SIX
Eloise would never be sure what precise concoction of emotions and poorly followed thoughts made her agree to have her mind expanded by a genuine fortune telling. Some of it had to be how completely she felt drawn to Archer, despite the fact that she didn’t know the first thing about the painfully handsome man.
Then there was the fact that Archer didn’t seem to be nearly as interested in her as she could feel herself becoming in him. That was always an incredibly intoxicating thing, to be more interested in a man than he was in you, and Eloise would come to realize that this dynamic almost certainly played into her strong desire to do whatever it took to spend more time with him.
Because that’s what she thought she was doing when she agreed to having her fortune told, of course. She had no reason to think that it would be anyone aside from him who did the reading. Why would she? She couldn’t see anyone but him, now that his cranky friend had taken leave. When she said that she wanted to have her fortune told, she was operating under the belief that it would mean she would step into the strange little tent behind him with him and him alone.
With that thought in mind, she couldn’t have cared less that she would be paying money for something she believed whole-heartedly to be a hoax. With her mind so fixed on the time she would be spending with Archer in the small confines of the tent, she was hardly able to compute what he said next.
“If you are sure you’re game, which it appears that you are, then you’re free to enter. She’s waiting for you. She’ll take your payment once you’ve gotten yourself situated, made yourself comfortable.”
“She? What do you mean? Who is she?”
“The one who’ll read your cards, of course,” Archer said with the ghost of a smile dancing at the corners of her mouth. “Who did you think was going to do the reading?”
“Well, you. I suppose I thought it would be you.”
“Ha! No, no chance of that, I’m afraid. I’ve not been blessed with the gift of sight.”
“So, it doesn’t bless all of you?”
“No, not all of us. It’s a rare gift, the sight is. Contained in families but given to only a few. My Gram is one of them. Chances are my child will have the gift, too. At least that’s what Gram says.”
“Your child?” Eloise asked quickly, doing her best to hide her alarm. “You’ve got a child?”
“Nope, not even close. She tells me my child, should I have one, will almost certainly have the sight. As for me, I don’t know if I think it’d be a blessing or a curse.”
He fell quiet then, his eyes far away and brooding, and Eloise did her best not to move a muscle. She wouldn’t have even drawn a breath if she could have helped it, that’s how badly she wanted to keep from drawing his attention to her. She didn’t need to know Archer to understand that he wasn’t the kind of man to speak about himself openly.
What he was doing now, it was a rarity, a fluke of sorts. It would only take the minutest of interruptions for him to fall out of whatever trance he was in that allowed him to speak the way that he was now. She knew that to be so, and it was only a matter of moments before that interruption came, in the form of a child screaming delightedly from several yards away.
It was one of the sounds a person could expect when spending time at a carnival, but Eloise hated it all the same. It was like looking out the window at a sight you had been longing for only to have that window slammed in your face. That was what Archer’s face looked like once he came to realize that he’d been speaking too much; like a window slammed shut, curtains closed to the outside world. If she was still hoping to learn more about him, she was in for a real disappointment. That book was, for the moment, decidedly closed.
“So,” he spoke to her again, the tone of his voice much gruffer than it had been before his lapse into thought, “are you wanting the reading or not?”
“I want it.”
“Fine. That’s fine. That’ll be ten dollars, and payment is due upfront.”
“Why’s that? You think I’ll try and stiff you?”
“People do it, you know. People do that kind of thing all of the time.”
Eloise felt embarrassingly offended that this man would assume that she was going to try and stiff him his payment, but on the other hand the logical part of her mind knew there was no reason for him not to think a thing like that.
Still, she handed over the money without any complaint or comment. She had already asserted that she was interested in receiving her reading and she intended to do that very thing. Even if it wasn’t going to be with him, she would get to meet his grandmother (or at least she was under the assumption that it was the grandmother, unless there was some other woman he called Gram), and that might prove to be a good time. Then, when the reading was over and she’d learned nothing of any particular use, she would exit the tent graciously and have something entirely new to speak to Archer about.
It wouldn’t be so bad. It might make for a good story, too, something she could return to Penelope with for entertainment. Penelope, although she would never admit it, had always enjoyed her stories and mishaps. A tale of a genuine fortune teller’s reading was the perfect thing to bring as a peace offering. The two girls would sit and giggle over the whole thing and by the time it was all said and done, their friendship would once again be intact.
“You ready for this?”
“Of course, I’m ready.”
“Are you sure, miss? People don’t always like what Gram’s got to say. She won’t sugarcoat anything, I can tell you that much right off the bat. You’ll want to make sure you’re ready for that, or else it might be best to move along to something else.”
“Thank you for the warning, but I don’t see that I’ll have any trouble with it.”
“Your life, Eloise. Give me a minute. I’ll let her know you’re coming in.”
Eloise nodded, really unsure of what sort of a response she was supposed to give to a comment such as that one. It was her life. That was true, she guessed, but what an odd thing to say! And to a customer, at that. For the life of her, Eloise couldn’t understand what kind of a game Archer was trying to play with her. She thought that it might be some kind of a business tactic, something to spike her intrigue and make her want the fortune teller’s knowledge all the more.
If so, it wasn’t working. Far from it, actually.
While Eloise stood anxiously outside of the little tent that looked too small for Archer to be inside of at all, her mind began to race. She didn’t need to be with her parents to know that this was exactly the kind of thing they would be horrified to find her doing. As she looked out on the laughing, exuberant throngs of people the voice of reason inside of her head began to speak.
It was the voice of her conscience, or at least that was how she typically thought of it, but at the moment it was sounding an awful lot like her father. That fact made it both more aggravating to Eloise and also much more difficult to ignore. Everything in her was programmed to respond to that voice.
The fact that the voice was telling her to get out, to leave this place before Archer returned to lead her into the tent where his Gram would tell her fortune, didn’t make things any easier. She felt practically paralyzed with her confusion and might have actually turned tail and run if it hadn’t been for the fact that Archer Grant chose that moment to make his way out of the tent again.
He had to duck to do it as he was far too tall for the tent’s relatively diminutive size, which might have made Eloise laugh if she hadn’t felt that a veil of seriousness had befallen the evening. If Archer could feel the uncertainty of her mood, he never let on. Instead he only stood there, silent as the grave, holding the tent flap open to her and staring down into her face.
“She’s ready for you.”
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“Of course, I’m sure. Are you?”
“What a question. I’ve already told you, this sort of thing doesn’t make me nervous. I’m more than ready, thank you very much.”
Although she didn’t feel even a little bit ready, Eloise lifted her chin, displaying a haughtiness she didn’t really feel, and swept past him into the confines of the dark tent. The moment she was inside, Archer let the flap go and then she really was in darkness. Immediately, Eloise was gripped with a feeling of absolute panic. She had no idea how the little place she was in could be so utterly dark, so completely absent of light.
It was true that it had begun to get dark outside and night in the swampy outskirts of New Orleans could be far more inky than in less rural areas, but still, this felt incongruous. For one thing, it wasn’t full night yet, only moving in that direction, and for another, the entire carnival area had been covered with bright twinkling lights. The fact that none of that light was now seeping in through the seams of the tent’s old, fraying canvas didn’t make any kind of sense to Eloise at all.
She did a full circle, holding out her hand blindly in front of her in a desperate bid to gain her bearings, and felt her heart began to pound so hard she felt sure that it would burst. Worse still, she could feel the lion inside of her beginning to protest, to rebel, and she wasn’t sure how long she would be able to keep it at bay.
If she lost control of herself, it would be completely ruinous for her family, not to mention potentially deadly for her. She had to keep herself from shifting, had to, but even the knowledge that it was so felt like it wasn’t enough to keep her in her human form. In the end, it was only the sheer surprise of hearing Archer’s grandmother speak that stopped her from revealing herself to all of the world.
“Be still, child.”
“What?! Who is that? Where are you?”
“It’s Gram, and I’m right behind you. If I light a candle, do you think you could calm yourself? I can feel a great disquiet in you and I think we both know that could be dangerous. Dangerous to you, dangerous to me. Certainly, dangerous to all of those normal people milling about out there, looking for nothing more than sweets and fried foods and a little bit of magic.”
Eloise froze. Her heart was beating so violently now that she could hardly hear over its thumping in her ears, but Gram’s voice had still managed to cut through her internal noise. It might have been the words she used, which were both strange and full of sense at the same time, but it might also have simply been the sound of her voice.
Eloise had been expecting a voice that sounded like dry reeds rubbing together, the typical sound she associated with those of advanced years but the voice she was confronted with now was far from that. It sounded almost girlish, like someone Eloise’s own age, a girl she might meet at one of her parents’ never ending balls with whom she could form a fast friendship.
It was shocking enough for Eloise to break with her unwavering panic, which really was best for all concerned. It was enough, at least, for Eloise to compose herself well enough to answer the woman, as well as for her curiosity to begin to return. She was starting to wonder if Archer had played some kind of a trick on her, if this “Gram” was actually a beautiful young woman with whom he was in cahoots.
“Yes, yes, I think that might be a good idea. A candle sounds like just the thing. Something to calm my nerves.”
“Then by god, that’s what I’ll do. Don’t move, not until I tell you to. Don’t want to risk you getting all riled up again. Like a skittish horse, you are. Don’t know why Archer sent you in to see me.”
“Now hold on, I don’t think that’s—”
“Of course, you don’t. Nobody ever wants to think a thing that’s not one hundred percent positive about herself. Doesn’t make that thing not true. Now hold still and bite your tongue. Until I’m ready for you, like I said.”
Eloise bit her tongue. It took far more energy and willpower than she would have liked to admit, but she bit her tongue all the same. Although Eloise would never think of herself as a spoiled girl and in truth she was far more grounded than the majority of the young people who ran in her circle, she was completely unaccustomed to being spoken to in such a gruff, no frills manner.
She wanted to say something along those lines, but she was smart enough to know what kind of a brat an assertion would make her seem and so she remained silent. For a moment, there was nothing but the sound of her breathing commingling with that of Gram’s, and outside the incessant sounds of people having a raucous good time.
Then, the unmistakable sound of a striking match and the accompanying scent of sulfur. It was a smell Eloise had loved since she was a little girl and it went a long way towards soothing her. So too did the ability to see the space she was in, which looked nowhere near as menacing now that she could see it clearly. It was, after all, nothing more than an aged tent, pretty with its many different kinds of fabrics from who knew where but not in any way supernatural.
She took a deep breath, finally finding the ability to calm herself down some, much to her serious relief. Still, she did not move. Something about that woman’s voice had commanded too much authority for her to disregard it entirely. She had made it clear that she did not wish Eloise to do a thing before she was ready, and so Eloise found that she could not. It was only when she heard that oddly girlish voice again that she was able to unfreeze herself.
“Alright, girl, it’s time. Unless you’ve decided that you’d like to move along your merry way. It might be best, you know, for you to just go on your way. You’re playing with fire, girl. But then you know that already, don’t you? You know that already, Eloise.”
Eloise felt her skin go cold. There was a minute that felt like it stretched on for a mile in which Eloise was sure that there was nothing fake about this reading whatsoever. The woman knew her name. The woman she’d supposed to be old who sounded like a girl knew her name, and what if she knew everything else, too?
The thought had her all set to launch directly into yet another bout of panic, when it occurred to her that there was another, far more likely explanation for Gram’s knowledge. She let out a shaky laugh and closed her eyes, shaking her head at her own stupidity.
“He told you, didn’t he?”
“Got no idea what you’re going on, girl. Don’t make no difference to me, either. I’ll take it you plan on going ahead with this?”
“I do. You two are good, though, I’ll give you that. Him coming in here first to let you know I was waiting? To ask you if you’d be wanting to see me? What a wonderful way of giving you a head start. Very clever, you two, but then I suppose you’ve got lots of practice.”
“Them’s serious accusations, Eloise. I’ll venture a guess that you’ve got to tell yourself that kind of thing in order to move forward with this thing. But since you seem hell bent on doing that, you best turn and face me. Best turn and face me so’s we can move forward with things. Come and sit now. Come and sit at my table and let me tell you what your life will hold.”
Eloise turned with a roll of her eyes and the beginning of a not entirely contemptuous-free laugh on her lips. When she was finally in full view of Gram, the woman who would be telling her the future, that laughter died before it was completely born.
Gram was a small woman, a build that looked more like it belonged to an adolescent than an old woman. And there was no doubt in her mind now, this was an old woman. This was the oldest woman Eloise had ever seen, her face and hands so wrinkled it hardly looked like skin. Her eyes, deeply dark, like peering into the bottom of a well, shone with intelligence.
There was a knowing in those eyes, and although Eloise still fought to convince herself that no truth would come from this, it was a fight she felt herself losing. There was a part of her that knew, just knew, that when she sat down before that woman and her gnarled old hands, nothing in her life would ever be the same.