Excerpt
Sylvia dropped onto the kitchen chair and scowled at her brother. She’d rushed straight from work after her grandmother called and told her about their new visitor. She couldn’t help but wonder if it were the same visitor her cards had been warning her about for the past week and even after she voiced this concern Ray still had the nerve to patronize her.
“She’s not some stray puppy you picked up from the side of the road, Ray,” she said. “I’m just saying you don’t know anything about her.”
Ray leaned against the counter, crossing his legs at the ankles, and sent her a crooked grin. “Damn. And I was really looking forward to teaching her a few tricks.”
“Stop thinking with your glands and think with your head, Big Brother,” Sylvia snapped.
“I’ve been thinking with my glands since I was fourteen. It’s a hard habit to break.”
Sylvia curled her lip at him and turned to her grandmother for support. She had sensed a mal puesta in the young woman and performed a limpia to heal her. It was a ritual they often worked for the families in town who came to see them about their curses. The inflicted would lie on a small cot and her grandmother would wave an egg over them, chanting a series of novenas.
She did this same cleansing on the young woman in Ray’s old bedroom. When she finished she took the egg and cracked it into a glass of salt water. The egg sizzled and cooked, curling its way to the surface like a snake trying to escape the flames of hell.
“Abuela, tell him,” Sylvia said. “You saw what happened to the egg. There was something bad inside that girl and who’s to say it won’t be back?” She shot a pointed look at her brother. “I just don’t think we should trust her.”