I disentangled myself from his embrace—without any grace at all, I basically just bolted from his arms. I hoped I hadn’t hurt his feelings, but I’d felt too comfortable, too content—all too quickly—in his arms.
“Did I do some—” Brendan started, but I wouldn’t let him finish.
“I just— I mean, I still don’t— Um, I’m sorry,” I stammered, feeling foolish. I daydream for a month about kissing him, now I f lee when he does?
Brendan seemed to understand, and just grabbed his laptop and sat on his couch.
“Hey, want to see something?” he asked, sitting cross-legged on the worn-looking black leather.
“Check these out. My grandfather gave me a bunch of old family photos. I scanned them in. There’s some great pictures of old New York in here.” I figured he was looking for a less seductive way to pass the time—and pictures of the family were a surefire way to kill the mood. I appreciated the effort.
As I joined him on the couch, Brendan twisted his head to face me.
“As you reminded me, you know nothing about me or my family, right?” He looked at me pointedly.
“Right,” I mumbled. If only you knew what I thought I knew….
“Maybe knowing a little more about me will make you more…comfortable,” he said. I sat down next to him, leaning back on my arms as Brendan clicked through some faded photographs.
“This is my mom, when she was sixteen,” he said, pulling 9780373210305_TS.indd 187
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up what looked like a teenage model’s headshot from the 1970s.
“She was a model in the ’70s,” he explained. Of course.
Blonde and fresh-faced, she looked nothing like her rakishly handsome son—except for the green eyes that stared doe-eyed and glamorously out of the monitor.
Brendan continued to click through the pictures, showing me old shots of family members from the ’60s and ’70s, often at some gala event. I definitely recognized some celebrities in those pictures.
“My grandfather gave me this one picture that’s so old,” he said, clicking on JPEGs and then shutting them. “What did I name this JPEG?” he asked himself. “Emma, it’s almost 100
years old, this shot. It’s of the house that used to be on this site.”
“This house is new?” I asked.
“Not
really
new. My great-great-grandfather bought this land and had a house built here. That was the early 1900s. This house, the one we’re in now, my great-grandfather had built, right before the Depression. Oh, here it is!” he exclaimed, and double-clicked on the icon.
Even though the scan was grainy and creased, withered with age, I recognized the house. I’d recognize it anywhere.
The image that filled the screen had filled my nightmares. It was the burning white house.
“No,” I whispered, squeezing my eyes shut and turning away. My gaze landed on the view outside the window, where the Hudson River sparkled in the distance, and I knew I’d seen it from this vantage point before. Something f lashed through my head—a feeling, a f leeting memory— something, that made me think I’d seen this view before. I tried to grab the memory, but it was gone. A sickening sensation washed 9780373210305_TS.indd 188
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over me, and even though I had never had it before, I knew what to call the feeling.
Déjà
vu.
“Emma? Are you okay? You’re looking a little pale.” Brendan was staring at me, concerned, as I sat there, refusing to face him.
“Emma?” he asked again, sounding worried. “Emma, you’re shaking.”
The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them.
“I dreamed of that house.” As soon as the words were spoken, whispered with a trembling voice, I regretted it. I returned to face him, to see the “uh-oh, she’s crazy” look on his face. But Brendan wasn’t looking at me like I was insane.
“You dreamed of this house—the one in the picture?”
I
nodded.
“What did you dream, exactly?” he asked me quietly, staring back at the grainy scan of the black-and-white photo.
“I dreamed that I was in this house,” I said, tracing the front door to the house with my finger.
Brendan still stared at the picture, but his voice was anxious.
“Take a good look at it. Are you sure?”
I would know that house anywhere. “I dreamed it burned down,” I said, my voice shaking.
He sighed, closing his eyes almost painfully. Then, shutting the laptop and placing it gently on the f loor, he faced me.
“You know how I was out of school a few days this week?”
Brendan asked, leaning in so his face was eye-level with mine.
I nodded.
“I went to Ardsley. It’s in Westchester,” he added. “I was visiting my grandfather. I had to ask him about something, as the oldest member of our family.
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“There’s always been a joke of sorts among the Salingers,”
Brendan continued, reaching out and taking my hands in his.
“That we have a—and I can’t believe I’m saying this—curse on us. I always thought it was just a silly story that’s been passed down from generation to generation, because—” he waved at the posh home around him “—clearly, we’ve been very lucky.
“Emma, you’re going to think I’m deranged.”
My heart caught in my throat. “I promise you, Brendan, I will not think you are deranged,” I said, my eyes burning into his. “I swear it to you.”
He eyed me warily, but took a deep breath and started speaking. “This curse was just an anecdote told at weddings and family reunions. Supposedly, every couple of generations, one of the Salingers is supposed to have this incredible romance—a straight-up, fairy-tale, true-love kind of thing.
Only, it would end up an epic failure. Any time one of my cousins got dumped or shot down by a girl, we’d joke about the curse killing our game. No one took it seriously. I sure didn’t.”
Brendan’s eyes f lickered to me, gauging my reaction. I hadn’t f linched yet.
“The curse is tied to a crest that’s been in my family for ages—nearly a thousand years, I believe. As the story goes, if one of the Salingers met someone wearing the crest, they were supposed to be your…true love.” Brendan’s tone was gentle over those words.
“My grandfather has a pretty massive library at his house, with all these old family documents, books, photos and such.
I figured I should research the crest a little more, because—”
he paused, picking up my necklace “—you’re wearing it.”
He dropped the pendant, and I was positive that it was on fire, the way it was stinging my skin. I wanted to open my 9780373210305_TS.indd 190
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mouth, to tell Brendan that I knew what he was talking about, but I couldn’t speak. A very small part of me had believed that the curse was just fantasy, my pathetic way of manufactur-ing a bond with Brendan. But as he spoke, the reality of the situation rushed at me, trapping my voice in my throat as I listened to Brendan talk about how he discovered the very thing I stumbled upon in Hadrian’s Medieval Legends. The very thing my brother’s spirit was warning me against.
“I found some old books, but they just repeated the same information that I already knew,” Brendan explaine
d. “It was an old family seal, belonging to some lord from forever ago, who redesigned it in honor of his wife.
“So I talked to my grandfather. And he told me about the house that used to be here.”
Brendan leaned back, dropping my hands and rubbing his eyes. “I’m making no sense.”
“Actually, you are.” I leaned forward and, clutching his hands a little desperately into mine, begged, “Please tell me about the house that used to be here.”
Brendan took a deep breath and began. “My great-great-grandfather Robert lived here—in the house you dreamed of.
When he was on his deathbed, he warned his grandson—my grandfather—that he thought the curse might actually be real.
Robert said when he was a young man, he fell head-over-heels for a factory worker named Constance. He called her his golden angel, because she was a blonde or whatever. It was love at first sight, of course. They had planned to elope, but she was killed the day before their wedding.
“The thing is, they thought they’d cheated death. She had worked at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, and she said she had a bad feeling about the place and wanted to quit. She’d been having horrible nightmares about being trapped in a fire. But she didn’t want to look like she was out for Robert’s 9780373210305_TS.indd 191
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money. He told her to quit—and she did, just a week before there was a huge fire that killed most of the workers. But it was like death was coming for her,” Brendan said bitterly.
“Was she in this house when it burned down?” I asked quietly.
Brendan didn’t reply, which was answer enough for me.
“It was an electrical fire. The fuses were overloaded. Robert thought he had fixed the problem, but I guess he didn’t do such a great job.”
Brendan paused. “Back then, pennies were made of copper.
So Robert stuck coins in the fuse box. An employee of his explained how to do it. Robert was so proud of himself for being industrious.”
“Does that even work?” I asked.
“It does, but it’s hardly what I’d call safe. When you do something like that, there’s no way to regulate the electrical current. And Constance hated staying in the house alone—it was too huge and dark.”
“So she turned on all the lights,” I said, knowing too well what happened next. Brendan just nodded, grimly.
“Robert didn’t have time to wait for the electrician. It was easier for him to just stick the copper penny where the fuse should have gone. Robert always blamed himself for her death—if he hadn’t been so selfish, so impatient…” Brendan trailed off.
“The curse, as I said, has always been something of a joke in my family. Let’s face it, when bad things happen, well, isn’t that just life? Don’t bad things happen?” My mind f lipped through everything that had taken me to this moment and nodded.
“Was Constance wearing the crest?” I asked.
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wore it as a brooch.” Just like in my dream. Where I had golden hair….
“I’d imagine it’s not always as glaringly obvious as yours, with the crest practically a big neon sign on your chest,” he continued. “But based on everything Robert told him, my grandfather believes that, yes, the curse is very, very real.”
“So the story of Lord Archer really is true,” I murmured to myself, and Brendan’s hands tightened around mine.
“You know the name?” Brendan inhaled sharply. “How?”
“I did some research of my own,” I admitted. “I always wanted to know what my necklace meant—but I could never find anything out. But then— Do you know Angelique?”
“The witchy chick, right?”
“Right. She’s my friend, and her mom is some big expert in medieval stuff. Angelique recognized my necklace as having some significance. She lent me a few antique books about medieval crests and legends, and I found the story there.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Brendan demanded, and my jaw dropped.
“You’re kidding, right?” I asked, incredulous. “What would you have thought of me? Besides, I read about this in a book that also had stories about dragons and curses and witches and unicorns! Like I could just roll up to you in the cafeteria,
‘Hey, Brendan, guess what I think my necklace means?’”
He smiled ruefully at me. “All right, I see your point. But Emma, I don’t know how the crest came to have that meaning. I only know what was passed down from generation to generation—that if someone wore the crest, they were destined for some terrible fate, just by knowing one of us.”
“It’s
not
every generation, Brendan. At least, not according to what I read,” I said, hesitantly. “The book was pretty fragile. Some of the pages were missing. But I read most of the legend, how this crest came to have that meaning.”
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Brendan ran his hands through his ink-black hair and looked at me intensely. “Can you tell me the full story, Emma?” His voice was soft and pleading. I took a deep breath and began the sorrowful tale of Lord Archer, who had doomed himself and his beloved to an eternity of loss. I explained, as best I could, that the crest was to be worn by Archer’s reincarnated love.
I didn’t think I had to spell out for him what I took away from the story, although it was pretty obvious: we were soul mates. We’d spent a thousand years looking for each other.
And we were probably cursed.
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Brendan hung his head in his hands, quiet, and I was afraid to move. Finally, I reached out to him and touched his arm. He suddenly grabbed my hand tightly and I jumped.
“I’m sorry,” he said, dropping my hand as if he’d just grabbed a handful of broken glass. “And I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings by ignoring you. I just knew I was so attracted… No, attracted is not the right word. I need a stronger word.” He stopped, and chewed his lip thoughtfully. Suddenly, Brendan exclaimed, “Spellbound! I was spellbound by you, and, to be honest, it took me a little off guard.”
“Your choice of words is interesting,” I said dryly, and he laughed a short, bitter laugh.
“Your first day at school,” Brendan began, “I was so impressed by how you stood up to Kristin. And I hadn’t even seen you yet.
“I turned around to give the new girl a hand, because Kristin was clearly harassing you. And then I saw your face.”
Brendan’s voice was no more than a tender whisper, as he brushed my cheek with the back of his hand.
“And
then I noticed your necklace,” he continued. “I mean, it’s a pretty big pendant, Emma. But, I didn’t get a really good 9780373210305_TS.indd 195
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look at the actual design of it. I just thought it was cool that you would wear something so different.”
Color touched Brendan’s cheeks, and he put his head down, stealing a glance at me. “All I could think about was you. I felt like I had been missing you all this time. It didn’t make any sense to me,” he said, reaching out and touching the pendant. He was half-affectionately stroking the charm, and half resenting it.
“I couldn’t understand why I was so drawn to you. I knew nothing
about you, other than, well, you weren’t a pushover, and you were kind of a liar.” Brendan saw my insulted expression and was instantly contrite. “I’m sorry, Emma, but you kind of are. Congress Academy? I’m sure you have your reasons, but still.”
The words continued pouring out of him. “Anyway, I sort of prided myself on my disinterest in girls at school. Really, one’s worse than the next, so the last thing I wanted was to fall for some snob. And one with something to hide. For all I knew you were kicked out of your last school for setting the damn place on fire.
“That first day at lunch, Anthony made some comments about you. You were new. He had already cornered you before English class, I saw it. He thought you were an easy target.”
I remembered that first day—Brendan had slammed his chair into the table and stormed out of the lunchroom.
“You guys got into a fight in the cafeteria,” I said, awestruck.
“You noticed me,” he said, sounding slightly smug.
“You practically threw a chair,” I pointed out. “Everyone noticed you.”
He smiled at me and squeezed my hand. “The thing is, Emma, I shouldn’t have cared what Anthony said. I didn’t understand why it made me crazy. I told him to stay away 9780373210305_TS.indd 196
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from you. And let’s just say when I walked into the quad that afternoon, and found out you were involved in all the commotion—I just had to get to you, to make sure you were okay.
I pushed my way through the crowd, and saw him towering over you— I thought I was going to kill him. If I got there a second later, I might have.” Brendan shook his head as if he were remembering the sight of Anthony terrorizing me. “I restrained myself as much as I did because I didn’t want to scare you. After that night at the Met, I thought you’d be freaked out by violence. So I didn’t do what I would have liked to do to Anthony. And afterward, when we spoke—”
“You noticed what I was wearing,” I interrupted, remembering how he’d held my charm.
“I hadn’t gotten a good look at your necklace before that.
When I went back to my locker, I compared the two designs and started putting things together. I hadn’t even thought about the Salinger family curse until that moment.”