Page 100 of The Sister's Curse

We shook hands. “How do you know Viv?”

“I come here a lot. Viv is really out about being a witch. She doesn’t put up with shit from nobody.”

“What does she say?”

“She puts curses on people who fuck her over. Like, there was this guy a few years ago who sold her a car knowing the head gasket was bad. The gasket blew, and Viv put a curse on him. Within a week, the IRS came down on him for tax evasion and his wife served him with divorce papers.” The electrician nodded solemnly. “He never said boo to Viv after that.”

“So you think she’s got the juice?”

“I wouldn’t fuck with her. Put it this way: when the electricity goes out this way, Viv’s house always has power. Makes no fucking sense whatsoever, but it’s true.”

Another lineman peered over at me. “I saw Viv hex a guy who smacked her ass. The owner threw him out, but he lost his dick to a pig a week later.”

“You’re pulling my leg.” I smirked.

“Seriously. Dude got drunk, fell asleep in the barn, and a pig gnawed off his dick.”

This was sounding like urban-legend material. “Either of these guys got names?”

I got names, but I was pretty sure both those guys were in prison right now. “Anyone else maybe have it out for Viv?”

“Well, she cursed the Kings of Warsaw Creek,” Chris said matter-of-factly.

Viv was apparently open about that with everyone. “What did she do?”

“She thinks those guys killed her sister, so she curses them every new moon. Says that sooner or later it’s gonna catch up with them.”

“Do you think they know she cursed them?”

The men shrugged. “Maybe. It ain’t exactly a secret.”

“Do you think the curse is gonna work?”

Chris stared up at the ceiling. “I wouldn’t fuck with a woman who can make a pig chew off your junk. Those men oughta get right with God, because they ain’t right with Viv.”

—

Forensics had left Viv’s house and the door was sealed with yellow tape, but I cut it with my pocketknife and let myself in. I had a duty to follow random leads: weirdos who didn’t tip at the bar; enemies in her personal life; being the wrong place at the wrong time. But every cell in my body screamed that Viv had been taken by the Kings of Warsaw Creek, and I was out of leads.

The house was eerily silent. I didn’t turn on the lights. I could see well enough by ambient light—a gift from my father.Thanks, Dad.Gibby’s toenails clicked on the hardwood floors. The heat was stifling with the windows closed; candles were melting and dripping wax in a slow tapping on the wood floors. I crossed the parlor in the dark and sat on the sofa.

I watched Gibby. I wondered if he would smell what he had at the Sumner house—if he’d sense blood.

Instead of pacing agitatedly, he gently sniffed the piano bench and the doorway to the kitchen, then came to sit on the floor beside me.

“You’ve seen some shit, huh?” I asked him, rubbing his ears.

He whined softly.

“I hope Viv is still alive. I hope it wasn’t her you smelled in the basement.”

He didn’t comment, just rested his head between his paws. I hated traumatizing him. I had very little idea of his background. He knew death. Part of me wondered if he could be trained as a cadaver dog, but he didn’t have the right personality. Police dogs were biddable, calm, and took orders well. Gibby was none of those things.

But he was mine, and I loved him. I stroked his back.

I stared at the deck of tarot cards on the coffee table. I didn’t have the first idea of how to read them, and I didn’t touch them. Beside the cards was a mirror with an ornate, tarnished handle.

I turned it over, expecting to see my reflection in it, but the glass was completely black. My silhouette was just a blacker patch of night on it as moonlight flooded in from the window at my back. The moon was a coin-sized blob in the mirror behind me.