“Why not? She’s a phony! Even her accent’s fake. She’s probably from Hoboken.”
“Trenton,” Romelda corrected her.
“See?” Vero said, as if this proved her point.
“Romelda doesn’t have to use the Eye to recognize a woman running from her problems. However,” she said, reaching for her tarot cards, “the answers to those problems are another matter.”
“I’m not paying for that,” Vero said, slapping a hand over Romelda’s before she could turn the first card over.
Romelda sucked in a sharp breath as their fingers made contact. Her pupils flared wide. A chill swept over me as her fake accent slipped andher eyes became unfocused. “You’re looking for a man,” she said in a low voice. “I see him in a vision. He is handsome. With dark hair.”
Vero yanked her hand away. “For twenty-five bucks, you could at least be original.”
“He has a very toned backside.”
Vero crossed her arms but didn’t argue with that.
Romelda blinked and her accent snapped back in place. “He wears many stories on his skin. One of them is about you.”
“His tattoo,” I whispered to Vero.
“She’s talking in riddles, Finlay. Quit giving her clues.”
“Yes! Tattoos. And he’s tall.”
Vero shot to her feet, pointing at Romelda. “That’s where you’re wrong! Javi’s only five foot nine and a half.”
Romelda stood, her bangles clanking as she thrust her arms wide and glared up at Vero. “Everyone is tall compared to Romelda!” The woman couldn’t have been more than four-eleven in her shoes.
I tugged the hem of Vero’s sweatshirt until she plopped back down. “What else did you see?” I asked to smooth the air.
She turned to me. “Pizza.”
Vero rolled her eyes.
“And a gun.”
“Not since Charlie took it,” Vero muttered.
“And I saw a car. With wings,” Romelda said, squinting. “Like a bird. Or maybe it was a bat?”
Vero barked out a laugh. “A car with wings. That’s a good one.”
I jabbed Vero in the side. “The hood ornament,” I whispered. Her face paled. There was a set of silver wings on the hood of the Aston.
“You will find the car,” Romelda said, “but the key won’t be in it.”
I stiffened. That had to be a coincidence, right?
“And your unwelcome friend with the scar on his face is coming into the shop right now.”
Vero gasped. “How’d you know that?”
The woman pointed her cigarillo at the closed-circuit TV mountedin the corner behind our heads just as Charlie entered the store. He snapped hangers aside on their racks, searching inside the T-shirt displays and peering behind the counters.
I grabbed our gym bag. “Do you have another way out of here?”
Romelda held out a palm. Vero frowned as she slapped a wad of bills into it. The woman signaled for us to follow her through another curtain behind her. It opened into a storage room littered with boxes of junk. She led us to an exit hidden at the rear. “You,” she said, stopping me at the door, “you will find what you seek, but you must take a leap of faith to acquire it. And you,” she said to Vero, “you will find whatyoudesire in someone close to you. He holds painful secrets inside him, in festering, broken pieces. Be patient. It’s only a matter of time before he reveals what he’s been keeping from you.”
