Haunted Devotion

1.

Often people mistake your looks and your charm to be used in other pressing matters but when you flash them a badge that says, Relish Organization, they tend to freeze up as that name brings all paranormal suspicion to light, especially curses.

What do I mean? Well, the Relish Organization was built based around the curse that was placed on my family from generations to generations.

It has a name, it's called the Chaser of death curse.

Sounds like a bad cocktail name to me but very real.

All my family has died because of it and my parents being the last victims of it by making sure I wasn't taken by it too.

My parents had gotten a read from a woman named Rowen, before they knew their time was up, who told them our family had been cursed with the Chaser of death, because of a decade of greed, which then led her to give my parents an amulet, a charm of some sort and had it made into an anklet that I always wear to be safe.

I keep it out of sight as Rowen informed my parents it could never be taken off me or touched or I would too soon meet the curse.

Now, on the way to see the Wallace's which have been a big acquaintance in the Relish business than I could remember, maybe because there were rumors Ivy Wallace had an affair with my uncle Carmine, my mom's brother, who accidentally swallowed too many grapes and died right on new years, just to get pregnant and try to gain a Relish inheritance.

Didn't work though when she found out the pool boy had more to give than uncle Carmine who had his tubes tied after he had his son Kenny who had moved to Cincinnati just to die in a boating accident.

Do you see the pattern?

Us Relishes don't live very long and die unexpectedly just as the curse intended.

Gerald, our long-term driver, is driving me to meet Hunter Wallace, who is now taking over for his mother Ivy as she's caught the saddening case of dementia.

Going through paperwork in the backseat, Gerald slides me a cigarette as he knows I need one to distress from all the filing that has to be done with the transfer Hunter has to endure to take his mother's place.

"Would be so much easier if they would lend us e-files instead of actual documentation. What year are we in? The 50's?"

Shaking my head and taking a drag from my cigarette, Gerald answers the car phone as it rings with the organization ringtone.

"Ms. Relish is meeting with the Wallace boy, she won't be in until evening time," Gerald says to whoever is wishing to see me.

The person on the other line, which is a pain in my ass, Yerlin Moore, basically HQ to the Relish Organization and not by choice as his family were henchmen to mine and so forth for decades.

Yes, decades.

How is that possible? Perks of some ancestral lines that pertain to some witchcraft and other things that people believe to be the Antichrist, which is just another word for demon or what they would like to call them vampires.

Were my family a part of either? No.

Just got into it with the wrong people who were and landed us where we are today.

"This job never gets old," I say as Gerald hangs up with the look of annoyance towards Yerlin.

After thirty minutes, we see Hunter waiting outside his estate's gate,  with welcoming flowers to butter me up to his new position.

"You would think they would get it through their thick skull that I don't like to be showered with materialistic things, not when it comes to doing business," I tell Gerald as I put out my cigarette and head out to greet Hunter.

Hunter smiles then hands me the daisies, which aren't my favorite, then proceeds to yap away about being honored to be working with me personally as he's seen his mother work just as hard supporting the Relish Organization.

"Yeah, now tomorrow you come over to my estate and I show you what exactly you'll be doing, for now just get these papers sent out and right in Yerlin's mailbox as he doesn't like things late."

Nodding, Hunter takes in all of what I'm telling him then offers me coffee or wine.

"I'm fine, just here to watch you sign and ship off that stack then heading to meet with the Elrod's," Looking for a cigarette lighter as I pull a cig out, Hunter helps by lighting it and I smile fakely then sit as he begins to fill out everything.

"How old are you by the way? People say you're too young to be running this organization all alone."

Alone...the word always seems to itch at me as I have been alone for many years now.

"Twenty- three, hardly that young if you see it as cat or dog years working in the work field that we do."

An emergency signal goes off on the pager on the side of my hip connected to the pantsuit I'm wearing.

"Speak of the Devil," I get up pointing my cigarette at him, "Don't be late with those and remember tomorrow my estate."

Leaving, flicking my cigarette to the side, Gerald opens the door for me to get in and have me taken to the location that was paged to my pager.

"Never seen these coordinates before," I say to myself, memorizing the numbers displayed on the tiny screen.

Gerald hands me a faxed message from Yerlin but I skimmed through it then sighed.

"What does he want me to do? Appear like a rabbit out of a magician's hat?"

Crumbling up the paper, I toss it to the side then get ready to deal with the unknown as I have for five years now since my parent's death.

Each time it gets easier but not the memory of being able to not  see them once I get back and just be taken in by a big empty acre of nothing but grass, fountains, a pool and a haunted mansion right in the middle of it all.