Malediction

13 - Near miss

Walking alongside Danny toward the library hadn't helped the insinuation dancing around Mathew and Thomas's thoughts. We had encountered many long uncomfortable stares, most of which were followed by baseless, tenuous gossip.
Most others in my position would have found it to have been discerning and off-putting, but strangely I found it to have had the opposite affect.
I wondered that if someone as average as myself could be seen talking with Danny Newscot, it would become less feared for anyone else.

"Where do we start?" Danny sat opposite me at a small work desk at the back of the quiet library

I hadn't put much thought into what exactly I was going to do had Danny accepted my offer, and now here I was, idiotically lost.

If this was going to work, I needed to know the truth, in its entirety.

"How do you know that what happened with your grandfather wasn't just really bad coincidence?"

I had considered the possibility, briefly. It was a stretch, but it was easily believable over a family curse.

He leaned his arms on the table, his hands neatly folded together in the centre, like always, his eyes were focused on anything other than my being

"Four women died who were involved with my grandfather, two men died at the hands of my mother, and one woman died after 3 weeks of having been involved with my uncle Blake"

The statement stood for itself, there was no way that was merely a coincidence.

Silence quickly settled in. It was filled with thought rather than tension.

"Do you have any idea who this woman was, or is, the one that supposedly created this, curse?" It sounded even more insane exiting my mouth than it did in my own head, and that's because it was insane

Danny shook his head "Like I said, my mother nor Blake refuse to tell me anything"

"What about William? Have you any idea where he is? Can you speak to him about it?"

He shook his head, defeated already "He disappeared years ago, I've not had contact with him since I was young, as for my mother and Blake, as far as I know they stand where Andy and I do, in the dark"

"You don't think he's-"

"Dead? No, no I think after my grandmother Lily passed on he just wanted to erase himself from here, from us. My mother and Lily were very close, very similar.." He trailed off

Upon first thought of the abandonment, I had been angry, but I slowly became understanding of Williams choice. He had cost four innocent women their lives, one of which was the mother of his two children. All he could see was the remnants of his mistakes, the remnants of the pain he had caused by simply existing. He had been quickly taught that love was something that needed to be forced away, so that's what he did.

"We should find him, we need to know exactly what we're up against, and he is the one that will know every detail" I suggested

"I have no idea where he is" Danny sighed "I wouldn't even know where to start"

"I do" I narrowed my eyes, earning a quick glance that tempted to linger "I have a friend, her dad is a PI, somehow he finds out information even with a confidential passcode on it"

Paisley would help me willingly, but that wasn't to say she wouldn't ask questions, questions that I would need to invent lies for. This needed to be handled carefully, delicately.

Tuesday morning, I pulled Paisley aside.

"I need a favour" I slowly began