*Let's play a game called 'let's pretend that Hazel was in third grade when Gaia started screwing around with her mother'*

Disclaimer: I don't own the following characters.

Voodoo

It was a dark day, as if the lightest day of the year -Mardi Gras- hadn't been a few days ago. Most people weren't drunk and loopy anymore, moods had fallen back from the spike, the streets were cleaned up and dark storm clouds had been hovering all over the city.

Hazel's mood was like that lately. You could blame that on Queen Marie's own mood for that, actually. She'd been muttering her days away lately. When she wasn't with a client she was muttering. In front of Hazel, behind Hazel, at night, during the day, but always about Hazel. Or poisoned child as she seemed to have become. Rotten child. As if she weren't there to hear it, as if she weren't there to hurt… The Voice inside Mother was aggressive. Maybe that's the poisoned one, Hazel thought.

Mother hadn't thought that about her before, had she? Those thoughts weren't really inside her, were they? It was the Voice. The voice putting the words in her mind: Hazel's mother didn't really hate her. She couldn't. She just had to be saved from what was being put in her mind.

Sammy was the one to give her the idea as they walked home from the stables. He was helping her pick hay out of her hair. They'd been throwing it at each other, but Queen Marie would freak if she saw it and Sammy knew.

Anyways, he had stopped in front of a store window, where the owner was putting out candles. He looked at the little orange burst for a second, as if mesmerised. Then it died.

"It's so stupid; people light fires, complain when they grow and burn like they're made to do, and then they put them out." He said.

Put them out. Get rid of it. That's what she was supposed to do! She had to stop the Voice! But how?

Queen Marie herself had provided her daughter with the last puzzle piece once Hazel crossed her mother's clients when she reached the part of the walk where she shooed Sammy away, promising that she'd be fine. They were two rich white boys who just wanted to believe in gris-gris and hokum.

"I hope this voodoo thing works. I can't stand Yaxley, and the sooner he stops thinking that he's the best…" One said.

When Hazel used to be small, Queen Marie would let her sit on a bench behind her and watch her work with the clients- as long as she made no noise whatsoever, and didn't squirm too much. She'd seen Queen Marie do voodoo before. Maybe she could remember everything about it, do it herself, and make mother think good thoughts instead of bad.

Hazel didn't know the exact spell, but she gave it a go.

She couldn't risk stealing one of the real dolls, so she made her own with newspaper and glue wrapped around two sticks, made into a cross. She made a big risk and she snuck to her Mother's bed while she was sleeping and snipped off some hair, from the back where she wouldn't see it. But Hazel needed something from the person she wanted to put the spell on- that was the number one rule of voodoo. And Hazel was taking no chance when the Voice was involved.

She tacked the hair on the doll, and looked at it without exactly knowing how to proceed after that.

So maybe Hazel's memory was blurry. She didn't know everything about voodoo like her mother did, but she remembered that ingredients and pins and actions always meant things. Like, rose petals made love potions. Young girls' hair made for good luck.

She had to move slowly and quietly and check often to see if mother was still sleeping. If not, Queen Marie would wake up, the voices would take control, and Hazel would be in so much danger and trouble… But she gathered what she could come up with, and spread everything

First; she opened up the beets. Hazel didn't understand why they even had any- she and her mother both hated them, and it wasn't like there was anybody else that ever came over to eat. Not even Sammy. But there was always, and as far as Hazel could remember had always been, a jar of beets in the kitchen somewhere. They were probably expired by now. Hazel wouldn't eat them either way. But they served their purpose.

She dunked her make-shift voodoo doll in the jar of beets, letting the juice seep in. It made horrible stains- Hazel knew firsthand since beets had put that big red stain on her church dress. Mother hadn't been happy… When Hazel took the doll out the newspaper was soggy, but pink. The colour of love. She figured that it'd dry.

Next she went into the kitchen and sneaked around, looking for sugar. She found the bowl and sprinkled some over the doll so her mom would start acting sweet instead of harsh. Unfortunately, when Hazel licked her fingers clean she grimaced. That was salt! Oh well, it was close enough. If Hazel hadn't been able to tell the difference, she doubted that the great voodoo spirits would see one. She didn't think that spirits must have a lot of observation skills and brains.

She also wanted her mother to be happy, so she took one of the markers she was supposed to keep especially for school (this was more important than school wasn't it?) and drew a smile on the doll. Because of the beet juice the ink ran down the doll's head, like a crying woman's makeup. Whatever, the thought was there right? She let it be.

Hazel had heard Mrs. Valdez say that people who hit their kids were heartless that one day that Gordy Smith's dad had hit him right outside the schoolyard when he'd gotten a detention, and Sammy had told his mom all about it. Well, Mom had slapped Hazel the other day when she'd spilled a pitcher of water and had nearly taken out a bunch of tarot cards. So she cut a paper heart out of her homework. Mrs. Leer would get so angry at Hazel for it, but it was a sacrifice worth making. She used a pin to fasten the heart onto the doll, and then she cursed herself. Pins were to hurt people, to cause pain. They were used for black magic- dark stuff. Even Queen Marie didn't deal with that kind of magic.

Well, she was attaching a heart with that pin after all. Hazel figured that it balanced everything out and made the pin okay.

She heard the floorboards creak and she froze, like a deer who'd been spotted in the forest. Queen Marie was up! She should have ran and scrambled or at the very least crashed on the floor and played dead. Maybe she could have faked being a really elaborated sleepwalker.

Queen Marie wandered into the kitchen, squinting at the light.

"Hazel, what are you doing up at this hour?" She asked looking at the mess of paper scraps, spilled beet juice, shredded newspaper, salt spilled from the big bowl...

"Nothing," Hazel said quickly. But her mother's eyes had already found the doll in Hazel's hands.

"No, no, no," she said quickly. She swooped in, took the doll from Hazel's hands and started unraveling it.

Hazel felt like the exact same thing was being done to her heart.

"Hazel Elizabeth Levesque, I don't know what you think you're doing right there but it better not be what I think it is." She said tossing the pieces of the carefully fabricated doll one by one into the can.

"Don't..." Hazel said weakly. Her mother didn't even hear her, she just kept going.

"Voodoo is some pretty intense magic and I don't want you messing with it. God knows what you could accidentally do what with your... Go to bed right now. And make sure I don't ever catch you playing with this stuff ever again, understood?"

"It doesn't matter," Hazel said softly.

"You're lucky I'm not washing your mouth with soap for that attitude young lady. I am your mother and what I say does too ma..."

"It doesn't matter if I try voodoo again," Hazel said. "It's hokum. It doesn't work."

Queen Marie stopped ripping the pieces off the doll.

"Yes. You're right. It is hokum."

She tossed the doll into the garbage can,

"But I still don't want you getting your hands dirty with this stuff. For goodness sake, is that beet juice? It doesn't matter. Go off to bed."

Hazel, miserable as ever- her one chance destroyed, walked out of the kitchen. Her steps were quick. She was trying to outrun the tears.

Marie took a deep breath and shook her head. What had gotten into that child? Whatever it was, she hoped it was out and gone. This career -as a fortune teller, voodoo queen... It wasn't good. It was foul and it involved an awful lot of lying and scheming and fraud. If Hazel got it into her head that it was good, she might get interested in the cards and the crystals and Marie couldn't have that.

She wanted more for that child. She'd change her own path at any given moment if she could be a respectable person, and she didn't want her daughter to suddenly get on that same path and have these same regrets.

No. Hazel could not get involved in this spirit business.

Not more than she already was... That part always pained her. Hazel was already up to her knees in darkness and the bizarre and there was nothing anyone could do about it. It was just the way she was born- like maybe she'd been cursed even before the gems had started going sour last year. And that would get her in so much trouble and pain, she could feel it. And who wanted trouble and pain for their child? Not her, anyways.

Marie would protect her child from any further harm than her blood would undoubtedly plunge her in. And that meant no voodoo.