"Polly! NO!" I screamed.
The force of Polly knocked Luc off his feet and his head hit the coffee table which made an unpleasant crack. The moment he was down she was on him like an animal, her fingers extended like claws trying to dig into any inch of flesh they could grab. Her hair was aflame, mussed and tangled from days of sleep, so that it formed an impressive halo of angry red around her face. He took her by the wrists, attempting to push her away, but she fought against him with all her strength—apparently rejuvenated after her two week long sleep—mumbling curses at him with every breath.
"You bastard—you piece of shit—how dare you do that to me—AND RACHEL," the volume of her voice swelled, "—how dare you use your magic on us—keeping us sedated—trapped—wasn't attacking us with that beast enough?!"
Luc's face twisted in pain that had nothing to do with the eager, brutalizing hands of the furious woman pinning him to the ground. I knew that Luc was innocent of that accusation, and I saw that he was tortured of the pain he inadvertently caused her. I knew that he could easily throw her off, simply because he was larger and bulkier, but it seemed he was unwilling to hurt Polly even if it was to protect himself.
I knew I had to do something to stop this, make her understand. I flung my arms around Polly and heaved, trying to separate the two. Polly thrashed against my grip, trying to throw me off, but it was enough to break her focus enough so that Luc would escape her clutches. Luc gave a final push and slid away from Polly, out of her reach, scrambling to his feet. I kept my grip on her, doing my best to keep her away from him.
"I'm sorry!" Luc shouted. "But don't you see why I had to keep her sedated? She did this before, when she first woke up, and she wouldn't listen to me. I couldn't get her to stop long enough to listen! I was hoping you'd explain it to her when you were well enough to wake up."
"Why did you sedate her though? Couldn't you have... tied her up or something? Tried to explain it to her then?"
Luc simply looked aghast at the suggestion of tying Polly up, of tying anyone up.
"Rachel!" Polly screamed over her shoulder at me. "What are you doing? We need to kill this fucker if we're ever going to be free of the curse! He's the one who summoned that thing and it won't stop until he's dead!"
"You don't know that Polly! You don't understand! He's not controlling it, it's not his fault, he must've only summoned it by accident..." I protested, informing her of my theory.
"That's not true either,"
Polly and I stopped struggling. My grip loosened, but Polly didn't return to attack Luc. We both just froze on the spot, looking at him.
"I didn't summon it. I have nothing to do with it except..." his voice trailed off, his eyes staring at the floor searching for something unseen. "...but that doesn't matter. It is my fault. The blood is on my hands. And I understand that you may hate me for it, but you need to understand that we're the only ones who can help each other now... and that I mean you no harm."
For once, Polly didn't say anything. She may have been blinded by fury, but even she could see the torment and guilt that was etched into his face.
Luc managed a final pleading look at us before once again turned and headed into his room, locking us out.
A heavy silence followed his exit—if you didn't count the increased activity of the Beast next door, riled up by our shouting match—as we both worked through his last words in our heads. Polly remained curiously quiet, especially since I expected her to round on me the minute Luc was out of the room.
I spoke first. "Polly?" I asked tentatively, ready to bear the brunt of her displeasure for me holding her back and impeding her attack on Luc.
But Polly was surprisingly calm when she turned to me.
"What... do you... think?" I was being extremely carefully approaching the subject.
"He seems... sincere. I mean, when I knew him, he was never good at lying," Polly said glancing back at the closed door of Luc's room. The emphasis on sincere showed her reluctance to trust him. "But that might be a new skill he's picked up since I last saw him."
"You don't believe him," I said, sounding sad which even surprised me.
"I can't!" Polly countered, anger tinging her voice. "I still don't know what's going on, neither do you! You can't deny the weird coincidence of the same attacks on you and my sister... and the only thing you have in common is HIM! We can't trust what he says at face value! And until I'm one hundred and ten percent sure that he's telling the truth... I'm going to keep my guard up. You should too."
I cringed at Polly's reprimand, but I knew she was right. Maybe I was so desperate for help that I was willing to blindly believe that Luc was trustworthy. But I couldn't bring myself to mistrust him either; I knew how much he had done for us, how much trouble we had caused him and yet he still wanted to work together. And that was one thing I was one hundred and ten percent sure about: working together was our only hope.
"Fine, we'll be cautious, but you can't try and murder him anymore,"
"Deal," Polly said, a little grudgingly. "Unless he does something to deserve it."
I rolled my eyes, but smiled. I was frustrated, but I was also just glad to have Polly back.
"How long have I been out of it? How did we even get here?" Polly asked, suddenly interested in our surroundings now that the crisis had past. The beast let out a particularly loud snarl next door, as it sometimes did, but it made Polly tense up reactively, just like I used to. "Why is that thing...?"
I knew what she was confused about; she hadn't been informed like I had. I took her by the hand to explain to her all the things she had missed out on, hoping that with a little insight, she would grow to trust Luc more.
Polly listened carefully but—true to form—skeptically.
"So, the spell worked?" she asked, after I had finished giving her a brief synopsis of what had happened and what I had learned. "Or so he says."
"Yeah," I said, my eyes narrowing at Polly, reminding her to keep her hostility towards Luc to a minimum. I wasn't sure why I was feeling so protective of him.
"And he's keeping us here because the Beast—," she casually motioned to the shared wall between the apartments and the entity growled as if on cue, "—can't come in and if we go out, it'll attack us."
"He's trapped here too," I reminded her. "He earned it's ire when he used the last of his powers to save us."
"Right, right," Polly said, waving her hand to cut me off. "So now what?"
"I don't know," That was true; this was where my knowledge ended. Since our awkward encounter the day I woke up, Luc hadn't been in much of a sharing mood. Even now, he was back in his room behind a locked door.
What I did know was that this depended on communication now. There was no more time to be wasted on social awkwardness. He may be under the impression that we hated him—which was only half-true on account of Polly—and I was pretty sure he hated us for stealing his powers, but we had to put that aside if we wanted to save ourselves... and each other.
I got off the futon, leaving Polly's side, and headed towards his bedroom. Now was as good of time as ever.
"Where are you going?" Polly asked, caught off guard by my sudden movement.
"To find some things out," I responded, looking back at her. "And to apologize."
Polly didn't protest further as I approached the door. I knocked twice, trying to stir up the courage to get to the information we needed out of him.
There was silence for a moment, and I feared that he wouldn't let me in, still too angry to face me. But then suddenly he was there, appearing through a crack in the door.
"What is it?" he whispered.
"Can I come in?"
There was a pause, and then an embarrassed whisper slipped out. "Only if the redhead stays out there,"
I couldn't help but smirk at that. "Deal," I said as he opened the door wider and stepped aside to let me pass.
Luc said nothing as I entered the room, even when I turned to stare at him. He closed the door behind me—not locking it—and we shared an intense look. We were both worse for wear. Luc looked like he hadn't slept in weeks and I was living on the bare minimums. I looked worse than the day I first met him; I had no make up to my name and was wearing the clothes he bought for me, a collection which consisted entirely of unflattering t-shirts and yoga pants. But there was something unnerving about being alone in his bedroom with him, something electrifying.
We watched each other for a moment before Luc broke our intense gaze and sat on the edge of his bed. He looked back at me, bashful and worried—not at all like the suave and talkative stranger I met when I had first entered his shop. I knew now that was an act, that the real Luc was thoughtful, kind and... a little damaged.
"What did you want?" he asked finally, when the strained silence between us got to be too much.
"I want answers, Luc," I said. My voice sounded much braver than I thought it would; it was almost commanding. Just what I wanted. "If you want us to work together, you need to tell us exactly what you know. I know you understand more than you're letting on. I know it's uncomfortable, but we can't be in the dark if you want our help,"
"I know," Luc said, sounding defeated. "I know I can't keep this from you. But it's not exactly easy to come out and say, y'know?"
I nodded knowingly, and he hesitated for a moment before patting the edge of the bed beside him, inviting me to sit down. I joined him, cautiously, just as Polly would have wanted.
"Please suspend your disbelief, for a moment. Even in the face of all you've already seen." He motioned towards the wall our apartments shared. The low growling was still audible.
"You see Rachel, I'm cursed."
Cursed. I had heard that before, from the strange women who refused me entry into her home and given me the book with the binding spell. I distractedly wondered if the book was still over next door, guarded by the beast.
"That spirit is part of that curse... it attacks people around me, close to me, to keep me isolated and lonely. And I've unfortunately passed it on to you. It affects..." his voice trailed off for a moment before picking up again. "It started after I left Lillian, after she died. I think it had something to do with her death, but I was never sure. But after that... well, there were others who suffered that fate, and I could come to a conclusion."
A chill ran down my spine. There were others?
"You see, I didn't realize it until..." he choked on the words, burying his face in his hands. But he eventually remastered himself and continued, "But I figured out the pattern, though it was too late. But I knew I had to be careful then, careful now. Careful to keep my distance.
"Because that's when I knew that it would attack whomever I fell in love with and torture them until they died." Luc whispered the last part so quietly that I barely heard him.
My mind ceased to function, stuck on the last thing he said.
"Love?" I fumbled the word. I glanced over at him, and the bit of his face that I could see through his hands was bright red. My lips twitched. As weird as this was, his blush was endearing.
"Yes," he gasped. "Love."
He suddenly sat up, grabbing my hand, clasping it between two of his; I flinched, trying to pull away but he was so quick, like a cat, that my resistance was futile. But while his hands gripped me in an iron grasp, his touch was soft and somehow gentle.
My tension eased as he stared at me and I couldn't help but gaze straight back into those perfect, earnest, emerald eyes. How could I fail to believe him when he looked at me like this?
"I'm so sorry for the way I treated you when you first visited my shop. I knew you were in a fragile place, and I am sorry for the way I acted. I didn't want to hurt you." He sighed, his eyes taking a pleading edge. "But I had to. I had to lie to you about what the cards said, for your own sake. I tried to protect you by not revealing what they really said... I thought that if you didn't know, that if I avoided you, resisted you... that it wouldn't want to go after you. But I was wrong.
"Rachel, that evening... I wasn't completely honest with you. The translation of the cards that I gave you wasn't exactly true. They did not say that you would not find love any time in the near future. In fact, they said the exact opposite; they told me that you were going to find new love very soon.
"The cards said that you were going to fall in love... with me."
I stared at him. This was unbelievable. I expected him to laugh or sneer or something that would prove that he was joking, but he was completely serious. And if I hadn't lived through weeks of horror, I wouldn't even entertain the idea of the cards actually being able to prophesize the future. But now that I had seen what I had, knowing what I did, knowing that there was more than the physical, the explainable... I believed him. Especially as I looked into those beautiful, pleading eyes.
I could feel it happen, like someone had opened a trap door beneath me. It was like the moment I understood it, in that same moment it instantly became true. The prophecy was fulfilled. I fell... It was like the descent on a ferry wheel, when all your insides tingle as if they're flying. I had been attracted to him since the moment I had saw him, but now, looking into those eyes, knowing what he had done for me, knowing the pain he had suffered, I couldn't help but fall in love with him, right then and there.
I could see it in his eyes, that he felt it too. His defences were dissolving before me, his eyes ignited with a fire as his gaze searched my own eager face. He reached out to me, wrapping his fingers gently around the back of my neck, and pulled me close to him. His lips touched mine, and I knew. Our lips moved together, desperate to find some piece of joy in this hellish mess.
And as he embraced me deeply—drawing me closer to him, pressing my body against his—the beast next door let out a piercing scream like it had been branded with a searing iron.
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Did you know you're reading the first draft of this book? Beware it's rough edges, typos, and plot bumps! This is an imperfect work, as all first drafts are.
If you're looking for something more polished, you should check out the new & improved version of THE PSYCHIC NEXT DOOR! It's been completely edited and expanded.
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