by Alex Rivers
Instinctively I knew he was going to Ronald’s apartment.
I decided not to stay around to see what happened when he got there. My anger gone, the flames on my hands had shimmered away to nothing. I whipped the chain off my bike, leaped onto it, and furiously pedaled away.
Chapter Three
My second client, and a childhood friend, billed herself as “Madame Isabella King, Psychic and Tarot Reader,” but I called her Isabel.
“You want some sugar in your tea, hon?” she called from the back room.
“No thanks,” I called back, glancing at the eerie human skull in the corner of the table. I wanted to believe it was a plastic model, meant to instill an atmosphere of mystery and of the occult.
It seemed kinda real, though. Creepy bugger.
Isabel’s shop was definitely selling the cryptic and mysterious fortune-teller vibe. The general decor was crimson velvet everywhere, accompanied by beads, bones, and candlelight. There were several runes etched into the thick wooden surface of the oval table where I sat. I knew many runes, and these were what we in the magical community called “squiggles” and “doodles.” I should know: I had helped to carve them.
Isabel returned from the back room, smiling warmly and carrying two mugs of tea. She was twenty-five, her skin reddish-brown. Her eyes were almond-shaped, and I knew them to narrow sweetly when she was amused. She wore a shocking bright pink lipstick, the color of a cheeky flamingo. As she approached me, the beads at the tips of her braids clicked together. She was dressed in a loose white blouse and a patchwork skirt that would have looked ridiculous on anyone else, but somehow suited her perfectly. She had a pink shawl draped over the blouse, matching her lipstick.
She set the teacup in front of me, and I took a careful sip from it. It was jasmine tea, and my entire body began relaxing after the Big Dumb Dan incident and the hectic bicycle ride that had followed.
“That tastes great.” I shut my eyes and leaned back. “And much needed, thanks.”
“How are you doing, Lou?” Isabel asked. She had a deep voice I privately envied. My own voice was too high, shrill when I was angry. A woman with Isabel’s voice could get people to take her seriously without resorting to turning themselves into a walking nightmare.
“I’m doing fine,” I said lazily and sipped again.
I was stretching the meaning of the word “fine” to its very limits.
In this case, “fine” meant I owed money to one of the worst people in Boston. His name was Anthony Cisternino, but after an interesting and bloody incident in his past, he had been nicknamed “Breadknife.” Then, as nicknames tend to do, it became a strange middle name, morphing him into Anthony “Breadknife” Cisternino. Sometimes people called him ABC, attaching the sing-song voice as if they were about to recite the entire alphabet. No one did it to his face, though, unless they wanted to be reminded what the B stood for.
The debt had been an idiotic mistake—money I’d thought I could easily return in a week. But a disastrous alchemical accident set fire to half my store shortly after I took the money, and the debt remained unpaid, growing each week like a malignant balloon.
I was barely scraping together enough to pay the debt’s interest, not to mention the original hefty sum. So Breadknife and his employees showed up every month to collect that interest. It was a visit I did not relish, and it was due tomorrow.
Also, because of this drain on my finances, I couldn’t afford to buy new supplies, which meant I was running out. Running out of ingredients, for an alchemist, is generally considered “not fine.”
“Totally fine,” I repeated. “How are you?”
“Meh.” Isabel sipped from her tea. “The internet is killing me.”
What she meant was that the online psychic market was slowly running her out of business. People couldn’t be bothered anymore to go to a fortune-teller’s shop, with all the accessories and knickknacks. They’d just get a psychic on a chat, and get a full reading in ten minutes for a tenth of the price.
Isabel had inherited her skills from her grandmother, and had learned the secrets of the trade from her. Now Isabel had a hard time reconciling what she’d learned from her grandma with the modern version that her clients needed. These days it was less “try to empty your mind and connect with your client’s soul” and more “it’s really important to get those five star reviews.” I’d heard her complain about this before, and I nodded in commiseration.
“Well,” I said, picking up my backpack from the floor and unzipping it. “Maybe these will help you get some new clients.”
I retrieved three crystals, laying them carefully on the table. They pulsed with an eerie azure light, casting a glow that reflected on Isabel’s face as she watched them, mesmerized.
“Oh, Lou,” she whispered, picking one up. “These are… beautiful.”
I smiled. I wasn’t one to toot my own horn, but…
Who was I kidding. Tooting my own horn was one of my favorite hobbies. If there was tooting to be done, you could count on me to be there. Tooting. My horn.
These crystals were perfect. The crystallization process took nearly three weeks, and I had diligently checked their progression each day, making minute corrections to the salty solution. It was a master’s work; you couldn’t get it from a second-rate alchemist.
“They let you communicate with the dead,” I said. “If you’re already in tune with the spirit world.”
I wasn’t a psychic; when I had tried to use them, all I got was a monstrous headache. But I assumed Isabel would fare better.
“Are you going to use them to talk to your… family?” I asked delicately.
Like me, Isabel was an orphan. But despite that, she never ceased talking about her ancestors as if they were living and breathing. She visited them regularly. More than twenty of Isabel’s family members were buried in the King family mausoleum. I had been there with her several times myself, when we were younger.
“I don’t know.” Her face was lost in thought.
I cleared my throat. “Okay! Two hundred each, like I told you.” Normally, I’d charge three hundred, but Isabel and I went way back. Two hundred was just enough to cover the ingredient cost.
She hesitated. “Listen hon, I’m having a bit of a cash flow problem at the moment. Can I pay you next week?”
I shut my eyes, cursing inwardly. I should have known. The way she hesitated when she first asked for them, the widening of her almond-shaped eyes as I named the price. I had known Isabel for long enough that it should have been obvious. But I’d blindly followed along, wanting to help a friend.
“Damn it, Isabel,” I muttered. “ABC is paying me a visit tomorrow. I need this cash.”
“You owe money to Breadknife?” Her eyes widened. “Lou, after all we went through with that bastard—”
“It was an accident,” I protested. “I was about to pay him back, but then there was that fire in my shop half a year ago… and things kinda went to hell after that.”
“Aw, shit.” Isabel muttered.
I nodded and sipped my jasmine tea. It didn’t taste so great anymore.
“Listen,” she finally said, rummaging in a small purse. “I have a hundred and fifty. So maybe I can buy only one crystal, and pay you the rest later? Would that be enough?” She retrieved a few crumpled notes.
I did a mental calculation. Since I had collected an extra hundred from Ronald, one-fifty would be just enough for ABC. It would mean I didn’t have enough for rent, but that was a problem for another day. “Okay.” I plucked the bills from her fingers.
“I’ll give you a reading, free of charge,” Isabel said, her voice apologetic.
“You always give me readings free of charge. Anyway, there’s no need, I know my future. It’s fucked.”
She had already retrieved the pack of tarot cards from a shelf behind her. “I’m sure it’s not, hon. You’re the most resourceful person I know. You’ll make it work. Let’s ask the cards how you’ll fare this month
. You’ll see—it’ll be much better than you think.”
I sighed as I watched her deftly shuffling the cards, her nimble fingers a blur. Then she held the deck for me. “Cut it.”
I pried the top card from the deck and held it to her, grinning.
“Always a smart-ass,” she muttered, taking the card and sliding it under the pack. She picked up the topmost card. “This is your current situation.” She flicked the card onto the table.
“Hardly surprising,” I muttered as I peered at the Fool. He was walking blithely, approaching the edge of a cliff, holding a flower.
She tapped a long, pink-painted fingernail on the card. “Nothing goes as planned. A situation that seemed straightforward turns out to be slippery. Your plans are foiled, and the best you can do is move along, laughing about it.”
“Gee, Isabel, you think? Could you be talking about the money that isn’t in my purse right now?”
“The second card,” Isabel said, ignoring my tone, “is the challenge ahead of you.”
She flicked another card on the table. The Emperor. Sitting on his throne, looking generally pissed.
“A strong, powerful man,” Isabel muttered uncomfortably. “One who cannot be resisted.”
I frowned at the card. It seemed the same as always, but when the light of the candles flickered, the emperor’s scepter looked like a knife, and his face bore an uncanny resemblance to Anthony Cisternino’s. I leaned to look closer, and the illusion faded away. My own subconscious playing dumb tricks on me.
“The third card will be your guidance,” Isabel said, trying to be cheerful, and flicked the final card.
I glanced at it, half expecting to see Death, and felt a moment of confusion. It depicted an enormous eye, burning with an unnatural flame, green scales around it. It almost seemed as if the card depicted only the eye because there wasn’t enough room for the entire creature on it.
“The Dragon?” I asked. “I didn’t know that was an actual card.”
She stared back at me, her face paler than I had ever seen it. “It isn’t,” she muttered. “Lou, what did you do to my deck? Is this your idea of a joke?”
“Nothing, Isabel, I swear!”
She picked up the cards, her fingers trembling so hard she dropped the deck. They spilled on the table, their faces up. I gawked at the chaotic spread, trying to make sense of what I saw. I knew almost none of these cards: The Lingering Shadow. The Closed Box. The Secret. Betrayal. Chaos.
My eyes scanned the cards, trying to piece them together, as if they were a picture book. The images were drenched in suffering and fear. There were six different cards depicting Death. Amidst them all, a card with a familiar figure caught my eye: a man in a long trench coat, standing in the darkness. I reached for that card, to look at it more closely.
Isabel snatched it away, and scooped the rest of the cards from the table. “I… I need you to go, hon,” she whispered.
“Isabel, what—”
“Please, Lou. Just go.”
“Sure.” I tried to shake off the uneasy feeling in my gut. Zipping my backpack closed, I stood up. “I told you my future is fucked.”
Chapter Four
I was brooding as I cycled back home, thinking of Isabel’s card reading, and her reaction. The cards had surprised her. Which meant either someone was messing with Isabel… or the reading had been spot on.
I had never seen her so scared.
That was saying something. When we were teenagers, our lives were practically laced with fear. We were living on the street, fighting for survival, the cold and hunger constant threats. If it weren’t for Isabel’s talent for spotting threats in advance, I shudder to think how our lives would have ended.
Finally, after nearly dying of cold one night, Isabel, Sinead, and I realized we had to get off the street. We could let the authorities take charge of our lives, which would mean we’d go back to foster care. Instead we decided to ask Anthony “Breadknife” Cisternino for help. It’s sad to note that we preferred a man nicknamed “Breadknife” to foster care. Unlike in our previous experiences with foster care, Breadknife would let us stay together, would not abuse us, and would feed us well.
In return, we just had to do what he asked.
This turned out to be a raw deal. Breadknife’s demands often got us hurt. They got other people hurt as well. The cold and hunger were gone, but the fear remained.
But Isabel had always seemed to withstand fear quite well. At least, until tonight. The cards had spooked her.
I was deep in thought, which is probably why I wasn’t on my guard. Or maybe I was just getting soft. Three years before, I would have noticed that there was something wrong a hundred yards before reaching the door of my shop. I would have smelled it, felt the hair rising on the back of my neck, tasted the bitter taste of adrenaline on my tongue. Living under Breadknife’s thumb, you had to be always on your toes, had to stay tuned to your five senses and your sixth one as well. But now I was oblivious, music blaring in my earphones, and I hadn’t noticed the four thugs until it was too late.
Here is what “too late” looks like: By the time I hit the brakes on my bicycle, two men were blocking the way to my shop, while two more were closing off my escape route from behind. One of the men in front of me held a gun, pointed right at my face. It was gripped lazily, the one holding it clearly believing a gun in hand gave you complete control.
Hard to argue with that logic, really. Still, no reason to let them feel like it.
His lips were moving. He said something, his face intense. Presumably it was something like “Your money or your life,” or “Well, look what we have here,” or maybe “Did you ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?” Whichever the case, it was all the same to me, because what I actually heard was Taylor Swift singing that she goes back to December all the time. I raised my finger apologetically, and he blinked, his monologue cut short.
“Sorry,” I said, removing my earphones. “The music was too loud. Could you repeat that?”
He looked deflated and angry. Perhaps he had practiced his terrifying speech in front of the mirror, imagining the scared look in his victim’s eyes. Now I’d ruined the moment, his fifteen seconds of glory as a badass criminal.
While he gathered his thoughts, I took in the situation. One of the thugs behind me was a woman holding a long knife. She wore black pants, black coat, and black lipstick. Cheerful. Her friend was a bit young, and chewed gum like he was making a statement with it. Maybe something like “I like my gum like I like people: chewed up.” The two men in front of me were bullies’ versions of Laurel and Hardy—thin and short, fat and tall. Laurel, the thin one, was holding the gun. Hardy was unarmed, but really, when your fists were like sledgehammers, there was no need.
“I told my friends here,” Laurel grunted, “that a young woman shouldn’t be walking alone so late in a neighborhood like this.”
“I’m not walking, I’m riding my bicycle.”
The loud gum-chewer snickered. The sound of his chewing got on my nerves. Also, I had to admit that, bravado aside, I was scared. The gun pointed at me was no joke. I still had some nightmare cigarettes in my pocket, but it was likely that Laurel would shoot me if I turned into a nightmarish hag, so that was out of the question. My hand began to get hot, uncomfortably so, and wisps of smoke smoldered from my palm. Damn it, not now.
Laurel clenched his jaw. “Tell you what, girl. You give us that bag, and your phone, and we let you go on home unmolested. How does that sound?”
I eyed the muzzle carefully, then raised my eyes back to Laurel. He quirked an eyebrow.
“Sounds fair,” I said, carefully getting off the bicycle. I leaned it against the wall, then unshouldered my backpack, taking a step toward Laurel, bag held high. He lowered the gun slightly, holding up his own hand.
“Oh!” I took another step forward. “I forgot. My economics essay is in here—I have to turn it in tomorrow, so just let me take it out. You guys don’t need it. I mea
n, it’s not like you care about my report on the laws of supply and demand, right?” I opened the bag, rummaging in it distractedly, taking another step toward Laurel. “Not that it’s a very good essay, anyway. Probably a C minus at best. My professor is a real asshole; I think he gives pretty girls low grades just so they come and complain to him personally. He’s just so sleazy—he makes you guys look like model citizens. Ugh, I swear, I can’t find anything in this bag. I don’t know why I need so much stuff inside—”
I slammed the backpack into the gun, forcing it aside, and kicked Laurel in what my grandmother would have called his “man-grapes.” True to his black and white counterpart, Laurel opened his mouth and closed it without making a sound as he crumpled to the floor.
I let the backpack drop, clutching my silver chain in one hand, a small vial in the other. Holding my breath, I shattered the vial on the floor.
With a sudden hiss, thick gray smoke rose from the broken vial. It enveloped all of us, making my eyes water as the smoke itched at them. Behind me I heard Gum-Chewer and Black Lipstick Girl gasping as they inhaled the smoke. Which was not something they should have done.
It was bottled sadness. Inhaling it evoked—depending on the amount you breathed in—gloominess, melancholy, depression, grief, and, in certain cases, a wave of incapacitating hopelessness.
I took a step back and turned around to face Lipstick and Gum. Gum sobbed and coughed, tears trickling down his cheeks, his shoulders shaking, and I decided he wasn’t a problem for now. Black Lipstick Girl’s eyes were wet, her breath wheezing from the smoke, but other than that, she was still armed and dangerous. The wave of misery hadn’t taken her by surprise. Perhaps sorrow was something she was accustomed to, carried with her constantly. It would definitely explain her fashion taste.
She lunged at me, knife thrust forward. I fumbled backward, not fast enough. It cut my shirt, and a sharp pain shot through my waist. I lashed at her clumsily with my chain, and she ducked. She was crying, the sorrow deep in her, but it didn’t dampen her reflexes.
