palm. She stood quietly for a few moments and then spoke. “You are destined for great things, Olivia. You have a long life line and…” Nadia had stopped speaking.
“And what?” I prodded.
“You have a great adventure ahead,” she said, almost squinting at my palm. “I see two great loves will enter your life.”
I replied with my own question. “Did I make the right decision joining the Council?”
Nadia squeezed my hand and stepped closer to me to ensure only I could hear her whispered words. “That was not your choice, miloska,” she said. “Women kings are born and must accept their fate.”
“There is no such thing,” I said back.
Nadia began to leave. “Oh, but there is,” she said nodding. “There is.” And then she quickly walked down the stairway, on to the sidewalk and into the night.
I remained in the doorway, unsure of what to think. I decided it was better not to mention too much to Lily or Elsa, who’d stayed in the kitchen. I knew Nadia wasn’t crazy, but she was old and maybe a little bit nostalgic for a different time. I walked back into the kitchen to find Elsa tearing a linen dish rage into strips for my arm.
Lily broke the silence. “OK, tell us: Did she read your palm?”
I nodded. “Yes. She said I would live a long life and have two great loves. I assume she meant the two of you,” I said, trying to make a joke out of it. But neither Lily nor Elsa was laughing.
“Nadia is a great seer,” Lily said. “If she said love, she means it.”
I found the entire conversation a little overwhelming after my cartography session. “How will I ever find one love, let alone two, when I’ve got a campaign to run and you two as my chaperons every evening?”
“Whatever Nadia told you is going to come true, Olivia. So you’d better be prepared,” Lily said, undeterred.
****
CHAPTER 19
Fortunately, I didn’t have time to dwell on fortune cookie predictions, or the mysterious old woman who doled them out. My arm, while tender, was healing nicely and, as Nadia had said, the images were invisible to everyone but me. That made my next job easier, as I was off to find the head of the Democratic Party and convince him to not run a candidate against Levi.
The expression “three is a crowd” holds true for both romance and politics. A three-way race is a disaster because it splits the ballots, making it almost impossible to gain a majority of the votes. A three-way race usually results in a run-off.
I was determined to help Levi avoid that fate. I drove over to Lake Merced and found my target. As I expected, Paul Levant was ensconced on a bench, watching a regatta. No one was seated next to him, probably not a coincidence. Throwing caution to the wind, I slid alongside him on the bench. Levant, a small bag of popcorn in his hands, turned to look at me, shook his head and chuckled.
“I figured you would come to see me, sooner or later,” he said, popping a kernel into his mouth.
“You must have ESP,” I said, watching the women of the University of San Francisco glide across the water.
“Maybe,” he said, “Or maybe I read somewhere that you’re running Levi Barnes’ campaign for District Fifteen. I do try to stay current on my political news.”
“I liked it better when I thought you had magical powers,” I said, enjoying myself.
Levant handed me the bag of popcorn and smiled. “On second thought, I do have ESP, because I know exactly what you are going to ask me.”
“You do?” I asked, feigning ignorance for the sake of our conversation.
“You want to know if the party is going to support someone else for that seat,” he said. “The answer is no; no one wants it.” Levant was agitated. I wasn’t the cause, but there was an undercurrent of worry running through him; it felt old, like it had been with him for a while. “The Republicans are looking for a candidate, Olivia. They want a Tea Party rep for that seat, someone who can appeal to the conservative money in Silicon Valley and the farm belt.”
“You think a guy who writes code for Facebook games is going to vote for someone who thinks the world is flat?” I asked tartly.
Levant shook his head. “Don’t be so flip. They won’t be as obvious as that,” he said. “It will be about taxes and regulation. It will