Wild Country (The World of the Others #2)- Anne Bishop Page 0,91

could be ignored. A teaching story never was.

Barbara Ellen glanced at Abigail. So. This story was not about Barbara Ellen or her family. She was the designated teller—but had Jana helped shape the information into a teaching story to make sure he and Virgil heard what they needed to hear?

“Once upon a time,” Barbara Ellen began, “there was a young Intuit girl who came from a family of gamblers and swindlers. Being Intuits, the gamblers used their abilities to sense things that were tied into their skill with cards and other games of chance. They knew when to bet and when to fold—and sometimes they cheated by folding when they could have won a hand so that the people playing with them wouldn’t start to wonder about why they won so much. And the swindlers always sensed who would be most vulnerable to whatever con they were playing.

“Sometimes they worked different swindles in the same town or split up and worked in a couple of towns close to each other. Sometimes the whole family would work one con. But they always stayed in touch and they always left the area around the same time because moving around was safer—and because there was less chance that one of the youngsters might say something that made a mark realize he was dealing with Intuits.

“See, their being Intuits was the big family secret, the thing you could never ever tell anyone else.” Barbara Ellen looked around the room. “You could never tell. And if you were a part of the family, you could never leave.”

“And if you did leave?” Tolya asked softly.

“Death,” Abigail whispered, her blue eyes blind and staring. “If you’re out of the life, there’s always the chance you’ll snitch on the rest of them, so … death.”

Barbara Ellen resumed the story. “The girl’s Intuit gift was unusual. Some people believe that gemstones of all kinds have healing or magical properties and can help the person who wears them. But the girl knew exactly which stone would resonate with a particular person. Even if a hundred stones were on a table, she could tell which one truly suited a person and would bring good things, positive things, into that person’s life—or help keep bad things away. But just as some stones would be good for a person, other stones would open a person up to bad things. Sometimes little things, like spilling coffee on your shirt just before an important meeting or missing out on having lunch with a friend because your car had a flat tire. Little things, day after day. And not so little things. Like sitting down at a poker table and gambling away your family’s life savings.

“The girl and her uncle had a particular part to play in the rest of the family’s endeavors. They would rent a booth at a fair or an open market. The uncle would repair jewelry and clean jewelry while the girl did the patter about choosing a stone for luck or love or good fortune. Some of them were tumbled stones you would keep in a bowl while others had a hole through them so they could be strung on a cord or a gold or silver chain—which the uncle would sell to the mark. And because the girl was young and pretty, people never suspected they were being cheated in some way.

“The thing was, if the uncle had a feeling the mark had money or something else of use to the family, he would signal the girl to select a dissonant stone—something that would sour the person’s life in some way and make them vulnerable. And the girl did it because she was young and they were her family and she depended on them for her survival. So someone would carry his ‘lucky’ stone into the saloon where the girl’s father was playing poker—and end up owing so much to all the players at the table that he would be ruined financially. Or a woman would wear a necklace that was supposed to bring her good fortune and end up being dragged into an alley where she’d be roughed up—and sometimes worse—before having her purse stolen.

“The girl didn’t understand these things when she was young, but when she reached her teens and realized what happened to the people who were given bad stones …”

“She ran away,” Abigail whispered. “She kept running and hiding, choosing places too small to be of interest to the family, or hiding in larger cities, doing