Carla swallowed and tapped on the shot. “Do you remember this guy?”

Eve’s curls shook. “No. He looks like he worked in the bar...”

“Did we meet him?”

Eve shrugged. “If we bought drinks at the bar, or if he served us, we must have.”

Carla scratched her arm without realizing it.

“Are you cold?” Eve said. “I can bring a blanket, and the boys can make coffee for us.”

Carla started to stand up, wanting to distance herself from the photo. She dropped it back onto the table face down. “I should go,” she said hurriedly. “It’s been so lovely to see you again, but it’s been a long day.”

“Oh, sure...” Eve said with a surprised shrug. “Are you sure you don’t fancy another drink?”

Carla shook her head and gave an involuntary shiver.

Eve stood up, too. “We should meet up tomorrow, if you’re free,” she offered. “I can take you up to the citadel. Do you remember the amazing views out to sea?”

“Yes, sounds lovely,” Carla said. She hugged Fidele and Eve good night and set off back to her hotel, feeling like she’d borrowed someone else’s legs.

Carla swiped her room card and entered her bedroom, then switched on her bedside lamp. She yanked the doors open to her balcony and stood leaning with her arms outstretched against the railing. A breeze had picked up and she looked at the expanse of inky-black sky above her and the sea below. She googled The King of Cups on her phone and again saw a distinguished man clasping a gold goblet in front of the waves. The card represented a stable relationship and told her not to suppress her impulses. It was connected to the water, and she just knew it had to be Fidele.

Which only left The Lovers.

Carla felt shaky again and she gripped the railing, taking several gulps to try to catch her breath.

Could the man in Eve’s photo really be the same person Myrtle had seen in her reading?

“Please don’t let it be him,” she said aloud. But her voice was swallowed up by the sound of the waves and the hot night air.

Twenty-Four

Insect

Sleep evaded Carla that night. She drank water from a bottle, pulled her covers up to her chin and wrestled them off again. She went to the bathroom a couple of times and reopened the patio doors to let some fresh air into her room. Back in bed, her legs wouldn’t stay still, jerking as if they wanted to dance without her. She refused to look at her phone, in case she had an urge to search for the man in the photo, to find out where he was now and if he was single. She prayed he was happily married, the same as Fidele, so he couldn’t possibly be the only contender left for The Lovers card.

Carla tried to distract herself by thinking about all the other pressing issues in her life. It had now been several days since she’d spoken to Tom, and part of her wondered if he’d been in an accident, or if he was just taking time to let the pregnancy news sink in. Was he still dead set against having children?

She stared at the ceiling, drifting off and waking intermittently. Something buzzed close to her ear and she batted a hand to swat the insect away. She pulled the pillow over her head as a barrier and eventually drifted off into a light sleep, only to be woken by her phone pinging at five o’clock in the morning.

She groaned when she saw her sister had messaged her.

I’ve got news. It’s not urgent, I can’t sleep. Club Insomnia, Jess texted.

Carla groggily propped herself up in bed. I’m there too x, she texted back.

Sorry, did I wake you?

I’m not sure if I was awake or asleep.

A few seconds later, Carla’s phone vibrated and she pressed it to her ear. “Hi,” she said with a yawn.

“Hi,” Jess said, equally sleepily. “Do you remember when we used to wake up early in our bedroom and whisper to each other, thinking no one could hear us?”

“Then Gran used to knock on the wall and shout for us to go back to sleep,” Carla added.

“And we’d both be exhausted in school, later on? This feels a bit like that.”

Carla smiled to herself. “What’s your news?”

“I paid a visit to that church in Preston,” Jess said. “It’s only fifty miles away, and the stained-glass window was there, just as it looks in the photo, complete with the magpie.”

“You didn’t shoot up in flames for heresy?”

“Don’t worry, I left my runes and sage at home, and I dressed smartly, too. The vicar looked ancient, like he’d been there forever, and a church didn’t seem the right place to tell him our family was cursed. I talked to him about the window, though, and he told me some interesting things...”

Carla plumped up her pillow and got comfortable. “Tell me more.”

“When I mentioned Lars and Agatha, he started to talk as if he’d known them personally, a long time ago. He mentioned they were a quiet couple who both lived into their eighties.”

Carla’s brow crinkled. “Was he talking about the same people?”

“I reckon so. He mentioned the couple were Dutch.”

Carla’s mouth parted with confusion, and she felt the need to recap what she knew. “So, we know a curse was cast, and it was announced in a newspaper that Lars died because of it, but then we find out that he and Agatha both lived in England until a ripe old age?”

“Yes,” Jess said. “That’s it. The vicar also told me they had a son named Willem. He died several years ago.”

“So, we can’t ask him anything...” Carla mused aloud.

“What’s there to ask?”

“I don’t know.” She just felt, knew, that there had to be more to this story. “So, Lars and Agatha somehow managed to outwit the curse?”

“It looks that way. But that’s not all. The plot thickens,” Jess said, her breath quickening. “The vicar said Agatha was a glass artist and she designed the window in the church. That could be why the design features the magpie. He still had some records on file, so could tell me the window was installed in December 1923.”

Carla batted the buzzing insect away from her face again. “But Lars died in November 1923, in Amsterdam. The newspaper article says so. How did he and Agatha manage to have their photo taken in front of the window in December, in England?”

“I have no idea. My head hurts thinking about it.”

Carla’s logical side kicked in. “There’s obviously some mistake. The church records must be wrong or something. We need to look at the positives here. Even if a curse was bestowed on Lars and Agatha, they somehow managed to escape it. It looks like it didn’t work.”

“But how?” Jess asked.

“Maybe curses aren’t true after all,” Carla reasoned. However, Anastacia’s talk of spirituality and Pharaohs’ curses in the early twentieth century left her feeling not quite certain.

Both sisters took a moment to try to make sense of everything but failed.