The Lasaran (Aldebarian Alliance #1) - Dianne Duvall Page 0,5
have five different images on them.” He turned them to face him, fanned them, then peeled off five cards one at a time and held them up. “There’s a square, a triangle, a circle, a plus sign, and these squiggly lines that look like the river symbol you might find in a map key.”
“Okay.”
“I’m going to shuffle the cards, then hold one up facing me.” He demonstrated the action, revealing the card’s plain black back. “You’ll tell me what card you think it is. I’ll make a little mark here on my paper.” He glanced down and to his right. “Then I’ll return the card to the deck, shuffle it, and hold up another.”
“Okay.”
He reached forward and flipped a laminated piece of paper from his side of the barrier over to hang on her side. The page depicted each of the five cards he’d shown her, aligned side by side. “In case you forget the symbols.”
“Okay.”
“Any questions?”
“No.”
“Good.” He smiled. “Here we go.”
Lisa diligently studied each card he held up and tried to identify it. “Star. Square. Star. Star. River. Star. Plus. Plus. Circle. Star.” She didn’t know how many cards he held up, but it felt like a lot. She also wondered if perhaps she might be making some good guesses, because by the time they finished, he looked pleasantly surprised.
“Okay. On to the next one.”
“How’d I do?” she couldn’t resist asking. This would be an easy, high-paying gig if she could get it.
He offered her an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry. We aren’t allowed to tell you that.”
“Okay.”
“Next we have a deck with four different cards.” Again, he held each up as he verbally identified it. “Red heart. Red diamond. Black spade. Black club.” He flipped another paper over to hang on the barrier, depicting the cards. “We’ll do the same thing with this test that we did with the other.”
“Okay.”
He shuffled the cards and began to hold them up, one by one, pausing to make a note on his clipboard after she gave each answer.
“We have two more decks to get through. Would you like some water or something first?”
Two more decks? “No, thank you.” She didn’t want to be late for her next class.
“This deck consists of the primary colors red, yellow, and blue.” He showed her one of each. Her side would be black like the other cards. His side was white with a smaller rectangle of color in the center.
Lisa silently swore. She had hoped the color on his side might go all the way to the edges so she could catch a glimpse.
Leaning forward, he flipped the laminated pages on her side back to hang on his side. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
He held up a card, then another and another.
“Yellow. Blue. Blue. Red. Blue. Yellow. Red. Red.” As she called out the colors, Lisa began to suspect she was doing quite well. Brad had a very expressive face, and the farther they got into the test, the more his eyebrows rose, his eyes widened, or his lips twitched as though he fought a smile.
Wait. Was he doing that because she was getting so many right? Or was he doing it because she was so abysmally, laughably bad at this?
Damn. She really needed this money.
“And the last deck we’ll use is this one,” he announced. “Each card boasts a number, ranging from zero to five.” He held one of each up to show her. “Ready?”
“Ready.” She took a little longer with this one, really trying to get it right.
“Don’t second-guess yourself,” he murmured.
She glanced at him. “How did you know I was second-guessing myself?”
“You’re taking longer and sound uncertain now.”
“I’m just trying to get it right.”
He shook his head. “Don’t overthink it. Just do what you were doing before. Let’s start again.”
Did that mean she had been getting some right before?
He held up a card.
Lisa gave a mental shrug and did what he said, blurting out the first number that came to mind when she saw the black surface. “Four. Zero. One. One. Five. Four. Five. Two. Two. Two. Three. Two. Zero. Four.”
Finally, he smiled. “All right. That was the last one. We’re done.”
She smiled back. “Great.”
After shuffling some papers, he opened and closed a drawer, then rose. Lisa stood, waiting patiently while he fiddled with the papers on the clipboard he held. It looked like the one with all the forms she’d filled out, but there were more pages now. He must have added her test results.
Rounding the table, he opened the door and motioned for her to