In the 1800s, a woman named Marie Leaveau operated an underground black market that centered around the occult. Known as the Voodoo queen of Louisiana, she plied her trade performing curses to selected targets, offering her services around the country to those who could afford them. This gave the buyer anonymity and left no trace that a crime was committed.

Voodoo is a specialized form of magic that works by way of controlling the actions or fate of a specific target. This is enacted through a ritual that requires multiple ingredients. The most essential of these would be something personal belongings to the target, such as an item or body part, to apply curses to them by proxy.

Through the ritual, the user created a bind between them and the target's soul, allowing them to transmit the curse. However, this doesn't come without consequence. Whatever so done to the target by the curse, the user will receive damage equivalent to that effect. If the curse causes a target to become paralyzed from the waist down, the user will receive some equal disability related to that effect (losing eyesight). If the victim dies through some disease, the user will drop dead at the end of the curse, and so on. This is why people don't go around cursing each other, as both parties would suffer in equal measure.

This obviously is not suitable as a long term business strategy for an entrepreneurial-minded witch. There's no sense in performing paid services for clients if it commits damage to herself. How can she break the system and get around this rule to make her trade profitable?