“Tommy!” She gasps, hand clamped over her mouth, surprised that I knew, surprised that she just blurted that out.
I smile, having already seen it myself. “He was real to you, right? Helped you through some hard times?”
She looks at me, eyes going wide as she shakes her head and says, “Yes—he—well—I used to have nightmares.” She lifts her shoulders and gazes around as though embarrassed to be confessing all this. “Back when my parents were divorcing, well, everything was so unstable, financially, emotionally, and that’s when Tommy appeared—and he promised to help me get through it, to keep all the monsters away—and he did. I think I stopped seeing him around the time I turned—”
“Ten.” I rise from my seat, a visual indication that this session is over and she should do the same. “Which, to be honest, is a little older than most, but still, you didn’t need him anymore and so he—went away.” I nod, opening the door and gesturing her into the hall where she’ll hopefully head on over toward the register and pay.
Only she doesn’t head for the register. Instead, she turns to me and says, “You have got to meet my friend. Seriously. She’ll flip. She doesn’t really believe in this stuff, in fact, she made fun of me for coming, but we’re having dinner later, a double date, and, well—” She pauses to glance at her watch, grinning at me when she says, “Well, actually, she should be here now, if not soon.”
“I’d love to.” I smile like I really do mean it. “But I have to be somewhere and—”
“Oh, that’s her over there! Perfect!”
I sigh and gaze down at my feet, wishing I could use my manifesting skills to make people pay up and disappear—or at least just this once anyway.
Sensing my plans are about to be pushed back even further, but having no idea how much further until she cups her hands around her mouth and calls out, “Sabine! Hey, over here, I’ve got someone you’ve just got to meet!”
My whole body goes cold. Frozen, solid, and cold. Like: Hello, iceberg, meet the Titanic kind of cold.
And before I can stop it, before I can do anything about it, Sabine is heading right toward me. At first not recognizing me as me, and not because I’m wearing that black wig, because I’m not, I gave that up a long time ago when I decided it made Avalon look like a freak, but because I’m pretty much the absolute last person she ever expected to see. In fact, she’s still squinting and blinking even after she’s standing right before me with Munoz at her side, who, by the way, looks just about as panicked as I feel.
“Ever?” Sabine gazes at me as though she’s just awoken from a very deep sleep. “Wha—” She shakes her head as though to clear it of cobwebs and starting all over again. “What on earth is going on here? I don’t understand.”
“Ever?” Her friend glances between us, her eyes squinched, darting, suspicious. “But—but I thought you said your name was Avalon?”
I take a deep breath and nod, knowing it’s all over now. My carefully crafted life of lying, hiding, and secret hoarding has resulted in this. “It is Avalon.” I nod, avoiding Sabine’s gaze. “But, it’s also Ever—depending.”
“Depending on what?” my client squawks, as though she’s been personally and deeply offended and wronged. Her aura suddenly flaming, wavering, as though she doubts not only me but everything I just spent the last hour telling her, no matter how spot-on my predictions were. “Just who the heck are you?” she says, looking at me as though she’s about to report me to—well, she hasn’t decided yet—but someone, someone will get a report, that’s for sure.
But Sabine’s back on her game, her voice calm, collected, and just a tad attorney-like, when she says, “Ever’s my niece. And apparently she has a lot to explain.”
And just as I’m about to do just that—well, not explain exactly or at least not in the way that she wants—but still, just as I’m about to say something that’ll hopefully calm everyone down and put an end to all this, Jude makes his way over and says, “Everything go all right with your reading?”
I glance at my client, Sabine’s friend, knowing that with my energy now so improved, so super-charged with the cleansing and healing meditations Ava’s been putting me through, it was one of my best readings ever—and yet I failed to predict this. But also seeing how reluctant she is to pay for it now, now that she knows me as her friend’s juvenile delinquent niece who moonlights as Avalon, the Shady Psychic Reader, I don’t even give her the chance to respond, I just jump in and say, “Uh, no worries, this one’s on me.” Jude squints, his eyes darting between us, but I just nod firmly and add, “Seriously. No worries. I’ve got it covered.”
But while that seems to settle the client, if not Jude, it doesn’t do much for Sabine whose aura is in an uproar and whose eyes are severely narrowed on mine. “Ever? Don’t you have something to say for yourself?”
I take a deep breath and meet her gaze. Yeah, I’ve got plenty to say but not here and not now. There’s someplace I need to be!
And I’m just about to say something to that effect, only nicer, gentler, in a way that won’t piss her off any more than she already is, when Munoz jumps to my aid and says, “I’m sure you two can discuss this in the morning, but for now, we really should go. We don’t want to risk losing our reservation after it was so hard to get.”
Sabine sighs, conceding to the wisdom in Munoz’s argument but still unwilling to let me off the hook quite so easily. The words coming from behind clenched teeth when she says, “Tomorrow morning, Ever. I expect to see you first thing in the morning.” Then, seeing the expression on my face, she adds, “No buts.”
I nod, even though I’ve no plans to make that appointment. If things go the way I plan, then tomorrow morning I’ll be about as far from that kitchen table as it gets. Instead, I’ll be spraw
led out in a suite at the Montage with Damen beside me, the two of us finally fulfilling those long-ago plans . . .
But it’s not like I’m about to tell her that, so instead I just nod and say, “Um, okay.” Well aware that as a trial attorney, she always insists on a verbal response, that way the meaning can’t be twisted or misconstrued. And just when I think that the worst is over—or at least for now anyway, she insists I apologize to her friend—as though I committed some crime against her. But even though I know I’ll pay for it later, that I won’t do.
Instead, I just look at her and say, “None of this changes what I told you in there.” I gesture toward the back room. “Your past, Tommy, your future—you know what I said is true. Oh, and about that choice you have coming up?” I glance between her and her date. “Well, as much as you may doubt me right now, you’d still be wise to heed my advice.”
I glance at Sabine, watching as her aura flares up in a bout of anger that’s just barely subdued by the presence of Munoz’s arm slipping tightly around her waist. Winking at me conspiratorially, he turns her away from me and out the door as their friends follow behind.
The second they’re gone Jude looks at me and says, “Dude, that was some seriously bad mojo that just went down in here. I feel like I should smudge the place with some sage to help clear it out.” He shakes his head. “What gives? I thought you’d told her by now?”
I look at him. “Are you kidding? You saw what just happened. That’s exactly the kind of scene I was hoping to avoid.”
He shrugs, counting up the cash in the drawer as he says, “Well, maybe it would’ve gone better if you’d warned her, if she hadn’t felt so sucker punched when she walked in and saw you were working here—giving readings no less.”