Cursed. Lisa Childs

didn’t glance out the window. She’d already seen the lights coming, in a vision, and so she’d hidden the camper in the middle of a cornfield. But still they’d found her; they’d found them. She stared at her children, memorizing their faces, praying for their futures. Each would know a great love as she had, and all she could hope was that theirs lasted. That they fought against their fate, against the evil stalking them, as she would have fought had she been stronger.

      She just stood there next to the camper, in the middle of the cornfield, as the child protective services, who’d already declared her unfit, took her children away. The girls screamed and reached for her, tears cascading down their beautiful faces like rain against windows.

      This wasn’t Myra’s final fate; her death would come much later. But as her heart bled and her soul withered, this was the night she really died.

      But the authorities didn’t take them all. Her hands clasped her swollen belly. Soon she would have another little girl. This child would need her even more than the others, for she would have more abilities than they had. She would be more powerful a witch even than Myra. But yet she would be even more cursed. The witch hunt would end for the others. But for her fourth child, whom she would call Maria, the witch hunt would never end...

       Chapter 1

      Energy flowed from the cards up the tips of Maria Cooper’s tingling fingers. Warmth spread through her as the energy enveloped her. This will be a clear reading...

      She had been blocking her special abilities for so long that she’d worried she might have lost them. But maybe that wouldn’t have been such a bad thing. In the past they had proved more destructive than special—more curse than gift.

      “What do you see?” the young woman asked, her voice quavering with excitement.

      “I haven’t turned the first card,” Maria pointed out. Only the Significator, the fair-haired Queen of Cups, lay faceup on the table between them. The card didn’t represent the young woman’s physical appearance—not since the girl had dyed her hair black, tattooed a crow on her face and renamed herself Raven. But the card represented the wistfulness of the young woman’s nature, so Maria had chosen it for her.

      “But you see stuff—that’s what people say about you,” the girl continued. “That’s why I wanted to learn from you—how to read the cards and how to make the potions and amulets. I know that you have a real gift.”

      A gift. Or a curse? She used to think it was the first and had grown up embracing her heritage. But then everything had gone so wrong, and she had begun to believe what others had—that she was cursed. That was why she had refused the girl’s previous requests to learn to read. Maria had taught her about the crystals and herbs she sold in her shop but she’d resisted the cards—afraid of what she herself might see.

      “I have it, too,” Raven confided. “I get that sense of déjà vu all the time. I know I’ve already dreamed what’s happening. I saw it...like you see stuff.”

       I hope you don’t see the stuff I’ve seen...

      “That’s why I want to learn tarot,” the girl said. “Because I know I’ll be good at it.”

      Raven had been saying the same thing ever since she had first started hanging around the Magik Shoppe. The twenty-two-year-old had spent so much time there that Maria had finally given her a job, and now she had given in on teaching her tarot. She hoped like hell that she didn’t come to regret caving in to the girl’s pleas.

      Maybe Raven had a gift. Or maybe, like so many others, she only wished she did because she had glamorized the supernatural ability into something that it wasn’t. Into something powerful, when having these abilities actually made Maria feel powerless, helpless to stop what she might see.

      “Thank you,” Raven said, “for helping me.”

       I hope it helps and doesn’t hurt...

      “To teach you how to read the cards, I have to show you how I do a reading,” Maria said. That was how her mother had taught her, having Maria watch her do readings for other people. But Mama hadn’t always told the truth of the cards. Instead of telling people what she saw, she had told them what they’d wanted to see.

      The old gypsy proverb that her mother had always recited echoed in Maria’s head. There are such things as false truths and honest lies.

      But there was no one but she and Raven in the old barn on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula that Maria had converted into her shop. She had only the girl’s cards to read. And she had already told Raven the meaning of each card, so she wouldn’t be able to lie to her—even if it would be the kinder thing to do.

       This is a mistake...

      Her fingers stilled against the deck, which was the size of a paperback novel. She preferred the big cards because of the greater detail. She had always used them, ever since she had first started reading—at the age of four. She had read cards before she’d been able to read words.

      “I’ve been working here almost since you opened a few months ago, but I’ve never seen you do a reading,” Raven remarked.

      And she shouldn’t be doing one now. She shouldn’t risk it...but it had been so long. She had missed it. Surely it couldn’t happen again. The cards wouldn’t come up the way they had before...

      “I haven’t done one in a while,” she admitted. But she hadn’t lost the ability. Energy continued to tingle up Maria’s fingertips, spreading into her arms and chest. Before the girl could ask her why she hadn’t, Maria shuffled the cards again and eased one off the top of the deck. “This first card will represent your environment.”

      Maria turned over the card atop the Significator, and dread knotted her stomach as she stared down at it. The moon shone down upon snarling dogs and a deadly scorpion.

      A gasp slipped through the girl’s painted black lips. “That’s not good.”

      Maria’s temple throbbed, and her pulse beat heavily in her throat. “No. The moon represents hidden enemies. Danger.”

      The girl’s eyes, heavily lined with black, widened with fear. “You’re saying I’m in danger.”

       Not again...

      “That’s what that means, right?” Raven persisted, her voice rising into hysteria.

      Since Maria had already taught the girl the meaning of each card, she couldn’t deny what Raven already knew. So she nodded. “Danger. Deceit. A dark aura...”

      Maria saw it now, enveloping Raven like a starless night sky—cold and eerie, untold dangers hiding in the darkness. Goose bumps lifted on her skin beneath her heavy knit sweater, and she shivered.

      “Turn over the next card,” the girl urged. “That’s what’s coming up—that’s what’s going to be my obstacle, right?”

      Maria shook her head. She wouldn’t do it; she wouldn’t turn that card. “No. We need to stop. We can’t continue.” She shouldn’t have even begun; she shouldn’t have risked the cards coming up the way they had before. But it had been more than a year...

      She had thought that she might have reversed the curse, that her fortunes might have finally changed. She’d been using the crystals, herbs and incense that she used for healing to treat herself.

      “Turn the card!” The girl’s voice had gone shrill, and her face flushed with anger despite her pale pancake makeup. “Turn it!”

      “No.” Her heart beating fast, she could feel the girl’s panic and fear as if it were her own. But she also felt her desperation and determination.

      “I have to know!” Raven shouted.

      Maybe