Page 67 of The Killer Cupcake
"What?" Kathy blinked, taking in the burgundy dress from last night, now wrinkled and twisted. This wasn't the Janey she knew—the one who never had a hair out of place. This woman's makeup ran in dark rivers down her cheeks, her perfect curls hung limp, and her eyes... God, her eyes looked like she'd been crying for hours. Or planning something.
Kathy's gaze caught that her aunt had taken a chair and pulled it close to the bed. Too close. Like someone had been sitting and watching her.
"You've been in my room? Watching me sleep?" Kathy asked.
"Had to come. Had to protect you," Janey whispered. “It’s your time.”
“For what? From what?" she asked.
Janey leaned close, her breath hot and sour against Kathy's ear. "The big bad Wolf. He's coming for my little red riding hood."
She slipped from the bed, and Kathy saw her aunt's bare feet—caked with mud, bleeding at the edges. She'd walked here barefoot from wherever Carmine kept her. Miles in the dark. Something terrible had happened—or was about to. Something bad enough to send Janey over the edge she'd been dancing on for years.
Janey paced to the window, movements sharp and strange. "You don't ask about Willa anymore."
Kathy's eyes found the door. Another chair wedged under the knob—to keep them in or the world out, she couldn't tell.
"I write to Willa. We keep in touch," Kathy said, keeping her voice steady.
"He did it, you know. She won't tell you the truth, but he did." Janey's voice carried a sing-song quality that made Kathy's skin crawl. "Jean-Baptiste. The family cast her out like garbage seven months later. Willa was so distraught. Jean-Baptiste was a coward or complicit. Willa lived on the streets for days before someone told Carmine and brought her back to me for healing.” Janey looked over at Kathy with eyes that glittered. "I had warned him, Kathy. I told him not to disrespect her or hurt her. Not to make me do what I had to do. I warned those Thibodeaux bastards."
Kathy frowned in confusion. "That's not true. Willa was pregnant. She and Jean-Baptiste have left his family. They have a small place in the Quarter. They are happy—that's what her letters said. She even sent a picture of them both together."
Janey's smile was chilling in its serenity. “Willa lost the baby. And that is when the family came for JB. That was it. The spell was broken. Willa was damaged goods, and JB had to face it. Those letters you write go to the post office, not to the cottage in the quarter.
JB had to choose between a broken Willa who had just given birth to his dead child and being poor or his freedom to be a spoiled bitch-boy Thibodeaux again. Guess what choice he made? Guess who threw her out of that little fantasy they had run off to in the Tremé and dumped her on the street.”
Janey didn’t pause for a breath. She kept going.
“I took care of her, made her strong again. And against Carmine's wishes, I made the Thibodeaux family pay.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Baked a cake for his cousin's wedding and had it served by one of my girls at the reception. Took out six of them in one night, but not that bastard JB. He got away.”
“No. Auntie. You didn’t do that. You wouldn’t?”
Janey stood frozen, a dark smile on her face.
“Auntie?” Kathy pleaded.
Janey didn’t respond.
“What? What are you saying?" Kathy's voice cracked with horror.
Janey's smile widened, satisfied as a cat licking blood from its whiskers. "Everyone cried about food poisoning at the reception. But the Thibodeauxs? They knew. Oh, they knew exactly what killed six of their blood." She studied her hands like they belonged to someone else. "The whole Quarter went into mourning. That beautiful cake—it took innocents along with the guilty. A cousin's new bride. An uncle who'd only ever been kind. I'd meant to punish the ones who hurt Willa, but poison doesn't choose. It just takes."
Her voice dropped to something raw. "Carmine had to sell pieces of his soul to Don Marcello to keep me from my mama'sfate—swinging from a tree while the crowd cheers. Everything we had, every favor owed, every bit of power... gone. Our house. Gone. We're owned by the Marcellos now, forever in their pocket. We’ve got to leave New Orleans for Vegas soon. Not to come back. Because of what I did. Because I couldn't stop myself, I’ve lost my family except you. You love me still.”
She laughed, but it sounded like a release of sorrow. "And Willa? When she learned what I'd done for her, she ran from me like I was the devil himself. Marcellos found her later because she, too, is part of the bargain. Found her months later in one of the wash houses, hands bleeding from lye. Brought her back to me like a lost dog."
Janey's eyes found Kathy's, and they were empty as graves. "Tell me, chère—did Jean-Baptiste destroy Willa, or did I? I used to be powerful, you know. Could make men dance, make them beg, make them mine. Now?" She spread her trembling hands. "Now I'm just deadly. Like the candies my sisters taught me to make. Nothing left in me but poison."
Kathy threw back the covers and rushed to her aunt, her heart breaking through her fear. Janey trembled at the window, her eyes wild and unfocused, seeing things that weren't there. Kathy wrapped her arms around her, holding tight.
"Willa loves you. She writes about you constantly—how grateful she is, how much she loves you. This story can't be true. You're confused, Auntie. Willa's pregnant again, just wrote me about it last month."
"I am NOT confused!" Janey shoved her away with shocking violence, sending Kathy stumbling. Her voice climbed to a shriek that could wake the dead. "I don't want to kill Carmelo, Kathy. God help me, I don't. If I kill him then they will kill my Carmine. I’ve done so much, he can’t keep protecting me. But I can't stop what's already started. He hurt you! He LIED to you! He BETRAYED you! HE HAS TO PAY!"
"What?" Kathy backed away.
"He's just like the rest of them. Never special, never different. You thought he was, but men can't be special, chère. They're heart-breakers, trust-killers, soul-destroyers. That's all they know how to be!" She spat the words like venom. "They're nothing but meat for the cutting!"
