Cursed Read Free Page A

quiet. They were gazing at one another, not at her.
    “What is it?” she asked. “What did they say?”
    “The Red Man isn’t the only danger. A curse and a prophecy,” Candace answered. “We can’t stop what comes. Only they can.”
    “The Chosen, the Devil, the Warriors,” Marie said. What was the connection between the Red Man and white zombie? Why had she been after Jayden?
    “Yes,” Olivier said. “Our salvation rests in the Fourth House that bears the curse and the prophecy.”
    “What else?” Marie asked anxiously.
    Candace’s eyes were filled with tears. “They said many will die. People we love. The three Houses of New Orleans will fall before the prophecy is fulfilled.”
    “Unless we find those who can stop it,” Marie whispered.
    Olivier nodded.
    Her heart racing with fear, Marie could think of nothing except Jayden. The spirits guided her to protect him at all costs even while warning her that many would die.
    Jayden was special. She didn’t fully understand why, but she had to make sure he survived whatever evil was coming. If it took her all night, she had to finish the ritual to bind the protective spells to the dog tags before he came to visit the next morning.
     

Chapter One
     
    “Lookin’ good, Jayden.”
    “Got your daddy’s rich-boy smile and yo’ mama’s good looks.”
    “He dresses like a magazine ad.”
    Jayden forced a smile at his laughing uncles and cousins. He was doing his best to hide his irritation at his mother’s side of the family. He gently threw the football back and forth with one of his uncles, not wanting to injure his uncle’s pride or aggravate the back injury that left him on unemployment.
    “You get scouted yet?” another uncle called from the sideline.
    “Yeah, by a few places,” Jayden said, grunting as he threw the ball again. “Nothing big yet.” He wasn’t going to tell them he entered his senior year of high school with scholarship offers from two huge football colleges, the University of Georgia and Lousiana State University.
    “Maybe your daddy can make a phone call.”
    The resentment was killing him. He recalled why he didn’t like coming to the family barbecues, and it was more than the rundown house north of New Orleans. He didn’t wish bad upon anyone, but he didn’t know how his grandmother’s house had withstood the hurricanes. It was the only one for miles that hadn’t been destroyed.
    She’d probably tell me it was the spirits protecting her.
    His eyes went to the good-sized shed leaning against the back of the house. While the men were out back with him, barbecuing, drinking and tossing the football, most of the women in the family were gathered within the shed, listening to his crazy grandma talk to the spirits of their ancestors and cast voodoo luck spells that never seemed to work for his mama. Her family was what his wealthy father referred to as ignorant .
    Caught between two families that couldn’t be more different, Jayden was grateful he wasn’t more screwed up than he was.
    A commotion came from the direction of the house. Jayden’s mother slammed the screen door open. She was arguing with one of her sisters. They both held glasses of alcohol and cigarettes. Jayden was too far to hear what they fought over.
    “So much for being sober. She never been able to stick to anything,” one of his uncles said.
    “Shoulda stayed with Jay’s daddy. We’d all be rich if she did,” another said.
    This was the other reason Jayden hated the barbecues: his mother was a wreck every time they left. The sisters quarreled for a few minutes before the door of the shed was opened by the third sister in the family of eight kids. She waved for them to come inside.
    Gritting his teeth at the thought of putting his mother back together again, Jayden caught his uncle’s latest throw and made a show of studying the time. It was close to noon, and he had to take his mother home before crossing town to his dad’s.
    “If we don’t