Wrong Bed Baby (Crescent Cove 10)

“Oh?” Bess moved to stand beside me. She was wearing a gorgeous siren red and black caftan that flowed around her surprisingly bomb-ass body. A few crystals glinted from her neck and ears, along with some decidedly more expensive diamonds.

“Yes. Charge your cards in the moonlight and your crystals in the sun. Some also like to do the crystals by the moon, but in my opinion, they get most of their energy from the sun.”

She touched the jagged tip of a tower of amethyst. “I’m not sure why they bring me so much happiness, but they do. And I agree, the sun makes them sparkle. Anything that happy should go together, right?”

“Exactly.”

Tabitha Monaghan came up behind me and peered over my shoulder. “Do we need to buy that many,” she whispered.

I pulled her forward, laughing at the notebook clutched in her arms. She owned Sugar Rush, the cake and confections shop in town. She’d moved into the building just before me. We’d bonded over wrestling her Christmas tree down the stairs. Chicks had to stick together.

While Forrester seemed like a pretty good landlord, his maintenance guy wasn’t on the property. And little things like helping a damsel in distress weren’t high on the coverage on our apartment app. If it wasn’t leaking, on fire, or broken, we were on our own.

It was pretty much how Tabitha, Kylie, and I had banded together.

“Taking notes?”

Tabitha pushed her glasses up her nose. “I have many questions.”

“I might have answers. Probably better ones with some of that sangria I saw on the table.”

Tabitha brightened. “Oh, it’s very good. I found the recipe on Pinterest. Mrs. Wainwright made margaritas too.”

“Bess, dear.” The older woman waved her off. “I’m already old enough to be your grandmother. Don’t make me feel any older.”

“Right.” Tabitha flushed. “It was really nice of you to put this together for our class.”

“I like to do it up in style.” Bess swayed lightly. “I also got a few of these for the next few days. I purposely did not move to Florida because I dislike this sort of heat.” She picked up her margarita and went back to the main table. “Now let’s eat then we can have our little class.”

Kylie Fisher burst through the door, looking decidedly disheveled. She tried to brush her hair out of her face. “Sorry, I’m late. I got…detained.”

Tabitha sat down in a chair on the right side of the table, then stacked cheese, pepperoni, and some sort of pickled thing. “You mean Justin detained you.”

I grinned. “Ah, young love.”

Kylie nibbled on her lower lip. “He’s very distracting.”

“So’s that hickey on your neck,” Tabitha said with a sigh before munching on her mini sandwich.

Kylie slid into the chair next to her. “Well, we can get you a guy, right?” She glanced over at me. “Can we practice a love reading maybe?”

I folded myself into one of the big round chairs. “Well, that’s half of my client calls.” I pulled my romance reading deck out of my bag, then tucked the canvas bag behind me. “Let’s start with what questions should we ask.”

“Will I find love?” Kylie asked.

I pointed at her with my hand full of cards. “Don’t be greedy. Ask the universe that and you’ll make trouble.”

Kylie’s eyes went wide. “Oh, no. I got my man. No one else can have him.”

I started shuffling. “When you’re asking the cards a question like that…” I flipped a card. “You get something like Two of Pentacles. While not a bad card, it doesn’t give you many details. This could mean you’ll find someone who will balance you. Kinda a meh reading though. And from what I know about Justin, he balances you, girl, but that probably doesn’t apply to Tabitha. So, you asked a vague question, and the cards gave you the wrong answer.”

Kylie frowned. “Okay, so more like, will Tabitha find a man soon?”

“Better, but still, soon means different things to everyone. Soon could be tomorrow or this year.”

“Can you get super specific?” Tabitha asked, her pen poised.

Something niggled deep inside of me. Teaching was heavier than I thought it would be. I could turn them away from the cards, or draw them in closer. I’d done my research when I’d first gotten into reading cards, but there was such a feel to being a tarot reader. You could learn the meanings of the cards, but if you didn’t trust yourself to interpret them, you’d never go beyond spouting off definitions by rote.