Cursed by Lizzy Ford Read Free Book Online Page A

didn’t shy away from her if it came up.
    “The cards are saying that whatever you asked them, the answer is yes,” Adrienne added, wishing her client understood just how positive the premonition was. She’d give anything to have a reading like this.
    “Really?” Tara brightened. “I want to design clothes so I asked if I’d get the internship with Louis Vuitton.”
    “Looks good,” Adrienne said.
    Tara beamed. “You are awesome!”
    Adrienne smiled patiently.
    Tara rose and left, tipping her a twenty, another indication the girl didn’t have money issues.
    Adrienne waited until the curtain closed behind her client then collected the cards, except for the three that were for Tara’s brother.
    These she spread out before her.
    “C’mon, spirits. Give me more.”
    The energy was too faint. Shaking her head at the cards, she replaced them in the deck and reshuffled.
    The cards stuck with her, though, throughout the next couple of hours.
    When her shift was over at five, she ducked in to wave to Madame Estelle and then left for the nearest bus stop.
    Adrienne walked the opposite direction of the touristy section of the ward towards the river. The air was heavy and still, smelling of one of the water treatment plants. Her nose wrinkled at the scent, and she was sweating uncomfortably in her long skirt and long-sleeved blouse by the time she reached the bus stop. A native of Atlanta, she didn’t yet know if it was possible to reach the Iberville Projects via foot, and she wasn’t certain she should try.
    After all, people said there was a serial killer loose in the Projects.
    Devil. Death. Six of Cups. She couldn’t stop thinking about the cards. They stayed on her mind throughout the bus ride that dropped her off forty minutes later at her stop at the St. Louis No. 1 Cemetery, near the Projects.
    The sounds of a funeral were distant but clear, the blare of horns reaching her as she stepped off the bus. Her father lived on the exact opposite corner from where the bus dropped her off, and she began walking through the slums, lost in her thoughts.
    The Iberville Projects had not yet been fully restored after the hurricanes, and she grew sad seeing the signs of the damage that still lingered. Sensitive to the spirits that still remained in the neighborhood, she tried not to let herself imagine the amount of people who had been hurt.
    The spirits here were despondent, many of them lost. She didn’t need her cards to feel their pain and suffering. Many were trapped between life and death and had not been properly freed from their bodies through the dessonet rite practiced in the South meant to help them transition.
    Their sighs and whispers were like music to her, a song too faint for her to grasp fully, but present enough for her to ache for them. They took her mind off the cards until she reached her father’s apartment building.
    Pulling the heavy door to the building open, she entered a dingy lobby whose lights flickered and scent was that of must and mold. The elevator in the corner was semi-reliable at best. Most of the keys didn’t light up when pressed, and the ceiling of the lobby and elevator both sagged.
    She crossed to it and waited for the elevator doors to open, entering the tiny space. Adrienne rode it to the fifth floor and hopped off.
    She entered her father’s apartment and automatically paused to listen for signs he’d beat her home. The cramped apartment was silent. Tossing her keys in the bowl on the kitchen counter, she hummed as she went to her room. It was large enough for a twin bed, small dresser and not much else. A floor lamp lit up the room while the shades of the window that faced the brick wall of the neighboring building were closed.
    She moved the ironing board out of the way, so she could get to her closet.
    A few minutes later, she heard the front door open.
    “Addy, you got a package.”
    She had just finished changing out of the long skirt and blouse she wore to Madame