Chapter 15

James felt like he'd walked into a brick wall. "Ow, fuck." He cupped his nose as blood flowed freely down his face. "What was that?" He glanced over his shoulder.

Sebastian had gone pale, like he'd seen a ghost. Had it been a shade? It wasn't dark, but there were plenty of long shadows falling across the road.

"What did I just run into?" James spun in a circle, searching. Both sides of the iron gate were well out of his way. He moved forward, needing to get a tissue out of his truck so he didn't bleed all over his shirt.

He banged into it again. Except there was nothing there. "What the fuck?" He stuck out his hand, and it collided with what felt like a wall but looked like nothing.

Ice ran down James's spine. He abandoned his bloody nose, feeling the solid air with both hands. He was standing right in the gateway, but an invisible force kept him from stepping beyond the property line.

Full-on panic hit James like a tidal wave. No. He couldn't be trapped. It wasn't possible. There had to be a way through.

He fell to his hands and knees, feeling near the ground and all the way across the open gateway. The barrier went right into the dirt and melded seamlessly with the stone pillars framing the gate. He pushed everywhere he could reach. The barrier didn't give in the slightest.

James jumped up and climbed the wall. He got one hand on the top ledge, but as he reached over with his other, he hit the invisible barrier, preventing him from reaching the other side.

He jumped down and spun to face Sebastian, who was still standing frozen. "Am I trapped here?" He didn't want to believe it. Couldn't believe it.

Sebastian was even paler than before. "I—I don't know how?—"

"What do you mean you don't know? Why can't I get out? I thought the unbinding spell worked. You're free to tell your secrets. We didn't even mess with the curse. How could this—how—I can't be trapped!" James's chest tightened, his next words coming out in a growl. "What did you do?"

"Me?" Sebastian spat back, anger temporarily replacing his fear. "Why do you think I did anything?"

James pointed wildly at the impenetrable gateway. "Because this is exactly what you did with my truck. You tricked me then, got me stranded here, and you've tricked me now."

"I'm not tricking you, James. I swear." Sebastian took a step toward him. "Yes, I knew exactly what would happen with letting your truck die, but I only did that to try and show you what was going on. This wasn't supposed to happen! I don't even know how it happened. All you did was release the secret bound in my blood. The curse trapping me here is so much more complicated than that!"

"I don't believe you." Primal fear had taken over James. He'd never quite trusted Sebastian and couldn't see past that doubt. All James could think was that Sebastian had been here for six years. His uncle had died here after being trapped for decades. That couldn't happen to James as well. "Let me out," he croaked. "I said I'd help. Just let me out."

"I can't," Sebastian pleaded. "I don't know how this happened. Please believe me, James. I wasn't trying to trap you. Why the hell would I do that?"

James felt unlike himself. As if everything he knew had twisted until nothing made sense. He pointed a bloody finger at Sebastian, his hand shaking. His nose dripped, getting blood all over his shirt. "You didn't want me to leave."

"Excuse me for being pathetically lonely, but that doesn't mean I want you stuck here with me." Sebastian let out a pained sob. "I don't want more people here. I want to get the fuck out! You can't get me out if you're stuck here. This isn't what I wanted! It ruins everything!" Sebastian's words got increasingly frantic. He fell to his knees, his breaths coming short and fast, like he was hyperventilating. "Fuck!" he screamed so loud the birds on the lawn took flight.

Sebastian began to sob, big, choking, uncontrollable sounds tearing from his lungs.

James was numb with shock, his fear so acute he'd short-circuited and couldn't feel anymore. If Sebastian wasn't lying and hadn't planned this, they were both completely screwed. How had they messed up so badly? This couldn't be happening.

That was when James realized he couldn't feel the haunting effects of the property. His emotions might be dulled in his current state, but even as he'd walked down the driveway, he hadn't felt it. He just hadn't registered the change before, with everything else on his mind.

Not feeling the skin-crawling wrongness of the place meant the curse had him, Storm House had claimed him, and he wasn't getting out any more than Sebastian was. Of course Sebastian hadn't wanted that to happen, but it being an accident didn't feel any better.

The ice encasing James thawed and his feelings crept back. None of them were good.

He wiped his face with the bottom of his shirt. At least his nose had stopped bleeding. He knelt on the gravel next to Sebastian, who was still sobbing like the person who'd meant the most to him in the world had died. James hadn't realized crying could be quite this loud.

He pulled Sebastian into his arms.

All his reasons for not trusting Sebastian stemmed from the way the secret-binding had made Sebastian behave. James couldn't hold that against him. Sebastian had never been messing with him. Trapping James wasn't logical if Sebastian was trying to break free, and James had no doubt he wanted to escape more than anything.

James had accused Sebastian in a blind panic and already regretted it, and he felt more and more guilty the longer Sebastian cried. James started to worry Sebastian was having a serious breakdown.

"Six years," Sebastian rasped between sobs. "It took me six years to get one person to realize something was wrong. I'm never going to get out of here."

"Hey." James placed a finger under Sebastian's chin and tilted his head up. "You're still better off than before. People will know something is wrong when I don't come home. They won't be able to explain away my absence, saying I'm avoiding the world by choice. No one will believe I've randomly decided to live at Storm House. We can still figure this out. Still tell people what's going on."

Sebastian's expression was grim. "I hope so."

"What do you mean?"

He chewed his bottom lip. "There's a chance finding out the secret triggers silence. So you might not be able to tell anyone. See, my mom knew about the curse. She was here with Stephen when their father died, and they found out together. Stephen told me her tongue was bound after she found out, so I shouldn't be mad she kept things from me."

James was surprised Sebastian hadn't mentioned this sooner. "But you were acting like I could tell anyone. Ask for help. Report the curse."

"Well, Mom never broke the secret-binding, did she? So, of course, she was kept silent. And she's a Storm. The binding spell is in our blood, along with the curse. I thought freeing the secret would mean there was no way you could be silenced for finding out. The spell would be broken. Plus, you aren't a Storm. Your blood has never been touched by the binding. But you got trapped after learning the secret, so I clearly have no idea how these spells actually behave in relation to one another and could've been wrong when I thought that breaking the binding meant you couldn't be silenced."

James's head swam. It was all so cyclical. "So the curse and the secret-binding might be interconnected, magically? They react to each other?"

Sebastian sagged against James. "Seems like it. I always thought of them as two separate spells cast on Storm blood. However, it's looking like breaking the binding triggered the curse, regardless of you not being a Storm. That's the only way you could have possibly gotten trapped. But, James, I swear I never suspected it was possible before now." He looked at James desperately, a hand tightening on James's wrist.

"I believe you," James assured him, and Sebastian relaxed. "I'm sorry I reacted like that. I should have stopped and thought."

"That's okay. I get it." Sebastian let out a tired sigh. "Now that this has happened, the curse capturing anyone who breaks the secret-binding and learns the truth sounds like something Grandma Selma would do. If she thought it was the only way to stop us escaping and leaving things to explode."

The speculation made sense in hindsight, sitting here on the gravel driveway trapped behind an invisible barrier, but James understood that Sebastian wouldn't have seen this coming, especially when he thought the spells could only affect his family members.

"There's no information on exactly how Selma cast the curse," Sebastian admitted. "Not about how she constructed the spell or what fail-safes she might have woven in. I never thought there was more than the secret-binding. Even connecting the two to react to each other is some seriously complex spellwork."

James was tired. So tired he thought he might never fully recover. "I guess it doesn't really matter." He was resigned to his fate in a way that surprised him. "It doesn't matter exactly how the curse got me, only that it did."

"If I had any idea that you getting sucked in was a possibility, I never would have let you break the silencing spell." Sebastian grabbed James's hand and squeezed. James assured him he understood, but Sebastian went on. "I mean, my mom found out and walked away from the property, so that meant all I had to do was break the secret free from my blood and tell someone who cared. Then we could try and break the curse."

James couldn't bring himself to ask why Sebastian's mom didn't care. The situation was heartbreaking enough already.

They were silent for a long time. The birds landed back on the grass, picking at worms and other bugs. James watched them hop around until the sky went orange and the shadows lengthened.

"We should go inside." Sebastian stood, stretching like he was stiff. He closed his eyes for a moment, then went to lock the gate.