“Let’s go.”
Forty-One
SAVANNAH
Zane recognized the man who answered the door — the same one from the security photos — right away. He stiffened immediately, his face contorting into a sneer of menace as I elbowed him silent.
“I’m sorry, we’re almost full for the night,” the man said, glancing over his shoulder. “But if you’re willing to wait…”
“Oh we are,” I smiled pleasantly.
“Okay then,” the man grinned back. “I’ll bring out a few more chairs.”
He led us inside, then disappeared quickly down a hall. The place was like the dozen or so ‘psychic’ homes I’d been to with my grandmother; part residence, part business. The nearest bedroom had been sacrificed for private readings, while any other clients and friends were kept rather awkwardly in the living room, to wait it out.
We walked past at least eight other people, jammed around a coffee table, sipping tea. They looked up at us strangely as we kept moving. I pulled Zane down the hallway, straight through the closed door with the ‘do not disturb’ sign pegged to it… and into a smallish room.
The woman sat at a table much like mine, across from a pair of clients. She still wore her tear-drop beaded headband, and her over-the-top chandelier earrings. Only now her gypsy’s robe was blue and black, instead of purple and gold.
“What the—”
Her expression registered surprise at first, and anger at being interrupted. But then it changed again, one last time, as recognition slowly dawned across her painted face.
“How dare you!” she growled.
I addressed the nice young couple seated across from her first. “Your reading’s over,” I said loudly. “For now, anyway.”
The couple looked startled. Hesitant and confused. Zane folded his arms across his chest and unconfused them.
“She said GET OUT.”
They scrambled past him, glancing awkwardly back at the gypsy-dressed woman. The very second they were back in the hallway, Zane kicked the door closed behind them.
“This is outrageous,” the woman snarled, rising from her chair. “You think you can just break in here like this? Cost me money on—”
“Cost you money?” I laughed in her face. “Cost YOU money?”
I pulled something heavy from my bag and slammed it down hard, right in the center of her table. So hard, she actually sat back down.
“Here’s your brick,” I snarled. “The one your friend out there threw through my window.”
The woman refused to look down at the object. Instead, her dark eyes remained focused on me.
“You owe me four hundred dollars,” I told her coldly. “It was a bit more actually, but I’m in a good mood so I’m rounding it down.”
“I’m calling the police,” the woman said simply. “I’m telling them you broke in here, and—”
Her words died as I slapped something else down on the table: the security photos. This time she did look down. Her penciled-in eyebrows went up a full inch.
“Call them,” I told her. “We’ll be happy to give them the full footage of your son smashing my window.”
The woman swallowed, bitterly. When she looked up at me again, her eyes had changed.
“He is your son, isn’t he? Or nephew. Or friend. Or whatever the—”
Just then the door rattled from the outside. The full weight of Zane prevented it from opening, even an inch.
“Mom?”