Burned

Chapter Twenty-Five

"We can mark Belladonna off the list, I have weeks worth of that." To my right, Kate made a checkmark next to Belladonna on her list of ingredients we needed. It was an extensive list, over forty things we would need. It was the most complicated potion I had ever seen. I searched aimlessly through Gran's journals for something about the Curse, but so far there was nothing.

As I thought about it, there probably wasn't anything. Gran thought the Curse was a rumor or theory. I don't know how she lived here her whole life and never thought anything of the Belasco family. Yet, I move here and the same day I run into one. It wasn't much time after that when I found out the Curse was real. Unfortunately, that had meant the guy I was dating needed to drink blood in order to survive.

"Okay, what about Valerian?" Kate asked. We had been at my house for almost an hour and all we had come up with was nine ingredients.

"I think this is it," I pointed at a tall green plant with small white flowers.

"You're the botanist if you don't know--

"It is, see how the vines fork into a large circular flower. Yup, it's Valerian. Okay, so that makes ten out of--

"Forty-one ingredients." She sensed my disappointment. "It's a good start," she offered a smile.

"Should we head inside?" I suggested. We were in Gran's garden -- now mine, attempting to see all the plants I had. So far we had: Belladonna, Laurel leaf, Rose: petals, hips, and water, white-Sage, Lily of the Valley, Thyme, Yew, and of course, Valerian. It was definitely an interesting potion, calling for all sorts of contradicting herbs.

I wasn't going to argue with the spell and potion Samuel Locke had created. It was the closest thing we had to break the Curse. We started walking back to the house. The first thing I was going to do was wash my hands, we had been in both the poison garden and regular garden. You definitely didn't want to get those two mixed up. Kate opened the back door, holding it open for me. I went straight for the sink and started to scrub my hands.

"You should probably wash your hands too, just in case." She started to argue, but ultimately ended up washing her hands. It couldn't hurt. You never knew what was on your hands.

"Hey, Corn?" I was drying my hands when she said this. I turned to face her.

"Yeah?" I handed her the towel.

"In your vision, the way you described Rose doesn't sound like Daniel's family. You said she transformed into a Cursed One. You said she had bat ears and unhinged jaw and all of her teeth were rigged," she trailed off as she continued to explain what I had seen.

"Yeah, it was pretty weird. I haven't ever seen Daniel turn into anything like that." The more I thought about it, the more I wondered why that was. What was so different about Rose?

"I wonder why?" She mused. I saw the gears spinning in her mind. She would figure it out -- she always did. There wasn't anything Kate couldn't solve. "In your vision, Samuel had started the spell, right?" I nodded. "If he hadn't died, then the spell would have continued. I wonder--

She started flipping through her journal frantically.

"What is it?" I implored.

"I think Samuel broke the Curse -- at least, a part of it. I think what you saw Rose turn into was what the Cursed Ones looked like, prior to Samuel Locke's spell." She cried out in full excitement.

"Wait, this is a good thing?" It was puzzling. I crept forward, as if I maintained close proximity, I might understand what she's thinking.

"Yes! It means the Curse is fractured, not completely broken, but there's a crack in the foundation. That means it will be easier to break. It means our chances of pulling this off just increased." Kate talked fast, so it was hard to keep up. the bottom line was that this was a good thing. It meant we were closer.