will call you with any updates.”
“Got another job for you.”
“Oh. Yes?”
“Name is Amber Sarga, gypsy genealogist, age in the early thirties, brown hair and eyes, about five feet seven inches, a hundred and thirty pounds.” He still thought of the woman as honeyed, much warmer and more vital than amber. Not stony to him. “She lives at number seven Mystic Circle in Denver.” He paused, mouth turning down, decided to say the words anyway. “Supposed to be—” but he couldn’t get “a curse breaker” out of his mouth “—psychic.”
“We’ll get right on that,” the assistant assured him.
“It’s urgent. Got a meeting with her tomorrow morning.”
“We’ll have a report to you by the end of the day.”
“Thanks.” He disconnected the call and wondered what the hell he was getting into. Conrad twitched and moaned.
A fleeting curiosity about his own family tree—and all those first sons who died before thirty-three—wisped through Rafe’s mind.
Maybe he’d call his younger brother. Gabe was the practical one, running the family corporations, salt of the earth. He’d said something about a family tree a long while back. Rafe would bet his helicopter that Gabe had a chart or two Rafe could slap down in front of the honeyed Ms. Sarga.
Not that it would change anything. A tendril of fear began to whip acid inside his gut. Conrad’s curse had come true.
Would his?
Amber played with the pups, enough to tire them for a few minutes, then went to her downstairs office and initiated a computer search for Conrad Tyne-Cymbler.
He didn’t have any social network pages, but her online investigation program showed his home—inherited—at a pricey address in Cherry Creek. His worth was recently downgraded due to a prospective divorce settlement. Amber winced, recalling the hurt that had emanated from the man. A quick search of public court files showed that the divorce hearing had been set for this morning.
She did an online query about his wife, Marta Dimir. Nothing showed up…except a quick ice-cube quiver sliding through Amber. Her minor magic that she used in genealogy, a certain past-time-sense, warned her that if she explored Marta Dimir’s background she would find violence, despair, darkness.
Amber shook off the feeling. Let Tyne-Cymbler’s investigators take care of the wife angle. The man had spoken of his son, and Amber noted that the boy was nearly a year old. But that wasn’t what snagged her interest. Tyne-Cymbler obviously felt that the curse that affected him would also impact his son.
A father-to-son curse.
She brought up the professional genealogical database she used most often. The Colorado Tynes had a family tree available online, about five years out of date. The chart listed Conrad’s father, deceased, and Conrad, but named no other Cymblers. It didn’t show the Cymbler line.
There were some pics in the family albums and one of them showed the blond guy, an old college roommate of Conrad—Rafe Davail. Very uncommon surname.
Very good-looking guy who lived in Manhattan.
Without thought her fingers typed in his name on the ancestry site and got a hit. She stared at the chart.
Davail had a father-son curse, too. Anxiety tightened her throat as her eyes tracked the graph. For the past three hundred years, the first Davail son had died before he’d turned thirty-three. Rafe’s father was gone, so was his grandfather and great-grandfather. There was a great-uncle who was a second son, and Rafe had a younger brother.
That wasn’t good.
The only item of value Amber had in the world from her family was a gypsy ancestress’s journal. A far too sketchy journal when it came to talking about curses.
But she knew what she was seeing.
Rafe Davail was very cursed.
Thumps and bumps woke Amber in the night. Her heart pounded—home invaders! The pups sprang from her bed and shot down the hall, barking. She snatched at the phone, pressed 911, started shouting over the dispatcher. “This is number seven—”
The ceiling light flicked on and a brownie appeared on the end of her bed. The phone slipped from her grip.
He wasn’t Pred from next door. This one wasn’t as skinny, though he was still thin. His face was more wrinkled, with lines of bad humor. His head between his large triangular ears was black. “Go ahead,” the brownie said. “Let’s see some fun.” He went transparent.
Amber fumbled for the phone. “Never mind,” she panted into it. “False alarm. My… A friend came in.”
“Are you sure you’re all right?” asked the dispatcher.
“Fine. Fine,” Amber said.
“We have a fix on your phone and will send a squad car by.”
The brownie opened and closed his hands, fingers stiff, mumbling something. Again her phone dropped.
“Changed the signal. They’ll go to the wrong address, blocks away from Mystic Circle,” he sneered.
“Who are you and what do you want?” Amber asked.
His features drew together and darkened with anger. His large triangular ears shook, probably with fury. She felt at a disadvantage in bed so she hopped out. “Who are—”
“I heard you the first time. Tiro. I gotta live with you.” He jumped from the bed, making gargley noises that might be brownie cursing.
“Tiro?” Amber asked.
“My name, human.” The brownie stalked over and walked around her. She turned in place to keep an eye on him. He opened his mouth and curled his tongue…like a cat using a sixth sense.
“The Mistweaver brownies were right. A wretched Cumulustre descendant. I thought your whole line had died out from stupidity four generations ago.”
Amber crossed her arms. The March night was cold since she kept the heat low. Her nightgown was flannel, but her feet were bare. “I beg your pardon,” she said in a voice as chilly as her feet.
She heard the grinding of his teeth, then he flung his head back. “And you look as stupid as all the rest. Smell like it, too. A curse breaker, right? And when you ‘help’ someone, you age? And your body is nearly a decade older than your true age?”
He knew her magic. He knew her family. What else did he know and what could she learn from him?
She sighed. “Yes.”
Tiro stomped to the middle of the room. “If you human women of the Cumulustre bloodline had learned your lesson, I wouldn’t be here. Bound to watch over you and serve you—those’re my ancient orders from the elf.” Stomp. “Can’t contact Cumulustre without permission. Those damn Mistweaver brownies won’t talk to him, either. Stuck.” A
