Priceless A Sexy Urban Fantasy Mystery - By Shannon Mayer Page 0,6
dusted off a rickety gold chair, circa 1960, and I sat down. She pulled a green vinyl chair with rips in it close and grabbed my hand before I could even ask her, her eyes suddenly focusing, as an intelligence that hadn’t been there a moment before filled them.
Because I’m an Immune, even psychics can’t read me; it’s like I don’t exist. But I have lines in my hand and reading those lines isn’t really magic. It’s more like knowing how to read a map and understand all the symbols and variances.
“Ah, little Rylee, you have big trouble coming your way. Always the same with you though.” She turned my hand first one way, then the other, her grip intense.
“You will find someone, a man from your past, who will become a part of your future.”
“You mean like a lover?” I hated the almost hopeful tone in my voice, the way it sounded, but I needed to be as clear as possible. A little romance never hurt anyone, but if it got in the way of finding India, or any other child for that matter, it wouldn’t matter how I felt about him. In the back of my mind, I wondered if it was O’Shea and quickly pushed the thought away. One kiss did not a lover make him.
“Obsession.” She whispered the word and a cool wind wrapped around my ankles. “Death. Power. They are all tangled here.” She pointed to the middle of my hand where indeed, there seemed to be several lines tangled about one another. “But you will also find your own past in this circle of three.”
The house groaned as a gust of wind pummeled the barely standing structure. I shivered and Giselle did too.
“You must go now. I have said enough for today. Where are your blue socks, child?” Her eyes slid into vacancy once more, and I grabbed her hands, snagging her attention.
I asked her what I always asked. “The child I seek, will I find her in time?”
Giselle’s eyes flickered and the intelligence returned, though I could see it waver. “This child you seek, she is strong; you have time, I do not know if it will be enough, but you have time.”
I stood to leave, pressing the stuffed elephant into her now empty hands. For all that she loved her stuffed animals, I never once saw one after I had left it with her, and I still had no idea what she did with them. I brought them now because it was one of the few times I got to see her smile.
“Wait.”
I froze in the hallway, Giselle’s voice drawing me back in.
“There is another child, a child of golden sunshine and blue skies that seeks for you.”
Every muscle in me tensed, my body paralyzed by the seer’s words. It couldn’t be what I thought, but I whispered her name without meaning to.
“Berget.”
The cold wind whipped through the house again, papers scattering about, a stack of books toppling over, and chaos ensued.
Giselle scrambled to her feet and rushed past me, caterwauling like a banshee about blue socks, her hair coming loose from her bun and the strands of it whipping about her face, obscuring her features. She attempted to right the things the wind demolished. It only made matters worse; for every pile she straightened, another fell, taking two more with it.
I shook myself free of the paralysis and reached out for Giselle, grabbing her by her bony shoulders, shocked at how thin she’d become.
“Let me go, devil spawn! Blood seeker! Killer! Whore! Let me go!” I didn’t take the names personally. Though some were accurate. You can’t get too pissy when people are telling you the truth.
I hung onto her shoulders, steered her back into the kitchen and plunked her into the green chair. She went limp and a voice came softly to my ear. “Sing for her, child.” I didn’t look around; I knew it was one of her guides. They loved Giselle, and so I did what they said. I sang.
“Trip upon trenchers, and dance upon dishes, my mother sent me for some barm, some barm; she bid me go lightly, and come again quickly, for fear the young men should do me some harm. Yet didn’t you see, yet didn’t you see, what naughty tricks they played on me? They broke my pitcher, spilt the water, cursed my mother, chided her daughter and kissed my sister instead of me.”
I trailed off, the old song from my childhood catching