Tom fixed his gaze on Kylie upon encountering her, immediately interested. It wasn’t her beauty that drew him in, but the aura of magic around her. Even someone with as little talent as he could tell she had power. “Did you want something?” Tom asked, for in his experience people always did.
Kylie took a breath. The next step was about to begin. “Tom Lockland?”
“That would be me.” Tom took in the measure of the girl and decided that she was far more than a spoiled American.
Kylie introduced herself and said, “I thought you might help me. I’ve heard that you know something about curses.”
“A bit.” Intrigued, he beckoned for her to come inside. He’d spent the best part of ten years searching for a way to break the curse that had afflicted his family for more than three hundred years, to no avail. The older a curse was, the more difficult it was to disperse, for it took root and grew, twisting through a person’s psyche and heart with punishing strength. Some people said that removing it could cause more damage than the curse itself.
“I need to know how to end it and I don’t have much time,” Kylie admitted.
Lockland had gray eyes, a rare pale color not unlike her own. It was not every day that a cursed American came to your door. It might be a bit of luck. Kylie was too tall, a good five inches taller than he, slender, with coltish arms and legs, and was wearing a dreadfully large raincoat and rumpled clothes in which she’d slept. She was a reluctant beauty, and that always appealed to Tom, who considered such women to be a code to crack. Convince her she was more than she’d ever imagined and she might just be yours.
Once escorted into the house, Kylie paced rather than taking a seat. She kept her backpack hooked over her shoulders as if ready to flee at any moment.
“Would you mind telling me what you’re doing here?” Tom asked.
“My boyfriend is in a coma,” Kylie told him. “It’s very serious.”
“I’m not a physician if you’re looking for medical help.”
“I’m not in need of a doctor. Gideon has plenty of those.” She stared at him then. “I’m in search of magic.”
Another man might have laughed at this announcement, but not Tom. He nodded, even more interested; after all, he was looking for the very same thing. It was after five and ordinarily he would have poured himself a whiskey. Instead he fetched them both cups of tea. To Kylie’s, he added a sliver of a wood mushroom that would cause even the most vigilant and wary individuals to reveal themselves.
“Anyone who falls in love with us is ruined,” Kylie said between sips of tea. The taste was refreshing, and she drank one cup and then was poured another. “My boyfriend Gideon was struck by a car. That’s why I have to end the curse. There’s no other way to bring him back.”
Kylie was talking too much and she knew it; she was about to tell Lockland about The Book of the Raven, it was on the tip of her tongue, but she stopped herself, recalling the librarian’s warning.
“Do you have any idea of how this might be accomplished?” Tom cocked an eyebrow and waited for her response. He wasn’t particularly educated, and had never gone to university, but he’d had to be shrewd in order to survive his childhood. When he smiled, he was disarming, and even more handsome than she’d first noticed, with movie-star looks from a bygone era.
“That’s why I’m here. My family was from this village, and I assume the curse must have begun here.”
“And your family is fine with what you’re doing?”
“That doesn’t matter,” Kylie said.
Lockland could spot an insincere person, he was one himself, and this girl was honest. He’d had to be canny to get through life in this dreadful village where people held gatherings to celebrate magic and were proud of their heritage. The library had been a witch’s house and it was said that writers often came all the way from London in search of inspiration when they were blocked. Many of the former inhabitants of Thornfield had been devotees of green magic, known for their use of the Nameless Art, particularly in matters of health and well-being. Healing, however, was not Tom’s interest.