Possessed (17 page)

Tricks

Tricks can be used to curse,
possess, or bring luck or love.

Tricks can consist of
specific roots, powders, herbs, or personal belongings, depending
on the desired outcome of the trick and voodoo dolls made in the
image of your target. Remember: blood, sweat, and especially hair
are very powerful ingredients.

Tricks can be placed in a
bottle and buried under the target’s doorstep or in their backyard
or a path they cross on a routine basis.

Tricks known as hot track
magic can be used in the form of powders and passed over an area
where your target will walk over on a daily basis. The effects of
the powders will seep through their feet and into their very
soul.

Tricks can be sewn into the
seam of the target’s clothes.

Tricks can be placed
underneath your target’s mattress, under their pillow or under
their bed.

Tricks in the form of oils
can be spread on door-handles or any other object that your target
touches on a daily basis.

Tricks can be also ground up
and put into the target’s food or drink. For instance:

If you’re after love, mixing
your blood daily with your lover’s morning coffee will make sure
they never stray.

If you want to cause your
target extreme discomfort, grind up insect parts and place them in
their food. This particular trick is called Live in You Things and
will cause animals, such as snakes, to actually grow inside of your
target. Eventually, your target
will go
mad, unless the trick is removed, of course.

Tricks can also be placed
inside a person or pet that your target has regular contact with.
The person or pet will gradually pass on the effects of the trick
to your target.

In order to cause a target
serious illness, death, or to possess them to the point of
insanity, tricks can be placed in a bottle and buried in a
graveyard. In order to carry out this specific trick, you need to
place specific ingredients into a jar then place the jar inside a
miniature coffin. Take the coffin to the graveyard and bury it and
mark it with the target’s name.

The last part caught me totally off
guard and I had to stop for a minute and try not to barf. No, not
the grinding up insect parts, but the graveyard coffin part. Had
Ivan really placed a graveyard trick on Sabrina? Is that why she
was buried alive? That was the only logical explanation. Why else
would she run off to the graveyard? I was tempted to run off to the
graveyard and start digging. But was that really a wise and
rational thing to do in the middle of the night when I had stones
in my passway? No. That wasn’t a wise idea. Think Arelia. Think of
a mature, rational plan that doesn’t involve running off to the
cemetery again in the middle of the night during a
storm.

I continued to read:

How to identify a trick or
know if a trick has been placed on you:

The best way to identify a
trick is to look for strange and unfamiliar odors especially in the
food you eat.

If you find personal objects
and belongings missing, be cautious, a trick may have been placed
on you.

Tricks leave their target
confused and out of touch with reality to the point where confusion
becomes reality.

Physical pain that has no
medical explanation most likely means a trick has been placed on
you.

Discomfort especially in the
stomach area that has no medical explanation most likely means a
Live in You Things trick has been placed on you.

A loud clap of thunder jolted me out of
my thoughts, the rain grew louder and the electricity disappeared
again. Great. Clearly, it was a sign that the graveyard plan would
have to wait for now. I lit a white candle that rested on the oak
desk.

The only thing I could do was put the
gris-gris on Sabrina and find where Ivan had placed my trick.
However, that was easier said than done. How was I going to help
Sabrina when I couldn’t even help myself? Maybe Aunt Mae was right
and the spiritual bath and oils had fended off whatever had tried
to get inside of her. Tomorrow, I would try to convince her to
leave Darkwood- maybe the further away she was from this place the
better it would be for her.

But what if tomorrow was too late? I
needed to stop Ivan now. So, I decided to look in the one place I
knew Ivan was most likely to hide the trick. The
kitchen.

I grabbed the candle and made my way to
the kitchen. I was going to search every inch of the place even if
it took me all night.

I started in the gigantic refrigerator
and carefully opened and sniffed every jar, bottle and container I
could find. Nothing seemed suspicious or out of place. I didn’t
find any weird powders, roots or herbs. None of my hair or blood. I
opened every cabinet and searched every single shelf I could
reach.

I headed to the pantry where there were
countless rows of bottles, jars, bags and boxes of endless food and
condiments. I opened all the cabinets and unscrewed as many jars as
I could. Frustrated and in the dark I sat on the cool floor and
tried to think. Nothing came to mind expect Ivan’s annoying
voice.

You’ll never know.

What I really needed was a good night’s
sleep. I was beyond exhausted and wasn’t getting anywhere, but I
didn’t want to admit defeat, so I sat there. I sat there for what
felt like forever staring at the single candle flame and wondering
how I could possibly get out of this situation. I felt like
screaming.

A soft knock on the pantry door
interrupted my thoughts and panic gripped me as I slowly opened it.
I wasn’t prepared to have another show down with Ivan right
now.

“
Lucus.” I felt a sudden
surge of relief, safety, nervousness and joy wash over me when I
saw him standing there with slightly tousled hair, dressed in his
signature white t-shirt, his face half-illuminated by the light of
a single candle. All of the ugliness seemed to suddenly
disappear.

Throwing all reason or desire to be
cool out of the window, yet strangely aware of the one armpit hole
I had in my t-shirt, I stood on my toes, gave him an enormous hug
and then buried my nose into his warm neck. I inhaled as much as of
him as I possibly could. He had a scent that somehow always managed
to make me everything seem better. It was an aroma that was
unidentifiable but uniquely Lucus. Spicy, sweet, earthy, melancholy
yet exciting. I wanted to hold him forever because something told
me the moment I let go he would disappear. I wasn’t ready to say
good-bye when I’d barely even said hello.

Lucus graciously allowed me to sniff
his neck for a few moments before he pulled me back and examined my
demented expression. He looked as if he were going to say something
but then changed his mind. Instead, he brought his lips to my neck
and slowly, almost teasingly covered it in gentle kisses that made
my knees weak. Then, he covered my mouth in a dizzying kiss that
left me breathless. It was the kind of kiss that was sweet,
dangerous and wholly intoxicating. The kind of kiss that was alive
and full of possibilities.

Blood-filled kisses. Don’t say a
word.

I looked up at him and tried my best to
ignore the beads of blood that slowly trickled down his forehead.
They’re not real, I thought as I closed my eyes.

Yes they are. Real as that stage you
saw. Real as all those people.

After a few moments had passed, I
opened one eye and then the other. I turned my head and meet Lucus’
patient eyes while doing my best to ignore the fact that he was
still covered in blood. Knowing that there was no point in
pretending to be sane, I blurted out exactly what I was
feeling.

“
I hear voices and see
things. Maybe I need to be committed. Nothing is right and all I
feel like doing is screaming.”

Yeah, queen, you do sound
crazy.

Lucus took a deep breath. His
expression was tense and his dark eyes narrow with worry. He ran
his hand through my hair and lightly stroked my cheek. “Go on
then.”

“
Go on what?” I
asked.

“
Go on and
scream.”

At first, I looked at him, unsure of
what he was really saying. But then that’s exactly what I did. I
closed my eyes, opened my mouth wide and screamed with an intensity
I never knew I possessed. Angry, savage and brutally wild. I didn’t
care who heard or what they thought about me. For what felt like a
good five minutes, I shrieked and hollered like a banshee. I
screamed for everything I couldn’t control or understand. I
screamed for every unfair thing I couldn’t change. And most of all,
I screamed for the entire situation. I screamed for every time I
heard the phrase ‘just get over it’, and screamed for an overall
feeling of helplessness that I was trying to fight off. I also
screamed for guests like Mr. Dumpty who felt so entitled that they
failed to realize that workers were human too. I had no idea why I
decided to scream for that, aside from the fact that it felt really
damn good, almost euphoric.

Afterwards, a rare calm flooded me.
Strangely, I felt renewed and stronger. I opened my eyes slowly and
was relieved to find that the walls were no longer covered in blood
and neither was Lucus.

He gave me a wide smile and for a
moment I felt terribly shy and horrified over my lack of poise and
control. After all, it didn’t really matter that I was a voodoo
queen and Lucus was under a curse, he was still a guy and was just
a girl who was really into him. Being blessed by a very moody
spirit did have its downside and episodes like this were one of
them.

“
Feel better?” he
asked.

I nodded and tugged on my hair, unsure
of how to act. How do you act after you have a psychotic breakdown
in front of someone you want to impress? Do you carry on like
nothing happened and smile sweetly? Do you talk about the weather
or the stock market? Not that I had a clue about the stock market.
I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to act, so in true Arelia style, I
examined my fingernails.

I gave him a shy smile. I examined him
for a few seconds, thought about what had happened tonight, and
then asked him a totally random question. “Why do people feel the
need to possess one another?”

“
Hmm.” He took a momentary
pause. “I think it’s the only thing that gives people the illusion
of control in a universe where we actually have very little. I
suppose if people can’t control their own hearts, emotions and
actions, they think by controlling others, they’ll somehow fill
some emptiness within themselves. Why do you think?”

I shook my head and tried to make sense
of why anyone thought they had the right to treat another person
like an object. “I’m trying to figure that out,” I said, as I
placed my arms around him and rested my head on his chest. “Thank
you for helping out with Sabrina, by the way. How did you get her
to stop crying, anyways?”

He grinned. “I begged her to open the
door by apologizing repeatedly. When she finally did, she threw a
very pointy shoe at me and told me that I wasn’t that good-looking
and I’m lucky that I got to see her in lingerie. She then slapped
me and called me a pathetic liar because I brainwashed you into
believing that I was under a Voodoo curse. After a few more insults
which I can’t clearly remember, she vowed to expose me for the
fraud I am and said that if I hurt you she’ll kill me. Then Mae
took over and somehow convinced her to take a bath. ”

I laughed when I should have been
horrified. “She said that? She did that?” That meant we were going
to be okay.

“
She did.”

“
I’m worried about her. Aunt
Mae said that whatever lured her to the cemetery may have tried to
possess her so I made this gris-gris for her. I’m going to try to
slip it on her wrist while she’s sleeping- as creepy as that
sounds, it’s the only way she’ll wear it. At least she’ll be safe
for a few hours until we can be sure.”

“
Let’s go. We can’t waste
any time, can we now?”

I nodded. Lucus took my hand and lead
me out of the pantry. I felt relieved that I didn’t have to explain
my quasi-neurotic behavior to him. I loved the fact that he went
with the flow and wasn’t at all weirded out by tricky spirits,
dancing skeletons, possible cases of possession, or my mood swings
and somewhat insane behavior. Even though the situation we were in
was complicated, he wasn’t. He made the inexplicable feel normal.
He made me feel normal. As pathetic as it was to admit, for once, I
wanted to be taken care of and I wanted to be loved.

However, instead of being giddy with
joy, inside I was terribly sad and conflicted. I couldn’t get Mait
Carrefour's words out of my head. Give Louis to me and say good-bye
to Lucus. Don’t be selfish. Be brave and give them both what they
need. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you, but they’ve already
lived theirs. I was beginning to realize that if Ivan didn’t let me
help Lucus and insisted on harming Sabrina then maybe I would have
no choice but to take his offer, but the thought of walking out of
Darkwood and leaving Lucus alone here for eternity was one that
was…

“
Are you alright?” asked
Lucus once we reached the top of the stairs.