A Passing Curse (2011) Read Free

authentic Louis XIV, wedged under the sterling silver door knob, a devil’s laughing face. But the night passed quietly and in the morning she agreed to work for Ajax.
    After driving back to her Burlingame apartment, a few miles south of the San Francisco airport, she’d less than three days to prepare before Ajax Fed-Exed a folder crammed with the plane ticket to Bucharest, visa, various permits, and a map to the castle ruins she was now approaching.
    She could not imagine why Ajax wanted her going into a country blind, knowing nothing, unless it meant that he would have more control.
    At Otopeni International, under flat gray skies, she’d breezed though customs by handing the inspector a mere twenty dollar bill. While changing some of her dollars into lei, she noticed Radu waving a sign with her name, misspelled of course, and then they drove five hours over the Transylvanian Alps into Villareceau.
    So, here she was, hunting for goddamned Dracula’s tomb, but only because she needed the money, never a good reason, the handmaiden of disaster. It was the life she led. But was it only the money? Or was it because Ajax was up to something and she was too damn curious for her own good?
    Radu stopped the jeep in the former courtyard of the thirteenth-century castle. She quit thinking about Ajax and climbed out. Piles of broken granite, nothing higher than a meter, ranged over three acres. Dwarfed spruce and wolfsbane bred among the stone blocks. Patches of ground fog rose a foot before dispersing. The snow had drifted to three feet in some places.
    “I do not like it,” Radu said and shut off the engine. The air was cold and smelled metallic from the snow.
    “You don’t have to like it,” she said and reached behind the seat for the rifle. It was a BRNO, a good Mauser copy, bolt action, five-shot clip, topped by a Chinese scope. She snapped the rifle to her shoulder and sighted on a far-off tree. “How does it shoot?”
    Radu raised his one eyebrow dramatically as if to say she was not in charge of him or his rifle, that he was merely putting up with her because of the money. “You pull the trigger,” he said as if to a dull child. “Do you know guns?” he asked suspiciously.
    She moved the safety, opened the bolt slightly, and, as she’d expected, saw the brass glint off a round in the chamber. “I know enough not to be driving over rough roads with a loaded and cocked Mauser.”
    “It was on the safety,” he said curtly. “Can’t you see? The three way on the bolt. Before you moved it.”
    “One good jolt can fire a Mauser, safety or not.”
    Before Radu could argue, she slapped the bolt shut, moved the lever to safe, and put the rifle back, making sure the muzzle was pointed out the back.
    Radu made a big deal of taking the rifle out again and inspecting it. He replaced the rifle, stomped his feet, and looked around. He grabbed a flare from under his seat. “I still do not like it. Being here.”
    “Think of all that easy money you’re making,” she said and opened her pack, grabbed the large lantern and pry bar. She hung the pry bar from her webbed belt and walked the fifty feet through shallow snow to the top of the stairs.
    Radu came up and ceremoniously handed her the flare. “You might need this.” He bowed from the waist and swept his hand toward the stairs. “I’ve done my job.”
    The flare was Russian, the body metal with an eye that she snapped on her belt. What was Radu so afraid of? “Why don’t you come with me?” she asked. “You might like the dark. We’ll be all alone, just you and me. Think of that.”
    Radu was thinking and being very dramatic about it. He looked around and shivered. He looked at his feet. “I’ll be right here. That is my job.”
    “You’re a coward, Radu,” she said, but could not get a rise from him. What was he up to?
    She shrugged and started down the narrow, crumbling steps. When her head passed under the ground line, she switched on the lantern.