He’d been accosted by magic from three directions today. First at his grandmama’s then in revelation of the family legacy. And now, he sat in a psychic’s shop, thanks to Tara. If he was remotely superstitious, he might think the spirits were trying to tell him something.
Chapter Two
Madame Estelle’s was divided into four rooms behind a shallow front counter. Each of the girls on staff had their own room that consisted of heavy black curtains covering all four walls and a table in the middle with two chairs. The two psychics had decorated their rooms in gypsy-like, jewel-toned colors with colorful rugs, fringe on everything, and candles.
Adrienne St. Croix was too new to have decorated her room yet, though she made another mental note to bring in something to fill the empty space. Sometimes she felt lonely, even knowing the spirits of her family and ancestors were crowded around her.
She studied the six cards on the table before her that had been drawn by the girl seated in the chair across the table from her. Reading tarot cards required a combination of understanding the symbols, interpreting the feel of the cards, and for her – translating the messages the spirits gave her. She combined all three to give the cards life and tell a story. Born of a long line of voodoo priestesses, she inherited the ability to communicate with the spirits from her mother.
But every once in a while, the spirits could be difficult. The story the cards were currently trying to tell her was more disjointed than usual. Four of them went together and presented cheerful predictions of a happy event.
Two sat to the side, their feel much darker to the point of being disturbing. The distance between the four and two was one of the subtle signs the spirits gave her. These two cards were away from the happy ones. They just didn’t fit the story the others were trying to tell her.
She chewed her lip.
“You look like you’re my age,” her client said. The girl had given her name as Tara, and she was well-dressed and gorgeous.
I wish you’d go back to texting, Adrienne responded silently.
The client was ignoring her request for silence yet again. She needed to concentrate, but understood repeat customers were always needed in a small shop like this, which meant she had to make small talk.
“I’m seventeen,” Adrienne said.
“Me, too!” Tara smiled. “Do you start school tomorrow?”
“Yeah.” Adrienne clenched her hands under the table, nervous about the new school. She glanced around her room, wishing she’d thought to bring in her small altar to Papa Legba or something to hang on the wall.
“What do they say?” Tara prodded, her excited gaze on the cards.
Adrienne picked up one – Death – and Tara gasped.
“Omigod! What does it mean?”
“Transition. Death is the ultimate transition to a new state,” Adrienne said, gazing at it. “It means major change is coming.” She looked over the rest of the cards. She set the card down and tapped the one next to it. “Did you bring someone with you today?”
Tara nodded.
“This card ain’t yours,” Adrienne said. She placed the Death card aside. “This one ain’t neither.” She moved the Devil card over. “Sometimes, someone else’s energy sticks to you when you come in.”
“So you can read my brother’s cards, too?” Tara asked.
“Not fully.” Adrienne couldn’t take her eyes off the cards for a moment. They felt … wrong. Not bad, more like the spirits thought she needed to see them. On instinct, she drew another and set it beside the first two.
“He’ll totally kill me for this, but what do his say?”
“This is him,” Adrienne held up the Devil.
Tara giggled.
“It don’t mean he’s bad.” Adrienne rolled her eyes. “It means he feels trapped by something. This one means it comes from his past.” She held up the new card, Six of Cups, then the Death card. “And this means he is about to face change. Something really, really important is gonna to happen to him.”
“Wow,” Tara breathed. “He’s so smart and athletic. I bet he gets a scholarship or something!”
Not sure the cards are giving good news. Adrienne kept the observation to herself. The energy lingering around Tara wasn’t enough to provide her a full picture, but she suspected the cards were a warning of some kind.
She shook her head. “Okay. Onto yours.” She drew two more to replace the Devil and Death.
“Where in the South are you from?” Tara asked, showing no sign she was about to let Adrienne have the quiet she preferred.
“Atlanta,” Adrienne replied. “Just moved here to live with my daddy.”
“Cool.”
Before Tara could interrupt her again, Adrienne rushed on. “Your cards are real good. You have a lot of positive opportunities in your near future, to include making a difference in someone’s life.”
“Hmm. Boyfriend?” Tara asked hopefully.
Adrienne hesitated. “Not near term, no. These are more focused on your family and school. This will be a very good year for you.”
“I guess that’s good.”
Tara was beautiful and wearing gorgeous clothes that fit too well to come from consignment stores where Adrienne shopped. She didn’t seem like someone who had trouble with boys, unlike Adrienne, who had the issue of a family curse that was hanging over her. It made for awkward introductions with boys back in Atlanta, and she guessed that the guys in New Orleans would be even less willing to date her. People in Georgia just thought she was strange while the people here knew too much about voodoo for her to hope that they didn’t shy away from her if it came up.
“The cards are saying that whatever you asked them, the answer is yes,” Adrienne added, wishing her client understood just how positive the premonition was. She’d give anything to have a reading like this.
“Really?” Tara brightened. “I want to design clothes so I asked if I’d get the internship with Louis Vuitton.”
“Looks good,” Adrienne said.
Tara beamed. “You are awesome!”
Adrienne smiled patiently.
Tara rose and left, tipping her a twenty, another indication the girl didn’t have money issues.
Adrienne waited until the curtain closed behind her client then collected the cards, except for the three that were for Tara’s brother.
These she spread out before her.
“C’mon, spirits. Give me more.”
The energy was too faint. Shaking her head at the cards, she replaced them in the deck and reshuffled.
The cards stuck with her, though, throughout the next couple of hours.
When her shift was over at five, she ducked in to wave to Madame Estelle and then left for the nearest bus stop.
Adrienne walked the opposite direction of the touristy section of the ward towards the river. The air was heavy and still, smelling of one of the water treatment plants. Her nose wrinkled at the scent, and she was sweating uncomfortably in her long skirt and long-sleeved blouse by the time she reached the bus stop. A native of Atlanta, she didn’t yet know if it was possible to reach the Iberville Projects via foot, and she wasn’t certain she should try.
After all, people said there was a serial killer loose in the Projects.
Devil. Death. Six of Cups. She couldn’t stop thinking about the cards. They stayed on her mind throughout the bus ride that dropped her off forty minutes later at her stop at the St. Louis No. 1 Cemetery, near the Projects.
The sounds of a funeral were distant but clear, the blare of horns reaching her as she stepped off the bus. Her father lived on the exact opposite corner from where the bus dropped her off, and she began walking through the slums, lost in her thoughts.
The Iberville Projects had not yet been fully restored after the hurricanes, and she grew sad seeing the signs of the damage that still lingered. Sensitive to the spirits that still remained in the neighborhood, she tried not to let herself imagine the amount of people who had been hurt.