The Serpent's Curse by Lisa Maxwell (read an ebook week .TXT) 📕

have to understand.… My husband has been sent away. My child is all I have left.”

“I’m not here to hurt either of you,” Esta said softly. “I’m just looking for my friend. I think something might have happened to him. I’m hoping that your son finding me means that you can help me find him?”

The woman studied her, and Esta had the sense that it was not a matter of whether the woman could help her, but whether she would.

“Please,” Esta said. “Do you have any idea what happened to him?”

At first the woman only sighed, like she had finally resigned herself to a fate she did not want. “Two days ago, your friend broke into my home, like a common thief, and I nearly shot him, thinking he was from the Committee. But then Sammie explained what your friend had done for him. He’s sick, very sick,” the woman told Esta, motioning that she should follow her toward a doorway at the back of the living area. “He practically collapsed at my feet that night. I’ve done what I could for him, to make him comfortable.”

“Thank you…”

“Patience,” the woman said. “Patience Lowe.”

“Thank you, Patience. For helping him.”

Patience shook her head sadly. “I couldn’t call a doctor, not with the Committee’s quarantine. But it would not have mattered. The sickness he has, it’s not one that people recover from.”

The woman stepped aside and waved Esta into the room beyond. There was a low platform bed and a large oak wardrobe in the corner. Harte wasn’t there.

Before Esta could ask, Patience brushed past her into the room and rolled back the rug. Then she pulled up a panel of the wood flooring to reveal an indentation beneath. But nothing the woman had told her—or could have told her—prepared Esta for what she found below.

TO TOUCH HER ONCE MORE

1904—San Francisco

It wasn’t the feverish chills that racked Harte’s body, making every bone ache clear to the marrow, or even the pervading stench of vomit and sweat and sickness that he hated the most. Those things were awful, but Harte could have suffered them well enough. But the way his skin was so alive with pain that it felt like it was crawling with vermin every time he moved? That was true torture.

Not that he could have lifted his arm to scratch at his skin, even if he wanted to. Harte had become far too weak to bother with moving, and besides, there was barely room for him to fit head to toe in the makeshift cellar where Sammie and his mother had placed him. The hole where they’d hidden him smelled of dirt, a dark, damp scent that surrounded and overwhelmed. The walls had been dug from the earth, and the space, about the size of a small root cellar, clearly hadn’t been part of the original building’s plan.

The boy’s mother had checked in on Harte often. Sometimes she would speak to him as she tried to spoon water past his cracked lips. She talked as she tried to help him, telling him about herself and explaining that her husband had created the hideaway. He’d dug it out by hand a few years before for when he needed to hide from the various people he owed money. The path of righteousness had apparently taken Samuel Lowe through the back room of more than one saloon, where he’d lost large sums of money playing cards with the wrong kind of people. Her husband’s absence hadn’t stopped his creditors from coming to the house, demanding their debts be repaid by a wife who had nothing to offer. It was one of many reasons Harte had to continue to remain hidden.

Sometimes, in the darkness of his burrow, Harte thought he could hear Seshat speaking to him. Once he even dreamed of her, dressed in blinding white, her eyes a black fire. Other times he dreamed of Esta. She would come to him, her soft mouth and devil’s eyes sparking with anger and humor all at once. But Harte could never seem to reach her. He would’ve given damn near anything to touch her again and to tell her how sorry he was for being a fool by leaving her as he had.

In the darkness, Harte’s other regrets came to him as well, one by one, along with the ghosts of all the people he had betrayed. His mother. Dolph Saunders. Esta. Countless others that he’d thrown aside for his own ends. Their faces rose up in the darkness, silent in their judgment, before fading away and leaving Harte alone once more.

The boy—his brother—never returned, though. Not after that first day when the child had led him to this hovel. He was likely afraid now. Harte hoped he was safe—he couldn’t forget the way Seshat’s power had surged through him, and he worried about the boy’s absence and what it might mean. He also couldn’t forget the threat Seshat had made about what she would do if Esta did finally find him.

Harte began to hope that death would take him—and the angry goddess inside his skin—before Esta could arrive. He came to realize that Seshat was right. Esta would never simply accept it if Harte didn’t meet her at the bridge, as he’d promised. She might well come for him, even if it was only to make him pay for his betrayal. But Harte knew that if she did, he would not be able to hold the goddess back.

But perhaps he would not have to worry about that eventuality. He knew, the same way a wounded animal knows to find a quiet place to lie down for the last time, that he didn’t have much longer. There was an ache in his inner thigh where a tumorlike growth had swelled hot and evil beneath the skin. It was so painful now that he couldn’t even move his leg. His fever felt like a brand against his skin, and eventually even