Jenks was sleeping at the table, Ivy was sleeping in the back room, having returned from her “date” shortly after sunrise, and Nick and Jax were outside making sure the air bag wouldn’t engage when Jenks ran the Mack truck into it tonight. And the NOS. Mustn’t forget the NOS that Nick had in his nasty truck, which would be rigged to explode on impact. I’d have no better time than now to do this. I’d like to say that I had waited this long so it would be quiet and I’d be undisturbed. The reality was, I was scared. The statue’s power came from a demon curse, and it would take a demonic curse to move it. A demon curse. What would my dad say?

“What the hell,” I whispered, grimacing. I was going to kill Peter. What was a little demonic-curse imbalance compared to that?

Stomach knotting, I placed the statue into the first circle, stifling a shudder and wiping my fingers free of the slimy feel of the ancient bone. Jenks had watched me do this earlier, so I knew what came next, but unbeknownst to everyone but him, it had been a dry run using the wolf statue. I’d lit the candles but hadn’t invoked the curse. The little wolf with its fake curse had been sitting on the table all night, Nick carefully avoiding looking at it.

Another glance at the light leaking around the curtains, and I rose, going to Jenks’s things piled carelessly by the TV. I plucked the totem from his belongings, feeling guilty though I had already asked to use it. Nervous, I placed his carved totem with the stylized wolf on top in the second circle. In the third, I placed a lock of my hair, twisted and knotted.

My stomach clenched. How many times had my father told me never to knot my hair even in fun? It was bad. Tying hair into knots made a very strong bond to a person, especially when you knotted your own hair. What happened to the bit of hair I placed in the third circle would happen to me. Conversely, what I said or did would be reflected in the circle. It wasn’t a symbol of my will, it was my will. That it was sitting in a circle to twist a curse made me ill.

Though that might be from the Brimstone, I thought, not putting it past Jenks, even though he’d agreed with my decision to stop taking it. At least it had been medicinal grade this time, and I wasn’t dealing with the roller-coaster moods.

“Okay,” I whispered, hiking my chair closer to the table. I glanced at Jenks, then got my colored candles from my bag, the soft crackle of the matching colored tissue paper they were wrapped in soothing. I had used white candles the first time, picked up by Ivy out “shopping” with Nick, a bitter touch of honesty to the lie our lives had become.