Cursed Luck, Book 1 Read online

  Praise for Kelley Armstrong

  “Armstrong is a talented and evocative writer who knows well how to balance the elements of good, suspenseful fiction, and her stories evoke poignancy, action, humor and suspense.”

  The Globe and Mail

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  “[A] master of crime thrillers.”

  Kirkus

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  “Kelley Armstrong is one of the purest storytellers Canada has produced in a long while.”

  National Post

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  “Armstrong is a talented and original writer whose inventiveness and sense of the bizarre is arresting.”

  London Free Press

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  “Kelley Armstrong has long been a favorite of mine.”

  Charlaine Harris

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  “Armstrong’s name is synonymous with great storytelling.”

  Suspense Magazine

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  “Like Stephen King, who manages an under-the-covers, flashlight-in-face kind of storytelling without sounding ridiculous, Armstrong not only writes interesting page-turners, she has also achieved that unlikely goal, what all writers strive for: a genre of her own.”

  The Walrus

  Also by Kelley Armstrong

  Rockton thriller series

  City of the Lost

  A Darkness Absolute

  This Fallen Prey

  Watcher in the Woods

  Alone in the Wild

  A Stranger in Town

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  A Stitch in Time time-travel gothic trilogy

  A Stitch in Time

  A Twist of Fate

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  Standalone Thrillers

  Wherever She Goes

  Every Step She Takes

  * * *

  Past Series

  Cainsville paranormal mystery series

  Otherworld urban fantasy series

  Nadia Stafford mystery trilogy

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  Young Adult

  Aftermath

  Missing

  The Masked Truth

  Darkest Powers paranormal trilogy

  Darkness Rising paranormal trilogy

  Age of Legends fantasy trilogy

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  Middle-Grade

  A Royal Guide to Monster Slaying fantasy series

  The Blackwell Pages trilogy (with Melissa Marr)

  Cursed Luck

  Kelley Armstrong

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without the written permission of the Author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  * * *

  Copyright © 2021 K.L.A. Fricke Inc.

  All rights reserved.

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  Cover Design by Cover Couture www.bookcovercouture.com

  ISBN-13 (print): 978-1-989046-29-6

  ISBN-13 (ebook): 978-1-989046-28-9

  Author’s Note

  Cursed Luck began life as a quarantine project. I was writing a thriller when the lockdown hit in March 2020, and I suddenly struggled with the tense and serious tone of that book. I needed something light and fun, and I suspected readers did, too. I decided to start a free serialized urban fantasy.

  If you read the free online version, that was my first draft. This version has been fully tweaked and smoothed, copyedited and proofread. While there are some minor plot changes, it remains the same book readers saw in the summer of 2020…just a cleaner version!

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Coming Next

  Goddess of Summer Love

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Aiden Connolly is making me an offer I can’t refuse, even when I know I should.

  For the past two years, I’ve run a small antiques showroom in Boston. Business isn’t exactly booming. I recently downgraded to a micro-apartment tiny enough that my cat is ready to serve me an eviction notice. So when this guy walks in and offers me a “unique opportunity,” it’s hard to say no, though if my gut warns me his job is a million miles out of my league.

  Also, in the last five minutes, I’ve formed a very definite opinion of Mr. Connolly. He’s kind of an asshole. He strode past my By Appointment Only signs as if they didn’t apply to him, marched up and said, “I’m Aiden Connolly,” as if I should recognize the name. I do not.

  He stands there, looking down at me. Way down. He’s not overly tall—maybe five eight or nine—but Connolly is one of those guys who could manage to look down their nose at someone standing at eye level. The smell of old Boston money wafts from him like fine cologne, and from his expression, my perfume is clearly eau de working class.

  It doesn’t help that Connolly is a ginger. I know that’s usually an insult, but I have a thing for redheads, especially ones like this with red-gold hair and eyes the color of new grass and just the barest suggestion of freckles across the nose.

  Combine “rich asshole” plus “hot young guy” plus “job that’s beyond my skill set,” and I should send him packing. I really should. And yet, well, I’m reaching the point where I drool every time I pass the fresh fruit stand but have to count my pennies to see whether I can buy my apple a day.

  “My office needs redecorating,” he announces.

  I look around my dimly lit showroom, crammed with antiques. “That . . . isn’t really—”

  “You are not an interior designer,” he says. “But I believe you could be, of a sort. I’m envisioning a different process, one that begins with set pieces and builds around them.”

  It takes a moment to understand his meaning. “Start with antiques and design an office to suit?”

  “Yes. Someone else would do that design, of course. What I want is an expert to select the base pieces. Roger Thornton tells me you have a unique collection and an eye for quality.”

  I brighten at that as Connolly’s odd offer begins to make sense. Roger Thornton is one of my best customers.

  “My collection is indeed unique,” I say. “Every piece is one of a kind. Not a single factory-produced item.”

  “I will take your word for that. I’ve collected a few antiques over the years, but I
wouldn’t even know their period of origin.”

  This admission could come with chagrin or self-deprecation. It could also come with pride, someone wanting to be clear their brain has no space for such mundanities. From Connolly, it’s a simple statement of fact, and I grant him a point for that.

  “Now what I’d like—” he begins.

  My front door opens, bell tinkling. I wait for the intruder to notice the By Appointment Only signs. Instead, a man strides in clutching a box. He looks like a professor. Maybe forty, tall and slender with wire-rimmed glasses and silver-streaked hair. He even wears a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows.

  “I’m sorry,” I call. “We’re open by appointment only.”

  He keeps heading straight for me.

  “I’m sorry,” I say again, a little firmer now. “If you have a piece to sell, you’ll need to make an appointment. I’m busy with—”

  The man thrusts the wooden box at me. “Fix this.”

  I glance down at a hanging hinge. “I’m afraid I don’t offer repair . . .”

  I trail off. The box is a tea caddy. Regency period. Rosewood. Perched on four cat paws, with a mother-of-pearl inlaid top showing a kitten playing with yarn. That yarn seems to slide off the box and snake toward me, whispering a soft siren’s call of devilry. Joker’s jinx.

  I clear my throat. “I do purchase damaged items, but if you want me to take a look at this, you’ll need an appointment—”

  He thrusts the box into my stomach. “I mean the curse. Fix that. Take it off.”

  I force a light laugh and try not to cast a nervous look at Connolly. “I’m afraid that’s a whole other level of repair. I’m not sure why you think this is ‘cursed’”—I air-quote the word with my tone—“but that is definitely not my department. Maybe you have the wrong address? There’s a psychic two doors down, upper apartment.”

  “Are you Kennedy Bennett?”

  “Er, yes, but—”

  “From the Bennett family of Unstable, Massachusetts?”

  “It’s pronounced Unst-a-bull,” I murmur reflexively.

  “Owners of ‘Unhex Me Here,’ also in Unstable?”

  “Er, yes.” I tug at my button-down shirtfront, straightening it. “But I . . . I’m not part of the family business.”

  “Your sisters sent me. They say this curse is a joker’s jinx, and that’s your area of expertise. Now unhex my damn box, or I’ll leave a one-star review.”

  “Go,” Connolly says.

  The man turns and blinks as if Connolly teleported in from an alternate dimension.

  “I said, go,” Connolly says. “Ms. Bennett clearly has no idea what you are talking about. Just as clearly, she has another client. Now take that”—his lip curls—“piece of kitschy trash and leave.”

  The man’s face flushes in outrage. “Who the hell are you?”

  “The person Ms. Bennett is currently dealing with. The client with an appointment.”

  “Y-yes,” I say. “Mr. Connolly absolutely had an appointment, and I must insist that you make one yourself if you’re interested in selling that box. As for anything else you think I can do with it, my sisters have a very weird sense of humor. I’ll totally understand if you one-star their business.”

  The man’s jaw works. Then he plunks the box on a sideboard. “Fine. You know what? You just bought yourself a curse, young lady. That’s my one-star review.”

  He stalks out, leaving the box behind. As the door bells jangle, Connolly murmurs, “That was interesting.”

  I force a laugh. “Right?” I ease the cursed tea caddy off the sideboard and tuck it safely out of reach. “So tell me more about this job, Mr. Connolly.”

  I agree to stop by Connolly’s office after lunch so I can see the space. Once he’s gone, I exhale and slump over the sideboard. Then I lock the door, place the tea caddy on my desk and peer at it.

  While Connolly called it kitsch, it’s actually a valuable antique like everything in here. As I told him, all my goods are one of a kind. That’s because they’re cursed. Formerly cursed, I should say. The former part is very important.

  I come from a family of curse weavers—a gift said to stretch back to the Greek arae. While we can weave curses, we can also unweave them, and that’s our true calling. Most times we’re asked to uncurse an item, though, we fake it. Not that we leave the curse on. That would be wrong. The problem is that those who show up on our doorstep rarely suffer from an actual cursed object. Instead, they suffer from an anxious mind that needs settling, and for generations, the Bennett women have provided that service, pretending to uncurse some heirloom or other.

  People who have a real cursed object usually don’t realize it. They may only know Great Aunt Edna’s jewelry box gives them the creeps. Worse, no one wants to buy it because it gives them the creeps, too. That’s where I come in. I will take that box off your hands. I’ll even pay you for it. Then I’ll uncurse it and resell it.

  One might think that the ethical thing to do would be to offer to uncurse the object. I tried that a few times. The owner stared at me as if I’d sprouted a turban and hoop earrings. Lift a curse? What kind of wacko was I? They just wanted to sell their dead aunt’s weird jewelry box.

  A couple of times, when I felt really bad about buying an heirloom, I tried quietly uncursing the object and giving it back. Didn’t help. They wanted it gone. That explains the tea caddy suddenly in my possession. While the owner obviously believed in the curse, he decided dumping it on me was safer than keeping it. Or he just got pissy and wanted to storm off with a grand gesture . . . which ultimately benefited one of us more than the other.

  I’ll uncurse the caddy tonight, and if the former owner returns, I’ll buy it from him. Fair and square. Right now, though, I have a far more important task: texting my sisters to tell them I’m going to kill them in some fresh new way that is totally different from the other two times this week I threatened to do it.

  Kennedy: Suffocation. Inside an antique tea caddy.

  It only takes a moment for my younger sister to reply.

  Hope: I don’t think we’d fit.

  Kennedy: Oh, you will when I get through with you.

  Our older sister, Turani, joins in.

  Ani: Pfft. I’m not worried. To kill us, you’d need to come to Unstable. Which apparently has fallen off your GPS.

  Kennedy: I missed one weekend. ONE. Also, the highway runs both ways. You could come here.

  Ani: To that den of iniquity?

  Kennedy: We call it ‘Boston.’

  Hope: Can we go pub-hopping?

  Ani: Yes. When you’re twenty-one. Now what’s this about a tea caddy?

  Kennedy: Joker’s jinx Regency tea caddy. Guy barged in during a client showing.

  Ani: I didn’t send him. Hope?

  Hope: Hell, no. I learned my lesson. I hate you, by the way, K. I had a date last week. Made the mistake of offering to drive, forgetting that every time I sit in the driver’s seat, it makes a fart noise.