Page 97 of A Thousand Cuts

Blue eyes flicked back to him eagerly. “A curse?”

He laid the notebook on the table resolutely. “A thousand of them.”

Black went wide-eyed, understanding his meaning immediately as he grasped for the book and flicked it open. His eyes moved over it intently, poring over the words.

“Not all of these were cast on him directly,” he said, and Fix shook his head.

“No, some of them were on things around him. Things he uses. Stuff he needs.”

“Objects?” Black asked. “How come Midas isn’t in on this?”

“Intent,” Fix said simply. “All of these were cast intentionally to mess with Liam.”

“Interesting.” Black’s eyes glazed over the way they always did when someone dangled something he found fascinating in front of him. “The other cases didn’t have this much info…”

“Others?” Fix asked.

Black burst from his chair, moving over to one of the cabinet drawers, yanking it open, and pulling old scrapbooks andnotebooks out to dump on the floor until he reached one in particular.

It had a black face.

He brought it over to the table and slid it toward Fix. “This is everything I know about it. There isn’t much, just enough for me to believe it’s real.”

Fix swallowed, heart sinking to his toes. “That’s what I was afraid of. Something in me just knew as soon as I saw that notebook.”

Black wasn’t so callous as to excitedly dive into gruesome explanations like he usually did. Instead, he waited patiently for Fix to flip open the cover before beginning a slow explanation of its contents.

“There’s not much I could find on the first case. It was too long ago. Just excerpts about a Tina Bouvier, who was ‘the most cursed woman in the world.’ She was suddenly found dead in her home with no explanation.”

Fix flipped through the pages, seeing the headlines and Black’s bubble handwriting as notes.

“But seventy years ago, a Kevin Peterson comes in for his first recorded nuisance cursebreak, escorted by his mother. From there there’s a slew of documentation throughout his lifetime. Curse after curse. They even had someone come in to check the home, to make sure he wasn’t being…you know…but his parents weren’t casters.”

Fix glanced over the child protective services report and then a news clipping Black had cut out of an obituary.

“He was twenty-five when he died. They couldn’t identify the cause of death,” Black said.

Fix felt ice in his veins.

That was the exact age Liam was.

“In both cases no one could name the cause of death definitively. That’s where the myths come from. There was nodefinite proof so Nexus refused to acknowledge it and write it into textbooks. Instead it was told as a scary story to budding nuisance cursebreakers.”

“I remember it.” Fix laughed without humor, laying a hand over his eyes. “I told it to a classroom of kids the other day.”

He felt Black’s small hand touch his knee. “You couldn’t have known. I didn’t even know it beyond a cool-ass conspiracy theory.”

“Is there anything else you know?” he asked desperately.

“For those who have speculated, the exact number of curses needed is unknown. The ‘thousand curse’ name comes from the practice of a thousand cuts, which is what people have likened it to. The curses build up slowly in increments until they prove fatal in the end. It’s more sinister than most deadly curses. It’s torture.”

“And there's no way to fix it?” Fix asked.

Black shook his head, biting his nails. “The only recorded cases ended in deaths. If it happened to anyone else, well…”

“They didn’t live to tell the tale.”

“No.”