Page 24

Curtis nodded, still looking at the picture.

~I was a blacksmith in life. Mostly I made useful things like horseshoes and tools, but I liked to tinker with jewelry sometimes for my own amusement.

~ He smiled in a surprisingly self-deprecating fashion.

~I was never much good at it, but Alice was kind enough to compliment that necklace and wear it in public, bless her. ~

“Not much good?!” said Eula, bewildered. “That locket was stunning . I was obsessed with it when I was a little girl.” Her face fell. “Which is why I couldn’t forgive myself when I lost it.”

Curtis’s eyes widened.

“Lost it?” Henry asked. He’d been mostly silent up until now, but Ethan could tell that he’d become just as invested in Curtis’s story as everyone else here.

Eula nodded. “I was young and stupid. I went out camping in the woods with my boyfriend at the time, and I thought I was invincible and that taking precautions was for people who were no fun, as young people do.”

She sighed, looking incredibly annoyed at herself.

“So I made the unwise decision to wear my family heirloom locket while camping in the forest out behind Girdwood Springs, and there was a storm that we were completely unprepared for, and, well, long story short, the necklace got lost somewhere along the way.”

Staring at the photo, she continued, “I went back out there to look for it every chance I got, even though it was a difficult hike, but it must’ve gotten washed away somewhere. The rains that night were horrendous – they ended up causing a landslide. If we’d woken up one minute later…”

Ethan knew that it was a silly thought to have, given that they’d only just met, but he didn’t think that Eula had ever looked so glum as she looked now.

She seemed like the kind of person who was always the life of the party, who always had something positive to say to cheer everyone up – seeing her so down on herself was unsettling.

~Please don’t be bothered by it, Miss Eula,~ said Curtis, and indeed he didn’t sound upset.

~I never expected that trinket to have meaning to anybody other than my Alice – the fact that it lasted that long is more than I ever would have expected.

I’m glad that you were able to enjoy it for many years. ~

Eula sniffled, and Henry and Sylvie glanced at each other, clearly not quite sure what had just been said.

Chloe gave a quick summary, and Sylvie nodded, passing Eula a cup of tea.

“Curtis is right. As sad as it must be, it’s not something you should get down on yourself about, especially all these years later.

” She smiled. “If I decided to beat myself up for every stupid thing I did when I was younger, I’d never get anything else done! ”

Eula smiled thinly, wrapping her hands around the teacup. “Thanks, darlin’. I appreciate it, I really do. But I think I’ll be beating myself up over this for a while yet. That necklace was my favorite thing in the whole world. And to know how much it meant to Great-Great-Grandma Alice…”

Sylvie continued to try to comfort Eula, and Ethan leaned back in his chair, taking a moment to gather his thoughts.

This trip to Eula’s house had certainly been enlightening in a number of respects, though they were still no closer to working out why Curtis had been called back to the living world.

He turned to Chloe. “What are your thoughts on all of this?”

Chloe took a big bite out of a rosewater custard donut and chewed thoughtfully, leaving a liberal dusting of cinnamon sugar on the tip of her nose, and it was all he could do not to reach over and brush it off.

She really did have a habit of getting food on her face, and while normally he would find that kind of thing maddening, with Chloe, it was just plain endearing.

“I’m not sure, really,” Chloe said. “I mean, part of me wants to go and find this locket, but it feels like a bit of a fool’s errand… and anyway, we should really be focusing on getting Curtis back to where he’s supposed to be. The locket feels more like a long-term project.”

“You could always ask Kira for some help narrowing down the location,” Henry said, butting into the conversation, and Ethan and his pegasus both fumed at how casually he was cutting into his time with Chloe.

“She’s the local ranger,” Henry went on. “If we can get some more information from Eula about whereabouts in the forest she was at the time, Kira might be able to make an educated guess as to where we should be looking.” He gestured offhandedly at Chloe. “You’ve got sugar on your nose, by the way.”

“Oh! Thanks!” Chloe exclaimed, brushing madly at her face, as the pegasus roared its rage to the heavens at such a brazen act of mate-stealing. “Is it all gone?”

At Henry’s nod, she turned her exasperated gaze on Ethan. “Why did you let me just spend all that time with sugar on my face?!”

Because it was cute. Because I wanted to lick it off once we were alone, whenever that might actually be. Because you’re my mate, and you would be the most beautiful woman in the world even if you’d been covered in sugar. Maybe especially if you’d been covered in sugar…

“I thought you were keeping it as a snack for later,” he said mildly, and Chloe whacked him over the head with an embroidered cushion.

Not that they would need to keep anything for later… or ever again in their lives, really. Sylvie had apparently decided to cater this impromptu five-person meeting with enough cake to feed an army, with leftovers to spare.

He sipped on his tea and picked up the smallest thing available – a tiny Portuguese tart – and nibbled on the buttery, flaky pastry and silky-smooth custard, resolving to do an extra hundred push-ups tonight.

“How are you holding up, Curtis?” Chloe asked, and Curtis smiled.

~I’m doing well, thank you. I never expected to meet a descendant while I was here, and I certainly didn’t expect that that necklace would have lasted as long as it did. It has been a humbling experience, to see that something of me has lived on into such a strange time.~

Suddenly he blinked rapidly, and looked away. ~Seeing that picture brought back so many memories. As much as I’ve been enjoying my adventure here, it has strengthened my resolve to solve this mystery so that I can return to my family.~

Chloe nodded firmly. “We’ll get to the bottom of this, Curtis. I swear it.”

Not just for your sake, but for the sake of my career as well, Ethan thought automatically – but he found that he didn’t really mean it.

With a jolt, he realized that he had barely thought about his job all day.

When was the last time that had happened? He was pretty sure that the answer to that was ‘never’. Certainly the fact that he was at actual risk of losing his job should have been at the top of his mind at this point, but it just… wasn’t.

Meeting Chloe had reordered his priorities, and the whole thing with Curtis, where he felt like he was part of something bigger – something where he could help someone – had awakened a part of him that he’d never even known existed.

His job didn’t help anyone, unless you counted making rich assholes even richer as ‘helping’. Which he didn’t. Not anymore.

Hell of a time to have an existential crisis, he thought musingly. But he supposed that that was the nature of crises – by definition, they didn’t tend to wait for the best possible time.

His pegasus huffed in dismay, but Ethan could tell that its heart wasn’t fully in it. Maybe getting away from the office – and even being able to shift outside of its scheduled time – had gotten it to start envisioning a different life for itself.

Well, the existential crisis, such as it was, could wait a little longer.

Right now, they had to work out what to do about Curtis’s actual existential crisis – and, as much as Ethan hated to admit it, it felt like they weren’t any closer to solving the mystery than they had been when they first arrived in Girdwood Springs.

Despite his pegasus’s protests at the idea of willingly talking to a hellhound, he turned to Henry. “Do you know of anyone in this town who could help us? Girdwood Springs doesn’t exactly feel like the most conventional of towns, if you get my drift. We’ve already met Margot.”

Henry smiled knowingly. “Yeah, she’s definitely a character.

It’s possible that she might be able to help further under very specific circumstances, but I wouldn’t rely on it – there’s a reason why she decided to more or less give up magic in favor of running a bookstore.

If there’s any further research that needs to be done, though, I’d definitely recommend going back to her. ”

Henry continued to ponder, looking thoughtful. “Natasha and Kieran – he’s our resident griffin shifter – thought their B&B was haunted. But it just turned out to be a sprite, so I don’t think they’d know much about dealing with actual ghosts, unfortunately.”

“Wait,” Ethan said. “Is that the B&B I’m staying at? The big place out in the forest?” His pegasus shivered at the idea of there being another ghost, even though Henry had just said that there wasn’t one.

Or maybe it was just scared of sprites instead. He was starting to lose track – maybe it would be easier to keep a list of things it wasn’t scared of.

You take that back, the pegasus hissed. I fear nothing and no one.

“Yeah, that’s the one,” Henry said, blissfully unaware of the pegasus’s mini breakdown. “One hundred percent certified non-haunted, especially once they helped the sprite back to its pond.”

“No clairvoyants in this town, then?” Chloe asked. “No mystics? Psychics?”

“No, sorry,” Henry said. “Well, not yet, anyway. Come back in six months, and who knows?” He laughed, and Ethan realized that the menacing hellhound aura was starting to fade to a background hum.

He’d never heard of hellhounds being able to control their auras, but maybe this one had learned how to dial things down a notch once it got to know people.