SIX THE FINDINGS OF CHARLES JERICHO

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Lyra had never really been one to frequent the library — especially the odd mythology sections that she and Peter were currently digging through. She wished she had any idea of where to start, but the curse had always been a mostly forbidden subject in their family. Ever since her mother died, they never spoke of it, let alone about how it started or the origin of something.

"Do you know when it could have started? I mean, we can do a keyword search for your last name, maybe? Do you know your mother's maiden name?" Peter asked as he shut another mythology book after finding nothing.

"It's gonna be Jericho. The name has been in my family for centuries and my mother gave it to me because she thought if she tried to change my name that it would anger the curse or something, I don't know, I was a baby," Lyra scoffed, "Something about an attempt to escape the fate of the Jericho Curse would piss off the bloodline, I don't know. I don't even know where to start. Just, just look up Jericho. God, what a load of good that name gave me. I should have just taken my father's name."

Peter looked sheepish as he walked over to the computer, "It's okay, we'll figure it out. If no one changed their name, that'll make it easier on research, right?"

Lyra took a deep breath, "Yeah, yeah. It might. Sorry, I just... I wish I knew what to do. I'm kind of trying not to freak out any time it's brought up so sorry for being a little... touchy, I guess. I'm not usually a sensitive type, but the looming threat of death--"

"Hey, hey, it's okay," Peter cut her off before she could finish her sentence, looking up from the computer with a worried look. He seemed to hesitate for a moment before he walked over to her and sheepishly pulled her into an awkward embrace. Still, that was enough for Lyra to melt as she wrapped her arms around Peter and squeezed tightly, just glad that someone was offering comfort. Although Peter hadn't really been her first choice, or her choice at all, for being the first person to find out, she was glad she wasn't dealing with this alone. If she was going to go down, at least she would have someone trying to pull her back up.

After a moment, Lyra let go and cleared her throat, content to forget that happened as she walked over to the computer Peter had just been standing at. There were too many results for her last name considering she apparently shared a name with a town in California known for hauntings or some lame tourist trap. She sighed as she scrolled through, looking for anything that might have any sort of relevancy to the curse.

"This is useless," Lyra sighed as she slumped down in the chair, her hand glued to the mouse as she continued scrolling.

"Oh, wait, wait, scroll up," Peter halted her as he placed a hand over hers on the mouse to stop her. He let go as soon as she stopped and she scrolled up just a little bit, "There! The Findings of Charles Jericho. Relative of yours?"

Lyra shrugged, "I've never heard of him. Let's see... a collection of archeologist, Charles Jericho's career before his... untimely death in 1871. Untimely sounds about right for my family. Where does it say it is?"

The boy peered over his shoulder as he looked for the information before he cursed, "They're all checked out right now. You've got to be kidding me."

The girl sighed as she leaned back in the chair and crossed her arms, staring at the book cover. After a moment, she pulled out her phone and snapped a picture of the cover and summary. Peter furrowed his brow, so she explained, "We have a name. That's a lead, right? I mean, I'm new to detective work, but that kind of sounds like a lead."

"It's more than we had yesterday," Peter nodded along with her, "Here, they have a notification system. If I put my number in, I'll get a call when it's checked back in. God, I love modern technology. Okay, so, what can we do with the name Charles Jericho?"

Lyra clicked to open a new tab outside of the book search function and typed in the name. It seemed that The Findings of Charles Jericho was the only book ever published about him. "Okay, okay, so it says here the book was published by his wife who went through his research after he died. It says here she died... a year after publishing the book. She left behind a daughter who kept the Jericho name despite being married twice."

"Anything about the daughter?" Peter asked as he leaned over her shoulder. She was very aware of how close he was to her, but her brain forced her to use logic which was that they were simply both trying to look at the computer screen. That's all it was. And the hug was just to calm her down. She really needed to stop overthinking things so much. This was purely him helping her not die by the time she was seventeen, that's it.

"Uh," she mumbled as she scrolled down the Wikipedia page for Charles Jericho, "Just that she lived to be ninety and had... three sons, two daughters. Jesus, they were busy back in the day."

"How long did the sons live?"

"Youngest died at sixty," Lyra read off, "Most of them lived to their seventies or eighties, but one of the daughters... she died at sixteen. No cause is listed."

"Do you think..." the question hung in the air with a certain fragility. They both knew what Peter was asking and Lyra had a feeling they both knew the answer.

Finishing the question, Lyra said, "That she was cursed? Sounds like it. There's no record of the other daughter's children, so that's a dead end. It seems like the curse, if this is hypothetically what happened to them, killed Charles, then the wife skipped her daughter, and appeared the next generation."

"An archeologist dying young with no known cause, his wife dying as soon as she got his hands on his research..." Peter tried to put the pieces together. His eyebrows laced together in concentration and she had a feeling she knew where he was going with this, "Your great-great-great grandpa or whatever he was, I don't know, he had to have found something that cursed your family with this... this darkness. I have a feeling the answer is going to be in that book."

Lyra sighed, "So what? We wait until someone turns it back in? Check if it's on Amazon? "

"Maybe... I don't think we have any choice but to wait."

After a moment of angrily staring at the book search screen, waiting for the red zero under Copies Available to magically become a one, Lyra got an idea, "Wait a minute, I know someone we can ask about this."

ahh sorry, this is short but hey we're actually getting somewhere plotwise! i also wanna thank starfragment for being so understanding with my infrequent updates! i promise I'm gonna see this story through to the end, it just might take me a while lol