Page 32 of Roma King
Garrett makes a guttural, angry sound in the back of his throat. His shoulders have hiked up an inch, tense, and he takes a step closer toward the table. In an instant, the Fox’s hands are in the air. “Woah now, friend. Woah, woah, woah. You picked the cup. Don’t blame me if you picked wrong.” The Fox’s mouth lifts at the corner as he slowly picks up the original cup, the one marked with the C, and turns it over. To me, he says, “Sometimes, you have to stick with your gut,Gadje. Sometimes, the trick…is that there is no trick.”
But when I look down at the table, the coin isn’t under the cup marked with the C, either. The Fox hasn’t looked down yet. When he does, his forehead furrows deeply. “What in the world…?” In one swift movement, he flips the middle cup over, confusion written all over him, to reveal nothing but scuffed wood grain beneath it. “Well, shit,” he says. “I can’t—”
This is getting fucking ridiculous. I snatch the cup from his hand and slam it down onto the table, my patience well and truly spent now. It’s late, and I’m tired, and I don’t want to play games anymore. “Look. We really don’t have time for this. Are you going to answer my question or not?”
The Fox is quiet for a second, and then another. He’s staring down at the table, as if he can’t believe what’s just happened. I’m about to finally give up and finally walk away from the prankster when his face smooths out, as if he’s suddenly been struck by an epiphany. He looks me dead in the eye and says, “Ask.”
I have no fucking idea what’s just happened, what realization has just come to him like a lightning bolt out of the blue, but I don’t waste any time. Reaching into my pocket, I pull out the rumpled photo of Corey and hold it up in front of him. “Have you seen this little boy? His name is Corey, and he’s five years old. He was taken from his home, and his parents are worried sick. The police have been out searching for him for more than a week. They have a lead that’s connected him to this fair. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re planning a raid on the place.”
Okay, so that part is embellished. The cops have barely done a thing to find Corey—they certainly aren’t planning a fucking raid—but the Fox doesn’t know that. My reasoning: if he thinks the authorities are going to show up here and start investigating the fair, he might talk just to prevent any unwanted attention. The fair isn’t likely to be a legal event, and I’d wager every penny I own that they’re not supposed to be using the old subway station as a base. The Fox looks at the photo of Corey and then back at me, his features hardening.
“You work for the cops?” His voice is ice cold.
“No. Not exactly. I work for the emergency services department. And it’s imperative that we find this little—”
“I haven’t seen him,” the Fox says sharply. “We don’t deal in children here.”
“You’re afair. You must see plenty of kids.”
“Take a look around. You see any?”
Idolook around, and Idon’tsee any children. Funnily enough, I don’t recall having seen a single one since we came down the stairs.
“Adults only here,Gadje. Why do you think we open our doors at midnight?” the Fox says. “Too loud. Too noisy. Too muchtrouble.” He emphasizes the word trouble in a way that implies I’m causing trouble right now, and I should probably stop.
Unlikely.
“No one around here has ever mentioned the name Corey, then? Or Petrov?”
The Fox rocks back on his heels, his grey eyebrows drawing together in an unhappy line. “No one called Corey. No one called Petrov. No one speaking about either.”
His face is made out of stone, the very picture of annoyance. I could ask more questions, but we only bargained for the one, and in the end it doesn’t matter. I’m like a human lie detector. After years listening to people lie over the phone about how they got hurt, or how their brother/sister/mother/aunt/friend managed to find themselves in trouble, I’ve mastered the ability to spot a falsehood from a dozen paces. Doesn’t matter what a person’s face is doing, or what they’re doing with their bodies. It’s the hitch in their voice that gives them away every time. The tight, hard edge, or the too-airy falsetto that sets the alarm bells ringing inside my head. This guy doesn’t know anything.
“Fine. Then thank you for your time, I guess.” As we walk away from the Fox’s stall, Garrett cracks his knuckles one at a time, his eyes flashing with steel. His irritation is a mirror to my own. I place a hand on his shoulder, squeezing lightly. “I know. Don’t worry. If the next one tries to waste our time, I’ll let you flip the table or something. Deal?”
Garrett’s mouth crooks up at the corner into half a smile.
Unfortunately for him, the next person we approach doesn’t have a table, though. The stalls to both our left and our right are swamped with people, all jostling one another to get a better look at whatever game or curiosity is on display; there’s no point getting in line to question the burly men and heavily kohled women who command the attention of so many fairgoers, not with so little of the night remaining, so we keep walking until we come to a tent at the end of the row. A glittering gold plaque has been staked into the dirt to one side of the tent, and on it, in looping, dramatic cursive: ‘Madame Shelta. Purveyor of fortunes, destinies, providences and fates. By appointment only.’
The tent’s fabric is purple and silky—rather theatrical, even against the explosion of color that sweeps through the abandoned subway station. One of the tent’s flaps is pegged back; inside the tent, darkness awaits. “Who has to make an appointment to see a fairground fortune teller?” I grouse, shivering as I peer inside, my eyes searching the black. “I doubt any of these guys have cell phones. And even if they do, there’s no way anyone would be able to find them on the internet.”
One second I’m squinting, trying to discern shapes out of the shadows, and the next I’m gasping for breath, biting back a shriek of surprise as a pair of astonishingly green eyes appear three inches from my face.
Holy fuck!
It’s a miracle I don’t trip over my own damn feet as I stagger away from the entrance to the tent. The owner of the eyes emerges, stepping out into the light: a six-foot four stranger with black hair, a full, sensuous mouth, strong jaw, broad shoulders and the most distracting, unusual eye coloring I’ve ever seen in my life. Green, like fresh shoots of spring grass. Green, like the color of the ocean where the Caribbean meets the Atlantic.
Breathtaking.
“We all have cell phones, actually. Shelta has her own fucking Yelp page,” the guy growls.
I freeze, startled by the deep timbre of his voice.
Holy what the…?
Honey, rough whiskey, fire and smoke: his voice is like nothing I’ve ever heard before. Deep, and sonorous and commanding. Bursts of heat blossom beneath my skin as I take another step back, allowing him to fully step out of the tent and move past me. His jeans are faded black, almost grey, and his white t-shirt has what looks like blue paint spilled on it, down by the hem. His right arm is covered in tattoos, from the cuff of his wrist all the way up to the sleeve of his shirt, and even more black ink peeks up from beneath his collar and rises up his throat. Holding a leather jacket in his hand, he looks like he probably has a motorcycle parked above ground somewhere close by. His eyes pick over me, sorting through my features, cataloguing the different aspects of my face, and, ashamed as I am to admit it, I find myself looking down at my feet. There’s something intimidating about the way he’s studying me, as if I’m not a real person but some sort of life-size photo and he’s looking for printing errors.
I stop breathing for a second. When I finally look up, the guy’s frowning at me like he just found the imperfection he was searching for.
