The woman who’d been passing by, nearly out of my line of sight, stopped dead and looked upward. Her daughter about-faced without hesitating. In a moment, they were both headed back the way they’d come.

“No,” Albert said. “You know when you’re going to get hit because your hair stands on end. And it isn’t.”

“How do you know?” someone called, and I suspected it was Albert’s other neighbor, a middle-aged goth woman who played a little too much Dungeons & Dragons. “You don’t have any hair.”

“I have hair on my arms, don’t I?” Albert yelled. He was largely unconcerned with how he appeared to the customers, something not entirely helpful in a sales profession.

“My hair is standing up on end,” I replied, still feeling the tingles of my scalp.

“All your hair? Even your head hair?”

I ran my hand above my head but didn’t feel anything. “No,” I said in a smaller voice.

“It’s probably a premonition,” Geraldine said. “Get out your crystals and reflect on it.”

“You should know the difference between getting struck by lightning and intuition, girl,” Albert said. “Though I guess now we know why you don’t get much business.”

“Oh, shut up, Albert,” Geraldine hollered. “She doesn’t get business because her tent looks like she stole it from a homeless person, her chairs are suspect, and she sinks back into her seat instead of making eye contact and smiling. It has nothing to do with her ability. No offense, Penny.”

I frowned at the slight, but she did have a point.

I clasped my hands and rested them on the table as a few more people ambled by. Two, a couple, looked at my setup with interest before glancing in at me. Another, a solitary man behind them, studied Albert’s setup. Clearly they’d heard the exchange and wanted to compare for themselves.

“I’ll bite,” the man from the couple said, directing his lady friend—no ring, so probably his girlfriend—toward me. He wore a good-natured smile, but hers was a tad brittle. Jealousy, or a hatred of divinity-type folk.

I doubted it was the latter, since she hadn’t worn that look before coming over, so that meant their relationship was fresh. They were still working on trust and intimacy.

I smiled and straightened into a semblance of professionalism. “Hello.”

“Honey?” the man said, stopping in front of the single chair and looking at his girlfriend.

“Sure.” She put her hand on the back of the chair. It wobbled a little and she hesitated.

“I can go if you want?” he asked, bending toward her.

“Oh no, it’s fine.” She gingerly sat in the chair. Her relieved smile when the chair didn’t collapse spoke volumes.

Fine. I would get new chairs.

I caught movement behind them, someone veering to the left. The other man had decided he’d try Geraldine’s hand at palm reading.

“Would you like a tarot reading?” I asked with my version of a kind smile. My best friend Veronica said it made me look like a cornered animal, but I was pretty sure she was joking.

“Um…” The woman’s gaze slid to the crystal ball and my smile tightened.

Please don’t pick that. Please don’t pick that. Please don’t—

“How about the crystal ball?” she said with a sparkle of excitement in her eyes.

I kept my sigh at bay. “Of course.”

Careful not to disturb the rocks placed around the table, I pulled the ball closer and grabbed a cloth from the bag resting on the ground beside me. I slipped the cloth over the ball to cover it, something that seemed very mysterious, but whose only true purpose was to give me time to think.

“Do you have any questions?” I asked her as I laid both palms on the covered ball and made eye contact.

A small knot wormed between her brows and her gaze slipped toward the man before she could drag it back.

Clear as day. People’s tells made this job easy.

“No,” she said with a forced light tone.

I nodded like I’d known she’d say that, and slowly pulled my hands away from the crystal ball, sliding off the cloth as I did so. I stared at it for a long moment before closing my eyes. Power pulsed in my middle from my rocks and the charged atmosphere. A feeling of inevitability lodged in my chest like a spiked ball.

“Something is coming.” The words slipped out of my mouth, unbidden. “Something will happen soon that will change your life forever.” The pressure in my chest increased. “But the journey has already begun. You can’t hide from it. You won’t be able to turn away. A chain of events has started, and at the end will be your destiny.” I opened my eyes and she was leaning forward slightly, her eyes riveted to my face.

The ball inside of me loosened a little, and I had a moment of supreme confusion, like I always did when my intuition forced itself to be heard. Because this reading wasn’t meant for her—this was me telling myself what was coming, using extremely vague, general, and unhelpful words.

“Sorry,” I said as heat rushed to my face. “That just came to me.” I fingered the cloth, half thinking I’d slip it over the ball and start over. I hated doing that. My excuses always sounded lame.

“No.” The word sounded more like a release of breath from the woman’s mouth, and I belatedly realized I should’ve asked her name. My bad. “That was dead-on. That sounded right.”

“Heavy,” the man said, and tried to lean against one of the support poles. It groaned loudly and the whole tent shifted. “Oops.” He hopped away.

Fine. Albert and Geraldine were right about my entire setup.

“Wow.” The woman smiled and leaned back. The chair shifted and her eyes widened until everything settled again. Clearly she thought she’d be dumped out of it at any second.

I stared into the depths of the twenty-dollar crystal ball, trying to see its middle through the white coloring. Not because any images or messages would await me, but because it made me look like I was concentrating really hard.

I flicked my gaze toward the man, a very quick gesture, before I scrunched my brow and looked at the woman pointedly. The pointed stare was always the way to go in this business. “You will find…what you seek.” I let my eyes flicker again, but just in his general direction this time. “The thing you are after…will become permanent down the road. But only if you keep faith. Work on trust.”

Red infused her cheeks and a delighted smile pulled at her lips.

“It seems a little general,” the man said, crossing his arms.

Please don’t make me prove myself. Please don’t make—

“No,” the woman said, her eyes rooted to mine. She put out her hand to stop him. “No, I know exactly what she means.”

I leaned back. Hopefully that would be enough. “I’m glad. When there are two people present, I always worry about being too…descriptive.” I gave her a demure smile. “Privacy is important.”

“I totally get you.” She nodded adamantly. “Sorry, how much—”

“No, let me.” The man reached for his wallet, and the woman gave him Bambi eyes as she went to his side.

I collected payment and watched them go. A moment later, Geraldine filled the front of my tent.

“Another happy customer?” she asked.

I frowned at the ball. “Yes. Overly happy. I accidentally blurted out my own premonition, which was as infuriatingly vague as they always are, and she ate it up.”

“Ah.” Geraldine smiled knowingly, checking out my rock configuration. “Yeah. She was responding to your…” She made a fist and shook it.

“Confidence?”

“Nah…” She pursed her lips. “More like…” She shook her fist again.

I didn’t know what that meant, but I went ahead and nodded knowingly anyway. Otherwise these charades might go on all day.

She glanced at the sky and looked down the path. “I just had a stinker. He didn’t give me anything to go off. And he picked up nearly everything on the table and analyzed it.”

“If you weren’t such a hack, that wouldn’t be a problem,” Albert yelled over.

She took a step and angled so she could shoot him a fierce glare. “You sell fake bows and swords. What do you know about it?”

“They aren’t fake,” he said. “I sell quality items!”

“Quality items my left foot,” Geraldine grumbled, stepping back.

Flapping fabric and canvas sounded down the way as the wind picked up. The pressure in the air increased until it felt like we were inside a shaken soda can. A hint of moisture traveled on the salt-encrusted breeze, even though we should’ve been too far inland to smell the sea.

Geraldine smiled at a teenage couple meandering by. They were never overly worried about the rain. “Anyway, when I tried to fish, real sneaky-like—I disguise my fishing in flattery, you should try it—he smiled like he knew what I was doing.” She scowled. “I’ll bet he’s in the trade. Here to suss out the competition, maybe.” She braced her hands on her hips. “I hate looking clueless in front of the handsome ones.”

“I’m sure you didn’t look clueless. He was probably one of those super-jaded guys. We get them all the time.” I put my money away and moved my crystal ball back to its correct position. My tent groaned again, pushed by a particularly strong burst of wind.

Her eyes narrowed as she shook her head. “No, it wasn’t that. It was…something else. A certain confidence…” A knot of concentration worked into her forehead. A moment later, her expression cleared and she shrugged, smiling down at me. “Doesn’t matter. I got his money in the end, so all is well. I’m going to pack up. I doubt there’ll be many more today.”

I grimaced and checked the time, then the sky. When the weather turned nasty, the managers of the village would usually stroll through and tell us it was time to leave. Anyone who left before she gave the okay might find themselves out of a space. And while this line of work only made me as much as a low-paying job, it was better than stocking shelves or working in an office. At least until I figured out what I wanted to do with my life.

“I might hang on a little longer,” I said, dropping my hands into my lap.

“Little Miss Rule Follower,” Geraldine said with a smile, and turned toward her booth.

But a half-hour after Geraldine tugged her wagon past, my resolve had weakened considerably. The patter of the occasional raindrop splatted against my tent. More plunked off the dirt path. Only one or two souls wandered by, and that was to head out. The day was done, regardless of whether anyone had bothered to tell us.

A strange surge of power amped up the energy rolling around my body, the effects of the premonition. I glanced down at my gems and stones, wondering if it was them. It could’ve been the weather. It was hard to say when the atmosphere was so wound up.

I needed to make a decision.

I glanced back up and started.

His footsteps had been silent, his approach sly. Yet there he stood, a muscular man a few years older than me, looking at me with an impassive face.

“Hello?” I asked, like I’d answered a phone call.

He moved forward with a sure step. The wind worried the dusty blonde hair that fell across his broad forehead. “Are you still open?” he asked, his eyes not leaving mine, even to glance at the table full of objects. It felt like he was assessing me, reaching in through my eyes and down to my soul, finding and reviewing all my secrets along the way.

“Oh.” I glanced out through the opening to the angry sky above. “It’s probably going to rain soon.”

He stood just behind the client chair. Clearly he was waiting for me to give a solid answer, and his patient silence had the odd effect of drawing the words from my mouth.

“Sure,” I said, shrugging. I had an umbrella. I’d chance a few drops for another paying customer.

Without a word, he stepped around the chair and sat, not flinching or hesitating when it whimpered in warning. His intense stare never left my eyes, and his face remained perfectly impassive. Like a serial killer’s.

I had the sudden thought that there weren’t enough closets in the world to save me from him.

“What…would you like?” I asked, running my hand over the table like Vanna White. “Tarot?” I touched the cards before glancing at the crystal ball. I weakly gestured that way instead of actually saying the words.

His gaze followed the movements of my hands, eyeing the tarot deck first and then the crystal ball. Without warning, he palmed the ball with a large, calloused hand and held it up for inspection.

“Ohhh…” I said like a tire losing air. “You’re not supposed to touch that.”

He squinted into it, as though trying to see the middle.

“I have to…” I made a circle in the air with my pointer finger. “I have to evoke the images, actually. They can’t just be gawked at like that. They won’t show.”

The corner of his mouth stretched into a half-smile before loosening again, back to stoic and serious. He dropped the ball onto the table, next to the stand.

“That just needs—” I flinched as he reached out, fast as lightning. My tarot deck was whisked away. “I’m not sure what experience you’ve had with these sorts of booths, but this level of manhandling is usually forbidden.”

He flicked through the deck, looking at various cards, before dropping them in a mess next to the crystal ball.

“This isn’t off to a great start,” I mumbled, at a loss. I’d never had someone so confidently wreck my setup before. Clearly this was the same guy that had visited Geraldine. The situation was a little off-putting, yet strangely gratifying.

His gaze landed on my newly acquired opal.

“Nope.” I jabbed my hand in front of it before his quick-draw-McGraw snatch could take hold. Instead, his fingers curled around mine.

A bolt of electricity blasted up my arm and into my chest. It stopped my heart and fried my insides as it shot down to my feet. I sucked in a pained breath. Adrenaline rushed into my body. The tug on my ribs that I’d felt in New Orleans was back, only this time it felt like a thick cable attached to my bones was being pulled by a semi.

The turning of the world ground to a halt. The wind died down to nothing and the canvas that had been whipping in the wind fell straight. The murmur of voices deadened.

We were two people moving in a frozen world.