Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

The Victorian house that Taliyah pulled in front of was… well, it was certainly a house.

I didn't really have the words to describe it. It had walls, and a roof, and presumably floors inside. But none of them seemed to go with each other—it was as though various architects had worked on a section of the house and then met in the middle. For example, one of the front windows was maybe two times larger than the one just beside it. And all the curtains were drawn, giving the place a heavy, shuttered feeling.

The lawn was studded with decorations; plastic flamingos and ducks, a few birdbaths, concrete faces hanging off every tree trunk, flags for every possible holiday all proudly displayed at once, and there were little concrete gnomes peeking out of the overgrown bushes in the garden every few paces.

"My bad taste senses are tingling," I said as I stared from the passenger seat of Taliyah's car.

She made a sound that wasn't quite a snort but was definitely a close cousin. "Wait until you go in."

I had a bad feeling about this.

We walked up the overgrown walkway, and I tried not to trip over the weeds that were growing up through the concrete path. And the front door wasn't in much better repair—it sounded like an old, cackling witch when Taliyah pushed it open and the paint was peeling badly enough that it revealed all the previous coats of paint the door had worn in what appeared to be a very long life. And that was in the moonlight. I couldn't even begin to imagine how bad it looked in full sunlight.

The front hallway of the house was just as sad and dingy as the outside, without any moonlight coming in through the covered windows. Though, from the looks of things, it probably would have been sad and dingy even if there had been ten-thousand-volt halogen lamps to light the space up. There was a rickety, sagging staircase on the opposite wall, disappearing into the gloom of the upstairs hallway, and horrible flocked wallpaper lined the walls—stuff I thought had been outlawed back in the seventies.

I flinched back, one hand on my chest. "Goddess, Taliyah. Shouldn't you have put up some police tape? Tried to cordon this off?"

She gave me a puzzled, wary look. "The case has been ruled as an accident, so far. This isn't a crime scene."

I glanced at the wallpaper again and shuddered. "So, you say."

Taliyah rolled her eyes at me, but the corner of her mouth jerked up into a reluctant smile.

The living room she led me to was honestly even worse, even though I didn't know how that was even possible. But I almost gagged when we stepped onto the dark brown shag carpet and took a look around me. The room was just… well, it was ugly. The Victorians had loved filling their parlors with shelves and shelves of decorations, statues, music boxes, knick-knacks, the list went on. And they'd done so with glee—no doubt owing to the fact that they'd never have to dust anything themselves. Well, whoever lived here had taken a page from their book, because every square inch of the room was crammed with kitsch. There were velvet paintings of sad clowns hanging on the walls, and something that looked like an elf on the shelf, but was more a valentine cherub. The whole place made my sense of style curl up and die.

I wrapped my arms around myself tightly, hoping ‘tacky' wasn't contagious. "Does the police department give hazard pay? Because I might need to put in a claim."

Taliyah ignored me, moving to stand in front of the huge fireplace that dominated the far wall of the room. The surround was made of pink quartz that clashed hideously with the carpet, which had started out chocolate brown and ended up a burnt shade of orange. I wasn't sure if that was owing to sun damage at some long-ago time (when the curtains were actually open) or if this carpet was patterned ombre. Just above the mantel, there was a large bare spot on the wall. It was obviously a bare spot, because just about every other inch of the wall was covered with some kind of decoration, so the chunk of three feet by two feet blank space stood out like the proverbial smoking gun.

"I'm going to assume that spot on the wall is relevant, since we're staring at it."

I didn't know why I bothered. Taliyah so rarely rose to the bait. She never had and it didn't seem like she ever would. Instead, she wore the detached indifference of someone who had seen it all and wasn't impressed.

Moving towards the wall, Taliyah grabbed the picture frame that was resting on the floor. The large frame was painted to look like distressed gold but had missed the mark completely and ended up somewhere closer to ‘chipped by being tossed in the trash'. The frame was about the right size to fit the bare spot on the wall, though, so I assumed such had been its spot of quasi honor.

It was almost impossible to tell what the painting inside the frame depicted, since the canvas was badly ripped straight through the middle. It was a rough tear—like something had hit it, rather than someone taking a knife to it in an attempt to avenge art lovers everywhere.

Taliyah flipped out her notebook and glanced over the page. "At roughly six-thirty this evening, Mr. Colton Bauer was in his living room admiring his recently acquired," she grimaced at the piece of ‘art'. "Masterpiece. When the painting suddenly flung itself off the wall and… attacked him."

"Attacked him?" I repeated, frowning.

She nodded. "Apparently, it landed on his head, which in turn tore the canvas and landed him in the hospital with a concussion."

If Taliyah hadn't sprung me from my own terrible decision of asking Maverick for dating advice, yes I would have been irritated. But I was still a little irritated and now that irritation had nothing to do with my surly cousin. Instead, I was annoyed with the fact that I was even standing in this horrible house, on this horrible carpet, surrounded by horrible things.

I looked at Taliyah and threw my hands on my hips. "So, some guy with the worst taste in the history of bad taste hangs up an ugly painting badly, which in turn falls off the wall and lands on him, and you think that ridiculousness is somehow connected to our very cursed shoes?"

Taliyah cocked her head to the side as she matched the raised-brow expression I was currently giving her. "How can you even tell the painting's ugly?"

I gave her a look of ‘really?' and then made an elaborate gesture around the room like I was a presenter in a game show. The evidence was damning.

"Point taken," she answered, and this time actually smiled—no doubt she enjoyed seeing me out of my comfort zone. "Normally, this wouldn't have even come to the attention of the police department."

"Imagine that," I frowned.

She sighed. "But Mr. Bauer was absolutely, fervently, convinced that the painting flung itself off the wall."

"And not that it just fell?"

She shook her head. "He said the painting lifted itself off the nail in the wall and then launched itself through the air. Then, according to testimony, he started ranting to the paramedics about ghosts and haunted paintings, and I thought cursed shoes, cursed paintings—sounds similar enough that it might be worth checking."

I let out a long, put upon sigh. "Fine. Let's take a look at the ugly painting, but if there's nothing wrong with it, other than the fact that it's a slap to the face of true art, then Mr. Bauer might have a second concussion to worry about in his near future."

"Just take a look at it, Wanda," Taliyah answered.

So, I took a few steps towards the painting, but then I didn't even have to touch it to feel the greasy, gritty sensation of a curse clinging to it. Forcing myself forward, I reached down and pinched the torn canvas between two fingers, as I ignored the sensation of ants climbing up my arm and, instead, tried to figure out what the painting was actually depicting.

It looked fuzzy, like someone had used a camera with bad light settings, for all that it was actual paint. From what I could make out, there was a foot stool which was surrounded by dripping candles. Strangely, as I continued to study it, the dark blob atop the foot stool began to delineate itself into a black cat. The cat was facing the viewer, and as I further studied it, I noticed its eyes narrowed into golden slits, its ears pinned back, and its tail was caught mid lash. It was the perfect example of feline disdain, and it looked so much like Hellcat that I hated it on sight.

"Ugh, just what this room needed, an ugly cat painting."

Taliyah, ignoring my valuable commentary, asked, "Is the picture cursed?"

I gestured to where she was only gingerly touching the frame, like she was worried the supposed ‘gold' was going to stain her fingers green if she wasn't careful. "I think you already know the answer to that question."

"Then it is?"

I arched a brow at her. "You tell me."

I mean, she was a would-be Fae queen, she didn't need me to point out the obvious.

She grimaced, looking like she wanted to let go of the painting, but forced herself to hold on to it. "I feel… something."

"Something that feels like?"

"Energy. And it's tactile—it almost feels kind of greasy." She shook her head. "That's not quite the right word for it. At first, I thought that slickness might just have been something on the frame."

"But it's not."

She nodded. It was moments like this that I had to remind myself that Taliyah, with all the power of one of the High Sidhe and next in line for the throne of Winter, had almost no experience with magic. It wasn't that long ago that she'd thought she was human and hadn't known anything else existed. All Taliyah had were her instincts, really. Luckily for her, years as a cop in Portland had honed those instincts pretty well already.

"That's the remnants of the curse you're feeling." I took a step back, eyeing the frame and just barely resisting the urge to scrub my hand against the side of my pants. It wouldn't help remove the feeling, and it might stain my clothes with lingering spite. "It almost feels like the curse builds until it's activated by something, and then it's depleted until it builds up again. Maybe that's why it's not flinging itself at us."

"What makes you think the curse won't fade once it's been activated," Taliyah asked me, her blue eyes sharp as she studied me.

I leaned closer, holding my hand out towards the frame but not quite touching it. I could feel those oily strands of power reaching out towards me, and I pulled back before they could make contact. "The way they're lingering, for one. Most curses hit, last until they do what they're meant to do, and then they disperse and they're gone for good. But this one…" I held up my hand again just to be sure. "This one seems almost like it's recharging, rebuilding."

Stepping back, I fought the urge to shake out my hand. The sensation of rough fur lingered on my skin. "Still, Mr. Bauer really should have known better than to tempt fate."

Taliyah frowned. "Tempt fate?"

"Yeah." I gestured from the ruined painting to the spot on the wall. "Doesn't he know it's bad luck to cross a black cat's path?"

I wasn't sure I deserved the long-suffering look Taliyah gave me. I mean, come on, that was a goodish joke?

"Is there anything else you can tell me?" She let the picture rest back against the wall as she got her notebook and pen out and then faced me, pen poised and ready to write.

I wandered over to the fireplace and started looking over the slab of pink stone with horrified fascination as I held my hands just above it, not daring to touch the ostentatious thing. "All I can tell you about the painting is that it's ugly. And it's really, really cursed."

"And the fireplace?"

"Not cursed."

"The other paintings that are still hanging on the wall?"

"Not cursed, but also still very ugly. Like everything else in this house."

The snap of Taliyah's notebook closing sounded very judgemental.

"But hey, look on the bright side," I continued as I spun on my heel, holding my arms out to indicate the rest of the room. "Maybe that conk on the head will actually knock some taste into the victim."

Shaking her head, Taliyah reached up to pinch the bridge of her nose like I was taking every ounce of whatever patience she had left. I'd seen Maverick do the same thing—when he was trying to ward off a headache. I wondered if he'd learned it from her, or vice versa.

"Well, thank you for your time," Taliyah said, not sounding very thankful at all. "Let me get you back to your store now."

I let Taliyah herd me back out of the house and waited for her to lock up, all the while rubbing my fingers together and feeling that oily miasma of the curse and wondering what the spell was going on.