Page 26 of A Game Cursed and Deadly

“Her nightstand.”

I sit at the edge of the bed, waiting for Esmeralda to do the same. She hesitates, eyeing the pillow, the smooth sheets. I should know better than to try reaching inside her mind, but the curiosity is eating away at me. Once again, when I pry the curtain of her subconscious open, I’m met by nothing but smoke and darkness. She’s a fortress. I back away before she feels my intrusion.

Her eyes refocus and she runs a hand over her face before sitting next to me.

“This is a lot to take in,” she volunteers.

“Lots of memories in this room?”

She shakes her head. “That’s not it. I can handle the memories. They’re everywhere. It’s the feeling that she’s not here I have a hard time with.”

It’s not lost on me that her mouth is willing to give away more information than her own mind lets through, as if she’s spent her entire life caging herself in, allowing others to see her exclusively on her own terms. I want to bare it all, peel away the layers and crawl under her skin until she’s nothing but blood and feelings at my mercy.

“She’s closer than you think. People never truly leave us.” They’re not entirely empty words, though I don’t elaborate the meaning behind them. After all, I do have my own petulant spirit who won’t let go of this world.

Esmeralda scoffs, surprising me. “Trust me, she’s gone for good.”

Before I can stick a knife in the wound she opened, wiggle it around until she bleeds before me, she shuts it closed, a neutral expression painted on her face. “Can you open the drawer for me?”

Trying to get information out of her now that she put up a wall will push her away, so I do as I’m asked. A jewelry box sits inside, carved of dark wood and inlayed with swirling patterns. The mere sight of it reminds me of my own box, unwavering though unwanted companion of many centuries, and I fight against a grimace when I pick it up and pass it to Esmeralda, who opens the lid with shaky hands. Part of me expects to find familiar tinkers inside, a locket and set of keys.

Instead, the box is filled with jewelry. Old, innocuous, barely precious jewelry.

“Is that what you were looking for?” I ask.

She nods, quiet. Her fingers reach into the box, stroking the mess of tangled chains and spare earrings like they’re a long-lost lover.

“Do you think this will be enough?” she asks.

“How much did you say you need?”

Her face twists in a frown. “I didn’t.” She pauses, her eyes trained on the jewelry. “Thirty-five hundred dollars.”

I do my absolute best to keep my expression from changing. There is no way the things in those pieces of jewelry are worth so much. I could tell her that, force her hand, appeal to her desperation. I could. Yet something tells me that’s not the right angle to take.

Esmeralda is hardly hungry for money. The way she looks at the contents of the box, like it pains her to part from them, tells me what I need to know. I could offer to make her a very rich woman, erase any worry of upcoming payments from her mind, and then what? The longing in her eyes would be no less pronounced.

Money is not what Esmeralda wants, the deepest desire I’ll appeal to. But it’s something I need her to have, if she’s to stick around.

“I’m no expert, but I think it might be,” I tell her, picking out a daisy-shaped pendant from the box. “They look like gold, and this has pearls in it.”

Esmeralda lifts a ring between her thumb and forefinger. It’s a thin gold band, tarnished from time, with a small stone perched atop it that has lost its luster. “Grandma’s engagement ring,” she explains. “Pretty sure it’s a diamond.”

Even if it were, she’d be lucky to fetch a thousand dollars for it, but I feign excitement. “That ought to settle your debt.”

Her gaze lights up. “Wait, really?”

“Diamonds are expensive.”

She turns back to the ring, a sheen of tears glazing her eyes. Her scent is all apricot marmalade.

“Ho sento, Àvia,” she whispers.

Catalan. The language sounds both foreign and like home all at once, and it makes my boiling blood run cold. It sounds like nights of passion, like broken promises, like unbreakable curses. I haven’t heard it in so long. The curse has an absolutely sick sense of humor.

“My Grandpa died when my Mom was a couple years old,” Esmeralda tells me. “Grandma wore her engagement ring for the rest of her days.”

“Are you sure you want to part with it?”