Erith jerked clothes from her bureau in huge arm loads like a lion devouring its prey, tossing them into the corner like discarded garbage. Fury found its way into her brain, wedging itself between the lingering shame and humiliation she felt from Blackwell's burning accusation.

"How could Agnes do this to me?" she ranted, willing her wrath to gush forth like rainwater rushing though a gully after a storm, "How could she? Then she disappears without so much as uttering a syllable in my defense, leaving me to take the heat alone. She's the one who insisted I wear the damn dress with her promises of good luck."

Angrily, she took a jar of Marie Laveau's face cream and hurled it against the wall shattering it into a million pieces. "I'll get her," she wailed in a shrill, high-pitched voice, continuing to mutter to herself. "The bitch, the slut, the whore, with all her talk about an Irish girl in Irish green. She got me into this mess and then left me, like a rat deserting a sinking ship."