Page 36 of Midnight Kiss
“Information,” I said. “I want you to tell me everything you know about cursed objects.”
“Hmm.”
I tapped my fingers on the countertop.
“Hmm.”
“Spit it out, Julius.”
“Easy, Boss, I’m considering,” he replied. “Well, what type of cursed object are we talking here?”
“A book,” I said.
“Oh, well that changes things.”
“Changes things how?”
“Okay, so here’s the deal,” Julius said, smacking his lips on the other end of the line. “Basically, you got three types of standard cursed items. You’ve got your regular-degular, run-of-the-mill cursed item. Think, like, cursed necklaces or rings or that kinda shit. Where you have them and then bad stuff starts happening to you.”
“All right.”
“Then you get your violent curses. Like dolls that you can stick pins in, and the person you cursed feels the pain.”
“And the final type?”
“Curses that sap the life out of you because they’re feeding off your actual lifeblood,” Julius said. “The nastiest kind of ‘em all. And books are usually the objects that have those types of curses.”
My hand balled into a fist. “Tell me more about the last type. Give me symptoms.”
“You’ll get real sick, like, nauseated, fever, pale. You won’t be able to sleep properly, and you’ll start having visions. Usually, they’re visions from the person who put the curse on the book in the first place,” Julius said, matter-of-factly. “Thing is, those types of curses are pretty much impossible to break.”
“There must be a way.”
“I don’t know,” Julius said. “You see, once the curse takes hold, you’re pretty much bound to the cursed object. It’s going to suck the life blood right outta you. And once it does, well, you die. And you make the curse stronger. Of course, that’s not a problem for vampires. We’re immune to that particular type of curse, given the fact that we’re the living dead and all.”
“But humans?”
“Oh yeah, they’ll die from it.”
“How long?”
“Couple of weeks,” Julius said. “A month tops.”
Fuck. I wasn’t one for vulgar language, but it seemed like the appropriate time. “There must be a way to break a curse like that.”
“Depends on the scenario, I guess.”
“You just told me it’s impossible. Now you’re saying it depends on the scenario?”
“Well, jeez, I had some time to think about it, all right?” Julius sighed. “What’s the situation?”
“A human is curse-bound to a book. What will it take to save them?” I asked.
“Let me think for a second.”
I paced back and forth in front of my countertop. The longer this conversation went on, the less time Emily had. If what he was saying was true then she was dying. “What if the book was removed?”
“That would make the human feel better, sure,” Julius said. “But the curse would just eat away at ‘em over time from a distance. It would take longer for them to die.”