Page 15 of Aftertaste

She rose and tossed her magazine onto the floor.

“So, you a virgin?” she asked, crossing the tent and taking the seat opposite him.

“Um, no?” Was she planning on sacrificing him to a demigod? “Why?”

“It’s totally okay if you are.”

“I,” Kostya scoffed, “am no virgin. I’mextremelyexperienced. An expert.”

“Oh.” She looked surprised. “Okay. Cool! In that case, do you have a favorite way in? Or should we just start slow? Sometimes you can get deeper that way.”

Kostya gulped. “Deeper?” Maybe he’d sacrifice himself.

“I mean, that’s the whole point, isn’t it? You’ll never get an accurate reading otherwise.”

Was she saying what he thought she was saying? Did this spiritual experience come with a little something else? ThiswasSeyoncé; anything was possible.

A bead of sweat ran along the back of his horrible shirt.

“Are you… I mean, is this…?” He lowered his voice. “Are we going to… because I didn’t bring protection.”

Her eyes grew wide. “Excuse me?”

“You just asked if I was—and I’m not!—but…deeper?”

“Oh my God.” She threw her head back and laughed. “I meant was it your first reading!” She pulled a ragged deck of cards from her back pocket and set it between them. “You know, tarot? Like the sign out front says?”

“Oh! No! Yeah!Obviously.” (Sweet relief! But also… definite disappointment.) “My bad. Yes. In that sense—and that sense only—total virgin territory. Please be gentle.”

“Right.”She laughed again, swiping a finger beneath one eye and smearing black liner. “Okay. Well. Here’s how it works. I’m going to shuffle the cards, and you’re going to think of the question you want answered. Meditate on it, put your energies into it, and just give me a nod when you’re ready. Cool?”

She offered him the deck to cut and Konstantin watched as she manipulated the cards, her slender fingers pulling the past, present, and future into complicated bridge shuffles and mesmerizing flourishes. He wasn’tthinking about the aftertastes at all now, or about any of the questions that normally plagued his thoughts. Kostya was busy feasting his eyes on Madame Everleigh—the curve of her face, the tilt of her shoulder, the tiny dots of lint caught on the collar of her sweatshirt, the freckles in her eyes like the jackets of bees, dusted with gold, the shade of lipstick she wore, the shape of her mouth—

“How you comin’ on that question, champ?”

Kostya’s eyes darted to the tabletop, his thoughts yanked back to what he was supposed to be doing there.

“Actually,” he said, shifting slightly in his chair, “I’m not really here for a reading.”

“Okay?” She placed the deck on the table between them. “So whatareyou here for?”

Your phone number. Your hand in marriage. Just one night, gimme just one night….

“Information.”

She leaned back and crossed her arms over her chest.

“Information?”

“Of amysteriousnature.”

“Okay, Deep Throat. Think you can be a little more specific?”

Kostya exhaled. “I need to know if it’s normal—or, I guess, I know it’s notnormalnormal, but is it athingto be able to taste the Dead?”

Whatever she had been expecting, it wasn’t that. She uncrossed her arms.

“Taste them how? Like their body parts?”

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