Curse of the Furies: Chapter 1
When her economics teacher had suggested the class take part in Take Your Child to Work Day, Erin didn’t think this was what her teacher had in mind. Erin wasn’t technically Tis’s child, but still. Other girls had probably spent the day sipping coffee in an office building, not staking out a drunk criminal on a deserted city street in the middle of the night. But when Erin had suggested it, Tis was so excited. It was too late for Erin to second-guess herself.
Erin sat stiffly on the cement step, hugging her knees and fidgeting with her fingers, wishing she were somewhere else. Despite the cold concrete, sweat trickled between her shoulder blades. Beside her, Aunt Tis leaned against the railing, twirling a section of dark hair in her fingers, green eyes alert, watching. She reminded Erin of a panther looking for its dinner.
A car door slammed up the street, making Erin jump. Two men rolled out, patted each other on the back, and parted ways. One bounded up the steps of an apartment building. The other lumbered toward them, weaving on the sidewalk.
“Ready?” Tis whispered, eyes shining.
Erin nodded and swallowed hard. She was not ready.
As he passed by, the streetlight threw a cockeyed shadow behind him. The man leered at Tis before moving along without a backward glance. Erin rolled her eyes.
“Stay behind me. Watch,” Tis whispered, jumping off the step and gliding after him, her coat billowing behind her like black wings, her whip trailing like a tail.
Erin’s stomach flipped. Afraid she might throw up, she clamped her mouth shut as she slid out, making sure to keep a good distance behind Tis.
“Billy Hicks,” Tis yelled, her voice sharp.
He stopped and turned around, blinking rapidly, confusion spreading across his broad face. Tis closed the gap between them, her walk confident and fluid. Her chunky boots made no sound on the pavement. The man’s gaze raked across her, and he opened his mouth.
With a flick of her arm, Tis’s whip shot out with a snap, cutting him off. Erin’s heart raced. Overhead, the light bulb in the streetlight blazed out, sprinkling glass on the ground and bathing the street in darkness. Erin stopped, frozen. Her breath hitched. Here we go.
“What the—?” Billy Hicks shrank back, the color draining from his face.
Good. He wasn’t stupid.
“What kind of man hits someone with his car and drives away?” Tis growled.
There was no response. Again, the whip snapped overhead, close enough to the man’s head to move his hair.
“You crazy—” He stumbled backward.
“You don’t want to finish that thought. Is that an answer?” Tis narrowed the gap between them.
“I-I would never,” Billy said.
Tis shook her head, tilting it at a sympathetic angle. “William, don’t lie to me, to yourself. We both know you’re walking home from happy hour because your car is in the shop.”
“I didn’t.”
“William. The man you hit bled on the pavement for an hour before someone called an ambulance. You’re lucky you didn’t sever a major artery. Or we’d be having a different conversation.”
“What are you? A cop?”
She laughed, deep and throaty. “A cop? No. I’m not a police officer. I’m much worse. You yelled hateful things at this man, hit him with your car, and drove away. You need to atone.” Her voice purred, the calm before the storm.
Billy squared his body, balling his hands into fists.
Erin stepped back, body tense.
“Who do you think you are?”
Billy lunged at Tis, but she stepped out of the way, grabbed his arm, and twisted it behind him, bringing him to his knees. She crouched so she was right behind him, her mouth close to his ear. She cranked his arm. He winced but didn’t scream.
“He’s out of work now. In the hospital. Don’t you want to make it right?”
Billy didn’t move, just stared at the ground.
“Fine,” Tis said, opening her palm to reveal a glowing purple ball. “As much as I’d love to play, my niece is here, and she would disapprove. So we’ll just get right to it.” She lifted her hand and blew on the purple orb—like she was blowing a kiss. Fog hung in the air and settled like a cloud around his head. Billy hit the ground.
He writhed on the pavement, whimpering and clutching his head. Tis watched him squirm for a few moments before glancing back at Erin with an encouraging smile. Erin gripped the cold metal railing of the fence, frozen but unable to look away. Tis waved her hand, and the purple fog disappeared. The man lay crumpled on the ground, sobbing.
“More?” Tis asked sweetly.
“No. Please. No more. I’ll turn myself in,” he said.
Tis smiled and leaned in close. “Good. If you don’t, we’ll have to have another chat. And I’ll leave my niece at home to keep things interesting.”
“I will. I swear.”
“Don’t think you can run. I’m incredibly good at finding people, and I’m not known for my patience.” She turned and left him in the street, clutching his head and whimpering.
Erin’s legs wobbled, and she felt bile start to rise. Please, no. She didn’t want to puke. She watched Aunt Tis walk away, her hair catching the wind like an action hero, beautiful and terrifying. Her aunts seriously expected her to do that? Erin was both in awe and a little freaked out.
Tis grinned and threw her arm around Erin’s shoulders. “C’mon, kiddo. We’ve got to get you home. You have a math test tomorrow.”
Erin’s head spun with questions, and she still felt like she might toss up her dinner.
“Will he be all right?” Erin asked, sweeping her arm in the direction of the crumpled man on the ground.
Tis shot a thumb over her shoulder. “Him? Oh, he’ll be fine.”
Erin glanced over again. He didn’t look fine. She stared at her feet.
“What?” Tis said. “I barely touched him. You should see the guy he hit with his car. He’s much worse off.”
Erin sighed. “Can we walk for a bit?” Did Tis seriously expect her to go home and do homework after that? There was no way. She had nervous energy to burn.
“Sure. It’s a nice night. Your mom and I actually lived down here briefly a long time ago. We rented a house up that way,” Tis said, pointing to a row of tall houses stacked close together, with wide porches and intricate stonework. “I’ll show you.”
Erin followed her down the dark street, eager to leave the job behind. To her relief, Tis seemed to have forgotten the man completely.
The cool spring air carried the delicious smell of a pizzeria around the corner. Despite still feeling queasy, Erin’s stomach growled at the scent. She listened to the soft scrape of her footsteps beside Tis’s on the sidewalk, trying to steady herself.
“So, that was a job?” she asked. Erin knew where she came from, what her aunts were, what her mom was—and by extension, what she was. Of course she did, but knowing they were Furies and seeing them in action were two different things.
Furies were Hades’s avengers. Their job was to punish people in the Underworld, and they were good at it, really good. They righted wrongs and enforced the natural order. A long time ago, Hades had made a deal with Zeus to loan them out. So now their domain expanded outside the Underworld. They’d been up here for so long, it was easy to forget they weren’t human.
“Not officially,” Tis said, answering her question. “Justice comes in many flavors. You know that job I did last night? I was at the hospital when they brought the man he hit into the ER. His wife was hysterical.”
“It wasn’t a job? So why did you do it?”
“She needed help. The police officer barely gave her five minutes of his time before saying there wasn’t enough evidence at the scene to make an arrest. He didn’t even really try. What Billy did to that poor man needed to be addressed. Otherwise, he would have just kept living his life and probably done it again. It wasn’t an official invocation, but the man who was wronged needed help. I helped. That’s what we do.”
The problem was that there were only two Furies right now instead of three. They needed Erin to make them whole again. It had always seemed unlikely, but after seeing Aunt Tis on a job, Erin was even less sure she was capable of taking her mother’s place. She didn’t understand how Tis couldn’t see that Erin was different from them. Furies didn’t almost throw up at job sites. How could Tis think Erin could fill her mother’s shoes?
She was curious about how Tis had found Billy but instead said, “I thought you only do murderers.”
Tis shrugged. “I do. Pretty much. This one was a freebie.” Tis paused, bumped Erin’s shoulder affectionately. “This was a crime of anger. One Ali would have done.” She chuckled. “Your mom would have sent that guy flying.”
Erin stilled. Tis barely talked about Ali, Erin’s mother, no matter how many questions she asked. So this walk to their old house was a gift. A peace offering, maybe.
They stopped in front of a white duplex with peeling paint and a plastic tricycle blocking the walkway. Tis got a faraway look in her eyes, and Erin could tell she was thinking of how the house used to be. Erin held her breath, afraid that if she said anything, Tis wouldn’t talk.
“This is where we lived, probably forty years ago. It wasn’t a duplex then. Meg planted that tree.” She pointed at an evergreen tree towering next to the house.
Erin tried to picture them here, having a life together. Now, her mom was gone, and Meg didn’t come around often. She had a hard time imagining her Aunt Meg, with her manicured nails and high heels, digging in the dirt. “Aunt Meg gardened?”
Tis laughed. “Hard to believe, isn’t it? The terrifying Fury Megaera in gardening gloves? She was different then. Well, not different, but not as . . . shiny.”
Her expression hardened. “But that was a long time ago.”
Silence started to expand between them, and Erin felt the moment slipping away.
“What was the purple fog?” Erin asked abruptly.
“Oh. You saw it purple? Interesting.” Tis studied her for a moment before shrugging it off. “It’s not a fog, exactly. More like a cloud I put in his mind of what he feared.”
“What did he fear?”
“When weak men lash out, it has more to do with their own insecurities than the person they harm. My cloud is a hint, a suggestion only. A feeling. His mind filled in the details.”
“That’s all? That’s enough?”
“Probably not. I also flooded him with an overwhelming feeling of fear and dread. He fears losing his family. Having them see the darkness in his heart. It should be enough, but if not, I’ll be more persuasive next time.”
“How did you know what he feared?” Erin asked.
Tis gave her a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry. When you get your first case, you’ll know.”
That was the least of what worried Erin. She swallowed what she wanted to say and, instead, smiled back at Tis.
Tis winked and flashed Erin another smile as she threw an arm over her shoulder and pulled her closer. “It’s not something to worry about yet.”
Erin breathed in the familiar citrus scent of Tis’s shampoo and was glad to say goodbye to the Fury Tisiphone as she relaxed into the safety of her Aunt Tis.
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