18. Reva #2
Sonny tugs me toward a narrow shop with painted signs in the windows and strings of beads hanging in the doorway. Candles crowd the display beside little bags of herbs, tarot decks, carved saints, gris-gris charms, and a sign advertising palm readings.
I stop. “No.”
“Huh? This is a NOLA rite of passage.”
“No.”
“Absolutely yes.”
“Sonny.”
“You need something silly.”
“That place does not look silly. That place looks like it knows my childhood nickname.”
“All the better.”
She hauls me inside.
A bell over the door gives a tired jingle. The shop is cramped and dim, shelves packed so tightly I’m afraid to breathe wrong. Sonny goes straight to a display of novelty candles shaped like male anatomy and starts laughing under her breath.
I drift toward the back, where an older woman sits behind a small round table covered with a purple cloth.
Her hair is silver and braided down one shoulder.
Glasses hang from a chain around her neck, and she looks up from a paperback romance novel with the expression of someone who has been expecting me and finds me late.
“Palm reading?” she asks.
“No, thank you.”
Sonny appears at my elbow. “Why, yes, thank you.”
I glare at her.
She beams. “For kicks.”
The woman closes her book. “Twenty dollars.”
Sonny slaps a twenty on the table before I can object.
I sit because apparently I am weak against peer pressure when it comes from a five-foot-nothing woman with perfectly winged eyeliner.
The reader holds out her hand. I give her mine.
Her fingers are cool and dry. She turns my palm upward, and for a few seconds, her face stays bored. Then her thumb stops at the center of my palm.
The air in the shop seems to tighten.
“What?” I ask.
She does not answer right away, and Sonny’s smile fades.
The woman traces a line near my wrist. “You were carried away from water and taken to the city of iron.”
My pulse skips.
“That’s vague,” I say, but my voice shakes under the challenge.
“It should be.”
“I paid twenty dollars for vague?”
Sonny whispers, “I paid.”
The woman looks at me over the top of her glasses. “You came back to the water because the dead called you.”
I start to pull my hand away but her grip tightens.
“Two sisters,” she says. “One in front of you. One behind a door. Both angry.”
My mouth goes dry. Sonny goes very still beside me.
The woman keeps her eyes on my palm. “A father without blood has crossed into the city.”
My heart slams once, hard enough to hurt.
“What does that mean?”
“It means what it means.”
“I hate this shop.”
The woman ignores that. Her thumb moves again, pressing into a crease near the base of my hand. Her expression changes, and for the first time, I see something like pity.
“No child opens a door on purpose when she does not know a door exists.”
My skin prickles with goosebumps.
I hear a phone ringing in a house that no longer stands the way it did. I hear my own small voice giving an address because the operator asked me to. I hear footsteps I have spent fifteen years blaming on a man with ink around his wrist.
I yank my hand back. This time the woman lets me.
“I’m done.”
Sonny’s voice is quiet. “Reva.”
“I’m done.”
The palm reader folds her hands on the table. “A woman you buried breathes again.”
My vision blurs at the edges.
Delia. She has to mean Delia.
I stand too fast, bumping the table with my thigh. A deck of cards shifts near the woman’s elbow.
Sonny grabs my arm. “We’re leaving.”
The woman nods once, calm as a church bell. “Tell the quiet man outside he cannot stop what is already walking toward you.”
I do not ask which quiet man. In my life, there are too many candidates.
Sonny gets me out of the shop before I can say anything regrettable. The heat outside feels like a slap. I suck in air that tastes like exhaust, sugar, and beer spilled long before noon, then bend over with my hands on my knees.
Sonny rubs my back. “Okay. That was less silly than advertised.”
“You think?”
“In my defense, most of them tell you you’ll meet a tall, dark stranger and take a trip.”
“I have met too many tall, dark strangers.”
“Fair.”
Ever is suddenly beside us. So much for distance.
His hand lands lightly between my shoulder blades. “What happened?”
“Tourism,” I say.
He looks at Sonny.
Sonny winces. “I took her for a palm reading.”
Ever’s gaze cuts to the shop.
I grab his wrist before he can do whatever his face is suggesting. “Don’t.”
“What did she say?”
“Things.”
His eyes come back to mine. “Specific things?”
“Yes.”
Sonny lifts one finger. “Deeply upsetting specific things.”
Ever’s jaw tightens.
I straighten and wipe my palms on my jeans. “I need a drink.”
“It’s lunch.”
“I didn’t ask for a clock.”
Sonny nods firmly. “She needs a terrible Hurricane.”
Ever looks like he wants to argue with both of us. Then his phone buzzes. He checks it, and his expression shuts down.
There it is again. Whatever thing it is everyone is hiding.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
“If one more man says nothing to me today, I’m going to start biting.”
Sonny brightens. “Honestly, I support it.”
Ever pockets the phone. “Get the drink. Then back to Noir.”
His voice leaves no room for debate.
That makes me want to debate anyway, but Sonny is already moving, and my legs are still unreliable after Madame Doom in the back of the voodoo shop.
We end up at a bar with neon in the window, sticky floors, and a bartender who makes Hurricanes from a machine with the confidence of a man committing a misdemeanor.
The drink is red, cold, and tastes like cough syrup went to college. I take one sip and gag. Sonny laughs so hard she has to hold on to the bar.
“This is terrible.”
“It’s tradition.”
“New Orleans owes me an apology.”
“Drink half of it.”
“Fuck that.”
I drink half of it.
Ever stands near the doorway, arms crossed, pretending he is not watching the street through the reflection in the mirror behind the bar. His phone stays in his hand. He checks it twice in ten minutes. Sonny catches me watching him and bumps my shoulder.
“Maybe he’s just bad at relaxing.”
“He’s bad at lying.”
“They all are.”
“No. They’re good at lying. They’re bad at remembering I’m not stupid.”
She gives me a look. “That may be the most accurate thing you’ve said all day.”
By the time we head back to Noir, the sun is high enough to make the sidewalk glare.
The Hurricane sloshes in my stomach like a bad decision.
Sonny chatters beside me, trying too hard now, pointing out a balcony where some famous musician maybe once threw a shoe at someone. Ever trails us more closely this time.
Too closely.
My suspicion has teeth by the time we turn onto the block. Noir sits ahead, doors locked, blinds half drawn.
A black SUV idles near the curb. Nash stands on the sidewalk by its window, body angled like a wall.
My steps slow, and then Nash steps back to let the door open. A man gets out of the passenger side.
For a second, my brain refuses the shape of him in this city. The silver at his temples. The set of his shoulders. The familiar stillness that carried me through every fever, every nightmare, every bad day I ever survived in Chicago.
Cal turns toward the bar. Then toward me.
The terrible red drink slips in my hand, sticky and cold against my fingers. Sonny says my name, but the sound of her voice is far away.
Cal sees me.
And the whole street goes silent.