Curse the Dark (The Harstone Legacy Book 1)

Chapter 7

"She's been cursed," muttered Margot.

"Don't be ridiculous," snapped Isobel. "Nobody would curse Flora.

"If Flora's been cursed," Maude started slowly, completely ignoring Isobel, "Our timeline may have just changed. We thought the next full moon would be the best time for a healing spell, but breaking curses is a whole other story."

"How hard is it to break a curse?" Two days ago, I would never have imagined asking that kind of a question.

Believe it or not, curses are pretty rare." Tilda dragged her hand through her curly red hair. "Despite what popular culture might have you believe, witches don't throw curses around. Doing something like that requires you to sacrifice a piece of your soul. Most people aren't willing to do that. The problem is, the longer a curse goes for, the harder it is to break. The whole coven will be needed."

"So, who would be the curse breaking expert?"

The four women looked at each other. "There is no such thing as a curse breaking expert," said Maude. She lifted her eyes to the house "The strongest witch in our coven is Flora, and she would not be able to begin to break even a simple curse, let alone whatever this is."

That was not useful. I scrubbed my hands through my hair. I couldn't think anymore. I was tired, sore and I still hadn't had anything to eat. Any moment now I was going to pass out from hunger alone.

"I need to get back inside to Flora. I don't like her being alone." Isobel strode back into the house.

At least one of us knew what they had to do. As of this moment, I had no idea what I was doing, or what the next step should be. I was reacting to the situation around me, but I hadn't had much of a chance to really understand it.

"How are you going?" Tilda asked tentatively.

"I think I'm done for the day. I don't know how to help her."

"You seem to be getting upset," commented Maude.

I was stunned. "Of course, I'm upset. That woman is trapped in some magical prison, and none of you seem to be able to tell me how to fix it, despite the fact that you kidnapped me because you had some misguided belief that I would be able to do just that." My voice rose until I was almost shouting.

The three women were staring at me as if they couldn't understand why I was having a meltdown. It seemed perfectly logical to me.

Margot turned to Tilda. "I think you need to feed her."

Finally, somebody was understanding my problem. "Maybe we should also do some research into curses," I suggested.

"That would be easy if books on curses weren't banned," said Tilda.

"What are you saying?"

Maude sighed. "What she's saying is that there are no books on curses in Walker Bay. Even showing interest in curses is a binding offense."

"As in magic binding." I remembered what Collias had told me.

Margot whistled. "Look who's learning fast."

"I wasn't really given a choice now, was I?" I said sharply.

Maude put her hands up. It looked like everyone was beginning to get concerned about my attitude. "You're going to stay with Tilda tonight, and tomorrow we'll start looking at what our options are."

It looked like my kidnappers were now desperate to get rid of me.

* * *

As I followed Tilda into her house, I couldn't stop thinking about all I had learned today.