When his eyes lost a bit of their shine, I realized I’d been staring at him for a beat too long. “Um …”
His smile turned warm and intimate, like we’d been besties for years or were about to be. The woman with him, who was maybe in her fifties, looked down her nose at me and sniffed. She wore a long black coat that looked like cashmere, black driving gloves, and an arrogant expression. I recognized the designer label on her handbag, so I knew it must have cost as much as my new car, if it wasn’t a knockoff.
“Not exactly what I’d expected,” she said in an unpleasantly nasal voice, her mouth pursed. She made a point of scanning my shop from one side to the other and then cleared her throat. “YouareTess Callahan? Susan’s friend?”
“Yes,” I said, starting to have a bad feeling.
“Cordelia Phleabottom,” she said. “And my son. How … nice to make your acquaintance.”
Oh, boy. The felons were here.
The man crossed to where I stood, his hand held out. “Aloysius Phleabottom.Sopleased to meet you.”
The odd thing was, he really seemed pleased to meet me. I suspected Aloysius would have been a great snake-oil salesman back in the day.
I took a step back, putting my hands behind me. “I’m sorry. I don’t shake hands. Germs, you know.”
His eyes sharpened. “So, it’s true. Your talent.”
“Susan told you,” I said flatly. Everybody and anybody could find out about me, thanks to unwanted press from the incident when I first came into my … talent.
Gift.
Curse.
When I touch people, sometimes I can see—in full, living color—exactly how they’ll die. Context clues can even give me an approximate idea ofwhen.And I firmly believe this isn’t knowledge that people should have.
I’d been eighteen, already working in the shop for Jack’s late uncle Jeremiah, who’d owned it then, the first time it happened. On my first day alone in the shop, too.
A painfully thin, skittish woman had come in. She’d asked me about something, I don’t even remember what, now, and I’d held out my hand to shake, like a real grownup would do.
And when she’d touched my hand, I’d seen a completely lifelike vision of her husband killing her with a shovel. I’d screamed and blurted it out and then collapsed in convulsions on the floor from a physical reaction to the vision. If the customer who’d walked in a few seconds later hadn’t been an EMT, I might have died, because the poor woman—Annabelle Hannah Yorgenson—had run away from me in fear.
I’d later found out that her death had happened just as I’d predicted. Somehow, horribly, the press had found out. The EMT had talked, or Annabelle had, or the people in the Orlando ER had heard me sob the story to my Aunt Ruby and Uncle Mike and spread the word.
I didn’t know and didn’t care. I just never wanted to go through a media frenzy like that again. After enough denial and avoidance, the press had finally given up and gone away, thankfully, but I’d been fairly unpopular with some of the more private citizens of Dead End for a while.
The visions didn’t happen with everyone, thank goodness. And the pain and convulsions were mostly a thing of the past. But when I saw violent deaths, it was still very hard on me physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Not to mention when, like now, nosy people wanted to pry into my life. Or, even worse, when the ones who wanted me to “use my gift” and tell them how they’d die showed up.
Idiots.
Aloysius casually put his hands in his pocket and stepped back, as if signaling he wouldn’t try to touch me, which I appreciated.
“No, Susan didn’t say anything. We do a bit of research on places and people when we visit,” he said lightly, looking around my pawnshop with interest. “We knew you were her friend, though, so we thought we’d stop by and say hello while she’s busy working.”
This didn’t make sense. Surely Susan would have told me they were in town when we’d talked earlier, if she’d known?
Hmm.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Ish, just ask her,” Cordelia demanded in her nasal voice.
“Don’t call me Ish, mother,” he said from between clenched teeth, never losing his smile.
“Ask me what?” I casually sauntered around the counter and stood behind it, because I wanted more distance between me and the felonious Phleabottoms.
Which would also be a good name for a rock band.
