The Curse Keepers (Curse Keepers series) Read Free

tonight?”
    Her question shook me out of my thoughts. I’d forgotten all about my date. I forced a scowl. “
Dwight
.” I rolled my eyes. “And no, I’m not. If anything,I’m late for my shift at the inn. But I can’t leave because I’m covering for Lila. She had to run up to Norfolk.”
    Marlena tsked. “That’s twice in two weeks that girl’s sloughed off her shift.” She snagged my shirt and pulled me backward, untying my apron. “Barb’s here. We can handle things until Lila gets in. You have to get ready to see Dagwood.”
    She didn’t have to tell me to leave twice. “Dwight… and I thought you didn’t like him.”
    Marlena shrugged with a grin that told me she was up to no good. “You said this was date five. Your men don’t make it much longer than that. The sooner Dwane is gone, the sooner you’ll hook up with someone like Mr. Hottie.”
    With a sigh, I stripped my apron over my head and tossed it into a hamper. “His name is
Dwight
and things are different with him. He’s got a job with State Farm. He’s stable.” I grabbed my purse out of a drawer in the back room and stared at her, raising my eyebrows and daring her to contradict me.
    Marlena placed her hand on the doorjamb to the back door, barring my exit. “Oh, he’s stable all right, but he’s so full of stability that he’ll suck the life out of ya.”
    My heart thudded against my chest at her statement. Going out with Dwight was
nothing
like having the life sucked out of me. I’d had the life sucked out of me on two occasions. The first was figurative and had happened when my mother was killed. I didn’t care to dwell on that memory. The second had happened that afternoon and was quite literal.
Give me stability, thank you very much.
    I stood in front of Marlena’s beefy arm and waited for her to move, giving her a look of impatience.
    Marlena’s voice lowered. “I care about you, Ellie. You’re a sweet girl. You deserve better than the boring guys you date. You’re young. You need a little excitement. Live a little.”
    “I live plenty, and I happen to like dependable guys.”
    “If you like them so much, than how come you go through them like Kleenex?” She dropped her arm and brushed past me before I could respond.
    Scowling, I pushed the back door open and stormed out into the humid North Carolina heat. I was late for my second job, helping my stepmother Myra at the bed and breakfast she and my father owned. I considered stopping by my apartment and changing first but realized I didn’t have time if I wanted to finish at the Dare Inn and get home in time to shower before my date. Dwight was supposed to pick me up just before seven.
    The great thing about living in downtown Manteo was that everything was within walking distance. My parents’ B&B was only four blocks from the restaurant where I worked, and my apartment was in the alley behind the restaurant. If a grocery store would open downtown, I’d hardly have to drive at all, especially since I rarely left Roanoke Island. Good thing too since I drove a rust-bucket piece of crap.
    Although it was a short walk to the inn, it was long enough to work myself up into a nervous ball of anxiety. The encounter with the guy at the New Moon shook me up more than I’d been in years. I chalked it up to my overactive imagination, desperate for the bizarre occurrence to be anything but the curse. I was halfway to believing it was all in my head—but for the fact that he’d had a hard time breathing too. Never mind the electrical current and the scorch mark on my palm. I stared down at the darkening shapes on my hand.
I must have set my hand on wet paper or a soggy cardboard box. The ink bled onto my palm, that’s all.
And the hallucination I’d had could be marked off as stress.
    Even so, I would have felt better if Marlena or the older couple had had problems breathing…
    But I wasn’t ready to slap a curse label on it. My only hope was that my dad was having a lucid