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“Oh really? You saw it? What about now?” She waves it in the air, high and wide, then back up high again. “Can you still see it?”
I turn my back and ignore her. I think we’re both getting frustrated. Our tempers are reaching boiling point, and I need to calm down before things simmer over. Maybe being at odds with each other isn’t helping. That seemed to be a common thread in the reading. Instead, we should be getting our shit together to problem-solve accordingly.
It’s also why I’m calling my brother and cousins. I could seriously use their insight right now. A few calls later, my brother Kirian and my cousins Toren, Taylen, and Leandra, who is bringing clothes without even asking me why I might need women’s clothing, are on their way for an emergency meeting called, “WTF are we going to do about these curses?” Curses being plural because my brother and cousins all have their objects already.
Granny gifted us all with our curses on the same day five Christmases ago. Quite a gift if you ask me. To do a thing like that, one would almost swear she hates us instead of loves us. Kirian got a necklace, Toren got a bracelet, Taylen got a brooch, which is probably the strangest, most vintage of all the cursed gifts, and Leandra got a set of earrings. I don’t know what would happen if she lost one. God help me because I don’t want to find out.
I guess because we’re all so tight, my cousins and brother all basically arrive at the same time, even though they all drive over separately and don’t live equidistance from me. They pour through the front door one after the other, each with a broody, worried expression. They seat themselves in the antique chairs in the living room, the boys on the sofa and Leandra on her favorite chaise even though it’s uncomfortable as all heck.
The strangest part of it all is that my normally boisterous family is totally quiet. Maybe they sense the heavy black air in the room, or perhaps it’s the curse at work. It doesn’t want us to come up with something illogical, so it’s impaired our ability to speak. I’m about to go and call Ellis to come into the room because she really should be here for this, but as she usually seems to be, she’s two steps ahead of me. Which means about twenty behind really.
I hear delicate little steps approaching. She doesn’t waste any time, and she certainly hasn’t lost her ability to shock, I mean to speak. She leaps up on the coffee table, thank god with her bare feet, also thank god the thing is strong as an ox and built in an era where shit was meant to survive a full-on apocalypse. Ellis, her dark hair cascading down her back, sweeps her eyes around the room, taking in each one of my cousins and my younger brother. She looks as solemn as if I’d assembled everyone to start in on some kind of black magic ritual.
“Gentlemen and uh, lady,” Ellis says in her best showman voice. “May I have your attention.” She produces her hand, and the ring seems like it’s grown in size. I know it’s impossible, but all I see when I look at her finger is that bastard piece of jewelry. “The curse is real. Very. Real.”
The room is literally so silent that if you dropped a pin—god who uses pins, but more like if someone dropped a very silent fart—it could probably still be heard before it smells.
“Well,” Kirian says, looking askance at me. “That got dark really fast.”
“I brought clothes,” Leandra chimes in, holding out the bag in front of her. She’s put it in some grocery store cloth contraption, the kind of bags meant to save the planet.
My brother and all of my cousins are dressed in black. I guess, as a family, we like that color. Kirian is wearing a suit because he came right from work. He owns a security company. Toren and Taylen, who each hate their names and how similar they sound to each other, are twins in black t-shirts and faded jeans, and Leandra is wearing a black designer dress and pumps to match. She owns her own boutique. She has the same black sandy-hued hair and blue eyes as her brothers, or at least she used to. Her hair is now nearly platinum, and the dress outlines her body in a way that makes me, Kirian, and her brothers want to immediately get up and start kicking some ass because Leandra is the baby of the family. She basically has four older, protective brothers. Lucky girl.
Taylen ignores his sister and studies Ellis with a skeptical look. Oh, no. Here we go. “Who the heck are you?”
