Deadly Sin (Cassandra Farbanks) by Sonnet O'Dell Read Free Book Online Page A

I could put my locket back on. I put it in its little niche between recharging crystals when I got in so it would have enough energy to go for another three days if I needed it to. I collapsed back into bed when it was around my neck and promptly fell into a deep sleep.
    I woke again much later when peels of sunlight shimmered across my face. The bedside clock read 10:00 a.m. I got up, showered, and then bounced around my kitchen wearing an over-sized concert t-shirt over my underwear while my stereo filled the apartment with power ballads.
    Breakfast was reheated pizza from a box in the fridge because, aside from a couple of bottles of beer and some milk that looked iffy, that was all there was. Trinket wrote on the wall calendar that she’d get groceries after her shift at Grimoires, and reminded me not to bring home take-out. She hated when I did that without telling her, or if I missed meals and didn’t call. She’d huff and puff – despite a lack of needing to breath –while packing meals in Tupperware to reheat another night, mumbling that she didn’t cook for herself. She was trying to get me to eat better. Her reasoning being that I was going to live a lot longer and needed to take better care of myself. She also claimed that the take-outs would make me fat. I had to draw the line when she wanted me to weigh in once a week. She took taking care of me way too seriously, especially as I didn’t ask her to. I have been taking care of myself for years. I took my pizza and sat Indian style on my bed, tapping my foot to the music while reaching under the edge of my bed for my laptop. I switched it on and chewed my cheesy, day old treat while waiting for it to start up, and then even longer for the internet to connect.
    I still use dial up. After blowing up three wireless routers within the space of a month, I gave up trying to get a decent connection. Magic plus wireless technology equaled kablooie .
    I blankly stared at my screen for a long moment. How should I begin a search for a symbol? I wished there was a search engine you could draw things into and search for a page with something that matched. I thought about the apple from the table. Putting apple into a search engine would bring up either fruit or iPods. I associated the apple at the scene with Eve, so I typed that in. The top entry I got was eveonline, a MMORG – Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game. Geek Fodder, not what I wanted. The next two were Wikipedia articles about rapper Eve Jeffers and the biblical eve, the one I was looking for. I clicked the link.
    I never liked the story of Adam and Eve, personally. All the blame lay on the woman for the fall from the Garden of Eden. If god had been really smart, he wouldn’t have put such a tree in the garden to start with. If I’d wanted them ignorant and compliant I’d have put it elsewhere. He created temptation in the first place and then scorned them for not resisting it. Temptation is very subjective. It is easy to resist something as long as you don’t have to walk past it every day. Like the man in his grand house who monitored his intake very carefully. Day to day he could control himself because he didn’t allow extravagances in the house, but put a feast before him.
    I scanned the page for useful words to spark something off. Temptation is used a lot, and always in a negative connotation. No one is tempted into to doing something good. Then I saw the word sin.
    I flashed back to my religious education when I was a teenager and being told by a nun what sin is. Religious education is mandatory in British schools. The nun hadn’t liked me one bit and she kept me behind to go into more detail. I thought there were seven really bad ones I was told to watch out for. I typed in seven sins. The screen chirped at me. Did you mean the seven deadly sins? If they were truly deadly that could be a start. I clicked the link to a page.
    The seven deadly sins, also called the cardinal vices or