The Third Kiss Read online

  “What is with this weather? I don’t remember it being this ridiculously hot last year.” She tugged at her T-shirt, stretching the faded Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle print tight across her chest.

  I swallowed past a dryness that hadn’t been there a minute ago and quickly looked toward the Arts and Social Sciences wing of the Quadrangle. “Better get going. Don’t want to miss the prof.”

  Where the outside of the Quad was all Tudor Gothic revival, inside was a mash-up of old and new. Beside a heavy oak wood door, a sleek glass notice board announced the Department of Classics and Ancient History was on the second floor.

  “Are you excited?” Cora asked as we climbed the stairs. “About starting here?”

  I mulled over the question for a second. “I’m excited when it first pops into my head. Then I remember the workload I signed up for. That quickly kills the buzz.”

  Her brows kicked up and she huffed. “Oh, come on. I’ve seen your entrance ranking. You could do this in your sleep.”

  Yeah, and I might have to with the shitload of academic reading coming my way. I shook my head. “The media communications part maybe. But the law? Don’t bet big money on it.”

  Cora’s forehead creased. “So why’d you apply for the double degree?”

  “Aunt Helena,” I said. “She hopes Beth and I will follow in her footsteps. I told her I’d give it a shot, but the communications degree would take priority. She told me law wasn’t that different from journalism, that both involved fiction of one sort or another.”

  Cora glanced sideways at me. “That’s kind of disturbing.”

  “Tell me about it. What about you? You excited?”

  Her smile gave me my answer. “Yep. The med science program here is excellent. I can’t wait to get into one of the undergrad research projects. And then there’s the whole Hogwarts thing.” She grinned at me.

  I grinned back. Shitload of academic reading or not, with Cora here, the first year of uni would be more than bearable. Come to think of it, there was no one I wanted to share the whole uni experience with more. If anyone could push me to reach just outside my comfort zone, it was Cora.

  At the top of the stairs we found ourselves looking down a long white-walled corridor. The first door on the right, labeled Department of Classics and Ancient History Office, was open. A guy not much older than me sat behind a desk, eating sushi and sorting a stack of files.

  “Hey. Who’re you after?”

  “Professor Scholler,” I said.

  “Second to last door on the left.”

  When we found it, the professor’s door also stood open. The room was your stereotypical academic’s study: two of the four walls were lined with packed bookshelves. Framed degrees and awards decorated the other two walls, and a large desk, covered in a mountain of books and journals, swallowed up most of the space in the small room. The scent of dusty paper broke through an acrid smell of fresh paint.

  Behind the paper-cluttered desk, head bent in concentration over an open book, sat a man I assumed to be Professor Scholler. I knocked on the doorjamb.

  He glanced up and smiled. “How can I help you?”

  I guessed him to be somewhere in his mid forties. Smudges of gray colored his otherwise sandy hair at his temples, but the blue eyes behind his wire-rimmed glasses were young enough. No tweed coat or leather elbow patches, only a pale blue polo shirt. One point to the prof for not looking like an academic wanker.

  “Professor Scholler?” I asked.

  “Yes?”

  “My name is Jonas Leander.” I stepped forward and reached across the desk to offer him my hand. “This here’s my friend Cora Hammond,” I said as Cora followed me into the room. “We were wondering if you had time to talk to us about some of your work?”

  “Ah yes. My assistant mentioned your call.” He smiled again and motioned to the two chairs at the front of his desk. “Please, sit. What exactly would you like to talk about?”

  “We’re interested in the work you did with Dr. Richard Cooper some years ago.”

  Beside me, Cora pulled the printout of the New York Times article from her bag. “You helped translate a Latin text found in the Bay of Naples. The Amoris Mortalis Spira scroll?”

  Daniel Scholler stilled. The smile remained on his face but no longer reached his eyes.

  “Yes. I did.” He took the sheet of paper Cora held out to him, barely glancing at the text. “That was a long time ago. Almost twenty years. What is your interest in this?”

  I tossed Cora a look. Had she picked up on the guy’s sudden change from how-can-I-help-you to how-can-I-get-you-out-of-my-face?

  I cleared my throat. “Well, this’ll sound weird, but we think someone is using their knowledge of the love curse mentioned in the scroll to play a bad joke on me.”

  The man’s scoff bounced off his freshly painted walls. “Bad joke is right. That blasted scroll should never have been dug up.”

  I snagged Cora’s gaze. Like mine, her eyes had widened.

  “Why would you say that?” Cora asked. “According to the New York Times article, it was an exciting find.”

  “Exciting find or not, Richard lost his common sense along with his academic tenure over the damned thing.” The prof slapped the article on his table and looked my way. “Now, what kind of joke are we talking about here?”

  “So I got this weird letter the other night. It talks about choices and mentions something called Love’s Mortal Coil.” I pulled the now tattered envelope from my back pocket and handed it to him.

  Brittleness settled at the corners of the prof’s mouth as he took in the crimson wax seal. He slid out the letter and silently read the text. When he was done, his eyes found mine. “Let me guess, it was your birthday recently?”

  My brows pinched. “My eighteenth.”

  The prof’s features hardened and he shook his head. “One of your friends has certainly gone to a lot of trouble to pull off this prank.”

  This time it was me who did the head-shaking. “I don’t think it’s one of my friends. More like one of the… One of my…” My what? I couldn’t exactly call them girlfriends. My longest stint was a week, and even I knew that seven days did not a relationship make.

  Beside me, Cora huffed. “One of his many hookups, is what Jonas is trying to say.” The prof’s left brow crept past the top rim of his glasses, but it was Cora’s matter-of-fact tone that bothered me more.

  “He has an extensive back catalogue of short-term female friends”—All right already. He gets the point!—“who might enjoy seeing him sweat, even if it is over some love-curse mumbo jumbo, so we thought maybe one of your students used their knowledge of the curse to rattle Jonas.”

  “Unlikely.” The professor handed back the letter. “The scroll isn’t covered in any of our course materials, and I don’t recall anyone asking about it, at least not in the last decade or so.”

  Dead end. I’d expected as much, but part of me had hoped this visit might shed some light on the stupid curse letter.

  I ran my thumb over the broken wax seal. Should never have opened the fricking thing. What you didn’t know couldn’t hurt you, and all that. Not that it mattered, because none of this crazy-ass shit was real. But we were here, so might as well get all the facts.

  I held up the letter. “So this love curse. What exactly is it all about?”

  The professor didn’t bother hiding his glance at the clock hanging above the office door, but even as his features pinched in obvious annoyance, he settled back in his chair and crossed his arms. “What do you know about the story of Amnon and Tamar?”

  “About as much as that article explains,” I said.

  The prof’s eyes fell on Cora.

  “Same,” she offered.

  “Well, then, we better start there.” He took a deep breath. “The Old Testament book of 2 Samuel gives t
he account of King David’s daughter, Tamar, and her half brother, Amnon. Tamar was exceptionally beautiful and Amnon desperately wanted her, but being his half sister, she was out of his reach. Eventually Amnon’s obsession with Tamar grew to the point where he couldn’t bear it any longer, so he lured her into his rooms and forced himself on her. Afterward, Amnon couldn’t stand the sight of Tamar. His desire turned to such fierce hatred that he cast her out. She ended up a desolate woman, living with her full brother, Absolom. Two years later, Absolom exacted his sister’s revenge and had Amnon killed.”

  “Hold on a minute.” Cora nodded at the printout of the New York Times article on the professor’s desk. “I thought the article said Tamar used the Mortal Coil spell to seek revenge on Amnon.”

  “It did. That, however, is not mentioned in the 2 Samuel account.” The prof leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desktop and pointing a finger at the letter in my hand.

  “Here’s where things get interesting. You see, there are those who believe 2 Samuel only tells half of Amnon and Tamar’s story. Those such as the unknown author of the Amoris Mortalis Spira scroll.”

  He might have wished the scroll had never been found, but the gleam in his eye betrayed the excitement the historian in him must have felt when they dug the ancient text up.

  “The other half of the story paints a very different picture of Tamar, one of a bitterly angry woman consumed by a burning desire for revenge. A desire so strong that she seeks out a servant of the devil and, in exchange for thirty pieces of gold, curses all Amnon’s offspring to be the object of others’ desire, but never their love, suffering brutal rejection much like she did.”

  I thought back to what I’d read in the article. “But the curse backfires.”

  “Yes.” The professor nodded. “Unfortunately Tamar was unaware of a crucial fact at this point: she was carrying Amnon’s child.”

  Cora edged forward in her seat. “So she’d cursed her own kid?”

  The prof gave another nod. “Which made her near insane with panic. She tried to bargain with the sorcerer, offering more riches to reverse the curse, but he couldn’t be swayed. However, he offered her another deal, the story says: instead of all Amnon’s offspring suffering the curse, only the firstborn would be subject to it. When the child came of age, he would be given three chances to choose from the many who would inevitably be drawn to him. If he chose the same way his father Amnon had—with lust and shallowness in his heart—his chosen would shun him on the morrow, just like Amnon had shunned Tamar. But if he chose wisely, looking deeper than the surface and seeking someone drawn to more than his own outward charm, then love’s joy his just reward shall be. He’d have a chance at true love.”

  Brows bunching, Cora sat back in her chair. “That doesn’t make sense. There’s nothing in it for the sorcerer guy if only the firstborn suffers the curse, and a watered down version at that.”

  “Quite right. But we’re not talking about just Amnon’s firstborn. If you believe the scroll, then the dark powers we’re supposedly dealing with are much too cunning for that. The bargain offers the firstborn three chances to choose wisely…throughout all generations.” The professor turned his humorless smile my way. “All the way down to you, young Jonas.”

  All the way down to— Ah hell. My head started to spin. Because, come on, a fricking love curse?

  Cora’s loud scoff helped anchor the shitstorm of unexplained panic flooding my brain. “Are you saying someone wants us to believe one of Jonas’s parents was cursed and has passed this curse down to him?”

  A brief nod from the prof. “Ridiculous, I know. And by the look of that letter, you’re meant to believe you’ve already experienced the consequences of Amoris Mortalis Spira in your choices. Twice.”

  My mouth slackened. “What do you mean?” No way could he have known about my two dumpings.

  “The watermark coils.” The professor pointed at the parchment in my hand. “Two of them are gone.”

  I slipped the letter out of the envelope. He was right; only one coil remained beneath the text.

  “According to the scroll,” the professor continued, “with each bad choice you make one coil fades. Should you choose wisely, all three coils reappear.”

  Three times your lips a choice will have to make.

  Sarah. Shelly.

  No, Ashley. Ah hell!

  I flung myself back against my chair. If this curse were real, I’d be shoveling up shit creek with a toothpick for a paddle. I mean, I couldn’t even remember the girl’s name. This time the whole bloody room started spinning.

  When it slowed enough for me to open my mouth without the fear I’d barf all over the good professor, I braved a question. “If all this curse business were real”—which it isn’t, but if it were— “what exactly would that mean for me?”

  The prof did his brow-above-his-glasses thing again. “The vanishing coils are an easy enough trick, Jonas. Anyone can buy a disappearing ink pen on the internet.”

  “Yes, but hypothetically, if it were real, what exactly would that mean?” I asked, ignoring Cora’s what-the-frig look singeing the side of my face.

  The prof leaned back in his chair and rubbed at the creases on his brow. “According to the scroll, it would mean you now only have one choice of life partner left. And if you use the same criteria you used to choose the first two, then you’ll be doomed to a life of rejection.”

  “The same criteria?” I knew what he was talking about. Hell, the writing was on the wall—or more like on the parchment—but I couldn’t keep the bitter edge creeping into my voice.

  “Whoever is taking you on this ride into the land of Canaanite love curses is assuming you won’t be all that interested in the inner qualities of the young ladies you…” The professor cleared his throat. “Spend time with.”

  I crossed my arms. “They weren’t exactly interested in my inner qualities, either.” They wanted the captain of the swim team, the guy invited to every party, not the guy who liked to disappear into a high fantasy novel or got off on dissecting a sci-fi flick for its believability. Not the real Jonas Leander. Why was I the villain here?

  “Yes, well, if this curse were real, I’d be telling you they were blinded by your Eros Guardian Charm.”

  My what?

  “His what?” Cora’s what-the-frig look had morphed to include a gape.

  “That’s right.” The prof clasped his hands on the table and leaned forward again. “If this were real, young Jonas, you would be an Eros Guardian—a keeper of romantic love.”

  Cora snorted. Loudly.

  I glared at her, but really, me? A keeper of love? If I needed proof this was a bad joke, then there it was; I didn’t do love. Ever. Love meant losing perspective. Without perspective there was no control, and without control you’d eventually end up wrapping your car around a tree.

  I dug my fingernails into my biceps and waited for the sting to reassure me I wasn’t in some crazy-ass Pride-and-Prejudice-meets-Dan-Brown nightmare. “I’m going to regret asking, but…what?”

  The prof’s gaze flitted back and forth between Cora and me. Most likely making sure we weren’t about to pass out from the fumes produced by all this Eros Guardian bullshit.

  When neither of us fell off our chairs, he took a breath. “According to the Amoris Mortalis Spira scroll, the firstborn of each generation directly descended from Tamar and Amnon is an Eros Guardian. As such, he exudes a certain… How do I put it? Pull, drawing people to him. Through their choices, Eros Guardians have the power to either protect and nurture romantic love, or cause it to die out. Or so the myth says.”

  Cora’s gaping mouth snapped shut the same moment she crossed her arms over her Ninja Turtles. “If you ask me, whoever wrote that scroll mixed way too much opium juice into their nightcap.” Like a B-grade sci-fi shocker, this whole curse business was seriously challenging her suspens
ion of disbelief.

  “Too much opium indeed.” Professor Scholler removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Nevertheless, someone wants you to believe you’re dealing with an ancient evil, one hell-bent on destroying the most powerful force on earth—love.”

  And I was meant to save it? Definitely a joke. Still, no matter how much my brain told me this was all a steaming pile of delusion, deep in my gut, unease rolled in on a wave of nausea.

  This isn’t real. This isn’t real. This isn’t— “There’s no way any of this could be real, right?”

  Cora’s eyes widened. “You heard the professor. It’s total rot!” The girl was mentally trying me on for a straitjacket.

  “Like this here article says, Jonas.” The prof picked up the New York Times printout off his desk and held it out to me. “It’s nothing more than fourth century fiction.”

  Right. Only I couldn’t shake the damn feeling that things were far from right. “Is there someplace we can find more information on all this? Some book or paper or something?” I asked, taking the article from him.

  His answering sigh filled the room with unmasked exasperation. “Soon after Richard disappeared, funding for the project was cut, so there are no papers, let alone a book.”

  I slumped into my chair. No answers, then. Fan-fricking-tastic.

  Another sigh came from across the table, this time resigned. “Look, the only thing I can offer you are Richard’s old journals.” The professor stood, chair legs scraping the worn wooden floor. “Although I highly doubt they’ll be of any use. The little I’ve read of them only proves Richard had lost his faculties. I’m convinced you’re caught in an elaborate ruse, Jonas. Nothing more. But if you’d like to waste your time reading the ramblings of a madman…” He handed me his business card. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a class to teach.”