True to form, Liora played the grieving, hysterical child with a mastery that would have fooled any soul who didn’t know the truth of her heart. She cried at all the right moments, clung to Mrs. Lorraine’s skirts with trembling hands, and let her voice crack in ways that made even the hardest men soften. None of the white detectives who came to investigate Mr. Louis’s death ever looked her way with suspicion. They stayed for hours after the body had been taken to the morgue, pacing through the house with their notebooks and cigarettes, but their eyes never lingered on the ten‑year‑old girl who sat quietly in the corner with her doll pressed to her chest.
They didn’t care to find out who murdered an uppity mulatto man in his own home. Mr. Louis may have been wealthy, but he was still a colored man, and one who had more enemies than friends. In their minds, anyone in Lafayette could have killed him. Many in town hated him for the way he sold off their sisters, cousins, and daughters; Mr. Louis had been a flesh peddler, a pimp who ran gentlemen’s clubs and back‑room deals that ruined families. To those detectives, his death was not a tragedy but an inevitability.
And as I watched Liora perform her grief, watched her wipe her tears with delicate fingers and bury her face in her doll’s hair, a realization settled over me with the slow, suffocating weight of humidity before a storm: she was the perfect combination of the two people who created her. Mama’s selfishness, her hunger for attention, her ability to charm and manipulate with a smile; those traits lived in Liora like blood in her veins. And Mr. Louis’s cold calculation, his narcissism, his willingness to harm anyone who stood between him and what he wanted; those traits had rooted themselves in her heart. Liora was not merely wicked. She was the distilled essence of both her parents’ sins, sharpened into something far more dangerous.
She dropped her act the moment the men left and the door shut behind them. It was like watching a mask fall away, revealing the creature underneath.
“Finally,” she said, letting out a long, exaggerated sigh as she flopped onto the velvet couch in the sitting room. “They sure took their sweet time.”
She stretched out like a cat in a sunbeam, utterly unconcerned that her father’s blood had barely dried.
“As my older sister,” she continued, her voice slipping back into that sweet, honeyed tone she used when she wanted something, “you’ll have to act as my guardian. So, I’ll leave the funeral arrangements to you.”
She didn’t care whether Mr. Louis had a funeral or whether his body was tossed into the bayou to be eaten by gators. His death meant nothing to her beyond the freedom it granted.
“We should call Mémé back to the house,” I said quietly. “To cleanse it. It wouldn’t be right to keep Mr. Louis’s spirit trapped here.”
I had yet to see Mama’s ghost, and that told me Solange had been right. Mama was most likely in hell, paying for the choices she made. But Mr. Louis had sins layered on his soul like sediment in the riverbed. If he lingered, he would not pass on easily.
Liora sat up slowly, her expression shifting into something sharp and venomous.
“Why would we do that?” she asked, her voice dripping with disdain. “If the bastard lingers, then let him. I want him stuck in this godforsaken house with all the other spirits trapped here. Let him anguish. Let him mourn how he was done in by the child he got on that woman he killed for. Let him suffer knowing everything he coveted went to the pretty little doll he thought would never amount to anything.”
She laughed, a sound that carried no joy, only poison.
I do not know why she brought up Mama. She had never cared about the woman who died giving birth to her. She had seen pictures of Mama, had met Solange many times over the years, but she held no love for either of them. Liora had no love for men or women, no affection for anyone except me.
“It wouldn’t be kind to do him that way,” I murmured. “He was your daddy, Liora.”
“I don’t want to be kind,” she said simply.
Her words fell heavy in the room, settling like dust on old furniture.
I gave up trying to talk sense into her. There was no point once she made up her mind. It was probably best to keep Solange and Liora away from each other. Solange did not like this sister of mine, she had seen the darkness in Liora long before I had, and Liora had developed a sudden fascination with rituals, rootwork, curses, and the old ways Solange practiced. I did not want Liora adding spiritual work on top of whatever she already was.
The house felt different now. Quieter. Heavier. As though it was waiting.
Waiting for Liora to claim it. Waiting for me to decide whether I would stand beside her. Waiting for the sins of the past to rise up and demand their due.
And deep down, I feared that the house, this cursed haunted place, had chosen its master long ago.
