Do Your Worst(61)

She tried to stop it, but her other arm couldn’t reach, and now Ceilidh was trying to help and getting it all over herself too. Clark jumped to his feet, yanking Riley around in his effort to grab the bottle, all three of them slip-sliding on the wet wooden floor.

By the time they finally set it to rights, the entire bar was staring.

Riley winced, for both herself and for Ceilidh, who was having a truly terrible night.

Only when she’d sent her friend back to the kitchen to change—one of them had to stay and work, after all—did Riley, belly full of dread, make herself look at Clark, mentally preparing for his scorn, but instead . . . he had his face in his hand, his shoulders shaking.

What the hell? Was he so mortified of the spectacle he was crying? Sheesh, he wasn’t even the one who’d gotten wet.

But no, wait, he was making little undignified hiccuping sounds.

“I’m sorry,” he said, gasping for breath. “Not laughing at you—” His speech died off in another bout of helpless laughter. “You don’t look that bad, really.”

Riley rolled her eyes. It was nice, unexpected, to hear him laugh.

“I’d offer you my napkin,” he said as she wiped ineffectually at her shirt with her own, which was so wet it was crumbling, “but you see”—he tried and failed to smother another helpless giggle— “it’s got onions in it.”

“You’re such a jerk.” But brightness cracked between her ribs. And then she was laughing too. “God, Clark, I stink.”

That set them both off in a new bout. Clark was going to fall out of his chair.

“I’m just glad,” he said, and swiped at a tear that had appeared in a corner of his eye, “that we already agreed to sleep in your bed.”





Chapter Seventeen


The first thing Clark noticed upon entering Riley’s room at the inn was that her murder board had expanded significantly. The second thing he noticed was that it now had his face on it.

“Uh, so . . .” She tried to place herself in a way that obstructed his view, an act that was complicated by the fact that he was taller than her and they were chained together. “I normally work alone, right? Like totally solo. But since the curse has sort of aggressively insisted you and I are linked . . .” She gave him a weak smile. “Linked,” she repeated as she held up her manacled arm, “get it?”

When Clark simply tried to sidestep her, she rushed to continue, “I guess I better fill you in on my working theories, or, in light of recent developments, lack thereof.”

“Where did you even get that picture?” It looked to have been taken at some kind of event. He was wearing a tux, but it wasn’t a posed step-and-repeat kind of thing. He wasn’t even looking at the camera.

“Google. Obviously.”

“Oh, obviously,” he repeated, mimicking the flat way she said the word in her accent. “Why am I up there? And is that—My face is circled.” He pointed.

“I was getting to that.” Riley walked them over to stand right in front of the wall that now stretched well beyond the original board—that Sellotape was going to peel off the wallpaper when she took it down, no question—but she blocked the part with his face on it with her body.

“The board is divided into different sections arranged chronologically.”

Yes, Clark could see that. To the far left was the curse-origins section he’d seen the first time he was here, now filled out with corresponding information.

It read a bit like a game of Cluedo. “Philippa Campbell (who) in June 1779 (when) at the cave by the cliff (where) because a blood feud had wiped out her family and threatened her home (why),” though instead of a weapon Riley had listed that Gaelic sentence they found in the cave: “an end to enemies (how).”

“Not much progress on that first section, aye?” He made a clicking sound with his tongue. “Didn’t you suss all that out ages ago?”

Clark wanted to make sure she knew that just because they’d had a laugh and he’d removed her onions didn’t mean he’d gone soft for her again.

“Yes,” she deadpanned, “thanks so much for pointing that out.”

The next bit said Curse Evidence with a section tagged Artifacts and an instant photo of the dagger underneath.

Doesn’t respond to fire, cleansing, or charms, she’d noted in the photo’s white space. Beside it, a Post-it read, belonged to Philippa?

While Clark scanned the next few items on the wall, Riley grabbed a pad of fresh notes off the nightstand and scribbled manacles before throwing it up beside the dagger.

“Oh, good. If you hadn’t written that down, we might have forgotten about them.”

Riley drew a cartoon penis and promptly stuck it to his chest.

“Very mature,” he said, removing it and shifting his gaze to the section labeled Events.

“When did you encounter stinging nettles?” he asked in the same moment that a phantom itch manifested on his hand. Clark scratched at it mindlessly. He still had some of her salve left . . . “Oh, you wily minx.”

“Are you talking about me or the curse?”

“You.” He’d known it hadn’t made sense for the dagger itself to have caused the rash, since Riley had never developed it despite handling the artifact plenty over the last week and a half.