Not that she really believed what happened in there.
It was all rather conflicted in her head.
Maggie smiled sadly. “We don’t have any interest in her. And if we wanted to pick your pockets, we would have already. Come, my reading for you tonight is free.”
“You’re not going to make me run around in darkness screaming my head off, are you?” Cora narrowed an eye. “Already did that once tonight. Don’t feel like doing it again.”
Maggie laughed. “No, no…I haven’t run in a long, long time. I’m hardly in any condition to chase you.” She turned and walked into her tent, waving for Cora to follow. “Leave your friend outside. These words aren’t for her.”
Cora looked at Emily and shrugged.
Emily frowned. She clearly didn’t like the idea of being left behind. “How the fuck does she know our names?”
“I don’t know. The guy from the ticket booth knew mine, too. I think they must be doing some weird facial recognition software thing and looking us up online.”
“Are you seriously going in there?” Her friend was clinging to Cora’s arm like she was a life raft. “You really shouldn’t.”
“I know.” Cora paused. She knew she shouldn’t. She knew it was insanely stupid. She knew this was the wrong thing to do. But, man, she was incredibly curious. “I guess I want to know what the big deal is. If they’re setting me up for some stupid game by looking me up, I want to know what they want.” She zipped up her coat pockets to make sure nobody could lift her phone or her wallet without her noticing.
Although they already had gotten hold of her phone once and opted to return it. Maybe they hacked it, and that was how they knew so much about her.
Emily frowned. “What’m I supposed to do? Just stand here and wait?” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Why am I always getting ditched by you people?”
“This is exactly the first time I’ve ever ditched you, Em. I’ll be right out in a second, anyway. I promise. It’s probably just a sham, and they want to sell me on some kind of freaky circus timeshare.” She grinned and walked toward the tent. “I’ll be right back. If I’m not out in half an hour, call the cops.”
“Oookaaaay,” Emily said in a long, drawn-out sigh. “My friends are all idiots.”
Cora laughed at the comment. Emily wasn’t entirely wrong.
The smell of incense just about smacked her in the face as she walked into the dark tent. She coughed. There were candles burning around the room, sitting in large bowls of wax made of hundreds of previously spent tapers, their colors all mixed together into muddy messes. Banners and large sections of fabric draped up from the walls to the center of the tent, giving the whole place a slightly claustrophobic feeling.
“This place looks flammable,” Cora commented dryly. “Does OSHA know about this?”
“What’s OSHA?”
Man, they knew how to stay in character. “Never mind. It’s just that the candles aren’t probably a great idea.”
The old woman was already seated at a circular table covered in a midnight-blue fabric and gold painted stars. A crystal ball—a legit crystal ball—sat in the center of the table next to a deck of weathered old cards. They were too big to be regular playing cards, but what they were, Cora wasn’t quite sure.
Maggie laughed. “I suppose not. Come, Cora. Sit. Listen to what Old Maggie has to tell you.”
Cora moved to stand by the table for a moment. She hesitated then, with a groan, sat in the chair across from old lady. “Why do I get the feeling it was an exceptionally bad idea to come here?”
“Oh, my dear, sweet, wonderful child.” Maggie reached out and picked up the old and battered deck of cards. Her fingers shook a little with age. The woman’s eyes were warm, and almost sympathetic. “That’s because…it was.”
4
Cora sat back in her chair and watched the old woman warily. “Are you threatening me?”
“No, no…I’m no danger to you. Old Maggie is no danger to anybody.” The woman began shuffling the cards. “Everyone thinks I’m to blame for the bad things that happen to them. That I’m the lightning that struck their house and burned it down. I’m not. I’m only the person telling you that it’s about to happen.”
“So…you’re saying my house is going to burn down?” Cora narrowed an eye.
Maggie laughed. “No, no. It’s a figure of speech. Metaphorically, your house is about to burn down.” She smiled warmly like that made it so much better. It didn’t. “Metaphorically, your life is about to end.”
“You’re saying something terrible is about to happen to me?”
“It already has. The clock has already begun ticking. It’ll strike midnight soon enough, then all your world will disappear. But a new one will take its place.” Maggie began cutting the cards into several piles. “Tell me, Cora, what’s your favorite color?”
“Not this bunch of bull again.” She sighed and leaned back, folding her arms over her chest. This woman was clearly on the same radio system as everyone else. They were all working together to mess with her. “What’re you guys trying to get out of screwing with my head? Hoping I’ll go back and tell everybody on social media how they have to come and see this insane circus? I hate to disappoint. I don’t have that many friends.”
Maggie only kept a faint, knowing smile on her face. “You can’t tell me your favorite color because it’s gone now. But you can remember having one, can’t you? Think about being a child and being asked that by your teachers. You know you had one.”
Cora tried to fight off the memory, but it was like when somebody told her not to look down. Of course she was going to look down. Nobody said “don’t look down” without then fully expecting that person to do precisely what they were told not to do.
She could remember being asked. She could remember having a favorite color.
She just couldn’t remember what it was.
“This is a lie.” Cora rubbed the back of her neck. “It’s a trick.”
“It’s a trick, all right.” Maggie began to place the piles of cards in front of her. Five in all. “But it isn’t ‘a bunch of bull.’ This isn’t a lie. Now. Listen carefully to what I have to say, Cora Glass. I don’t give out free readings twice.”
She flipped the first card over. It was painted to look like a tarot card, but she didn’t recognize the figure. To be fair, she knew jack shit about tarot cards. Only what she’d seen in movies or on TV. The figure was a woman with long dark hair, bent backward at an alarming angle. The text on the bottom read “0. The Contortionist.”
“You are on the beginning of a journey. A chapter of your life has ended, and a new one is about to begin,” Maggie explained. “The Contortionist is full of hope and wonder.” She tapped the card. “But the road you will walk will not be an easy one.”
Maggie turned over the card on the top of the next pile. It was reds and blacks, with a man standing there, a fiendish and sinister grin painted on his face. He wore sunglasses, one lens tinted red and the other black. His shadow seemed to be alive—in so much as it had features—and its face was twisted in a deranged and inhuman smile. Like the Cheshire Cat, if it had done drugs. More drugs, anyway.