Chapter 7: Shopping Time

Tara tore out of her house the moment her mother let her go. She couldn’t stop thinking about what she had felt the night before, and that had made the chores take even longer than usual. Still considering the possible reasons the curse might have changed, she slammed the door to the truck and threw up gravel as she pulled out of the driveway to her trailer.

“Mom is going to be pissed about that,” she thought to herself

Ever since her father left them when she was six, she’d been in charge of taking care of the trailer. Her mother had to work two jobs, just to keep food on the table and make the trailer payments. Today, her mother had actually had a day off. It was rare that she had time off from both jobs, and she just wanted to stay at home and drink. And when that happens, Tara knew that she would have to do extra around the place to make sure she kept her freedom. It had been very hard with her mind constantly going back to the change last night. It was after 3:00 when she finally was able to get away.

As she drove to the church in the bayou, Tara began going through the possibilities again.

“Maybe it was nothing. Maybe Patrick just found a way to start fighting it,” she started off hopefully.

“No, that’s just crazy. And there wouldn’t have been so much dark energy flowing. Patrick was an asshole and needed to learn his lesson, but he wasn’t evil...”

“What about Maman Brigitte. Maybe she felt justice was not being done and interceded? She asked herself, immediately dismissing the idea. Maman Brigitte was wife to Baron Samedi and goddess of Justice. She was also a Ghede, or death-goddess. Just because she is a death goddess doesn’t make her evil, death is just a part of life. If it was an evil goddess it would be more in the realm of Marinette-Bwa-Chech one of the petro Loa, and an outstanding sorceress.”

“But, if it were one of the Loa it would have been more powerful, wouldn’t it. It has to be another priest or priestess, probably a bokor, judging by the darkness of the energy.”

“Why would someone, manipulate my curse? To what end?”

Tara drew a sharp breath as one last thought occurred to her as she parked the car near the church, “Could I be the target of the change? Am I in danger?”

Sally smiled as her two daughters climbed into the car. Lily took the front seat, as she always did as the older. Patty brushed her new long hair out of her face and climbed into the back seat.

“Mom, how much can I spend? I know it might be a lot, but I’m going to need a lot more clothes unless Dr. Summers can figure this out quickly,” Patty asked her mother.

Patty had never really enjoyed shopping before; especially for clothes, but this time she felt a small spike of excitement at the thought of all her new options.

Sally began to answer, “Well, honey. I think we should buy at least enough for the next week. I don’t think we should expect anything to change by then. Don’t forget your father just got a raise with his new promotion, and right now would be a great time to spend some of it.”

“I was also thinking that we should probably get you some more girly styles of clothes, so you can adjust more quickly. We want you adjusted as much as possible before school starts in a week. I hope, that is okay with you,” Sally continued.

“Ummm, I think that will be cool,” Patty tried not to think of how wearing short skirts and dresses might make her feel, instead she decided to change the topic, “Speaking of school, do you guys have any ideas for what I should tell the kids at school?”

Sally got a thoughtful look on her face when Lily spoke up.

Lily offered, “I have done some thinking about that. Don’t you have a sister and niece in Indiana mom?”

“Yeeesss...” her mother responded, not sure where the blond was going with this.

Lily continued with her plan, “Well, why don’t we tell everyone that Patty is your niece? And that Patrick went to stay with them for the year. We can even say it was your sister’s idea that Patty needed to get away from her school because of something bad.”

Sally, starting to consider the idea, asked Lily, “Alright, but why did Patrick go to live with her? Why didn’t we just take Patty? And, what about the names? You know your cousin’s name is Lisa, isn’t anyone going to know?”

Lily tossed out, “Well, we could hint that Patrick went to Indiana, because it would be too expensive to have three kids. We could even claim the public reason is because he wanted to experience what it was like living on a farm, instead of the suburbs.”

Patty had been sitting quietly, listening to her mother and sister discussing the plan. She had been thinking about the name similarity.

Patty had a thought, “Mom, wasn’t I named after your Great Grandfather Patrick? If so, couldn’t Aunt Marta have also named her daughter after him?”

“Actually, that’s not too bad a plan. I should probably talk to Marta about it; even though we only see them once every couple months or so, just in case. We should probably use that reason with the school tomorrow as well. I’ll make sure I give Marta a call tonight,” Sally decided.

“School tomorrow? What for?” Patty asked in surprise.

“Well, dear, we need to make sure everything is clear with them before you start next week. You don’t want them kicking you out or anything. We can’t just surprise them with this. Hopefully, we can present our plan to the principal and councilor and keep it quite from the teachers and students.”

By this time Sally was pulling into a parking spot in a somewhat run down shopping plaza on the edge of town. It looked like half the store spaces were available for lease, but there were a couple teen clothing stores still open.

As she locked the car she told her daughters, “There aren’t as many options here as at the mall, but this should be good enough for the time being. Maybe we can check out the mall this weekend and see what we can find there.”

Nodding to her mother Patty stepped into the store while her stomach did flip flops.

Tara immediately knew something was wrong. She looked at the jar of ash in her hand, but couldn’t see anything wrong with it. It just felt wrong to her.

She spent quite a while going through all her belongings at the church, looking for any clues as to what had happened. Nothing seemed out of place, but it continued to feel wrong.

While she searched she pushed back the dark energies flowing through her from somewhere else. It was second nature to her to resist the influence of others. She didn’t even notice that it was much easier to resist now than it had been a few hours earlier. She had barely registered the spike in darkness flowing through her earlier. Now that energy began to build again, slowly.

After searching all over the church and not finding anything she realized she would have to use the option of last resort. That was to try to connect to the energy of the curse tied to the contents of the jar. Setting out her candles and brazier, she lit a bit of incense.

Smelling the rich spices filling the air, she began to chant and focus her energy.

Patty couldn’t believe how the dress was making her feel. It was a pale yellow dress with thin straps holding it up. Pink flowers dotted a band of white that stretched from the bottom of her breasts to her belly button.

The feelings that had started to creep back into her were both embarrassing and exciting at the same time. It seemed that each time she tried on another dress or skirt, her arousal gently increased. She wasn’t a dripping, panting mess like this morning, but her nipples had become somewhat firm and her whole body glowed with the increasing arousal.

“Hey, sweetie, can you try on this last blouse with the white skirt you tried earlier? Then we can start looking for some undies for you to wear. Okay?” Sally asked as she handed a blue silky blouse over the top of the changing room.

“Sure mom! This one looks like it might feel amazing.”

Patty slipped the dress over her head and looked down at herself for the hundredth time this afternoon. It seemed she couldn’t quite get enough of staring at her own curves in the mirror. When looking down they were still interesting, but gazing straight ahead she was able to pretend for a moment that she wasn’t looking at herself. Every time she did that she would feel her skin begin to tingle slightly.

As she slid the silky blouse over her head and down her body she thought to herself, “If I’m not careful, I could grow addicted to these feelings.“

Sliding the white skirt up her legs, she stepped out of the changing room to allow her mother and sister see how she looked.

“Oooo, That looks gorgeous on you sis!” Lily exclaimed with excitement, looking at where the short skirt stopped midway down her sister’s thighs. She knew that not all of Patty’s excitement was because of the clothes.

“Okay, okay. I surrender! You are better at knowing what a teen girl should wear! Stop rubbing it in!” Sally told her older daughter.

Sally had been concerned about how revealing the clothes were that Lily was choosing, but after a couple hours the girls had worn her down. She now admitted that what Lily was making Patty try on did, in fact, seem to match what she saw other girls wearing now. She just wished Lily would stop reveling in her victory.

“Alright, lets grab some undies and get out of here,” Sally said with a sigh as she started to get up.

Tara gasped as she tried for the third time to sense the jar’s energy. This time she had resorted to following the energy line from herself through the curse to the jar. As she plunged her senses into to the flow she immediately noticed a couple things wrong with it.

First of all, there was WAY too much sexual energy flowing, enough to make her entire body buzz with arousal the instant she touched it. The sudden shock of her pussy growing hot and wet, as well as her nipples hardening to pebbles, was almost enough to break her concentration. She pushed back against the tendrils of red pulsing energy and felt her body relax, if not back to a completely calm state.