He’d never really teased anyone growing up. He’d always been too obviously sensitive to invite that kind of playful interaction. Don’t dish it out if you can’t take it, et cetera. Even Patrick had always gone easy on him, hyperaware that Clark was prone to emotional bruising. He’d looked on with envy while other lads ribbed each other, jostling their shoulders, coming up with silly nicknames.
It was a way of being close he never thought he’d get to experience but had always wanted to. Done right, he thought, teasing gave you permission to take yourself less seriously. Riley did that for him, let him try to do it back.
“I’m not playing with you anymore.” She picked up one of his grapes and threw it at him. “It’s thankless.”
They played four more rounds while they finished their lunch.
By the end of it, Clark’s white shirt was covered in grape stains from ones she’d lobbed at him, though he had managed to catch a few in his mouth near the end.
Before he knew it, two hours had passed, and Clark found he’d had one of the best afternoons in recent memory, with this woman who’d actively admitted they’d never be friends.
He was in the middle of an impression of Sir Michael Caine that Riley had somehow convinced him to attempt when a loud hiss came from about a foot to his left.
He scrambled to his feet, scanning the nearby grass for—Yikes.
Clark’s pulse spiked, a cool tremor shooting across his skin with instinctive revulsion as every one of his limbs seemed to lock at once. There. Still coiled. A snake.
“Okay, remain calm.” He held out both palms slowly, hoping Riley wouldn’t try to move toward the angry reptile, given her propensity for launching herself face-first toward danger. “I’ve read about it and there’s only one kind of venomous snake in Scotland.”
Reddish-brown body. About two feet long. Distinct zigzag pattern across the back.
Oh. That was definitely—
“An adder,” Riley supplied, not moving, not taking her eyes off the animal.
The snake hissed again, sustaining the sound as it began to slowly unfurl its scaled body. Adders weren’t normally aggressive, but not much about this castle was normal.
“Move,” she told him urgently as the animal angled itself in their direction.
Clark started backing away, keeping his eyes on the snake, but the animal tracked him, following with increasing speed.
Adder bites don’t kill people, he consoled himself. Usually. Though apparently they caused excruciating pain.
As if offering a demonstration, the adder opened its jaw, thrusting its head forward with extended fangs.
“You’re not moving fast enough,” Riley yelled, and when he looked back, she was much farther from their canopy of trees than he expected.
Something was wrong with his feet. They weren’t obeying, tangling together in his fear.
I’m going to get bit, he realized a few seconds before Riley grabbed a long stick off the ground and then, tilting her head to judge the angle, lunged, scooping under the snake’s writhing form, lifting, flicking, lobbing the adder about ten feet into a set of soft shrubs.
Clark stood as frozen as a statue, mouth open to catch flies.
“Let’s go.” Dropping the stick, she grabbed Clark’s hand and broke into a straight run, bodily dragging him in the opposite direction of the still-spitting snake until they made it inside the gates to lean against the castle’s cold stone wall—each of them pulling in oxygen in great heaving gasps.
Clark closed his eyes. “Please tell me you didn’t just fling an angry, venomous snake with a stick.”
“It was gonna bite you!” she protested. Her face was closer than he’d thought, close enough that he could see the arc of her lashes, the way her incisors were slightly long, how one eye had more gold in it than the other. With most people, the more he got to know them, the less he found them intimidating. Riley wasn’t like that.
“Where the fuck did that thing come from?” How had she known how to handle it? Did they have a lot of snakes in South Jersey?
“I think the curse was trying to send us a message.” Riley looked up at the castle. “It doesn’t like it when we’re nice to each other.”
As if just now noticing that she still held his hand, she finally released it. For some reason, that kind of thing kept happening.
Clark flexed his fingers. “What do you mean?”
“Think about it. You gave me your gloves; the castle gave you a rash.”
“I’m sure it must have had something to do with an external irritant.”
“I let you in on my approach to curse breaking,” she continued, “and I literally catch on fire.”
“Well, you shouldn’t have built a blaze in that ancient fireplace in the first place—”
“And now,” Riley said over him, “we call a temporary cease-fire and the only venomous snake in Scotland appears out of freaking nowhere.”
When he first met her, he’d assumed a curse breaker would be all airy-fairy, but the way her brain worked was consistently scientific. Cause and effect. Process of elimination. The more he spent time with her, the more he understood how she drew in clients. She would have been persuasive, if he hadn’t had his guard up.
“Even if you think these events are supernatural in influence,” Clark began, “you can’t think the curse would be so particular about the way you and I interact.”
She might think him self-important, but he and Riley were hardly the first people the castle had tried to banish. For centuries, Arden’s lore and the strange events surrounding the property had driven people off. The power of suggestion held tremendous sway.
Riley made a noncommittal noise.
Only once they’d waited long enough to be totally sure the coast was clear did they venture back to clean up the remains of their picnic.
As they were packing up, Clark came across an untouched red thermos he hadn’t noticed in the hamper. “Is this yours?”
“Oh, yeah.” She tried to shove the thing behind her back. “It’s nothing. A cleansing solution. I was supposed to try and get you to drink it.”
Clark recoiled. “Not the one you used on that evil Victorian eBay doll from your website?!”
That client testimonial still haunted him.
Prior to curse removal, Wilhelmina Spindlehausen showed the propensity to randomly turn off light switches in any room she occupied. Her glass eyes followed me everywhere, and she emanated a chill that could permeate a ten-foot radius.
“No.” Riley looked up and to the left. “I mean, I diluted it. Like a lot.”
Taking the thermos from her, Clark unscrewed the top, checking to see if the liquid inside bubbled. “It smells like pure petrol.”
The thermos had a bumper sticker on the front that read Stay Shameless. Certainly a fitting moniker.
“I can’t believe you were trying to poison me during our truce.” That snake had done him a favor, breaking up the chummy scene.
“Okay, first of all, I didn’t give it to you, did I?” She stuck her nose in the air. “And besides, cleansing dolls is one of my most regular sources of income. You’d think the freaky factor was the selling point, but I guess some people bring them home and end up with buyer’s remorse.”