Better Read Than Dead (10 page)

The picture on the card was of a man holding a painting palate in one hand, a paintbrush in the other, and sitting before an easel that had several wands already painted there. Immediately I said, “This says you’re very creative, but it’s more than that. Like you’re big on decorating, or even that you’re an expert at decorating or painting or something.”

The woman giggled and said, “I’m an interior decorator.”

I heaved a huge sigh of relief. Okay, this was going to work. I continued with the cards and laid down another. The picture held a queenly-looking woman with dark hair, holding a pentacle in one outstretched arm. “I get the feeling you’re very good at what you do, but you have a client right now who’s holding out on you. A woman with dark hair hasn’t paid her bill yet, and you have a cash-flow problem until this account is settled.”

“Oh, my God! That is so true! One of my biggest clients is a woman with dark hair, and she’s been ducking my calls to pay up!”

I relaxed and let myself sink back in the chair, realizing I’d been holding myself very tightly until now. I’d been so worried I would have trouble doing the conversion from free-form to interpreting the cards, but this was like child’s play. I continued on with the woman for ten more minutes and then ended the session. She beamed at me and got up excitedly. “Do you have a business card?” she asked.

“Certainly,” I said, reaching into my purse and pulling out a pile of them. I laid all but one on the table, and handed it to her. I felt confident now about advertising.

“You were wonderful,” she gushed.

“Thank you. Thank you very much,” I said humbly.

The woman trotted off, and no sooner had she gone than a young, very good-looking man with jet-black hair, dark brown eyes and olive skin stepped around the corner. Unlike the woman who had just left me, he was maskless. He sat down and we shook hands. “Hi, I’m Jimmy,” he said.

I shook his hand and noted, “Not one for the masquerade theme, eh, Jimmy?”

He chuckled and explained, “No, it’s not that. I’m the groom. The rules are that everyone wears a mask but the bride and groom.”

“Oh! Congratulations! I didn’t know the bride and groom were going to get a reading.”

“Yeah, my wife’s idea. She’s in with your partner right now. We wanted to get in before the party started rocking so we’d have a chance to see you two. Ophelia loves psychics. She’s always going to see them. That’s how we met, you know.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, the woman she used to go to told her she was about to meet a man at the grocery store, and I guess she described me to a T. Well, Ophelia goes to the store every night for two weeks, but no one looks like the psychic describes. Then one night she’s over at her aunt’s house, helping with dinner, and her aunt needs some goat cheese or something. Ophelia doesn’t want to go to the store to get it because she said she didn’t look good, she’d been lounging around all day. So her aunt insisted that she go, and wouldn’t you know it? I got in line right behind her.”

“That is a great story,” I said, smiling. I wondered if Ophelia knew how lucky she was. This young man had wonderful energy. “Okay, Jimmy, you ready?”

“Sure,” he said, and moved his seat closer.

I asked his full name and birth date, shuffled the deck and began. The first card I turned over was a picture of a man scribing on a parchment in deep concentration. There was an abacus on a shelf near him, and several pentacles lined the bottom of the card. “You’re an accountant,” I said matter-of-factly.

“Whoa! You’re good,” he said, sitting up in surprise.

I gave him a big toothy grin and continued: “I get the feeling that you’re new to your company. Like this is a pretty big firm, and they don’t take just anyone, so the fact that you even got hired is a big accomplishment.”

“That’s all true,” Jimmy confirmed.

I drew another card and laid it down across the first. This one held a kingly-looking man holding a sword. He looked quite menacing to me. “I get the feeling that your boss is a taskmaster, and you’re having to burn the midnight oil at this new job, where nothing is ever quite good enough.”

“You’re right on the money,” Jimmy confirmed.

I drew again. This one was upside down and depicted a pregnant woman sewing on a tapestry. “There’s also an issue of debt here. You owe a lot in student loans?”

“A bundle,” Jimmy said, squirming at the mention of debt, but still giving me his full attention.

We kept on like that for another ten minutes or so. I talked about how the money he and his new bride would receive from the wedding would be a considerable help, but the thing that would help him the most was a promotion he was about to receive.

“A promotion?”

“Yup, and it’s a big one. Luck is on your side this year, Jimmy. Very soon you’re going to come into a position of power and influence. Trust me: You’re doing good work at your firm, and even though you think you’re not appreciated, you are. You’re going to get a raise that will allow you a lot of freedom in the future.”

“Cool. Does it say anything about our honeymoon?”

I laid down another card that depicted eight cups on a fountain catching water from the top of the fountain. In the background there was a large mountain covered in snow. My eye went to the mountain and focused on the snow. “You guys going to Aspen?”

Jimmy barked out a laugh and said, “Vail. Ophelia’s father gave us the use of the family condo in Vail for two weeks.”

“You’re going to have a ball,” I said. “Although I’m not sure how much of the outside world you guys will see. This says you could be spending most of your time indoors in the hot tub.”

Jimmy laughed again. “Yeah, the condo’s got a huge hot tub, and we’d already planned on putting it to good use. Say, what can you tell me about kids?” he asked.

I laid down a card, the two of wands. “I see two. Both boys, but not for a couple of years yet. You and Ophelia should enjoy some time together before you jump into parenthood.”

“That’s what we’d planned on. Listen, this was awesome, thank you so much!”

“Anytime,” I said as he got up, taking several business cards with him as he left. I reached down for my bottled water then, which I’d tucked under my chair, and as I sat up another figure dressed in a black tuxedo, a rose cummerbund and a black mask walked in. I held up a finger as I took a swig from the water, then tucked the bottle back underneath my chair. I smiled gamely at my newest guest and said, “Good evening.”

The man simply nodded and sat down. I shuffled the cards several times, then swished them briefly around on the tabletop. I didn’t want to get the same sequence, so I made sure to shuffle them fully. Finally I looked at the man sitting in the chair and asked, “Okay, so that I can focus on your energy, may I have your full name and date of birth?”

“Bob Smith. June sixth, nineteen sixty.”
Liar, liar, pants on fire . . .

I had already closed my eyes when “Bob” gave me his name and birth date. Surprisingly, it’s not all that uncommon for people to want to hide their personal information. They don’t trust psychics, and want to give us as little to go on as possible. I repeated his information in my head anyway; mentally tripping when I realized the birth date he’d given me was 6/6/60. Usually this would make me chuckle and roll my eyes, but tonight I shuddered involuntarily.

I opened my eyes and turned over the first from the deck. The death card stared up at me. Kendal had once told me that the death card didn’t usually mean death. It was really about old endings and new beginnings. Still, the hooded skeleton smiling up at me from the face of the card wasn’t very reassuring, and mentally I reached out for the comfort of my guides. In an instant I realized they were gone.

Now, believe it or not, I have a physical sensation when my crew is around. Think of it like feeling static electricity on one side of your body. I’m so used to this feeling that it doesn’t faze me when they show up, but having them exit stage left in the middle of a reading gave me a moment of panic. Why would they leave?

About then it dawned on me that this man was waiting for me to say something, and the first tinges of panic tickled my neck. I had no idea what this death card was trying to say, nor why my guides would suddenly leave. To distract him I laid down another card. This one was labeled, THE TOWER, and showed a huge medieval tower being struck by a bolt of lightning, sending its roof off to smash on the ground. Even more disturbing was a depiction of people being tossed out of the tower by the force of the lightning bolt, captured midfall as they plummeted to their deaths on the rocky ground below.

As I looked at the graphic images there was the tickle of a thought on the edge of my intuition, but it was faint and distant. As the seconds ticked by, I could feel the mounting pressure of this man’s expectations as I continued to stare at the two cards on the tabletop and got no clear message to deliver to him. In a panic now, I mentally called out loudly to my crew and demanded their presence immediately, furious that they would abandon me at the beginning of a reading. Not knowing what to do, and to stall for a little more time, I laid down yet another card labeled, JUDGMENT, which depicted three luminescent human figures rising from the earth with outstretched arms toward an angel blowing a trumpet. In one electrifying second I felt my crew smash back into place as a message tumbled into my mind with the force of a physical blow. I snapped my head up to look at the man in the chair as I gasped, “Oh my God . . . ! You’ve killed someone!”

For a moment the man only sat there, neither moving nor speaking. I could see his mouth form a grim, set line, and then slowly he nodded exactly once. I sat there petrified of what I had said out loud. My heart was racing, and my palms were sweating, and I didn’t know what else to do, so I pulled my head back down to the cards. I looked at the judgment card, and my eyes focused on the many figures rising up to meet the angel; then I looked back at the tower card and saw the people falling to their deaths, and another thought bulleted through my head: “No, not just one person . . .” I said breathlessly. “You’ve killed many people.”

The man’s reaction was even more chilling as he actually chuckled and replied, “Hey, you’re pretty good.”

I stared at him for a long moment, my mouth working open and closed and my eyes wide. It suddenly occurred to me that if I showed him how much fear I felt, he might worry that I knew a little too much, and take care of me as well. I needed to continue with the reading if I had any hope of saving my own skin. With a gulp and a shaking hand I drew another card, forcing myself to get a grip already. “Uh, this says that you do this for a living,” I said before I could stop myself. Where the hell was my filtering mechanism today?

“You could say that,” he shrugged.

I turned over another card, “This indicates that your family is very supportive of you; in fact you may even work for your family.”

“In a way,” he replied.

I tentatively turned over another card, and with a quaking voice I said, “Uh, well, there’s plenty of work out there for you. I mean, you’re in demand. I mean—”

“I get your meaning,” he said quietly.

With unsteady fingers I turned over another card, thinking that if he hadn’t killed me yet maybe I could talk my way out of this. “This says that there’s some sort of rift, like there are members of your family that have gone down a separate path, and that you no longer speak to one another, and there’s some really bad blood forming here, like people are turning on each other. . . .” I paused, not really understanding what I had just said.

The man leaned in, suddenly interested. “Go on,” he insisted.

“Uh, well, I get this feeling that there’s a member of your family who has betrayed you somehow, and that you’re right to keep him at a distance, but . . .” Something kept playing in the background of my head, and I paused to pay attention to it.

“What is it?” the man demanded.

“Well . . .” I hesitated.

“Tell me,” he said in a voice that wasn’t kidding.

“I keep hearing, ‘He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword.”’

The man sat back and regarded me for a long moment before standing up abruptly and reaching into his jacket pocket, I assumed for a gun. Reflexively I pulled back in my seat and squeezed my eyes shut. He was going to kill me! I’d said too much!

There was a pause, and then I felt something flutter lightly in front of my face. Squinting one eye open I looked down to see a twenty-dollar bill on the table in front of me.

“Thanks,” he said, reaching down to pick up one of my business cards. “You’re good.” And with that he walked out of my area.

No sooner had he gone than I bolted up and scurried around the curtain, where Kendal was just finishing up with one of the bridesmaids. As she squeezed past me Kendal looked alarmed and asked, “Abby? What’s the matter? You look white as a ghost.”

“Shhhh!” I hissed at him, and jumped forward, grabbing his arm and yanking him out of his chair. “Come with me
immediately
!”

Kendal didn’t argue, and we made our way out of the curtained area and quick-stepped across the large ballroom through the double doors and down the hallway to a small cubby, where I was sure we had minimal privacy. Still, I kept my voice at a hiss level. “How could you book us for a
mob
wedding?” I said, accusation in my eyes.

“What?” he asked me, taken aback by my statement.

“Mob, Kendal! As in M-O-B, mob!
This is a mob wedding!
”

“What are you talking about?”

“I just read a hit man for the freaking mob!”

“You
what? !
”

“Am I going to have to keep repeating myself, or will you eventually listen to what I’m saying!” I said, hissing vehemently in my state of panic.

“I heard what you said; I just don’t understand how you know you were reading a hit man for the Mafia,” Kendal said calmly.