Page 17 of Soothsayer

“Not yet.” He glanced sidelong at me. “I need to make sure of something first.”

I knew what was coming; I fuckingknewit. I groaned. “For fuck’s sake. Really?”

“Do you have any idea the kind of weird shit that’s going on with these people?” he asked. “I’ve got to make sure you’re above board before I do any more business with you.”

“Yeah? And how can I possibly prove that to you?”

“Tell me what they’ve got on you that makes you so anxious, and let me verify it.”

I shook my head. “No way. This is you angling for a story, Andre, and you already got your story from me. I told you not to expect a new one.”

He waved a hand dismissively. “You didn’t tell me not to, either, and you know what? There’s something happening here. That other story was a puff piece for a magazine about psychics.Thisis about the Icelandic mob moving some sort of illegal contraband into the United States and throwing its weight around to make sure no one comes down on them before they move it again. And when I say weight, I mean some heavy-duty shit, Cillian. Political, monetary, and mercenary leverage. This is arealstory.”

Aaandhere was the unwitting deprecation of my entire life. I was good at taking it, but I had rarely been in less of a mood to. It seemed that living for a few months with people who were like me, who believed me, had spoiled me. Andre knew what I could do, and I had expected to be taken at face value, especially after he’d done an entire interview with me. Apparently he considered that prior experience a waste of time.

Fuck that. “Look at me.”

“I’m driving, man—”

“The road is clear for the next two hundred yards, this won’t take me long. Fuckinglookat me.”

Andre kept his eyes resolutely forward for another moment, surveying the traffic and slowing down a little before, finally,turning his head. Our gazes met, and I pushed myself hard, fell into his mind and past his surface thoughts—ridiculous, not really a, oh my god—and beyond into the depths of his past, and his future.

Three seconds later, I broke eye contact. “Journalism major but you entered the Marine Corps right out of university because you thought it would make your daddy proud of you the way college wasn’t going to. You did two tours in Afghanistan, and you hate it there, but you also can’t stay away, can you? You’re always thinking about going back, looking for whatever you feel like you lost over there, but you’ll never find it again.”

“So you did some research on me,” Andre said, his lips pursed tight, eyes staring straight ahead. “That doesn’t prove anything.”

“You’ve got a baby girl who’s five months old and has been colicky for the past three days. She keeps you and your wife up at night. You love her, but you don’t know how to tell your wife that you’re going to accept a contract to go overseas again in three months and leave her alone with the baby.” I plowed ahead, ignoring the growing strain on his face.Question me? Let’s see you question me now.

“You haven’t fit into the life you thought you should have ever since getting back from the war, and you never completely will. You have a scar above your left knee that you scratch at when you get nervous, and you secretly like how easily you can tear the skin and make it bleed. It makes it feel fresh, like it’ll never go away, and you don’t want it to.”

“Shut upnow, Cillian, or I swear to god—”

Time to back it off a little, or I might self-righteous myself out of any help. “You’ve got a special speech all planned out for your daughter’s first date, and it’s going to scare the shit out of that boy, but he wouldn’t have been good for her anyway. You’ll be there to walk your daughter down the aisle, and your first grandchild will be named Andrea, after you. You’re a survivor.”I exhaled noisily, letting go of the visions as best I could. They were still lurking in my mind, and they’d be there forever now, but I had plenty of practice pushing them back. Andre wasn’t the worst I’d seen, not by far.

“And I’m a psychic. You don’t think that a person like Egilsson would be able to find a use for me?”

“He did before,” Andre guessed after a tense minute. “When you told me about being a guest, you meant more like a prisoner, right? This is a personal thing for you.”

“I certainly don’t give a shit about the mob.”

“Huh.” We drove the rest of the way to the restaurant in silence, but it wasn’t the kind of silence that made me worry I was going to be shoved out of the door onto the road. That was an improvement.

Andre managed to find parking in a ridiculously crowded section of downtown, in the middle of skyscrapers I’d never seen before. I felt positively tiny and completely insignificant. It was kind of nice.

“The Magnificent Mile,” Andre said as we got out of the car. “Shopping and lodging for people with more money than sense.”

“And we’re eating at TGI Friday’s?”

He smiled at me, a little narrow but still genuine. “Everybody wants to slum it sometimes.”

“Why are we here?”

He snorted as we walked down the sidewalk. “What, you didn’t see that in my head?”

“I don’t see anything that connects to my own fate.”

“So you never know what’s going to happen to yourself, just to other people.”

---