Cursed

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 leave now, we’ll get stuck in a few funeral processions on our way out of town. It’s about the time when they start up,” he said, aware that at least two graveyards were between his grandmama’s house and the downtown apartment where his mother lived. “We’ll play next time, Uncle Tommy.”

“A’ight.”

Jayden flashed another smile and jogged to the picnic table area. He grabbed a pulled pork slider, tossed the football on the ground under a massive oak tree and headed towards the house. Dear god, could the elderly voodoo priestess cook! He wolfed the sandwich down and entered the house to grab his keys and wallet first.

The interior was in worse shape than the sagging exterior. It smelled moldy beneath the rich scents of homemade barbecue sauce and collard greens. The wallpaper had long since yellowed or peeled in many rooms. Grandmama Toussaint smoked like a chimney and burned her magical incense to the point that the house reeked. Worn, outdated furniture, filthy drapes, the scent of cat urine …

He paused to sneeze before snatching his belongings then leaving quickly for the backyard. Approaching the shed, he opened the door. A cloud of heavy incense engulfed him. Jayden wrinkled his nose to keep from sneezing again. He ducked beneath the short doorway.

The three sisters, his grandmama, and two of his great-aunts were huddled around a table with a few of his cousins. Wooden shelves lined the walls, cluttered by clay jars, hanging herbs, bottles of discolored liquid – some with unidentifiable items suspended in them – and mummified pieces of animals he’d never stayed long enough to identify.

Jayden hated this place. It reeked of death, despite the incense and cigarette smoke.

“You ready to go, Mama?” he asked.

The women at the table all faced him at once. Every female born in his mother’s line bore the same birthmark in the same place: a small, faint mole between their eyes. His Haitian grandmama said it was the sacred mark of Loa Loko, the voodoo god of healing and herbs from which the powerful priestesses in his maternal line received their powers of protection and healing.

Faced with a table full of women bearing the same mark, Jayden felt a little weirded out. No part of him believed in any form of magic, but the same birthmark appearing on three generations of women struck him as unnatural.

His grandmama’s round face lit up. Her eyes contained a wild gleam, and her grin was punctuated by three gold teeth and three white teeth. Her wide smile almost swallowed her face.

“They said you’d come!” she exclaimed.

He didn’t want to know who said he’d come.

“Are you mambos or grandmama today?” he asked, only half-joking. He’d seen one of her possessions before and planned on running the next time she started.

“Child,” she chided and stood. She was barely five feet tall and round, clothed in a purple gown with a matching headscarf. Necklaces and bracelets of bone and wooden beads clicked together with her movement. “I am always your grandmama, and I always serve the spirits. I have something for you.” Her accent was thick, her pronunciation of English words careful.

“Grandmama Marie, I have what you gave me last time. I’m good,” he said. Recalling the fuzzy … thing she gave him last month, he tried not to cringe as she maneuvered her large body to a shelf and bent over.

He looked at his mother expectantly. She rolled her eyes at his silent plea to hurry and put out her cigarette, leaning down for her purse.

“Your great grandpapa was here last week,” his grandmama continued. “He came to me in a vision and warned me. There is someone in your life who will do you great ill. I prepared a spell for you, my Jayden.”

“Oh, Jayden!” one of his aunts exclaimed.

“A protection spell,” his youngest cousin informed him. “Grandmama chose me as her apprentice. I helped with the rite this morning.”

“Great,” he said, scratching the back of his head. If this crap was real, grandmama would use her magic powers to buy a winning lotto ticket. He repressed a shudder at the surroundings that freaked him out. “Maybe you should become an apprentice for something you can get a degree in.”

“I know, Jayden,” his cousin sighed in exasperation. “I’m only in seventh grade. I can help Grandmama and study for school.”

“Here it is.” Grandmama Marie straightened and reached over the heads of those at the table to hand him a small box.

Jayden took it reluctantly.

“Open it!” his cousin squealed. She was dancing in place.

Jayden’s sensitivity to the feelings of the women in his life overcame his revulsion. He held the box away from him and opened it warily. His dread turned to interest. He withdrew the round, tarnished dog tags on an equally aged ball chain. He was forced to squint to read the name in the candlelit shed.

Rene-Baptiste Etienne Toussaint

“Grandmama, are you sure?” he asked, surprised.

His cousin hugged him. He wrapped an arm around her squirming body instinctively. She pried the tags from his hand and held them up for the rest of the women to see.

“He wanted you to have them,” his grandmama responded with a proud smile.

His great grandfather had volunteered to fight for the U.S. overseas during World War One rather than live in repression in Haiti during the U.S. occupation. The dog tags were a family legacy, one of the few pieces to survive a fire that occurred before Jayden’s birth. As much as he wished he wasn’t related to the people practicing voodoo, he was humbled by the piece of family history in his hand.

“You have to put them on!” his cousin demanded. She grabbed his arm and tugged him down until he yielded and bent. Solemnly, she placed them over his head, murmuring a few words in French he took to be a prayer to the dead man who allegedly wanted Jayden to have the tags.

“Thank you for … uh, protecting me,” he said. “I’ll take good care of them.”

Her eyes glowed. Jayden straightened and tucked the box into one pocket while pulling out his keys.

“And they’ll take good care of you.” His grandmama laughed, along with the other women.

Jayden looked down at the dog tags, amazed by the gift from the crazy woman in the shed.

“Jayden, you must not take them off,” Grandmama Marie said, growing serious. “Ever.”

“I won’t, grandmama,” he assured her.

“No, Jayden.” She approached him, peering up at him with intensity that left him unnerved. Her words were hushed, so that only he was able to hear them. “The white zombie is going to kill you. Your great-grandpapa will protect you.”

Jayden didn’t know what to say. He wanted to laugh. How ridiculous was this?

“Okay, Grandmama,” he said at last.

She appeared satisfied with the response. “You are the hundredth in our line. You are meant for great things.”

“I know, Grandmama,” he said. “But becoming a voodoo priest is nowhere in my future.”

She harrumphed and turned around, returning to the table.

“I’ll call you later, Mama.” His mother rose and kissed his grandmama then hugged her sisters, aunts, and nieces.

Jayden fled. He was out of the shed before his mother finished her farewells. He went back to the house and waited in the kitchen, preferring the scents of barbecue and cat urine to death.

“Mama didn’t get to tell me whether or not to go on that date,” his mama complained as she tugged open the screen door.

“You don’t need some dead ancestor to tell you dating a con is stupid,” Jayden replied.

She narrowed her eyes. His mother was tall and slender, her flawless, cocoa skin, large eyes and high cheekbones rendering her beautiful despite the abuse she did to her body over the years. She’d bleached out the family mark to the point it was only noticeable up close. Her looks had captured the attention of Jayden’s father, who married her after a whirlwind romance, despite the objections of his respectable family, one of the oldest and most prominent in the South, even before Jayden’s daddy made his millions.

“You’ve been sober for two years and haven’t smoked in one,” he added, eyes on the drink in her hand. “You remember why you’re supposed to stay that way?”

“Don’t lecture me like I’m a child, Jay.” She frowned at him then glanced at the alcohol, as if not realizing she’d been drinking.

Most days, Jayden felt like he was raising a teenager instead of being raised by a mother. Single and struggling, Cora Toussaint’s reliance on drugs and bad decisions had culminated in the incident Jayden would never forgive her for, the one that almost claimed the life of his little sister. He owed it to his mother to help her, even if he didn’t want his sister anywhere near her ever again.

“Mama, I need to talk to you about something,” he started, aware he’d agreed to come this weekend for a reason other than to see the family he had nothing in common with.

“I’m in no mood for it.” She placed the glass on the counter and led him through the living room.

About to press her, Jayden sneezed hard instead.

His mother gave him the don’t-be-rude glare, and he held his nose to keep from sneezing again. He’d never been so happy to smell the combination of cigarette smoke and unshed rain as he was when he left the house and reached the front porch.

“Yo’ daddy buy you that car, Jay?” Uncle Tommy asked from his seat on the front porch.

“Yeah,” he managed to keep his tone friendly, out of respect for his mother. “It was a birthday present.”

“Must be nice not to have to work for a living. Why’d you divorce him, Cora? We coulda all had nice cars,” his uncle laughed.

“Yeah. Well, good seeing you, Uncle Tommy,” Jayden said.

“You take care!” his mother said, hugging her brother. “Have Mama call me later.”

Jayden’s smile faded as he strode to the car. He didn’t want to drive to the barbecue, knowing he’d catch hell about the car his daddy bought him, but his mother’s car was barely fit for driving down the block. He wasn’t about to risk having to spend the night here.

The car was a sauna in the late, muggy Louisianan afternoon. Incense and smoke clung to him, stinking up the car quickly. Jayden turned on the air conditioner full blast, but it still took too long for the car to cool down.

His mother spoke to his uncle for a few minutes before trotting down the steps to the car.

“Oh, thank god!” she exclaimed, leaning forward to the vent. “Mama’s AC broke last week.”

Jayden bit back his response, that his grandmother’s AC was broken every time they visited. It just added to the misery of visiting.

“Well, we made it,” he said as he pulled away from the house. “You and Bess have another fallin’ out?”

“Don’t we always.”

“Pretty much.”

“Mama had some good things to say about you,” she said. “She says you’re blessed, and you’ll make it big.”

“So she read the newspaper about me being scouted.”

“No, child, that’s not what she does.” Cora rolled her eyes. “She’s got the divine touch. She’s been right about everything. Marrying your daddy, my divorce, you kids, everything.”

“Mama, if you made your own decisions about life instead of waiting for some dead relative to tell you what to do, you –” he started, his frustration emerging.

“Jayden!” she snapped. “Have some respect for the spirits of your ancestors. You don’t want to anger them, do you? You’re so much like your father. You don’t even try to understand …”

He ignored her lecture about ancestral spirits and other nonsense. He didn’t believe in magic and agreed with his father that such beliefs were ridiculous. Marie Toussaint’s crazy visions and weekly discussions with dead people made him cringe, but not as much as the faith the family put in them. He constantly battled their influence on his mother.

His mother finished talking. They were silent, Jayden brooding and his mother satisfied that he’d listened to her this time. As important as it was for him to talk to her about Isabelle, his eight-year old sister, he didn’t think his mood would allow him to be calm enough for the sensitive subject.

“Did you tell your Uncle Joe about the football scholarships?” she asked.

“It didn’t come up,” he lied.

“Aw. You know he had an offer when he was in high school? Turned it down. Huge mistake. I was hoping you’d tell them,” she said with a sigh. “They might not think me such a screw up.”

“Mama.” Jayden glanced at her. “You’re not a screw up. Your mama and I agree on that, if nothing else. You’ve made mistakes, but you’ve taken steps to make up for them.” Sorta.

“My little prince.”

His face grew warm at the motherly nickname. He hated it.

“Can’t even drive my car to see my own family.”

Thank god, Jayden said silently. She’d be in her mama’s voodoo shed every weekend, if she had a decent car.

He felt like he was seventeen going on seventy. He gripped the steering wheel tightly.

“Mama said you broke up with your girlfriend,” she said. “Did you?”

“Yep.”

“You see? She does know things!”

“Kinda obvious. It’s the first barbecue in a year I didn’t bring her to,” Jayden pointed out.

“She was a bitch anyway, like all the girls at that snooty school your daddy put you in. She wouldn’t even talk to Mama when she came. She thinks she too good for us.”

He said nothing. He loved his school, if for no other reason than it was the one part of his life that had some semblance of structure. A natural at sports and academics, he didn’t have to deal with resentment, his mama’s temper tantrums, his daddy’s pressure, or juggle the extended family when he was in class. He was almost normal for those few hours a day. Even better, he was allowed to be a typical teenager, something neither parent seemed to get.

“I did kinda like her, though,” his mama said after a moment. “Why didn’t you tell me you broke up?”

“No big deal, mama. She was looking for something more serious than…” he stopped, but it was too late.

Her eyes were narrowed again.

“Oh, you, Jayden Toussaint Washington, you better not have-”

“Mama, please!” he said quickly. “I’m seventeen. I don’t want to get married! I just want to be a normal teenager. Do normal things, play football, worry about what college I want to go to.”

“Just like your father. I thought I raised you better. You think life is so easy and you can fool around, cuz your daddy’s got money! I bet you didn’t even –”

Jayden sighed. The traffic into New Orleans after the last long weekend before school began was heavy. He bore through her lecture, knowing she spoke out of personal injury and not because she believed him to be the deadbeat jerk she considered his father. At least, this is what his therapist explained to him.

It took work being the only sane one in a family of lunatics.

It was two o’clock by the time he pulled in front of her apartment building in the slums of the Lower Ninth Ward, a section of New Orleans where damage from the hurricanes of the last decade was still apparent in crumbling buildings and structures plastered with health and safety warnings. His mother’s building had been gutted and the interior completely refurbished. While it appeared sad and battered on the outside, the inside was relatively new.

Jayden dropped her off then parked in street. For once, he was glad the elevator to the seventh floor was slow. Instead of waiting, he went to the stairwell. It gave him time to cool down and recover his normal high level of patience. His phone rang as he ascended the stairs.

“Hey, Jay,” the voice on the other end said.

“What’s up, Mickey?”

“You gonna be at the early practice tomorrow morning?”

“Yeah,” Jayden said with a grimace. “What the hell got into coach? Especially the first day of class. Half the team will show up drunk.”

“I wish I was one of them,” Mickey groaned. “Can I catch a ride?”

“Sure. Wait, another call.” Jayden glanced at his phone and hung up on the new caller. “Kimmie again.”

“I thought you broke up.”

“We did. She won’t stop calling.”

“Lame. Hopefully the cheer squad isn’t practicing in the morning, or she’ll corner you for sure.”

“I didn’t even think of that. She’ll definitely find me Friday at the game,” Jayden said, irritated.

“You’re too nice, Jay.”

“I was honest with her. She’s just not getting it.”

“If you have a new girl by the game, she’ll get the point. Take my advice: no more of this relationship crap. Girls always throw themselves at you. You could have a new one every week until we graduate. That’s my plan.”

Jayden snorted. “Too much drama. I got three sisters. It’s enough to deal with outside of school.”

“Tell them up front. It’s what I do.” Mickey laughed.

“Whatever. I’ve seen you trip over yourself whenever you see Tara,” Jayden said, referring to one of the two stepsisters he’d inherited when his father remarried a few years ago.

“God, she’s hot.” Mickey’s voice took on a dreamy quality that made Jayden laugh. “I tried to ask her out last week. Epic fail.”

“She’s like her mommy - not into white guys.”

“I’m the top running back in high school, which means I’m black on the inside.”

“You’re crazy, man,” Jayden said, entertained. He reached his mother’s door and paused. “I gotta go. Be there at five to get your crazy ass.”

“Alright. Peace.”

Jayden hung up. His phone rang again, and he saw Kimmie’s name flash across the screen. Any other day, he’d try to be polite and answer. After dealing with his mother’s family and being lectured about how crappy of a son he was all the way home, he didn’t want any more drama.

He rejected the call and walked into his mother’s cozy, clean apartment. She was on the phone. He didn’t have to listen long to guess she was talking to one of her sisters about the felon that asked her out.

Frustrated, Jayden grabbed his gym bag and waved to her. He hoped to talk to her before he left, but that wasn’t going to happen. He left her apartment and jogged down the stairs, emerging into the humid afternoon.

The white zombie is going to kill you.

Grandmama hadn’t said someone would try. She said someone would succeed.

He didn’t believe in this stuff, but her words added to his sour mood. Getting in his car, he cut across town to Interstate 10 and headed east, away from downtown New Orleans, towards the wealthy suburbs.

Jayden zoned out on the way home, nervous about his senior year of school. Soon, everything changed. His comfortable routine would be gone, and he’d be too far away to help his mother, if she went back to drugs.

He passed through the prestigious neighborhood in the Eastover Ward where his father lived. Huge houses were hidden beyond thick gates and tall trees. His father’s was located at the end of a cul de sac – the largest of the estate-sized properties on his street.

Jayden clicked the remote for the gate and drove up a stone driveway leading to a Georgian style manor house. He continued around back to the twenty-car garage housing his father’s precious antique race car collection and parked in the second garage built for the family’s daily commuting cars.

A massive garden punctuated by waterfalls was directly behind the house and ended at an expanse of closely cropped, green yard hedged in the distance by stone walls to keep out paparazzi and trespassers.

He was still considering his college options when he walked in the kitchen door of the stately mansion and through the quiet house. The scent of familiar cigar smoke tickled his nose, coming from his father’s study. He glanced through the cracked doors as he passed then stopped. His father was alone in the masculine study with its heavy wood furniture, thick drapes, and natural lighting.

“Hey,” he said, pushing open the door. “You have guests?”

“Waiting for you.”

Frederick Washington was a slender, tall man with stylish, rectangular glasses and a quick smile. Jayden’s chiseled looks came from his mother’s side, but his height and charisma he got directly from his father.

“Really?” Jayden crossed to the chair across from his father and sat.

“You look rough, kiddo,” his father said. “Not going to ask why.”

There was no open animosity between his parents anymore, though Jayden knew they weren’t on friendly terms, either.

“You talk to her about Izzy?” his father asked.

“Not yet.”

“You wanted me to wait.”

“I know, Daddy. Just … give me ‘til the end of the week. The last thing she needs is to be dragged to court over this. I barely got her together after her last incident.”

“Dolo toujou couri lariviere. It’s in her nature,” his father recited the Creole proverb. Again, different than regular French where the word would be toujours, I believe. “It’s not your responsibility to put your mother together.”

“It’s not my responsibility to babysit the girls every day either or go to their PTA meetings and soccer matches because you’re too busy being the black Steve Jobs!” Jayden shot back.

His father was unaffected by the outburst. “One day, they’ll refer to someone as the white Frederick Washington,” came the amused response.

“Whatever, dad.”

“You’ve got it good, Jay. When people see you, they don’t see your skin. They see your daddy’s wallet. You never had to deal with what I did growing up. Our family is respectable, but once was poor.”

“Mama’s family says I’m too white already.”

“Backwards, superstitious, and ignorant. White people aren’t the only ones who can get a good education. Still into voodoo?” his father asked.

“Yeah.”

“If it were real, they’d buy themselves winning lotto tickets.”

Jayden snorted, aware he’d thought the same earlier.

“They’d spend it all and end up back in the Lower Ninth. It’s how backwards people behave.”

Hearing the words out loud made Jayden aware of how harsh they were. He was embarrassed to think he’d thought the same earlier in the day, when he was itching to get away from people who were so unlike him.

“I don’t want Izzy ever exposed to that,” his father said softly. “You know why. You can handle it. She’s a sensitive girl with a good future. It’s in her best interest if your mama signs away her parental rights, so I can raise the girl right.”

“I agree,” Jayden replied, hating himself a little for it. He loved his mother, and it hurt to know she wasn’t capable of taking care of his sweet little sister.

“I know this is a lot for you to handle, Jayden. You got college, football, Kimmie, and now this. Why not just let me take her to court and you can focus on school?”

“Because it doesn’t seem right to take Izzy. Mama won’t negotiate with you. She will…might with me,” Jayden said firmly. “Daddy, she’s got no one to take care of her except those relatives of hers – of mine! – who are making her crazy.”

“If your mama wanted to change, she would. They don’t make her do anything. She’s as messed up as they are.”

A small piece of Jayden knew as much, but she was his mother! How did he walk away from her, after all he’d done to try to help?

“It’s not a problem, Daddy,” he said. “If my way fails, we can try yours. Besides, I don’t have Kimmie to complicate life, so I’ve got an opening for some drama.” He laughed.

“What happened with Kimmie?”

“She’s just too much work.”

His father regarded him for a moment. “Kimmie’s parents are wealthy and well-connected here in town. You’d make a great pair.”

“I’m seventeen. I just want to be a normal teenager. Date other girls without caring how rich their parents are or if they can help your company,” Jayden said, frustrated.

“I don’t want you to make the mistake I did,” his father replied. He considered Jayden for a long moment. “You’ve got a good head on your shoulders. Just don’t lose focus. You’re meant for great things, Jay.”

“I’ve been hearing that a lot lately.”

His father was quiet, pensive to the point of troubled.

“What’s wrong?” Jayden asked curiously. His dad wasn’t one to dwell on the troubles of life.

“You’re right, Jayden. We do put a lot of responsibility on your shoulders,” his dad answered. “You can handle it all well, but it makes me not want to add to your burden.”

“How so? Are we broke?”

“No.” His dad smiled. “You’re probably not going to want to hear this. It’s one of the reasons I pressure you so much to excel.”

Jayden leaned forward, intrigued by the enigmatic response from the laid-back, technological genius known for wearing jeans and sandals to business meetings.

His father rose and went to his desk, retrieving something from the top drawer. It was small enough for his fist to hide it from view, and Jayden sat on the edge of his seat in anticipation.

“This has been passed down for four hundred years.” His father held out his closed fist.

Jayden glanced at him, unsettled by the grim tone. He held out his hand.

His father dropped an old skeleton key into his palm. At one time, the iron might’ve been smooth, but it was rough now, chipped and rusted, with a dark patina covering what remained of the smooth surfaces.

“I hope this opens a treasure chest,” Jayden said, studying it.

“Not exactly.” His father took it. “This is the family legacy, Jayden, a very dark, horrible, disturbing one. This key went to the set of chains belonging to the first slave our ancestor sold to the Americas.”

Jayden was silent, surprised.

“Once upon a time” his dad flashed a quick smile “about twenty generations ago, an impoverished man in Africa began selling men and women to the Europeans who needed slave labor in the New World. He started with his cousins then the other members of his village and soon expanded his operation to incorporate every village he could reach. He sold tens of thousands of Africans into slavery and killed those who refused to go. He became a very, very wealthy man virtually overnight, sought out by nobility and rich Europeans for his ability to supply human laborers and servants fast, no questions asked. There wasn’t an order too big or unique for him to fill. His sons and their sons – a total of ten generations – followed in his footsteps, selling our people into slavery until the Civil War.”

“You’re serious?” Jayden managed, not expecting to hear such news about his father’s highly respected family.

“Very. He became corrupt with power, influence and riches. His deeds are why no one in our family is named Charles. Somewhere along the line, he crossed paths with one of those backwards types who believed in magic, a woman named Brianne. An alleged curse was placed upon the family, so that every firstborn would die, until ninety-nine had been killed. They say he claims the lives himself. Then, after ninety nine, his penance would be fulfilled.”

After his bizarre dealings with his grandmother, Jayden couldn’t help but laugh. He understood the mystery and myths about voodoo – the tourists they brought in were what helped save New Orleans after the hurricanes hit. But that didn’t mean he believed any of it.

“I know,” his father said, relaxing. “That part of the tale, I don’t believe either. Though I will admit I’m glad you’re number one hundred. My older brother was number ninety-nine and died in a car accident. Got hit by a drunk driver that was certainly not a four hundred year old African.”

“That’s insane, Daddy,” Jayden said.

“Agreed. Your Grandmama Toussaint told me about the curse when I married your mother. Said her spirits told her, and our families were linked. I put as much credence into that as I do any of that superstitious nonsense. How she knew about the unfortunate family business, I don’t know.” He gave the key back to Jayden. “The rest is true, though. This key, the history of our family, all of it.”

Regarding it uneasily, Jayden didn’t let him self imagine who the first slave might’ve been or how many lives this key had condemned. Holding it made his skin crawl.

“I keep waiting for someone to figure it out,” his father continued. “Before me, my family never had national attention. All it takes is one person interested in tracing our roots back to Africa for the family legacy to explode. We’d be expelled from the African American community as a whole and publicly disgraced.”

“I can’t imagine what people would say,” Jayden said, grappling to understand how large and dark the family legacy was. Tens of thousands of lives four hundred years ago could have left millions of descendants today.

“All the more reason for you to pave a new path, the way I have, one that contributes more than our ancestors took away. I started, and you’ll continue.”

“Is it even possible to wipe away such a horrific past?”

“We are not our ancestors. That’s what will save us, if the truth ever comes out.”

“You don’t know that it will.”

“Some secrets are too bad to be kept forever. Your grandmama knows. Others might know, too, and are just waiting to blackmail me or humiliate the family. I don’t know. We have a lot of people watching us, Jayden, a good reason not to draw attention by giving them a reason to dig. Be conservative in everything you do. Don’t give anyone a reason to pry.”

“So I shouldn’t tell anyone,” Jayden guessed.

“It’s up to you. I did tell your stepmother. I think I’ll tell Tara and the twins eventually, so they aren’t blindsided when the truth comes out.”

Jayden said nothing, disgusted by the weight of the key in his hand. School hadn’t even started, and he was overwhelmed.

“You aren’t a technological genius, but you can still pave a pathway few black men have. Graduate first in your class at the academy. Get a scholarship to some big football school with a decent academic program and graduate first there. If you go to the NFL, you’ll be the first in this family and among the greatest black quarterbacks, because you aren’t just athletic – you can think strategically inside the game and in real life. If you take another route, you’ll find a way to be the best. You’ve got my ambition and your mama’s looks. If you remember why you’re doing this, you’ll always find a way to excel and contribute to our community.”

“Can I just be a seventeen-year-old who wants to play ball and date hot chicks?” Jayden complained.

“I wish it was that easy, Jay. We shouldn’t be paying the price for what someone twenty generations ago did. But his deeds can take away everything we have, if we don’t prove we are different.”

“Why did you pick today to tell me this?” Jayden asked. He rose and paced, wired with emotional energy from his nerve-wracking day.

“The timing seemed right. Every big decision you make your senior year will determine your future. What college you go to, how well you do in school, who you date. I want to make sure you understand that you’re a part of something bigger. Don’t make the mistake I did and knock up some poor, backwards, superstitious woman like your mama. Marry up, not down.”

Jayden nodded. He was a man now, and his father was entrusting him with the family secret. His gaze lingered on the key.

He hated it. It felt cold, heavy, evil.

“Keep it. That’s for you to pass down to your firstborn, along with the legacy.”

Jayden knew exactly where he’d put it: in the back of his closet, with the weird birthday presents his grandmama gave him.

“I need an answer this week about Izzy,” his dad added. “The injunction ends next Monday. I won’t turn my little girl over to that woman. I need to be in court next Monday, either with a signed agreement from your mother or with a lawyer filing a suit.”

“I know. I’ll do my best.”

“You always do, Jayden.”

“Thanks. I got a lot to do before school tomorrow.” Without waiting for his father to say anything else, Jayden left.

So much for this being the best year of school ever. No, while others were out partying, sliding through half their classes and touring colleges, he’d be stuck trying to right the wrongs committed by some long dead ancestor.

He trotted up the stairs to the second floor of the house and passed by the rooms of his two stepsisters. He paused in front of his sister’s room and pushed it open. It was nap time for the two younger girls, and the eight-year-old was asleep, clutching one of her many stuffed animals. The scar down one side of her cherubic face was barely noticeable, and the mark of his mother’s family was dark.

Every time he looked at her, he saw his own failure to protect her from a drunken fight his mother and her ex-boyfriend got into two years before. One of them sliced the girl’s face open. Even if by accident, it was something no good mother would let happen to her daughter. Since the incident, his mother had been under a restraining order to stay away from her daughter, one that Jayden’s father was certain to keep in place with injunction after injunction. Izzy still had nightmares about the incident.

His father was right. Isabelle could never go home to her mother. Jayden didn’t like the idea of hurting his mother, but he wasn’t willing to put his sister in danger again. The past two years, he’d dedicated himself to helping his mother through treatment for drugs and alcohol, only to admit he didn’t think her capable of staying away long enough to raise her kid.

Maybe this was the first step he could take to redeem his family’s legacy: save his sister.

Jayden retreated to his room. He flipped on the lights to his walk-in closet and went to the back corner, where he kept a box of voodoo-inspired gifts his mother’s family gave him for holidays and birthdays. He dropped the key into it.

“Good riddance.” He wiped his hand on his jeans then left the closet to wash his hands thoroughly.

It didn’t help. He still felt dirty after touching a piece of the family legacy.

“Jay!”

His step-sister, Tara, was his age and tall, gorgeous with light brown hair and blue eyes. She marched into his room without knocking. She was dressed perfectly as always in a trendy skirt and top, her feet in ballet-style shoes.

“Will you take me somewhere?” she asked.

“You ever gonna get a driver’s license?” he grumbled, wanting some quiet time after his stressful day.

She gave him her pouting puppy dog look, the one that always made him laugh. Jayden had too much trouble disappointing the women in his life to send the relatively tolerable Tara away.

“I put the twins down for naps, so you wouldn’t have to,” she added, referring to their two younger sisters.

“Fine,” he said, smiling. “You have to buy me ice cream.”

“Deal.”

“Where we going?” he asked, grabbing his keys and wallet from the dresser once more.

“I’ll tell you in the car.”

“You only say that when we’re going someplace I don’t want to go.”

She grinned.

Jayden sighed and followed her out of his room and through the house, exiting out the back door leading to the garden. He unlocked his car and got in. The interior of his car was already scorching.

“Smells like incense,” Tara said, plopping into the passenger seat.

He grimaced and started the car. A glance at Tara revealed that she was texting, and he guessed this was the real reason she preferred for him to drive her. She rarely stopped messaging her friends. He doubted she’d be able to set her phone aside for five minutes.

“Where?” he asked again.

“Irish Channel.”

“Are you serious?” he asked, not wanting to drive through the throngs of tourists in town to reach a rundown part of the city edged by the Mississippi River.

“Yeah. It’s light out. No one will steal your car.”

It’s not my car I worry about, he grated silently with a glance at her.

Turning on the radio, he focused on driving while she played with her phone. He purposely tried not to think about what his father had just revealed and instead, thought about football practice the next morning. He drove back into the middle of town and hopped off I-10 to take highway ninety across the Mississippi River and into the Lower Garden District. The Irish Channel was on the rough side of the touristy district.

“Where next?” he asked.

Tara looked out the window to orient herself. “It’s supposed to be right off First Street.”

“Got a name?”

“Madame Estelle’s Psychic Arts.”

“You’re going to a psychic?” he demanded, fed up with the occult after his day. “Tell me you’re kidding!”

“This one is supposed to be real. Kimmie’s cousin went yesterday and said they have this new tarot reader who was like, crazy accurate,” Tara said. “Don’t you think this stuff is cool?”

“No, I don’t. It’s ridiculous. And this isn’t even in a nice part of town. No tourist would wander this far away from the nice part of the Garden District.”

“Who peed in your cereal?” she asked. “Oh, there it is! Park, Jay!”

He slowed, searching the car-lined streets for a parking spot. The only ones available were a block or more away.

“I’ll let you out and park,” he said, stopping the vehicle. “I can’t believe you dragged me here for this.”

“Ice cream, big brother.” She flashed a smile and got out of the car, heading towards the rundown storefront.

Jayden shook his head. He parked and got out, walking down the street past a few eateries and small shops. He paused outside of Madame Estelle’s, begrudging the unknown psychic for being the latest to trample on his patience. Brightly colored lettering advertised psychic services, tarot readings, and communications with the deceased.

Jayden walked into the shop and sat down in the empty waiting room.

He’d been accosted by magic from three directions today. First at his grandmama’s then in revelation of the family legacy. And now, he sat in a psychic’s shop, thanks to Tara. If he was remotely superstitious, he might think the spirits were trying to tell him something.