Wild Man's Curse (Wilds of the Bayou #1) by Susannah Sandlin Page B

felt the need to lock the place.
    Maybe she’d really splurge with the paranoia and buy a new deadbolt while she was in Houma.
    It occurred to her, as she rounded the porch to reach the driveway and the old pickup, that Tante Eva had once owned a boat. Anyone living out here with a lick of sense would have a boat, since the roads went underwater so easily. Maybe when Nonc LeRoy had decided to put on his walking shoes, he’d taken off in the boat and that’s how Tante Eva ended up with the pickup. Had they worked out who’d keep what, or had LeRoy just left, or had Eva thrown him out?
    Those answers, Ceelie figured she’d never know.
    She did get some answers at the probate office, however. Since Tante Eva had died without a will, and Celestine Savoie was listed as the only surviving next of kin on the sheriff’s paperwork and the death certificate, Ceelie only had to fill out a pile of forms and wait for ownership of the cabin and its contents to officially transfer to her. That was the smaller portion of her inheritance; the most valuable was the title to ten acres of land in Terrebonne Parish. The transfer process would take about a month, if no one showed up to contest it after the notice ran in the Houma paper.
    Just like that, she was a property owner. Never mind that most of her ten acres was swamp. If she decided to keep it, she could lease hunting rights in different seasons and make a steady little income, or at least that’s what the woman in the probate office had told her. She’d also said Ceelie would have to check with one of the local game wardens to find out the exact regulations.
    For better or worse, she knew a couple of local game wardens.
    Ceelie had spotted a Walmart on the way into Houma, so she stopped and picked up a deadbolt lock, a few groceries, and the largest container of unrefined salt she could find, just in case another flying bag of feathers gave her the willies and she felt the need to cast some more serious juju.
    Ceelie would try to be mature about the whole bad-vibe thing, but at the end of the day, she was Eva Savoie’s great-niece and had learned at a young age about the protective powers of a handful of Morton Salt, preferably without iodine.
    Speaking of protection, Ceelie sat in the Walmart parking lot and reconsidered the wisdom of buying a gun, although she’d noticed a couple of sporting-goods stores and a gun shop on the way into Houma. It had been so long since she’d fired one, however, that she stood a good chance of ending up as one of those idiots brought into the emergency room after having shot off her own toes. Plus she had no medical insurance.
    No gun, then. She climbed out of the truck and went back inside the Walmart, this time heading for the sporting-goods department. It took less than a minute for her to admit she knew nothing about knives and throw herself on the mercy of a bored store employee with a nametag that read “Dave.”
    “What you need depends on what you want to use it for,” Dave said, settling his focus on her chest. Dickhead. “You wantin’ to skin a boar or peel a tater?”
    Ceelie narrowed her eyes. “I want it to use on an intruder in my house out on Whiskey Bayou, seeing as how my Tante Eva Savoie the voodoo queen has been murdered,” she said, giving him a sweet smile in response to his widening eyes. “You know, as a fail-safe to cut out his heart with in case my own spell doesn’t work.”
    Five minutes later, she was back in the truck with a brutal-looking tactical knife that would make a much better bed-buddy than the rusty old ax. She also had a scrap of paper on which Dave the Walmart salesman had scribbled his phone number. Turned out he was fascinated by voodoo rather than fearful of it, was turned on by a woman with enough confidence to cut out a beating heart, and thought they could have some fun together.
    Ceelie thought so too. When hell froze over. She wadded up Dave’s phone number and threw it in a Dumpster on