Curses of the Curse Workers Trivia Quiz

Answer: Transformation

Cassel spends the majority of his life thinking that he isn't a worker, having forgotten about the early signs of his Transformation work. As his family are all Curse Workers and work with the mob, this leads him to feel at odds with his family - as well as the fact that he has memories of committing a murder, and all he remembers feeling about it is glee.

Answer: Emotion

Shandra is an emotion worker, who frequently uses her abilities both to run cons and as a means of parenting her children when they were younger by forcing them to feel shame/regret or to force them to apologise for misdeeds. The blowback to her using her abilities causes her to be particularly emotionally unstable and as such she is often a very unpredictable character, acting on emotion.

Answer: Death

As a death worker, he used to work as an assassin for the mob. The blowback from his death curses affects his fingers, so it's very visible how many deaths he caused using death work. He's retired from the job at the time of the books, although he does kill again using his death work to protect Cassel.

Answer: Physical

Another mob enforcer of the family, Philip's job involves breaking bones of those who have angered the mob. He has a troubled marriage. Cassel feels that Philip hasn't really looked him in the eye for three years which he presumes is due to the incident where he murdered Lila. Since Lila wasn't actually murdered, it is most likely to be due to this cover-up as well as the continual use of Cassel as an unwilling assassin following this.

Answer: Memory

For many years, Cassel thought that Barron was a luck worker. In actuality, he was a memory worker who was actively altering Cassel's memories to ensure his cooperation. Cassel initially thinks that Barron is a compulsive liar, but actually the blowback from his extensive memory work is eating away at Barron's memories, which he tries to counter by keeping notebooks to remind himself of anything that he may forget. Cassel's status as an unreliable narrator is largely caused by Barron and his memory work.

Answer: Dream

Despite having been transformed into a white cat, Lila is still able to use her dream working skills to lure people to sleepwalk from their beds at night, as well as cause dreams and nightmares. When we first meet her in the books, she has caused Cassel to sleepwalk onto the roof, leading his school to believe that he may have been trying to commit suicide. Cassel, who has memories of killing Lila, is oblivious to her continued existence.

Answer: He isn't a worker

Sam isn't a worker at all. He is the first person that Cassel actively chooses to reveal his dangerous secret to, as he does actually trust Sam, although he can't help seeing him as a mark at times due to his upbringing. Sam looks after Cassel's betting operation following the sleepwalking incident at the beginning of "White Cat" that leads to Cassel needing proof that he is safe to sleep at school and won't sleepwalk onto the roof again.

Answer: Emotion

The daughter of a prominent advocate for worker rights, Daneca believes strongly in worker rights, but she's also adamant that she isn't a worker and outspoken about how emotion workers are dangerous. She is actually an emotion worker herself who does not like to use her powers. Sam feels deeply betrayed by the fact that she kept hiding that she was an emotion worker from him.

Answer: Memory

Maura keeps coming to the conclusion that she wants to leave Philip, then Barron works her to forget that she wants to leave. Since this doesn't actually deal with the issues within their marriage, Maura then ends up coming to the decision to leave again, and thus ends up getting worked again. Repeated workings can cause considerable issues: in Maura's case, it's hallucinations of music.

She does begin to recover when she goes a long time without being worked.

Answer: Luck

Interestingly, despite luck workers being the most common, it's the type of worker that we see the least within the books - at least as far as the major characters are concerned. Perhaps this is as we spend a lot of time seeing the mob perspective, where being a luck worker is possibly the least useful skillset.