“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.