up for a second, wondering if I should do it. “Come with me.”
Yes. Yes, I think I shall.
This means I lose, of course. But I’m too tempted not to.
The boy—Scout or Thirty-Two or whatever the fuck he’s called—follows on my heels, practically skipping to keep up as I weave through the hotel.
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere.”
I take a sharp left.
“What are we doing?”
“Walking.”
I take the stairs two at a time.
“When will we—”
I stop dead in my tracks, holding my finger up to his face. “Stop. I like you, but don’t annoy me.”
His face turns to stone for a minute, big brown eyes gazing up at me, and then his mouth breaks into a slow smile before he thumps me on the arm. “You had me going for a second there. That mask is pretty terrifying. Now come on, we don’t have all day, do we?”
He turns on his heels and races up the rest of the stairs, and I have no real choice but to follow the little shit.
“Where to now, Boss?” he asks at the top, hands on his hips while he glances left and right down the corridor.
I don’t bother answering as I take a left and continue down the hallway, and he doesn’t say another word until I unlock the door to my bedroom.
“Whoa, big guy,” he holds his hands up, taking a step back. “I like girls. Only girls. Not saying there’s anything wrong with boys… you’re just—”
I cut him off with laughter, giving him a clip around the ear for his arrogance. “I like neither. You have nothing to worry about.”
“You like my Sapphire,” he says as he follows me into the room.
I make my way over to the box that sits on top of my dresser, unlocking it and moving the photo of my mother to the side. “Sapphire’s a monster. And she’s mine, not yours.”
He folds his arms across his chest, about to argue, but the small rectangular card in my hand must catch his eye and he’s already onto something else. The boy is a squirrel.
Perhaps that is what I shall call him.
“What’s that you got there?”
I hold the card out between two fingers, and he crosses the room to grab it out of my hand. He turns it over carefully and then looks up at me. “This is my grandmother’s card.”
“Indeed. We have something of a bet ongoing over it. Tell me what it means.”
“So she can win? Or so you can win?”
“Does it really matter?”
He shrugs. “Not really. You think this is going to tell you if fetching my Sapphire is a good idea or not?”
“Stop calling her that,” I snap. “And yes.”
He lets out a sigh. “Moon card. See, there’s the moon. Two towers on each side, one’s good and one’s evil, but they both look the same to crayfish standing at the bottom. On either side of the river you have the wolf and the dog, one’s wild and feral and the other is domesticated and civilized.”
My eye twitches. “That’s it?”
He hands it back to me. “That’s it.”
“What exactly have you told me that I couldn’t have deciphered myself just from glancing at it?”
The boy shrugs his shoulders. “What do you want to know?”
I shake my head. “Uh, my future? That is what you promise, is it not?”
That slow, arrogant smile spreads across his face again, as if he’s so much smarter than me. “The meaning depends on which angle we’re going for. Love?”
“No!” I scoff. “Don’t be so ridiculous.”
“So with love,” he continues regardless. “This means it’s full of misunderstandings. Nothing is as it appears. Things are clouding your judgment, things from your past, and you need to let them go.”
I shake my head at him. “Enlightening. Truly. For surely the same could not be said and ring true for every other human on the planet—ever.”
He smirks and takes the card back out of my hand. “The dog and the wolf. Who you going to be?”
“Isn’t that what you're supposed to be telling me?”
“Okay, fine. You’re the dog, and you should go and get my Sapphire. Dogs listen to their betters.”
I scoff at him. “I’m nobody’s dog.”
“Fine. You’re the wolf, and you should go and get my Sapphire. Protect what’s yours. Show them who’s the boss. The alpha of the pack.”
I burst out laughing, pulling the card out of his hands and flicking it behind my back. “I think I am merely a man, and you are merely a charlatan. What card do I need to tell me