The Zodiac Curse

Two years ago, a girl brought home a rabbit, and her father died. A year later she brought home a hamster, and her sister died. Now she has a dog named Lucky, and a masked woman stops her in the street with a warning: her family is under a Zodiac Curse. If a dog enters the home of someone born in the Year of the Dog, that person will die within fifteen days — and the girl is a Dog.

Her father was torn apart by an excavator; her sister was ground to bits by a mixer. The day after each death, the animal vanished. With Lucky in the house for eleven days, only four remain. The woman's parting words echo: closest kin or deadliest poison.

At home, the girl finds a locked box under her mother's bed holding two dried animal carcasses, pierced with crossed-out photos of her father and sister — and one of herself. Her cold mother, her worried grandmother, and a dream of Lucky's fangs leave her wondering who cast the curse.