I locked my bike in front of Say Chi’s and pushed at the door, expecting to be given my peaceful benediction, but it was locked. The sign on the window said Closed . Odd for a downtown store to be closed on a Saturday afternoon. I peeked through the glass and yelped when Faye’s face suddenly appeared on the other side.
She unlocked the door. I went to step inside, but she blocked my way. “I’m closed today.” Her expression was strained. Her eyes glanced worriedly behind me and up and down the block. Her gorgeous candle-like aura morphed into the sickly, fear-tinged yellow I’d seen coming from my father.
My fingernails dug into my palms. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
“I stayed late after you left, trying to find information on your…unique situation.” Her voice descended to a whisper. “There was a particular volume I tried to locate that I thought might have something about”—her voice lowered even more—“silver. I came in the next morning and the shop had been broken into. They stole my hard drive and left this stuck to my monitor.” She handed me a blue sticky note.
Be very careful the tales you tell. You won’t like the ending.
My nerves tingled. From my peripheral vision, I watched shots of silver flare from my body.
Faye looked apologetic but resolute. “Whoever did this was sending a message, and I got it loud and clear. I’m off the case, honey.”
My gut clenched. “I don’t understand. Why would—?”
“Someone doesn’t want people looking into this. This note is about you. Look, I wish I could help, but I’m a single mom with cancer and a special needs kid. I can’t afford to have anything happen to me or to this shop. You might want to keep this quiet. Perhaps there’s a reason people like you are so rare. I’m very sorry. Take good care of yourself. And please,” she said, her dark eyes imploring, “don’t come here again.”
Faye shut the door in my face.
A cannonball of dread dropped into the pit of my soul with a thud. It pulled my heart down with it. People like you. Rejection was a sour pit I swallowed whole. I’d been turned away because of what I was. Blamed for something I didn’t even understand. Faye was the only person who seemed to know anything about why I was different, and she wanted nothing to do with me.
I bent to unlock my bike and head straight home, frightened by the thought that someone knew about my search for answers and had threatened Faye because of it.
A riff of guitar music close by caught my attention. Ignoring it, I slipped the key in the bike lock, but the music stopped me again. It wound around me like wind, whispering, summoning. I shivered.
Despite my fear, I was drawn to the music. Abandoning my bike and my instinct to hurry home, I wandered a couple doors down, the melody beckoning like a finger, pulling me toward it.
The song wafted from the open doorway of a brick building on the corner, as did the warm, toasted smell of freshly ground coffee. I poked my head in the door. The weathered brick walls with crumbling mortar were covered with old posters of musicians. Aluminum pendant lights hung over the tables, casting a disk of yellow over each one. I spotted the source of the music at the front of the room. Dark jeans, black shirt with folded short sleeves exposing defined arms. And another tattoo.
Those eyes connected with mine, and every atom in the room crackled with delight.
Finn stopped playing his guitar and scooted off the stool.
“Cora! What a perfect surprise. Get in here!” he said, jogging over. “You’re peeking in the doorway like you might not come in.” He squeezed my hand and tugged.
“Well—”
“I’m so glad you came.”
“What do you mean?”
“I got hold of your address from your mate, the serious girl who’s always sparkling,” he said with a teasing grin. I blinked in shock before I realized he meant Mari’s sequins.
“Mari. She’s my cousin.”
“I stuck a message on your front door this morning. Didn’t you get it?” When I shook my head, he said, “Brilliant. It’s serendipity, then. Please stay.” The look he delivered was pure smolder. My resistance burned to ash. It was both infuriating and completely delicious. “I’m warming up now. I start in thirty minutes.”
He led me to a table next to a window near where he’d set up. “I—but—I—” But before I could utter a single pronouncement about how I didn’t mean to come, how I had simply followed the music, how it had led me here, to him, Finn bent down and kissed my cheek.
“You smell like cinnamon. Yum,” he whispered with a slight bite to his bottom lip. He held me with a look. “Don’t run away, Cora.”
I told myself this would be good, for just a little while, instead of going home and ruminating in spooked-out feelings about Faye and who might have broken into her store. Trepidation flared anew. Who would be threatened by someone looking into silver auras? Earlier, I had felt like I was in some kind of danger. Today, Faye had insinuated that I was the dangerous one.
People filed in and filled up the tables and the booths along the walls. I noticed Queen Bee Serena Tate, surrounded by her drones, eyeing me from their VIP perch in the front row. Serena’s eyes scanned me derisively. This surprised me. The Queen Bee usually flies too high to take notice of the little people far below her. I could only assume her sudden hostile vibe had to do with Finn.
I knew I looked like a gigantic idiot for being there by myself. My teeth scraped against one another, and I contemplated bolting. Instead, I called in backup.
While I waited for Mari and Dun, Serena eyed Finn with a predatory glint, following his gaze to where I sat. She sauntered over to where he was set up, leaned in boob-grazingly close, and whispered something in his ear. He smiled but his eyes were locked on me. I distracted myself by pulling out and studying the aura color chart from Say Chi’s.
I already knew the chart didn’t mention my silver aura, but I wanted to learn and memorize what the various colors meant. If this wasn’t going to go away, I’d better figure out how to use it.
White was supposedly the most transcendent and supreme of all colors. Purity. It was described on the chart as the color of a spiritual master. The chart clearly said that no one was ever pure white, which didn’t explain the man who’d been following me.
I took a pen from my bag and wrote Silver? And along the bottom, Faye’s warning to me: There are those who want nothing more than to find someone like you.
“What are you doing here?” cooed Serena’s candy-coated-poison voice from over my shoulder. I was struck by the scattered orange-red-green of her aura. She was…inconsistent.
“Same thing you are, I suppose.”
She leveled a challenging stare at me. “I doubt that. Finn invited me.” She glanced down at the chart. “Peculiar reading material. Let me guess, you believe in past lives, too. Might as well,” she said before I could retort. “Since you have no life, you can always fantasize about how fabulous your other lives might have been.”
I stuffed the chart into my bag. “Mind your own business.”
“Oh, hey,” Mari said, appearing with perfect timing. She squared her shoulders at Serena. “I’m so glad I ran into you, Serena.” I gaped suspiciously at Mari’s agreeable tone. “I’ve been meaning to ask you a question.”
“Yes,” Serena said with a bored look. “What is it?”
“What grade did you get in Bitch 101?”
“Silly Mari,” Dun singsonged with a smile. “Serena graduated from that class years ago. Isn’t that right, Serena? You’re what? In the Master Bitch class now? Jedi Bitch?”