I stay quiet. Even if I know he’s wrong, he doesn’t. Jesse, who tries so damn hard not to care about anything and winds up caring more than any single person should, is offering me the chance to hurt him. For the first time, Jesse Talbot isn’t hiding that he cares.
“I’ll hold you to it,” is all I say, and the relief on Jesse’s face makes me doubly glad I didn’t try to push.
He steps back. The mood shifts, a stiff formality replacing his warmth. “You should go get your coat.”
I eye the rain pouring behind him. I have exactly zero desire to leave my comfortable nest on the couch and step into the deluge. “Why?”
“We need to go to the mortuary. There’s something I need to show you.”
“Stop staring. It won’t bite.”
Despite the reassurance, I’m not sure where Jesse thinks my attention would be better directed if not at the corpse in the middle of the room.
Painfully bright lights wash over the cavernous mortuary. Silver faucets gleam behind three enormous sinks, two of which are filled to the brim with what smells like lemon and bleach. Five metal slabs, including the one currently occupied by a dead body, are lined up in perfect symmetry in the middle of the room. A tiny drain perforates the center of every slab, the coils rusted red. On the other side, tightly latched lockers cover the wall.
Cold and clinical, Elias Talbot’s mortuary leaves no doubt that this is not a place where the living belong.
The vent above the sink rattles. A whoosh of cold air hits the top of my head.
Jesse waves a hand. “Just the AC. He keeps it cold in here.”
Of course. For the bodies.
I lean against one of the slabs, trying to school my features into neutrality. Boredom, even. A dead body just a couple of feet away? Okay, and I had chicken parm for lunch, so now we have two facts nobody cares about. A freezing basement mortuary where the only sound is the humof the machine that sanitizes the tools Mr. Talbot is going to use on said dead body? Please.
I amnotgoing to think about it.
From behind a desktop roughly the size of small television, Jesse says, “The faster you get over here, the faster we can leave. My dad’s software doesn’t let me extract information on a hard drive, and if I try to email it to myself, he’ll get the notification on his phone.”
I think the corpse was a woman.
“Why did you use your dad’s computer to begin with?”
“His database.”
I wait for him to tack on the rest of the sentence, but he presses a button on the keyboard without glancing up.
“Congratulations, you just won first prize for THE most useless answer!” I applaud politely.
Mirthful eyes flick up from beneath his lashes, his lips twisting in a reaction I now recognize as him locking in a laugh before it can break free. The sight is enough to ease a few of the knots tightening in my belly. It’s strange, not having to hold back my thoughts before I speak or edit my words to make sure they’re the best fit for the person hearing them. I’ve spent so much of my life moving through the world as though I need to compensate for taking up space in it. As though everyone whose life I entered was owed the best version of me, and the best version was whotheywanted. Jesse, though … none of my calculations work on Jesse. I can’t figure out which Mina he wants, so he just gets the Mina thatis.
“Remember when I told you my dad spent a few years trying to figure out what kind of deal my mom made in Sarasota? Well, he needed access to a ton of information, and he found a way to compile a search engine with a database of articles he pulled from across the globe. The database only covers twelve countries, but he scoured them from head to toe. Every region and locality, every newspaper, periodical, bulletin, or police report.
It took him years to put it together.” Jesse chuckles, though there’s no humor in it. “All that work only to find out my mom’s curse originated on the west coast of Florida.”
I inch around the slabs, sticking close to the wall. Jesse watches me, brow arched, looking torn between amusement and exasperation. When I finally reach his table, he kicks a stool toward me. “Glad you had a safe voyage.”
I huff, settling onto the stool. “You know, I think you should rein in the sarcasm a little considering I haven’t screamed even once at the DEAD BODY.”
“Thisisme reining it in,” he says. “If I rein it in any more, I’ll end up on one of the slabs.”
I aim a kick toward his stool and wince when my toe slams into a metal leg. “That isn’t funny!”
He flashes a smile so wicked it would make the devil flinch. “Last one, I promise.”
Right, and someday I’ll be able to watchAssal Eswedwithout sobbing at the ending. I shake my head. It only occurs to me after Jesse returns his attention to the monitor that the knots in my stomach have almost completely disappeared.
“I figured out what the numbers in your mom’s journal mean.” Jesse purses his lips. In an unusual turn of events, he seems to be struggling for words. “When your mom found out she was pregnant with you, I think she started researching the curse.”
