Spellbound - Cara Lynn Shultz [67]
I screamed, sitting upright in bed. My hands clutched at my chest. I could still feel it—the dreadful, burning pain that scalded my heart. Frantically, I clawed at my chest, and my finger slipped through the fabric of my tank top. There was a small hole over the spot where my heart was pounding.
The hole hadn’t been there when I went to sleep.
I slipped my finger through the fabric and felt my heart thudding. I knew what I had seen: I had dreamed Gloriana’s last moments. My last moments. Terrified, tragic moments.
What was I doing? Could I really face a fate that terrible? How could I do this to my family—to my aunt? To myself? A dizzying panic began to whirl around me, and I felt like I needed to lie down—even though I was already in bed.
I glanced at the time—it was too late to call Angelique, so I texted her.
Please call me back asap. Urgent development.
I sat up, waiting for her to call back. I had been promising myself to keep a better eye out for signs that the curse was real, I told myself. My fears were just manifesting in my dreams.
Oh, Emma, who the hell are you kidding? You wanted a sign, and you got it.
Now what was I going to do with it?
Chapter 13
I woke up Sunday morning, stiffly curled up in a ball with my cell in my hand. Angelique hadn’t called back, so I called her immediately. My first voice mail was pretty calm. “Hey, Angelique, it’s Emma. Can you give me a call?”
I tried her again after showering. My second voice mail was a little more agitated. “Angelique, it’s Emma. Please call me back. There are new developments and only you can help me.”
My third voice mail sounded like I called her from inside of an insane asylum. “Angelique! I dreamed Gloriana’s last moments! And I’m supposed to hang out with Brendan today. Yeah, it’s Brendan. He’s the guy. Shocker, I know. Do I go? What’s going on? Please, please call me back!”
I was desperately trying to get a hold of her before my meeting—oh, who was I kidding, date—with Brendan. Everything, as crazy as it sounded, pointed to one thing: we were cursed soul mates—and still, I couldn’t stay away.
“If Angelique calls me back, I won’t go,” I decided, and plugged my phone back into its charger.
But she didn’t call back—and all my calls eventually went to voice mail. And I reasoned, I couldn’t cancel on Brendan. More like wouldn’t cancel on him, Emma.
And the more I thought about him—and how I felt when he kissed me—the more I knew I wasn’t going to stand him up. But mostly, when I was with him—I was happy. The happiest I had been in years. And whether that was from a curse or just from my emotional wounds finally healing, I’d be crazy to let go of him.
So I decided to stuff all of my newfound knowledge into the back of my head, and go downtown to Brendan’s house. But all that information refused to go unrecognized; it kept me frozen on the sidewalk as I regarded the four-floor, classically Manhattan brownstone. A scrolled, wrought-iron banister wound its way down the stoop, and the matching eight-foot-tall fence stuck out in comparison to the more modern structures lining the street, which faced a park with striking views of the Hudson River.
I checked the gilded numbers on the gate again. I was pretty sure I was on the right street. Brendan hadn’t told me an apartment number, which meant the entire thing was his family’s.
Now, what Christine had said made sense. When she called his family “prominent,” she meant “rich.” Very rich. Completely, totally, vacationing-in-Dubai rich. Well, Archer wanted to be reincarnated into someone wealthy, and it looked like he got his wish.
A tinny voice shook me from my thoughts, barking at me from the small, white security box on the fence.
“Are you going to stare at my house, or are you going to