Page 10 of Spicy Little Curses (Scared Sexy Collection #3)
Nine
Petra
Descendant of Ash
D ax’s expression was one of anguish. The way he stared at the mark on my wrist left no room for doubt about what it meant: my impending doom.
Guess I’d have to cancel that upcoming mani-pedi.
He said urgently, “What else did Celeste tell you?”
Distracted and in pain, I said, “What?”
“ Think , Petra! It’s important. Did she say anything else that might help us?”
I tried to recall every word the medium had whispered in her eerie, overlapping voices. My wrist burned like hell, as if the sigil was branded all the way into my bones.
“She said something like ... ‘In the heart of the city, where the dead still make deals, that’s where you’ll find what you seek.’”
He nodded, his jaw tight. “She’s talking about St. Louis Cemetery No. 1.”
“The graveyard?”
“It’s not just any graveyard. It’s where people go to ask for favors and strike bargains with the dead. Especially at the tomb of Marie Laveau, the famous voodoo queen from the nineteenth century. The offerings pile up there. Candles, coins, crosses ...” His voice lowered. “Sometimes blood.”
Blood again. I had a very bad feeling about this.
The air around us grew colder. The shadows on the walls grew longer, slithering up toward the ceiling like snakes. When the fire in the hearth flickered, the scent of rotting flesh filled the air.
I rose and looked around the room, but the moment I took a step, the floor tilted beneath me. A sharp, searing burn ripped through my wrist. I gasped, clutching my arm to my chest. Dax leaped to his feet, urgently saying my name.
“We have to get out of here,” I said.
But then the candles on the bookshelves and the fire in the grate were snuffed out all at once, plunging the room into darkness. In the shadows of the gilded mirror above the fireplace, something moved.
The Hollow Man.
He stepped out of the reflection, a silhouette of endless void, the tattered edge of his long coat dragging along the floor. His featureless face was cast in darkness, but I felt his eyeless gaze on me. The air grew impossibly still, the weight of oblivion crushing my lungs.
He took a slow step forward, and the books on the shelves began to tremble. The chandelier overhead creaked, as if swaying in a phantom breeze.
The putrid stench of death was overpowering.
In a voice like skeletal fingers scratching against a coffin lid, the Hollow Man spoke.
“The grave is open. The headstone is already carved. Only one thing remains, Descendant of Ash— sacrifice .”
I stood frozen for a moment, shock and fear turning my muscles to stone. Thankfully, my temper kicked in and saved me from being a total wimp.
“You know what?” I shouted, jabbing a finger in his creepy direction. “I won’t be intimidated by a faceless, undead weirdo! You and your boneyard stank can go suck an egg!”
“Petra, what’s happening? Is it him?”
Dax’s tense voice cut through my anger. I’d forgotten he couldn’t see what I could see.
Before I could answer, the shadows of the room collapsed inward, pulling the Hollow Man back into the mirror. He disappeared like ink swirling down a drain.
A heartbeat later, the candles on the bookshelves and the fire in the hearth flickered back to life.
But the cold remained. So did the suffocating presence.
The Hollow Man was still nearby.
“Petra! Talk to me!”
I turned to Dax with my pulse hammering in my ears. “We need to leave. Now.”
He didn’t argue. He grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the double doors of the library. Just as we reached them, a deep, resonant knock echoed through the room.
We both froze.
A second knock was followed by a third. They were slow, calculated, and felt sinister. As if someone—or some thing —was waiting for an invitation inside.
We looked at each other. Dax said, “I’m thinking we find another way out.”
“Brilliant idea. How?”
He glanced at the windows. “You afraid of heights?”
“We’re on the first floor.”
“Did you forget about all those steps we walked up on the way in here?”
“Fine, we’re on the second floor. Can we please just go ?”
We pivoted, darting over to the windows. Dax threw them open and looked down. “We’re in luck. There’s a trellis. Give me your hand.”
He helped me over the sill and watched as I descended, cursing under my breath as my palms were nicked by thorns as I scrambled down. When I reached the bottom and leaped to the ground, Dax quickly followed.
By the time we burst out onto the front lawn, the masquerade was still in full swing. The laughter, lights, and lilting strains of the quartet all felt wrong after what I’d just seen and felt. Smelled, too, that overpowering stench of decay.
Dax scanned the street. “We need a car.”
By the felonious look on his face, I knew what he was planning. “Oh, fantastic. Let’s add grand theft auto to our list of problems.”
Ignoring me, he grabbed my hand and led me through the throng of costumed guests wandering the lawn until we passed the stone archway of the gate and slipped into the shadows beyond the streetlamps and toward a vintage black Camaro parked at the curb.
I muttered, “Of course you picked the loudest car in the city. Every ghost within miles will hear us coming.”
“We need speed,” he countered, crouching by the driver’s-side door. He squinted, looking through the window, then straightened and strode off into the darkness. Seconds later, he returned holding a brick.
“What are you planning on doing with that?”
He shot me a droll look, then smashed the Camaro’s window.
The car’s alarm blared. Its headlights and taillights flashed. Dax reached through the window, pulled up the lock, swung the door open, climbed inside, and bent over the steering column, ripping off the panel below.
From across the street, a man in a horned ram’s mask hollered, “Hey! That’s my car!”
As people started moving toward us, I scrambled into the passenger seat and slouched low. “Incoming.”
“I’m almost there,” Dax growled, fiddling with wires.
I watched the man in the ram’s mask break into a run. “Get there faster , Sunshine.”
With a few sparks and a flicker of power, the engine roared to life.
We peeled away from the masquerade, tires squealing. The mansion shrank in the rearview mirror, its glowing windows like the hollowed eyes of a skull.
I exhaled in relief and closed my eyes.
“You okay?”
My laugh was low and dry. “Aside from my branded wrist, my sliced-up palms, and that thing with no face that keeps stalking me? Yeah. I’m wonderful . What’s the plan?”
“We get to the cemetery. We find out what Marie Laveau’s tomb is hiding. Then we figure out how to stop this, once and for all.”
“Okay, but how do we figure it out?”
“We just figure it out.”
I stared at him. “It must be such a relief to be so unburdened by logic.”
“That’s the most passive-aggressive thing I’ve ever heard.”
I snorted. “Hang around, Sunshine. I’m just getting started.”
I touched my aching wrist. The burn had dulled, but the weight of the Hollow Man’s words still lingered.
“ The grave is open. The headstone is already carved. Only one thing remains, Descendant of Ash—sacrifice. ”
As if reading my mind, Dax demanded, “What did he say to you?”
“He yammered on about graves, headstones, and sacrifices. Nothing made sense. He’s just as confusing as Celeste Leclair.” I frowned, cradling my scalded wrist. “But he called me ‘Descendant of Ash,’ which felt important. Any idea what it might mean?”
Dax’s brows knit together, his usual swaggering confidence dulled by what looked like a bad case of the heebie-jeebies. “That could mean a lot of things, but the first thing that comes to mind is witches.”
I waited for the disbelief to come, my ingrained skepticism rearing its head to scoff, but I must’ve been sufficiently bludgeoned by the supernatural by this point, because I accepted it in stride.
“What witches?”
“The ones who were burned during the infamous hunts and persecutions in Europe and the Americas from the 1400s to the 1700s.”
I deliberated for a moment, then shook my head. “That seems like a reach.”
“Not if you factor in your being adopted and not knowing your birth parents. Add to that what Celeste Leclair said about how the curse can only be unlocked with blood magic and you holding the key ...”
He gripped the steering wheel so tightly, his knuckles turned white. “Maybe the original caplata who cast the curse was your ancestor. And she was an ancestor of those who were put to death generations before.”
When I remained silent, pensive, Dax continued, “Think about it. If the Hollow Man knows your lineage, he’s telling you where you fit into the curse. He’s giving you a clue.”
“I thought he was supposed to be trying to kill me? Now suddenly he’s leaving me a supernatural breadcrumb trail?”
“That he’s communicating at all is new,” Dax muttered. “As far as I know, he’s never spoken to any of his victims before.”
“I really wish he’d chosen somebody else to get chatty with.”
We shared a grim glance as we sped through the night toward the cemetery. And though we’d left the Hollow Man behind, I knew we weren’t escaping.
We were driving straight into his waiting hands.