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Billy was right. The police wanted to investigate everything that was going on in the studio. They took all of Kevin’s research notes, talked to everyone in the building, and then shut down the show to keep leaks from getting out. Which was… fine? Wilford felt like he should be working through the whole thing, but when it really came down to it, he didn’t actually want to do anything.
He didn’t even like Kevin that much. He was useful to have around, and was good as his job, but Wilford couldn’t stand him. But there was an almost physical hurt that he couldn’t seem to shake. Depressive episodes were nothing new. They cropped up from time to time. Wilford would hide away from people for a few days, take some pills, and eventually get over it. But this wasn’t that. He was angry. It was like something was taken from him. It was fine when he pulled this shit, because he made goddamn sure it never stuck. But this was cheating. Someone had come in and fucking ambushed him, and then left him there. What a fucking coward.
Worse, Wilford knew there wasn’t much he could do. It was a helplessness he’d never felt before. Resetting was futile. He could reset a thousand times, change a thousand things, and fate would have still come right back around to this moment. Before, he’d always been on the outside in situations like this — an observer, there after the fact to pick apart the details and repackage them into something clear and easy to understand. There was nothing clear about this. Nothing easy to understand. He had no idea what he was supposed to do next.
There was nothing he could do. That was the problem. He was too damn close to this one. It was a problem he’d heard about, but it was always a distant one. Somebody else’s problem. Now that it was his problem, there was nothing in the world he could do to fix it.
Nothing he could do. But there were other people who might be able to do something. Wilford grabbed his phone and Googled a name. Fifteen seconds later, he had a phone number and an address.
Abe’s office was downtown, in a dirty brick building squashed between a funeral home and a Mexican restaurant. Stepping through the door was like stepping into the 1930s. The coat rack next to the door made Wilford feel like he was supposed to have worn a coat just to hang it up. There was a dresser against the wall, with a miniature version of the faux-antique radio Wilford had. He stopped and looked at it. It wasn’t like the faux-antique radio he had at all. It was genuinely old. And still working. Some NPR hosts were talking about someone who had spent thirty years trying to get an interview with the Jersey Devil, and the adventures he’d gone on in the process.
“Hey, Wilford. How you holding up, pal?” Abe said, striding across the office to meet him with a handshake. “It’s always tough to lose a partner.”
Wilford didn’t know what he was supposed to say. So he said nothing, nodding and looking around the room. There was an uncomfortable amount of photos of various men around the office.
“I was hoping you might have some friends who could get close to the investigation,” Wilford said, looking away from the creepy photos and back toward Abe.
Abe nodded. “Yeah, I got a few friends still on the force. I don’t know how close any of them are to it, but I can finger around some of them. See what we can find. Do you think your guy got to close to something? What was he working on?”
Wilford shook his head. That’s why he couldn’t figure out why the cops were so interested in his reports. “No, he was doing a piece on people dumping exotic pets. But it was definitely a hit.” The cops at least agreed on that.
“Yeah, we’re probably not looking at a suburban soccer mom that got stressed out because Timmy’s lizard got too big,” Abe agreed. He walked back toward his desk, inviting Wilford to sit down. “What was he into?”
He was really doing this, apparently. Shaking his head both at himself and the situation, Wilford took the offered seat. “He gambled. I think he dealt on the side. He got into trading cars last year. Nothing too out of the ordinary.”
“Nothing that narrows down anything, either.” Abe pulled out a notebook and started writing everything down. “Any girlfriends? Boyfriends?”
“Nothing regular that I know of,” Wilford said. “Couldn’t tell you any names.”
Abe nodded down at his notes. “Well it’s something I can pass along. I’ll let you know what I hear back. You gonna be there on Saturday?”
Wilford had completely forgotten about the invitation. Maybe getting out and going a little nuts was exactly what he needed. “Yeah, I think I will,” he said.
With there being no point in going into the studio, and having nothing to do at home to occupy his mind, Wilford drove out to Del Perro earlier than usual. Even at the busy restaurant, there wasn’t a whole lot to do. Tourist traffic had slowed down a bit with school starting up, but the area was never going to be slow.
He took a table out on the patio to just watch the lunch service. The amount of his own money he’d put into the place finally felt like it was paying off. Things were moving quickly and smoothly, with only a few minor tweaks being made here or there to keep up the momentum.
The patio was a loud place to be. Music playing over the speakers inside barely filtered out through the doors, and noise from the ocean mixed with the chatter and clatter of diners to create something almost unpleasantly loud. Wilford couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed it before. He looked out over sandy beach, watching people play in the waves for the last time before they had to go back to their more adult responsibilities. Wilford had never learned how to surf before. There was no surfing in DC, but now he didn’t have an excuse not to learn. He put that on a mental to-do list.
Eventually, one of the waiters noticed he’d snuck up onto the patio and came over, either to take his order or tell him to go away. Whichever he’d intended to do, he stalled when he got close enough to see Wilford’s face.
“Oh. You’re here early,” he said.
Wilford pointed at the seat across from himself at the table. “Sit down,” he said, looking away again out over the beach. Someone had started flying a kite down in the surf. He wondered why he never noticed how busy the beach directly in front of him was.
“How are things going today?” he asked. He looked back to address the waiter. He was one of the new kids he’d hired after he invited everyone to leave. Jesse, according to his name tag.
“Uh.” Jesse looked around at the crowd and shrugged. “Busy, but not like we were a few weeks ago. We’ve lost about twenty menus. I think people are taking them for souvenirs.”
Wilford hummed. He wasn’t so sure about the idea of people stealing menus, but he’d seen intelligent people do dumber things. He supposed he shouldn’t be too surprised.
“It always this loud out here?” he asked, looking around the crowd. The patio was definitely more popular than he’d thought it would be during the day. He thought more people would want to be inside, away from the sun and the heat and the sand and the seagulls screeching at everyone for food.
“I don’t think it quiets down until closing,” Jesse said.
Wilford nodded and thought for a moment. There was an idea forming in the back of his head, but it lacked any real foundation.
“Bring me whatever’s not selling,” he said, pulling out his phone. He had some research to do while Jesse got up and took his order to the kitchen.
Wilford knew the beach itself didn’t actually come with the property, despite the property being beachfront. But he’d never really cared enough to ask why. A quick Google search gave him his answer though: all beaches in San Andreas were public property. Which meant he might need a permit if he wanted to get people off the patio. According to the government pages dealing with such things, getting one shouldn’t be too big of a deal. It was the logistics that would be the biggest problem. Looking down the beach in either direction suggested that either nobody else had had the same idea — which seemed unlikely — or there was some hidden roadblock that he hadn’t considered.
He was deep into reading over the permit process by the time Jesse brought his plate. Apparently tourists didn’t like braised eel. He’d have to talk to the kitchen about what else wasn’t selling so they could get a jump on rearranging the menu for the coming season. He just worried that sooner or later, if they started taking everything off the menu that didn’t appeal to middle-aged soccer moms and their snotty kids, they’d wind up with a menu identical to everyone else on the boardwalk. Which was probably exactly the reason why everyone else seemed to have near-identical menus, only standing out by which staple grain they chose to use as the basis for their dishes.
Maybe he wouldn’t change the menu at all. If the place failed, it would fail without leaving him feeling like he’d sold out.
While he ate, he downloaded documents and emailed himself all of the relevant links he could find. It would probably take him a few days to get everything filled out and put together, so there was no point in rushing it. He made lists of expenses that would need to be made to get his idea off the ground, as well as safeguards to keep additional expenses from cropping up. Theft and loss would be a bigger problem than it already was, if people were stealing menus as it was. They’d have to find a way to stock disposable flatware that wasn’t awful to use and look at. Somehow, that seemed like it was going to be the biggest roadblock. They’d already gone and banned plastic straws. Plastic silverware would no doubt be next on the chopping block.
It was another bridge to burn when he came to it, though he had a few ideas he could explore once he knew whether or not it was even possible.
He stayed out on the patio, watching the lunch service slowly transform into the dinner service with no discernible gap in between. Figuring he should get up to empty the seat, Wilford threw some cash down onto the table and headed inside. The bar was just as busy as the patio had been outside, so he slipped behind the counter to take a look at things without bothering the bartenders. He checked the bottles on the wall and counted the menus, hoping the missing menus had migrated back there. The bar was short by six. People were definitely taking them. Of all things to take, he understood menus the least. At least people who stole glasses and silverware did so with the intention of using them. What could someone possibly do with a menu for a place that didn’t even deliver?
He spent the rest of the day taking a detailed inventory of everything. The missing menus were closer to 40 than 20. Even accounting for what was out on tables, no two groups of silverware stood at the same number. The number of glass and flatware missing didn’t match damage reports. Apparently, people were walking off with half his restaurant. He added security camera upgrades to his list of things to think about. A staff meeting was another thing to think about, and it probably couldn’t wait. He pulled out his phone and sent out a mass text to every employee telling them in very plain terms that they were expected to be at the restaurant at closing if they wanted to have a job the next day.
He didn’t expect to weed anybody out with a single meeting, but at the very least, if the thefts were internal, the person responsible knew they weren’t operating in the shadows any longer.
He still wasn’t sure about going to a party. He wasn’t exactly in a partying mood. The police still had the show shut down and weren’t sharing any information, and now Kevin’s family were starting to point fingers at everything and everybody in town, despite Wilford’s continued adamance that his death had nothing to do with the story he was running. He’d been following Kevin’s notes every morning. Unless there was some conspiracy to keep invasive ferrets and snakes under wraps, there was no reason why it should have offended anybody to the point of murder. Wilford didn’t even want to run it, but Kevin was trying out a new brand of content to start his own web series, and wanted to stretch his muscles with Network resources before he started flying solo. Wilford went along with it, because starting his own web-based production company seemed like best way to survive the growing war against mainstream media. And frankly, he was eager to get out from under the network’s imposing thumb. While he had the freedom to cover the stories he wanted to cover, he didn’t quite have the freedom to do whatever the hell he wanted.
But it had all been shoved to the back of everything else. Wilford knew investigations didn’t shut down entire studios just because of sensitive information. He knew he was a suspect as well. So was everyone in the building. It was no secret how Wilford ran his company, and someone was sure to take second-hand gossip wildly out of context.
Still, he made the drive out to Banham Canyon Saturday evening. At the very least, he could talk to Abe and see if he could get any new info he couldn’t get from other sources. He also wanted to talk to Celine. He still hadn’t been able to figure out who or what he’d managed to piss off, and was starting to think that a Plan B might be warranted. He left early, expecting her to get the hell out of dodge like she had last time. When Benjamin let him into the house, he found Celine and Damien talking quietly near the back door.
“Stay. Just for a week,” Damien insisted. “See if things change.”
“Damien,” Celine said tiredly. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but it’s really not necessary.”
“If you’re worried about imposing, don’t. I could use the company in that old house,” Damien said.
Celine rolled her eyes. “Then you shouldn’t have moved into a place that big.”
They probably could have kept arguing like that all day, so Wilford cleared his throat, letting them know that he could hear them. They both looked over at him, Celine’s expression rapidly cycling from being exasperated to annoyed to bright and happy.
“Wilford!” she said.
“Got a minute?” he asked.
Celine nodded. “I’ll see you at lunch tomorrow,” she said to Damien, before turning fully to Wilford. “Of course. Let’s go upstairs.”
Wilford caught a confused look from Damien as he turned to follow Celine up the stairs. One of the sets of stairs, Wilford realised. She’d let him first through a different part of the house before taking him upstairs.
“How many stair cases does this house have?” he asked incredulously.
Celine sighed and shook her head. “I hate this house,” she said. “I don’t know why. I just do.”
“Is it just you two and Creepo down there?” Wilford asked.
“Do you mean Benjamin?” Celine asked. She didn’t sound terribly offended at Wilford’s insult, so she must have felt similarly about him as well. “Chef also lives on the property. But they both live in a separate part of the property.”
“No kids?” Wilford asked. He thought that was the entire point of huge houses like this.
Celine led him into a dimly-lit room, shutting the door behind them before she spoke again. “Mark has two from a previous marriage, but they live with their mother. I met them once, right before we got married.”
Wilford didn’t know much about how families were supposed to behave, but that sounded about right from his experience. Which told him it was probably not how families were supposed to behave.
He sat down at the small, round table in the middle of the room. What she’d brought to his house earlier in the week was like a travel version of her room. Large, woven tapestries hung from the walls and over the windows. Dim lamps cast an orange light over everything, making Wilford wonder what lurked in the shadows. A skull with a ruby in one of its eye sockets stared down at him from a shelf along the other side of the room. He was glad she hadn’t brought that with her before.
“But I assume if you wanted to speak with me, that means you haven’t found your curse-flinger,” she said, sitting down as well.
“I’ve narrowed it down to about a hundred people,” Wilford said.
Celine nodded. “Is it getting worse?” she asked.
Wilford threw his hands into the air. He didn’t know what was curse and what was fallout or coincidence.
“Right,” she said softly. “I heard about what happened, and I’m very sorry. I should have asked sooner how you were doing.”
Wilford shook his head. “To be honest, I only came tonight to talk to you and Abe.”
Celine gave him a sad look and nodded. “I don’t know if you found it while you were here last month, but if you decide you want to get away, there’s a theatre downstairs. We have all the Joey Drew movies if you just want to escape.”
“That’s kid’s stuff, isn’t it?” Wilford asked.
“Some of it’s more adult than you might expect,” Celine said wickedly. Now she had him curious. He might have to go check that out after all. “But back to business, I don’t have an opening for another couple of weeks, and I wouldn’t want to rush right into something like this even if I did. Sometimes curses have expiration dates, or criteria that need to be met before they can be broken. To break someone else’s curse, we’d need to find out exactly what kind it is. Even knowing that, it can sometimes take days to unravel everything.”
Wilford nodded. That’s what he was afraid of hearing. “What do you suggest?” he asked.
“Apologise. To everybody on that list you’ve narrowed down. Even to people you think you might have annoyed, even if you eliminated them before.” She leaned over and reached into her bag. “It’s not going to be easy. You might want to practice in writing first. It’s of the utmost importance that you take ownership of whatever you might have done to offend this person, rather than apologising because they were offended. That would only make things worse.”
She handed him a gold ring with three small stones set in it. The middle one was a shimmering white, while the outer two were smaller and black.
“In the meantime, wear that,” Celine instructed. “The opal should help balance you out, and the hematite should protect you from anything getting worse.”
Wilford looked more closely at the ring. He’d never been one to wear jewellery, but this seemed like a good exception to make. The ring was a little small, but he managed to get it onto his left pinky without feeling like anything was going to fall off or go numb.
“Wear it all the time?” he asked, trying to get used to the feeling of it against his skin. He wasn’t sure he liked it much.
“As much as you can,” Celine said. “I’ll call you in a couple of weeks to see if we need to go forward or not.”
Wilford nodded and stood up. “Sounds good,” he said.
Celine stood up and opened the door. “I think it’s time I disappear. Try not to have too much fun tonight.”
She flashed him that wicked smile again as he left the room, eager to see if Abe had arrived yet.
He didn’t even like Kevin that much. He was useful to have around, and was good as his job, but Wilford couldn’t stand him. But there was an almost physical hurt that he couldn’t seem to shake. Depressive episodes were nothing new. They cropped up from time to time. Wilford would hide away from people for a few days, take some pills, and eventually get over it. But this wasn’t that. He was angry. It was like something was taken from him. It was fine when he pulled this shit, because he made goddamn sure it never stuck. But this was cheating. Someone had come in and fucking ambushed him, and then left him there. What a fucking coward.
Worse, Wilford knew there wasn’t much he could do. It was a helplessness he’d never felt before. Resetting was futile. He could reset a thousand times, change a thousand things, and fate would have still come right back around to this moment. Before, he’d always been on the outside in situations like this — an observer, there after the fact to pick apart the details and repackage them into something clear and easy to understand. There was nothing clear about this. Nothing easy to understand. He had no idea what he was supposed to do next.
There was nothing he could do. That was the problem. He was too damn close to this one. It was a problem he’d heard about, but it was always a distant one. Somebody else’s problem. Now that it was his problem, there was nothing in the world he could do to fix it.
Nothing he could do. But there were other people who might be able to do something. Wilford grabbed his phone and Googled a name. Fifteen seconds later, he had a phone number and an address.
Abe’s office was downtown, in a dirty brick building squashed between a funeral home and a Mexican restaurant. Stepping through the door was like stepping into the 1930s. The coat rack next to the door made Wilford feel like he was supposed to have worn a coat just to hang it up. There was a dresser against the wall, with a miniature version of the faux-antique radio Wilford had. He stopped and looked at it. It wasn’t like the faux-antique radio he had at all. It was genuinely old. And still working. Some NPR hosts were talking about someone who had spent thirty years trying to get an interview with the Jersey Devil, and the adventures he’d gone on in the process.
“Hey, Wilford. How you holding up, pal?” Abe said, striding across the office to meet him with a handshake. “It’s always tough to lose a partner.”
Wilford didn’t know what he was supposed to say. So he said nothing, nodding and looking around the room. There was an uncomfortable amount of photos of various men around the office.
“I was hoping you might have some friends who could get close to the investigation,” Wilford said, looking away from the creepy photos and back toward Abe.
Abe nodded. “Yeah, I got a few friends still on the force. I don’t know how close any of them are to it, but I can finger around some of them. See what we can find. Do you think your guy got to close to something? What was he working on?”
Wilford shook his head. That’s why he couldn’t figure out why the cops were so interested in his reports. “No, he was doing a piece on people dumping exotic pets. But it was definitely a hit.” The cops at least agreed on that.
“Yeah, we’re probably not looking at a suburban soccer mom that got stressed out because Timmy’s lizard got too big,” Abe agreed. He walked back toward his desk, inviting Wilford to sit down. “What was he into?”
He was really doing this, apparently. Shaking his head both at himself and the situation, Wilford took the offered seat. “He gambled. I think he dealt on the side. He got into trading cars last year. Nothing too out of the ordinary.”
“Nothing that narrows down anything, either.” Abe pulled out a notebook and started writing everything down. “Any girlfriends? Boyfriends?”
“Nothing regular that I know of,” Wilford said. “Couldn’t tell you any names.”
Abe nodded down at his notes. “Well it’s something I can pass along. I’ll let you know what I hear back. You gonna be there on Saturday?”
Wilford had completely forgotten about the invitation. Maybe getting out and going a little nuts was exactly what he needed. “Yeah, I think I will,” he said.
With there being no point in going into the studio, and having nothing to do at home to occupy his mind, Wilford drove out to Del Perro earlier than usual. Even at the busy restaurant, there wasn’t a whole lot to do. Tourist traffic had slowed down a bit with school starting up, but the area was never going to be slow.
He took a table out on the patio to just watch the lunch service. The amount of his own money he’d put into the place finally felt like it was paying off. Things were moving quickly and smoothly, with only a few minor tweaks being made here or there to keep up the momentum.
The patio was a loud place to be. Music playing over the speakers inside barely filtered out through the doors, and noise from the ocean mixed with the chatter and clatter of diners to create something almost unpleasantly loud. Wilford couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed it before. He looked out over sandy beach, watching people play in the waves for the last time before they had to go back to their more adult responsibilities. Wilford had never learned how to surf before. There was no surfing in DC, but now he didn’t have an excuse not to learn. He put that on a mental to-do list.
Eventually, one of the waiters noticed he’d snuck up onto the patio and came over, either to take his order or tell him to go away. Whichever he’d intended to do, he stalled when he got close enough to see Wilford’s face.
“Oh. You’re here early,” he said.
Wilford pointed at the seat across from himself at the table. “Sit down,” he said, looking away again out over the beach. Someone had started flying a kite down in the surf. He wondered why he never noticed how busy the beach directly in front of him was.
“How are things going today?” he asked. He looked back to address the waiter. He was one of the new kids he’d hired after he invited everyone to leave. Jesse, according to his name tag.
“Uh.” Jesse looked around at the crowd and shrugged. “Busy, but not like we were a few weeks ago. We’ve lost about twenty menus. I think people are taking them for souvenirs.”
Wilford hummed. He wasn’t so sure about the idea of people stealing menus, but he’d seen intelligent people do dumber things. He supposed he shouldn’t be too surprised.
“It always this loud out here?” he asked, looking around the crowd. The patio was definitely more popular than he’d thought it would be during the day. He thought more people would want to be inside, away from the sun and the heat and the sand and the seagulls screeching at everyone for food.
“I don’t think it quiets down until closing,” Jesse said.
Wilford nodded and thought for a moment. There was an idea forming in the back of his head, but it lacked any real foundation.
“Bring me whatever’s not selling,” he said, pulling out his phone. He had some research to do while Jesse got up and took his order to the kitchen.
Wilford knew the beach itself didn’t actually come with the property, despite the property being beachfront. But he’d never really cared enough to ask why. A quick Google search gave him his answer though: all beaches in San Andreas were public property. Which meant he might need a permit if he wanted to get people off the patio. According to the government pages dealing with such things, getting one shouldn’t be too big of a deal. It was the logistics that would be the biggest problem. Looking down the beach in either direction suggested that either nobody else had had the same idea — which seemed unlikely — or there was some hidden roadblock that he hadn’t considered.
He was deep into reading over the permit process by the time Jesse brought his plate. Apparently tourists didn’t like braised eel. He’d have to talk to the kitchen about what else wasn’t selling so they could get a jump on rearranging the menu for the coming season. He just worried that sooner or later, if they started taking everything off the menu that didn’t appeal to middle-aged soccer moms and their snotty kids, they’d wind up with a menu identical to everyone else on the boardwalk. Which was probably exactly the reason why everyone else seemed to have near-identical menus, only standing out by which staple grain they chose to use as the basis for their dishes.
Maybe he wouldn’t change the menu at all. If the place failed, it would fail without leaving him feeling like he’d sold out.
While he ate, he downloaded documents and emailed himself all of the relevant links he could find. It would probably take him a few days to get everything filled out and put together, so there was no point in rushing it. He made lists of expenses that would need to be made to get his idea off the ground, as well as safeguards to keep additional expenses from cropping up. Theft and loss would be a bigger problem than it already was, if people were stealing menus as it was. They’d have to find a way to stock disposable flatware that wasn’t awful to use and look at. Somehow, that seemed like it was going to be the biggest roadblock. They’d already gone and banned plastic straws. Plastic silverware would no doubt be next on the chopping block.
It was another bridge to burn when he came to it, though he had a few ideas he could explore once he knew whether or not it was even possible.
He stayed out on the patio, watching the lunch service slowly transform into the dinner service with no discernible gap in between. Figuring he should get up to empty the seat, Wilford threw some cash down onto the table and headed inside. The bar was just as busy as the patio had been outside, so he slipped behind the counter to take a look at things without bothering the bartenders. He checked the bottles on the wall and counted the menus, hoping the missing menus had migrated back there. The bar was short by six. People were definitely taking them. Of all things to take, he understood menus the least. At least people who stole glasses and silverware did so with the intention of using them. What could someone possibly do with a menu for a place that didn’t even deliver?
He spent the rest of the day taking a detailed inventory of everything. The missing menus were closer to 40 than 20. Even accounting for what was out on tables, no two groups of silverware stood at the same number. The number of glass and flatware missing didn’t match damage reports. Apparently, people were walking off with half his restaurant. He added security camera upgrades to his list of things to think about. A staff meeting was another thing to think about, and it probably couldn’t wait. He pulled out his phone and sent out a mass text to every employee telling them in very plain terms that they were expected to be at the restaurant at closing if they wanted to have a job the next day.
He didn’t expect to weed anybody out with a single meeting, but at the very least, if the thefts were internal, the person responsible knew they weren’t operating in the shadows any longer.
He still wasn’t sure about going to a party. He wasn’t exactly in a partying mood. The police still had the show shut down and weren’t sharing any information, and now Kevin’s family were starting to point fingers at everything and everybody in town, despite Wilford’s continued adamance that his death had nothing to do with the story he was running. He’d been following Kevin’s notes every morning. Unless there was some conspiracy to keep invasive ferrets and snakes under wraps, there was no reason why it should have offended anybody to the point of murder. Wilford didn’t even want to run it, but Kevin was trying out a new brand of content to start his own web series, and wanted to stretch his muscles with Network resources before he started flying solo. Wilford went along with it, because starting his own web-based production company seemed like best way to survive the growing war against mainstream media. And frankly, he was eager to get out from under the network’s imposing thumb. While he had the freedom to cover the stories he wanted to cover, he didn’t quite have the freedom to do whatever the hell he wanted.
But it had all been shoved to the back of everything else. Wilford knew investigations didn’t shut down entire studios just because of sensitive information. He knew he was a suspect as well. So was everyone in the building. It was no secret how Wilford ran his company, and someone was sure to take second-hand gossip wildly out of context.
Still, he made the drive out to Banham Canyon Saturday evening. At the very least, he could talk to Abe and see if he could get any new info he couldn’t get from other sources. He also wanted to talk to Celine. He still hadn’t been able to figure out who or what he’d managed to piss off, and was starting to think that a Plan B might be warranted. He left early, expecting her to get the hell out of dodge like she had last time. When Benjamin let him into the house, he found Celine and Damien talking quietly near the back door.
“Stay. Just for a week,” Damien insisted. “See if things change.”
“Damien,” Celine said tiredly. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but it’s really not necessary.”
“If you’re worried about imposing, don’t. I could use the company in that old house,” Damien said.
Celine rolled her eyes. “Then you shouldn’t have moved into a place that big.”
They probably could have kept arguing like that all day, so Wilford cleared his throat, letting them know that he could hear them. They both looked over at him, Celine’s expression rapidly cycling from being exasperated to annoyed to bright and happy.
“Wilford!” she said.
“Got a minute?” he asked.
Celine nodded. “I’ll see you at lunch tomorrow,” she said to Damien, before turning fully to Wilford. “Of course. Let’s go upstairs.”
Wilford caught a confused look from Damien as he turned to follow Celine up the stairs. One of the sets of stairs, Wilford realised. She’d let him first through a different part of the house before taking him upstairs.
“How many stair cases does this house have?” he asked incredulously.
Celine sighed and shook her head. “I hate this house,” she said. “I don’t know why. I just do.”
“Is it just you two and Creepo down there?” Wilford asked.
“Do you mean Benjamin?” Celine asked. She didn’t sound terribly offended at Wilford’s insult, so she must have felt similarly about him as well. “Chef also lives on the property. But they both live in a separate part of the property.”
“No kids?” Wilford asked. He thought that was the entire point of huge houses like this.
Celine led him into a dimly-lit room, shutting the door behind them before she spoke again. “Mark has two from a previous marriage, but they live with their mother. I met them once, right before we got married.”
Wilford didn’t know much about how families were supposed to behave, but that sounded about right from his experience. Which told him it was probably not how families were supposed to behave.
He sat down at the small, round table in the middle of the room. What she’d brought to his house earlier in the week was like a travel version of her room. Large, woven tapestries hung from the walls and over the windows. Dim lamps cast an orange light over everything, making Wilford wonder what lurked in the shadows. A skull with a ruby in one of its eye sockets stared down at him from a shelf along the other side of the room. He was glad she hadn’t brought that with her before.
“But I assume if you wanted to speak with me, that means you haven’t found your curse-flinger,” she said, sitting down as well.
“I’ve narrowed it down to about a hundred people,” Wilford said.
Celine nodded. “Is it getting worse?” she asked.
Wilford threw his hands into the air. He didn’t know what was curse and what was fallout or coincidence.
“Right,” she said softly. “I heard about what happened, and I’m very sorry. I should have asked sooner how you were doing.”
Wilford shook his head. “To be honest, I only came tonight to talk to you and Abe.”
Celine gave him a sad look and nodded. “I don’t know if you found it while you were here last month, but if you decide you want to get away, there’s a theatre downstairs. We have all the Joey Drew movies if you just want to escape.”
“That’s kid’s stuff, isn’t it?” Wilford asked.
“Some of it’s more adult than you might expect,” Celine said wickedly. Now she had him curious. He might have to go check that out after all. “But back to business, I don’t have an opening for another couple of weeks, and I wouldn’t want to rush right into something like this even if I did. Sometimes curses have expiration dates, or criteria that need to be met before they can be broken. To break someone else’s curse, we’d need to find out exactly what kind it is. Even knowing that, it can sometimes take days to unravel everything.”
Wilford nodded. That’s what he was afraid of hearing. “What do you suggest?” he asked.
“Apologise. To everybody on that list you’ve narrowed down. Even to people you think you might have annoyed, even if you eliminated them before.” She leaned over and reached into her bag. “It’s not going to be easy. You might want to practice in writing first. It’s of the utmost importance that you take ownership of whatever you might have done to offend this person, rather than apologising because they were offended. That would only make things worse.”
She handed him a gold ring with three small stones set in it. The middle one was a shimmering white, while the outer two were smaller and black.
“In the meantime, wear that,” Celine instructed. “The opal should help balance you out, and the hematite should protect you from anything getting worse.”
Wilford looked more closely at the ring. He’d never been one to wear jewellery, but this seemed like a good exception to make. The ring was a little small, but he managed to get it onto his left pinky without feeling like anything was going to fall off or go numb.
“Wear it all the time?” he asked, trying to get used to the feeling of it against his skin. He wasn’t sure he liked it much.
“As much as you can,” Celine said. “I’ll call you in a couple of weeks to see if we need to go forward or not.”
Wilford nodded and stood up. “Sounds good,” he said.
Celine stood up and opened the door. “I think it’s time I disappear. Try not to have too much fun tonight.”
She flashed him that wicked smile again as he left the room, eager to see if Abe had arrived yet.
