But then again, I don’t really know how dragons’ luck works,he had to admit as Caleb started typing. He frowned.Or internet search engines either, for that matter.
“Have you ever tried something like this before?” Henry asked.
“Not really,” Caleb said. “Though one time I asked Siri where I’d put my car keys, just to see what would happen, and itdidactually tell me.”
“So… it’s not totally outside the realm of possibility, then?” Luna asked, the hope obvious in her voice.
“I can give it a go, anyway,” Caleb said. “Now, I have to concentrate for this next part. I’ll really be pushing my luck for this, so let’s see if it works.”
Quickly, he took a deep breath, scrunched his eyes up, wriggled his fingers and then typed into the search bar:who’s behind this curse?
The results didn’t pop up instantaneously. In fact, it seemed to be taking an awfully long time to load the results page in general.
This won’t work,Henry’s hellhound sniffed, even as he tried to tell it to have a bit of patience.As if adragoncould help us –
“Oh. Hello,” Caleb said. “This seems… interesting.”
Henry blinked, leaning forward to look at the computer screen.
At first, he wasn’t sure what was so interesting about what was on it – it seemed to be a link to a fortune-telling website, or at least that was what he was guessing from the title of the webpage.
But after a moment, he saw what Caleb meant. That was theonlyresult. And Henry didn’t have to know much about internet search engines to know that wasn’t usually how it worked.
“Huh,” Luna said, her eyes wide. She read off the screen as Caleb clicked on the link: “‘Madame Fortuna will tell your fortune, predict your love life, tell you who is working against you and stopping you from achieving your dreams. A qualified witch at your service.’Um. Is this for real?”
“Seems like it,” Henry murmured, as Caleb scrolled through the website. It was pretty nice, actually, done up in purple with pictures of crystal balls and arcane symbols.
Ugh, Icannotbelieve that actually worked,his hellhound huffed, as Henry internally shushed it.We could have done that, if we’d wanted to.
We absolutely could not have, and you know it,Henry told it.If you don’t have anything helpful to say, just be quiet.
“Look at this,” Caleb said as he clicked on a link that readServices Provided.“It says here she can both breakandcast curses. Do you think this might actually be who we’re looking for?”
“I suppose it’s hard to say for sure,” Henry said. “Idefinitelyhave never heard of any Madame Fortuna though, and I have no idea why she’d ever have heard ofme. Do witches go to nightclubs a lot? Maybe I refused her entry one night, and now she’s angry.”
Kira laughed a little as she crossed the room, putting cups of coffee down in front of Luna and Henry. “Oh, I’m suresomewitches must go to clubs,” she said. “Where else would they meet rock star vampires?”
Henry had to laugh at that. “Okay, good point.”
“It still doesn’t really explain why she’d curse you though,” Luna said, sipping her coffee, her eyes still on the screen. “Unless that actuallyisthe reason.”
“I doubt it,” Henry said. “We’re not really a fashionable enough place to attract vampires. Or witches, I wouldn’t have thought.”
“Hey, it has a profile for her,” Luna said, pointing to the bottom of the screen. “Perhaps it’ll tell us something interesting? I’m not sure what, though.”
“Well, let’s read it,” Caleb said, clicking.
And then, in the next moment, they all sucked in a quick, shocked breath through their teeth.
“Wait,” Luna said, sounding just a little faint. “That’s – but that’s – in the photo –”
“That’s you,” Henry confirmed grimly.
And it was true – there was no mistaking that breathtakingly sunny smile, those waves of auburn hair, those sparkling coppery green eyes. The woman in the photo even had the same freckles as Luna – there was a dark one just on the bridge of her nose, which was there, perfectly replicated in the photo of Madame Fortuna on her ‘About Me’ page.
Henry had pretty much had every aspect of Luna’s appearance committed 100% to memory from the moment he’d laid eyes on her, and there was no way this was just a case of someone looking kind of similar to her, or it being a photo that somehow distorted Madame Fortuna’s face to make her look like Luna.
They were, in every way,identical.
