kept her eyes trained on his face as he did so, noting how—unlike most people—he didn’t move his lips as he counted. When he finished, she held her hand out for the remaining deck and told him to look at the top of the stack he’d counted out and memorize the card.
“Got it,” he said after a moment of mock concentration.
“Now give it here.” She put the small stack of cards on top of the deck and made a show of shuffling—once, twice, three times—never allowing the top cards to be mixed in, but keeping her hands at a practiced angle to disguise her skill. She slid the deck back over. “Now, I want you to think of three names. Any three. Your first, middle, and last. Or your favorite actors. Anything at all. Spell them inside your head and take out a card for each letter.”
He counted off six cards. “You haven’t told me your name. Unless it really is Henrietta, like you said on the tour. But you don’t look like a Henrietta.” He counted off five more cards.
Clever, him using the same distracting technique she’d worked so hard to perfect. “I’m Dini.”
He counted off five more cards. “Like the song?” And, completely unbidden, sang a few soft bars of the old Shaun Cassidy hit “Hey, Deanie, won’t you come out tonight?” It was a pleasant memory; her mother used to sing that song to her all the time, and she felt a soft bit of connection to this stranger who so easily tapped into that memory.
Dini smiled and took back the untouched deck, then scooped up the cards he’d counted off and put them on top. “No. Dini as in hoo.”
Quin’s eyebrows rose above the frame of his glasses. “Your actual name is Houdini?”
“Marilyn Houdini Blackstone,” she said with a grand gesture of introduction. “Give me the cards you took off the top.” He did, and she counted them. Nine. She deposited them casually on top of the deck. “Now, you’re going to tell me your three names, and I’m going to deal off the cards and spell them. If I spell them wrong, don’t tell me, okay?”
“Okay. First, Menger.”
“Well, that one I know. M-e-n-g-e-r.” She dropped a card faceup with each letter.
“Hedda.”
“As in, Hedda Krause?”
“I wasn’t sure how to spell her name.”
An unusual, and unwelcome, tremor zipped through Dini’s hand. “H-e-d-d-a.”
“Oh good. I spelled it right.” He seemed genuinely relieved. “Last one, Irvin.”
Her finger was poised on the top card, but at the mention of the name, her hand dropped to the table. “Irvin? Why Irvin?”
“Does it matter?”
The tone of his question ran everywhere from teasing to—maybe, but probably not—flirting. “It’s kind of a random choice.”
A tiny shrug. “Not so random. It’s my name.”
To say that Dini froze in that moment would not be quite accurate. Breath moved in and out, she blinked, and her left hand closed on the deck of cards with a death grip. Still a jab of ice pick–sharp pain stabbed at her head, like she’d taken an ill-advised gulp of a frozen drink. She fought—and, probably failed—to keep a neutral expression on her face as it waned.
Quin mirrored her gesture of introduction. “Irvin no-middle-name Carmichael, the Fifth.”
She’d get back to that later. “I-r-v-i-n.” She looked up. “Do you remember your card?”
“King of diamonds.”
“And you had nine cards drawn.” She counted them out, dropping them face up on the pile. “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight”—dramatic pause—“King of diamonds.”
“Cool,” he said and took a sip of his beer. “The trick I get—you put the cards down in reverse order. But keeping the stack intact while you shuffle? That was amazing.”
Dini decided not to confront his condescension, even though it irked her.
“Do you know who you are?”
“Do any of us really, Dini? And isn’t that question a little too existential for a first date?”
The response caught her so off guard she laughed and fumbled her shuffle. She put the cards away and took the cooling mug in her hands. “This isn’t a date.”
“A date is in the eye of the beholder.”
“Dates don’t have secrets, Quin Carmichael. And I have a feeling you’re carrying one.”
“Not a secret, exactly. More like a mystery. Here it goes.” Quin shifted himself as if settling in for a long story. “A few years ago, we—my sisters and I—were clearing out my grandparents’ house. It was originally owned by my great-great-grandfather. Built sometime in the 1890s. We all had a chance to go through and take whatever