Meditate until the candle has burnt itself out. See the curse returning to its creator, and see the effect the curse has on his or her life. Also, see your life free of the curse, and feel the accompanying joy.
Once the candle has burnt itself out, the curse will be off of you and on the person who placed it. Prepare to sleep with one eye open, because a living curse is a fickle nomad, and it’s got your scent.
If you can, it is always better to remove the curse entirely. However, this is an arduous, dangerous undertaking. Be sure to have three times as much gathered power as the power of the curse, remembering that a curse gathers strength over time. If the power of the curse exceeds the power of those gathered to remove it, the curse will transfer to all present. Follow these instructions to destroy a curse:
Create a circle with salt.
Gather all the power you can. Douse them with oil of agrimony. Have them form a ring around the circle of salt.
Draw the curser into the salt circle. She or he does not have to be conscious. If she or he has died, you can put an item dear to them in the salt circle instead, though this method is not guaranteed.
Once the curser or their representative item is in the salt circle, have the power hold hands around and chant the following:
With the power of my blood,
And the strength of my verse.
I reclaim my own path,
And I destroy your curse.
Air.
Earth.
Water.
Fire.
As these words are spoken,
This curse is forever broken.
Curse removal is a gruesome process when it works, as the curse must unstitch itself from the flesh of the person who made it as well as the one who has borne it. They don’t always survive.
Chapter 41
Katrine
He told her he’d been out walking when the snakes started bubbling up from the ground. He asked for a ride home. She drove him back to his apartment, veering to miss the bump and pop of reptiles under her wheels before realizing such a thing was impossible. She shouldn’t be with him. He was dangerous. Still, when he asked her to come up for a drink, she said yes.
Outside his apartment, she exited through her driver’s side window and balanced on her hood, trying to get inside without wading through them. He tossed her over his shoulder and carried her up the exterior staircase to his second-floor apartment.
He set her down outside the door and unlocked it, stepping aside to let her in first. She stepped over the threshold. He closed the door behind her. A plug-in room freshener emanated the cloying smell of funeral gardenias. She would never be able to smell that flower again without feeling sick.
He took off his hat. She thought he looked vulnerable without it, but so painfully handsome that she thought he could read her mind when she looked at him. “They come every twenty-five years, but I’ll never get used to them.”
“Hunh?” He set his guitar on the couch.
“The snakes.” She felt like she was hyperventilating. She wasn’t supposed to be here.
He went to a window and pushed back a curtain. “They can’t stay forever.” His chuckle was low, almost a growl. “I’ve heard of frogs falling from the sky, and blackbirds raining down, but I’ve never heard of so many snakes coming out at once.” He turned, his black eyes piercing her. “Have you?”
She shook her head. “No, only here. I think it has something to do with the warm weather. They’ll probably disappear as quickly as they came. You’re not from here originally?”
The question seemed to amuse him, but he didn’t answer it. Instead he stepped away from the window. She felt like she was falling, and put out her hand to steady herself. “Am I bothering you, being here?” she asked. It was a reflexive question.
“No. Can I get you that drink?” He glanced at her sideways.
“Sure.”
She removed her coat and sat on the leather couch, putting her head between her knees to restore her balance. The apartment walls were close and bare, probably the same harsh white that the landlord had painted them between tenants.
John ambled into the kitchen, flicking on his stereo as he passed it. She heard the hiss of two beers opening. She folded and then refolded her white linen coat. A hunting magazine lay open and face up on the table in front of her. He’d been reading. Bruce Springsteen was singing about small towns. She accepted the cool brown bottle when he handed it to her.
“Thanks.” She swallowed half of it. Outside, the wind of history and fear rose up, whipping against the windows of the apartment, enlisting branches to get Katrine’s attention, blowing children’s toys from the yard into the street in the hopes of waking her up. The snakes grew sibilant. She chose not to listen.
John watched her, his black eyes hooded. “I’ve got more beer if you need it.”
For the first time since she’d met him, she focused her attention on him fully and held it, scanning him from top to bottom. He was vibrating with a sexual energy too strong to read anything underneath it, a hot thick thing that reached right back out to her. She accepted it. She wanted to feel good. Her mind wouldn’t, but her body could. And they were safe up here, away from the snakes.
She stood and strode to the bedroom, her breath sharp and scented with beer. He didn’t let her reach the bed. He was behind her, his corded arm wrapped around her waist. He shoved her hair away and kissed her neck. She moved into it, turning until his hot mouth was on hers.
He helped her to the floor. His weight on her was good. It made her feel like someone else was in charge. She bucked her hips, and he moaned in the back of his throat, a growl more than a word. He unbuttoned her shirt, yanked it off, and pulled her bra down to her waist. She’d have an abrasion circling her ribcage from the force of it, but for now, she welcomed the pain, just as she welcomed his mouth on her breasts, his bites, his hand thrusting into her jeans.
He pulled his hand out to undo the snap on her pants. His breath was ragged.
She hadn’t had sex with anyone since Adam. Adam, who had followed her their entire relationship with an eraser, forgetting everything she had done for him. It made it so easy for him to move on. She wanted so badly to feel some other man’s mark on her. It would push Adam farther away. It would have to. It would heave every thought away so she could just be. She shoved John’s hands away and wiggled out of her jeans. She tried to stand, wearing only underwear and her bra around her waist, intending to step to the bed. He yanked her back down.
“We’re going to do it here.”
He used enough force to throw her off balance, and she landed next to him on the carpet. She grazed her elbow on the edge of a table. “Stop it,” she said. She’d meant his roughness, but her words inflamed something in him. She saw it flare up for a moment, in his eyes. They were shark-black, and something crawled in them like beetles in a hole.
He recovered himself, but it was too late. She’d seen it.
She pictured Ren and his honest strength, and she felt sick that she was in John’s apartment. So what if Ren and Heather were dating? Good for them. It didn’t mean she needed to be here. She inhaled soul deep. It was the sound of a death row pardon.
“I have to go.” She pulled her bra up, adjusting it before sliding the straps over her shoulders.
“What?” He sat on his haunches, his voice incredulous. His erection pushed against his pants like a ridiculous spear. Outside, the wind picked up, screaming its warning. Listen. Please listen.
But she didn’t need to. She was strong. This was her body. She was going to take it outside now. “You heard me.”
“Hold on.” He started to reach for her shoulder, noted her expression, and instead held up both hands. “We were just having fun.”
She reached for her shirt, not arguing. Her body felt light because she had realized something: she could comfort herself. She didn’t need to be here, or anyplace like here, ever again.
“I can make you feel good.”
She felt his eyes on her blue silk panties, still wet from the earlier passion. “I don’t want to—”
“We’ll just have fun,” he promised. He put a hand on her ankle. The heat was incredible. He snaked it up her calf. “This is just about making you feel good. I don’t need anything out of it, baby.”
She didn’t stop his hand, or his mouth as it moved over hers, kissing her, softly reigniting the passion. Maybe. Just for a minute. He moved his warm mouth down, to her stomach. His kisses were light, his tongue stirring electricity. She didn’t stop him as his kisses moved lower, or as he maneuvered himself between her legs. His fingers hooked the sides of her panties. He sat up to pull them along the length of her legs, returning to kiss a soft circle around her belly button. His mouth moved lower, licking her, his hand stroking her inner thigh.
She tried to keep still, but it was hard. His mouth was so close. The anticipation danced along her nerves like heat lightning. She closed her eyes, her mouth curving in a soft smile. She would let him go down on her. Her body would find relief, and it might just clear her head. What would that cost her?
But then her eyes opened. She didn’t know what it was—the tenor of the snake song outside the window? The insistent scraping of the branches against the building finally getting to her?—but she was no longer blind. She witnessed his pulsating evil clearly. All the heat in her belly disappeared, replaced by slicing fear.
She twisted her hips to get him off.
It was too late.
In the moment that followed, she felt the backdraft that precedes horror.
It pushed against her throat, but she couldn’t pull away fast enough. He was on top of her, thrusting into her, one hand splayed next to her head, pulling at her hair, the other pushing at her shoulder. It took him thirty seconds, and he was ejaculating inside of her. He whispered ugly words, ridiculous words, as he came: I will take your power when the snakes rise. Your children will pay for this, and their children. I will return to make you pay. Not one of you can stop me.
And then he was spent. He fell, his weight pinning her, the spasms wracking his body. He lay there until they passed, then pushed himself onto his back.
“It’s times like this I wished I still smoked,” he said, his voice husky.
Her brain couldn’t piece it together, couldn’t understand what had just happened. It was her substantial, tenacious heart that commanded her. Pull on your underwear, then your pants, then your shirt, girl. Get out of here. Don’t let him take anything more from you.
“You leaving so quick?” he asked. “Like I said, I’ve got more beer.”
She couldn’t look at him. If she had, she would have seen a layer of innocence slathered on so thick that he believed it himself. Dressed, coat yanked on, she stumbled out of his apartment. She felt dirty and small. The hope that she’d been nurturing the past three months fled like a hunted thing.
Once outside, she ran until her breath was raw, slipping and sliding over the reptiles, sometimes falling to join them, always getting back up and running some more. On the other end of town, police sirens rang out, but no one was out in the Avignon neighborhood, or on any other street she ran through. The snakes were keeping them inside. When her breath cut at her, she walked, numb, until the tears came.
She hadn’t protected her sister from being molested, hadn’t even known about it, had left town as soon as she’d graduated, and had blundered from one disastrous relationship to another since then. Jasmine masking her power with anti-depressants was no worse than Katrine misusing hers. In fact, it was a step up. At least Jasmine wasn’t pretending. And now, Katrine’s arrogance had cost her something she could never get back: her own body, and the right to decide what was done to it.
Her heart tugged at her like a supplicant as she walked. The pungent scent of the reptiles girded her ankles. She ignored both. She deserved everything that had ever happened to her. She had the power to see, and she’d closed her eyes at every opportunity. The tears intensified, and she felt herself drawn to Rum River just around the bend, water calling water. Her female relatives should wrest her minor power away rather than Jasmine’s. Any hard-won peace that she’d felt since returning to Faith Falls dissolved in the acid bath of her thoughts.
She wondered what Adam was doing at that moment. Sitting in front of a fire with a glass of wine, Lucy wrapped in his arms as Heather had been in Ren’s? She was happy for the latter pair. Ren was far better off with Heather than he ever would be with her. What about Tara? Was she safe? Tears rose at the thought. She’d spent enough time with Tara. She should have sensed her fear. She’d failed everyone.
The tang of the spring-thawed river caught her nose. She was back in her neighborhood, the twenty blocks between here and Avignon traveled in a blur. She chose not to walk within view of the Queen Anne (don’t look at me, I’m ugly), instead treading through a neighbor’s yard, the snakes thinning the nearer to the water she drew. The sly shard of moon shone on the rushing water of the Rum River. It was spring-high, frothy, sharp. Katrine didn’t slow.
She waded straight in.
The biting temperature of the water stole her breath, and then the force of it stripped her balance. Her body scraped along the bottom of the river, fierce whirlpools whipping her head around and shoving her back into the calmer edges, only to yank her back toward the raging center. It was icy black. The water penetrated her nose and mouth and pushed into her lungs. She had no urge to fight it. Her heart kept her down like an anchor, a red muscle cast in lead. She was soul-tired, wearier than she imagined a person could be, and nothing felt more natural than following the flow.
What has John stolen from me?
She kept her eyes closed and thought of life’s extremes. Fire to water, with nothing she could call her own to stand on, not for any length of time. She extended her arms and legs. A rock chewed her right ankle. Blood spilled from the gash and churned into the current, diluting from salty red to formless pink to racing silver, becoming clear river water diving through waving weeds and fish gills.
She felt a tug, a pull to follow her blood. She opened her eyes to the confusing murkiness and took a deep breath of river. The water burned like fire in her lungs. It felt good against the breathtaking cold.
When she had taunted Jasmine as a girl, telling her sister she was a liverless chicken-licker for not joining her in the chicken drop, she’d been terrified herself. She’d wanted Jasmine next to her. Even though Katrine would jump in again and again, her fear never lessened. She was always sure the next time would be the time the falls would win, and she’d be sucked over like that bag of puppies. But she kept jumping in. Why? The question trailed out with her blood as her head scraped against a rock and the cold forced her deeper into herself. It felt so good to stop fighting.
I’m doing the chicken drop, Jasmine, and I’m not chicken this time.
Chapter 42
Tara
Sleeping in a protected cove of the dank tunnel had not been difficult the first night. She had her sleeping bag and the heat of risk to keep her sheltered. The tunnels were quiet except for the sound of water dripping and the occasional skitter of rodent feet. When her dreams came, they resembled the roots of trees. The following day was spent reading and crying. The second night was much harder than the first, laced with nightmares and groaning sounds. She decided to spend the next day exploring, using a roll of string she’d brought to lead her back to her nesting spot.
The tunnel floors were musty, hard-packed dirt, their walls cold, crumbling red brick that shed copper-colored dust when she trailed her fingers along them. The smell of damp and earth was strong. Old wiring lay exposed in the walls and the ceiling, empty light sockets staring down like eyes. Someone had spray-painted “sex, hugs, and rock and roll” on a wall and traced a white heart around it. Her flashlight caught all of this in epileptic bursts but mostly, it lit the area exactly four feet in front of her in a yellow circle that she followed until she found herself in front
of the door that led to her house.
The doors at each tunnel terminus had numbers above them fashioned of nickel-sized pieces of blue and white tile. Her house number was 2227. All but the tail of the third “two” was intact. She reached out to the mildewed wooden door made of once-powerful oak grown spongy with time and moisture. On the other side was more wood, fresher, nailed there by her father on her mother’s command, and on the other side of that, brick laid on brick and cemented in place to keep out all the dark.
Tara put her ear to the wet wood. It felt cold and tingled, like a snake’s kiss. Up close, the rotting wood smelled like the deep of a fall forest. Could she hear crying? Laughter? But that was a trick. The three layers of protection over the tunnel entrance were too thick to let any noise through.
Loneliness held her, a smothering embrace that made her sleepy. Was it nighttime? She’d spent the whole day navigating the tunnels. She should rest. She was winding her string back up when she heard the scrape of a door opening, followed by the heavy breathing of a man.
She thought immediately of the demon in the cowboy hat, coming for her, coming for every last one of the Catalain women. He was at his most powerful tonight, and he was done waiting.
Chapter 43
Ursula
Ursula sat up in bed, the scream echoing in her flesh. It took her several beats to realize the shriek was hers. Once she became oriented, she reacted without hesitation, not even slowing to grab her glasses. She shot from her first-floor bedroom where she had gone to steal an hour of sleep before resuming the search for Tara and charged out of the house and down to the river in her frayed pajamas, her hair flying around her like bats. She was sobbing, yelling as she ran, screaming Katrine’s name.
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