Interlude Rosetta
Interlude
Rosetta
“They’re gone,” Isaiah said.
He peeked his head into the backroom where she still sat behind the spread of cards. Her finger poised over the Devil. Her eyes distant.
“He gave me two grand to let them inside.”
“Surprised it was that low, honestly. He has more money than sense,” Rosetta said on a sigh. She released the cards and pushed them away from her. “Let me take out my contacts. These things are terrible.”
Isaiah rushed in with a case and some solution.
She plucked the white contacts out of her eyes and blinked furiously as they adjusted back to her regular sight.
She might look like she was in her eighties, but she was closer to a hundred and fifteen.
Without the contacts and gloves and dim lighting, she looked even younger.
People expected a wizened old hag, though. So she put on the performance.
“That’s better.”
“The cameras barely gave us enough time,” Isaiah said.
“Yes, well, thankfully you stalled so I could get into position.”
Rosetta didn’t have the true sight anymore.
Not since she was much younger. Oh, she could read the cards and the crystal balls.
She actually did prefer to work by cauldron light.
Only it had nothing to do with telling any kind of future.
The tarot cards had been particularly impressive, if she did say so herself.
Since she hadn’t been reading much of anything.
Sometimes tarot worked that way. It showed the truth even without the sight.
She was primarily an herbalist and could brew potions the likes that had never been seen. Hence her long life and younger appearance.
Untangling spells was one of her specialties. She had been doing that for Dallas Llewellyn. Whatever was wrong with her might have been beyond Rosetta’s expertise. She had been trying, though. After all, she’d gotten the loan from the vampire syndicate to cover the costs. Now she was dead.
It was unfortunate. She really did enjoy a challenge.
Like the pair that had just walked in.
It had been a long, long time since the cards had answered her, but she couldn’t deny that there had been truth in the telling. Whatever trials they were in for, it was not going to be for the faint of heart.
“It sucks about Dallas, though,” Isaiah said, sinking into the chair opposite her. He leaned over to look at the cards. “Shit. Was this what you pulled?”
“Yeah. Trials and tribulations.”
“Give me a goddess card any day of the week,” Isaiah said on a laugh.
Rosetta twirled the Devil card around her finger. “Indeed.”
“I was going to pick up coffee. I’ll poach some tourists on the way,” he promised as he stood, oblivious to Rosetta’s train of thought.
Because this wasn’t the first time she had met Graves.
Though it wasn’t like him to not remember first meetings.
She was raised by a coven in the Bronx, and her abilities had yet to come.
She’d thought she’d get to be a showgirl forever.
It was the height of the Roaring ’20s, and she was a dancer in a nightclub for monsters.
Not that they displayed that. Her daddy played saxophone in the band while her mama ran the business side. It was a family affair.
Graves had walked in the stage door, through the dressing rooms, and she had come out in full stage attire and tripped over her own feet onto him. It was one of the best places to conduct business for the monsters of the time.
“You all right, Miss…?” Graves said, in lieu of apologizing as he helped her to her feet.
“Miss…Miss Davis,” she sputtered.
When she looked up into his sharp-white features and scowled brow, she saw little figures marching around his head. Only the coven magic kept her from screaming in terror at seeing something over this monster’s head.
“What is it?” he asked apprehensively.
“You’re going to have great pain and torment in your life,” she blurted before she could think better of it.
Instead of scowling further, he actually laughed. “Yeah. Tell me something that I don’t know, kid.”
“I…”
“Do you have some of your mother’s sight, Miss Davis?”
“I don’t have any sight, sir.”
He nodded. “Well, pain and suffering aren’t premonitions, if that helps.”
He moved to step around her, but she couldn’t let it go.
“There’s a sword. There’s a sword in your future.”
He stalled. “What about the sword?”
“It’s…in a market,” she said. “It’s not good for you, though.”
His eyes lit up at the words, something like hunger in them.
“Thank you for that advice, Miss Davis. You have a good night now.”
Then he disappeared into the gloom. She never saw him again or found out why exactly he was there that night to see her family.
By the looks of it, pain and torment had lingered in his life.
But she didn’t know what ever became of that sword.
If he’d ever found it. If it had made him worse than before.
Rosetta grabbed her cell phone and found the number she had been looking for. She hadn’t told Graves about their first meeting. And she hadn’t told them the whole truth about Dallas’s mentor.
She knew Kingston. He’d contacted her about helping Dallas in the first place. He’d even fronted the initial money for it. And paid her to contact him if anyone came snooping.
“Yes?”
“Dallas is dead.”
“Yes. I already knew that,” Kingston said darkly.
“You were right that people would come snooping around,” she said.
“Who?”
“Graves and his apprentice, Kierse.”
Kingston was silent a long moment. “They seem to keep getting in my way.”
“Is there anything that you’d like me to do?”
“No. I’ll take it from here.”
Then he hung up.
Rosetta tossed the phone down. If he hadn’t paid her so much money, she would have told him to go fuck himself. Maybe it was time to leave Vegas. She could feel the tension in the country like the feeling in her knees when a storm was brewing.
She wanted to run. That was what had kept her alive all this long century. But what Kingston hadn’t said, what Graves hadn’t said, either, was that things were changing for those with magic. And maybe it was time to be at the front of that change.
She picked up the cream card that she’d initially discarded on her counter. An invitation to be a delegate at the upcoming convocation to discuss the Monster Treaty.
New York City was home, after all. Maybe it was time to return.