Page 2 of Soothsayer

Of course, knowing someone else’s fate takes a lot of the fear out of them coming to kill you. I never saw my own fate, so what he wanted to happen didn’t matter—I knew he wasn’t going to be my end. Thankfully Marisol was more than happy to put her shotgun to good use, and when he broke in that night, he got a face full of buckshot. Marisol had called the police, who’d chocked it up to a robbery gone wrong, and my name was kept out of things entirely. All’s well that ends well, except sometimes I still feel that moment in my head, hear the ratchet of the gun and the boom before my brain exploded in a rush of red and gray. I try not to let it get to me.

“Let’s do the spread,” I suggested. “It’ll clear things up.” Tarot was Marisol’s medium of choice when it came to prognosticating, and it was usually pretty reliable.

“Let me shuffle first,” she said and worked the deck through her hands while I finished my pancakes. I put the plate on the counter, cut the deck when she told me to, and waited for her to finish shuffling, her midnight eyes soft and unfocused. Finally she looked up at me. “Three today.” I obediently pulled threecards, setting them down in a straight line on the table between us. Marisol put the deck aside and turned over the first card.

“The Ten of Swords.” She traced the body on the card, pierced by ten long blades. “The Corpse. Destruction and ruin.”

“Oh, dammit,” I said, sitting back and running a frustrated hand through my bleach-blond hair. “He’s coming back again.” A week ago, I’d pulled the Nine of Swords, and now my work from that afternoon was catching up with me. There was nothing worse than a fucking repeat customer, as though their fate would have altered since I saw them last. The visions I saw never changed, unless they turned completely black. Black usually meant the person I’d gotten the vision from was dead, although in some cases a part of them stayed with me after death.

This particular guy hadn’t liked the fate I’d laid out for him and had come back twice now, expecting it to be different each time. Like trying to cover his tracks better was going to save him from his future. He’d been more and more insistent with every visit, and I was completely out of patience.

“It’s time to get tough on this fucker.”

Marisol brightened a little. “I’ve got a brand new AR-15 that could use a workout.”

“Not that kind of tough,” I said. “I think what he needs is…a more extensive reading.” You could drown in the details when it came to reading the future, but sometimes a client needed that kind of kick in the ass.

“Can I watch?”

“Pervert,” I teased her, and she slapped my arm playfully.

“Don’t make me call your mama and tell her you’re being a bad boy,” Marisol warned and then tapped the next card. “Go on.”

I turned it over.

“The Ace of Cups.” Marisol grinned. “Oh, how pleasant.”

I gazed at the card for a long moment. “It could be.” A new beginning, blessings and happiness to ensue…yeah, this visitwould be pleasant. At least it would be a nice reprieve from the damn Corpse.

“Last one.” I turned it over, and both of us frowned.

“The Hanged Man,” Marisol said. “Reversed.” She looked at me. “I think this one is meant to be you, Cillian.” The card showed a man suspended upside down against a tree, his hands and feet bound and his face surprisingly serene for someone who represented sacrifice.

Cards for me didn’t come up all that often, especially not ones like this. “I’m not feeling very martyrly,” I said dryly.

“It isn’t a card of martyrdom; it’s a card of divinity,” she said. “This card could be both destruction and resurrection. It’s closely linked to Christianity, in reference to the suffering of Christ. It could also depict Osiris, or even Odin.” Something niggled at the back of my brain when she said that, but I pushed it aside. “This means that your life is coming to a crossroads,” Marisol continued. “A big change is coming, and you’d be smart not to fight it.”

“When am I ever smart?” I asked, forcing a smirk to my face. My throat was strangely tight, and I had to get the words out before it closed on me entirely. Something was wrong, but I didn’t have time to get into it now. Two other cards came first, and I, more than anyone, knew that you couldn’t fight fate.

Marisol had pity on me and dropped it. “Certainly not when you’re working the cash register,” she said.

“Hey, addition is hard!”

“Calculus is hard,cielito. Addition is for six-year-olds.” She stood up and whisked away our empty coffee cups. “I have to open up the shop, and you have to get ready for the day.”

“Right.” Time to put my armor on.

Chapter Two

You know what they said: dress to impress. The way you looked had a lot to do with how you were going to be treated, and at this point in my life, I was better than a goddamn Boy Scout at being prepared. For most of the people in this business, your appearance was just another part of the con. If you looked mysterious, exotic, special, and strange, you’d have more credence to the average consumer than a housewife in a terry cloth robe and hair curlers. I’m not sayingIbelieved that; I’d had my ass handed to me by more than one unassuming face, but I did believe in the efficacy of the right presentation.

When I was alone, or with a genuine friend, I could wear sweatpants and a T-shirt and lounge around like a slob and everything was okay. When I was getting ready to meet a client, especially a belligerent one, it was time to get formal. I had a few decent suits that had survived my escapades over the years, and those were my fallback position. I headed upstairs, back into Tavo’s old room, and pulled my gray wool Hackett suit out of thecloset. It was secondhand and a little short in the sleeves, but I could turn back the French cuffs of my crisp white shirt and make the length look deliberate. Wool was still a little warm for August in Denver, but it wasn’t like I was planning to go out in this thing. A low black waistcoat, a chain for a pocket watch—I didn’t have a pocket watch, but the look was good—and a decent pair of shoes and I’d get a businessman’s attention, if not his respect.

I stripped out of my clothes, baring my skin to the light that made it past Marisol’s heavy curtains. My body was covered with strategic tattoos: a band of thorns around each of my wrists?I’d been going through a dramatic phase?curling vines and smoke around my neck, an eye of Horus directly beneath my Adam’s apple, and the disintegrating wings of Icarus falling to pieces across my shoulders and back. Most of them covered up something I didn’t feel like sharing with the world, although if you looked close enough you could see the scars beneath them. The wings had been the first and the beginning of my love affair with tattoos. I had some on my arms and legs that didn’t act as camouflage, just images I liked or reminders I sometimes needed, all the way to my fingertips.

I stepped into my suit pants and put on my shirt, minding the creases and lines as I buttoned up my second skin. The suit was for respectability, the tattoos offered a bit of mystery, and the jewelry, well…

What could I say? I looked pretty pierced. Silver studs in my nose and ears, a silver teardrop by my left eye, and heavy silver rings on my fingers covered in symbols of dubious merit—the jewelry was a distraction, and also a convenient way to make my punches hurt a little more. I didn’t often get physical with a client, but it happened occasionally, and what was my motto? Be prepared. It wasn’t like I knew when someone was going to go psycho on me.

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