“I’m trying to catch a particular scent,” Riley informed him, not stopping, not even sparing him a glance.
Clark took a deep breath too, letting his chest expand under his waterproof coat.
“All I can smell is wet stone and sea salt.” He turned to sniff the air in the opposite direction, but Riley caught his hand this time and yanked.
“It’s stronger this way.”
Her hand was small and warm in his, and because he was weak, Clark made no immediate move to take his back.
“What does it smell like?” he asked, genuinely interested despite suspecting this might be part of her plan to save face.
“You won’t be able to smell it.”
Ah! So, he’d caught her.
“My nose works perfectly.” Clark put every ounce of British condescension he could muster into his voice.
“I promise,” Riley said, ignoring the dark clouds that rolled ominously across the sky ahead as they continued to wind toward the base of the cliff, “that if I tell you, you’ll freak out.”
“I can assure you that I’m an extremely calm, mild-mannered person.” Or at least he had been, before he met her. “Every report I ever got from school called me a pleasure to have in class.”
Riley snorted. “I bet.” She pulled away to press the back of her hands against her eyes. “Fine. Sometimes I can smell magic.”
“You can smell magic?” Clark said slowly, and then pressed his lips together, fighting not to let his complete bewilderment bleed into his voice. He’d just told her he wouldn’t fly off the handle.
“Sometimes,” she repeated, dropping her arms to see Clark’s reaction. “But this” —Riley gestured at his sour-lemon face—“this reaction you’re having is exactly why I don’t tell people.”
Well, obviously no one could hear such a proclamation and not regard it with skepticism. Clark was starting to grow concerned about the depths of her self-delusion.
“Look, I can appreciate that it’s weird,” Riley said, “but it’s a family thing. My grandmother taught herself to track curses by their scent signature—it’s sort of like a magical fingerprint—and then, when I was old enough, she taught me.” She shook her head. “I didn’t even realize how strange that sounds until I was in high school. Lots of people in Appalachia learn to track, to hunt. I just don’t shoot what I find.”
“To be clear, you’re saying you’re some kind of . . . supernatural bloodhound?”
“Did you just call me a dog?”
Since Clark didn’t have a death wish, he quickly pivoted. “What exactly does a curse smell like?”
“It’s hard to describe. It’s not a normal scent, like rosemary or oil paint or chlorine. It’s more like a set of sense memories stacked one on top of another. Like . . . odor vignettes.” Riley grimaced at her own metaphor. “Arden’s curse smells kind of like blood in your mouth when you bite your tongue—salt and copper—mixed with the ground a second after lightning strikes. Iron. Burning. Earth.”
Clark couldn’t help himself from trying again, feeling silly as he sniffed the air. “You smell all that now?”
“Yes. Scent memory is hard to hold on to. When I trained with Gran in the forest, most of the smells grew familiar after a while. It was easier to isolate a new signature. But here, everything is new—new air, new flowers, new ocean, new rocks—but the same scent clings to this”—she unhooked the dagger from her belt—“and it’s even stronger at the castle.”
Clark didn’t know what to make of her reaction. Riley didn’t look or sound like someone panicking or grasping for straws. She looked damp and slightly frantic, but more determined than ever. Raising her chin to catch the wind like at any moment she might lose the trail.
There was no way she could have known where he’d take her today—so the chances of her stashing something up ahead like she could have planted the dagger at the castle didn’t add up. Was it possible his fake map really had pointed them in the direction of something mystical?
With a slightly unsteady hand, Clark gestured for her to precede him. “I guess you’d better lead the way.”
As dusk began to fall, the changing light created deeper shadows on the rock. One minute they faced solid granite, dark and unyielding, and the next—
Riley brought her hand up to shield her eyes against the setting sun. “That wasn’t on the map.”
The cave entrance must have been carved into the cliff surface by centuries of wave erosion. Clark halted his footsteps.
“I think it’s only accessible at low tide.” He’d never seen anything like it. Grabbing a fistful of Riley’s jacket, he held her back. “We can’t go in there.”
“Are you kidding?” Riley kept walking, towing him along. “We just discovered a mysterious cave at the bottom of the cliff that houses Arden Castle, and it’s practically dripping in the curse’s scent signature. As a curse breaker, I’m obligated to investigate. You, however”—she gave him a withering look—“do not need to come.”
Right. Not bloody likely. A gray haze clung to the opening. And though they weren’t terribly high, the atmosphere felt significantly thinner here. It was harder to take a deep breath. He wasn’t sending her in alone.
There could be bears or falling stalagmites in there. Stalagmites? Stalactites? Clark could never remember the difference. In any case, there might as well have been a neon sign declaring DANGER AHEAD.
“Helmets,” he said, removing his pack and starting to pull out safety gear. It was the least he could do, considering he might have inadvertently lured her to her demise. “You’re lucky I had an extra one in the camper.”
Riley knocked his hand away when he tried to do up the buckle under her chin, fastening it herself. “And you’re lucky you look like that, because you’re a massive dork.”
Clark frowned. What? It needed to be snug.
They walked for a while, the tunnel deep and dark enough that even with their headlamps pointed straight ahead all they saw was yawning black abyss. In her eagerness to explore, Riley banged her head twice on low-hanging chamber ceilings.
“Who’s the dork now?” He crowed, knocking on her helmet as he passed.
The temperature dropped steadily as they walked farther, the crash of waves growing fainter with each step.
Without the light from their headlamps, they might have overlooked the ravine.
Riley threw out an arm to halt Clark’s process, staring down at the abrupt drop-off of the ground at their feet. It looked like some kind of fissure had fractured the stone, leaving a cavity close to five meters deep and perhaps one, one and a half meters wide.
They both stared down where Clark aimed the torch on his helmet, illuminating murky water and jagged rock.
“What do you think?” Riley took a few steps back.
Clark was still peering over the edge. “The fall probably wouldn’t kill you, but—”
She must have stopped listening at that point, because the next thing he knew, she’d broken into a run.
“Riley.” Clark watched in frozen horror. “Don’t you dare—”