The hand closed with a snap, folding the bills, fingers tucking them into her tube top. She gestured to a nearby doorway with a beaded curtain.
“In there,” she said. “I will be with you in a moment.”
They sat in silence at a small round table, covered with a lacy cloth, a single, unlit candle at its center. The walls were blank. No photos. No paintings. No mirrors. The window to their right faced the crumbling gray brick of the neighboring building, close enough to touch.
Madam Zala had been gone for more than a moment. Closer to five minutes, actually.
“Probably making sure the bills aren’t counterfeit,” Pope said.
Then a toilet flushed somewhere inside the house and a few seconds later the curtain of beads parted with a rattle as Madam Zala returned, taking a seat opposite them.
She was carrying something wrapped in a blue scarf.
Anna shot Pope a glance, knowing he must be thinking that this was a waste of time. But she was convinced that Susan had written the name on the back of Chavi’s photograph for a reason, and the least she could do was let this thing play out, for better or worse.
Madam Zala reached to a dimmer switch on the wall behind her and turned the lights low, then lit the candle and moved it to one side.
Placing the scarf at the center of the table, she unwrapped it to reveal a deck of tarot cards, which she extended to Anna.
“Please shuffle them.”
Anna took the cards. There were twenty or so, but they were larger than normal and handling them felt a bit awkward. She did her best to shuffle them, then handed them back to Madam Zala.
The woman squared the cards. “You have a question for me?”
“Question?” Anna asked.
“Most who come here seek answers, yes? Without a question, the cards cannot guide you.” She glanced at Pope, then returned her gaze to Anna. “Something about your love life, perhaps?”
“I just want to know my future,” Anna said.
“That could cover many things. Is there something specific you’re concerned about?”
Anna thought about this. “There’s someone new in my life. A stranger. Can you tell me about him?”
Madam Zala nodded, then cut the deck and dealt several cards faceup on the table, arranging them in an elaborate layout. Each card carried a number in the corner, along with daggers and swords and naked goddesses and New Agey symbols. Anna had no idea what any of it meant.
“The Major Arcana,” Madam Zala said. “Each represents one of life’s journeys.” She pointed to a card, showing a man with a wand. “The Magician represents the journey of will. You have been weakened by recent events, only to gather strength and rally, your will growing stronger with each passing hour.”
She pointed to another card, showing an old bearded man. “But the Hermit crosses before you, representing caution. Fear. Prudence. Ignore him at your peril.”
Then another card, this one showing a man hanging upside down from a tree. “The Hanged Man,” she continued. “The symbol of sacrifice. To achieve the goal you wish to achieve your sacrifice will be great. Perhaps greater than you’re willing to accept.”
“What does any of this have to do with the stranger?” Anna asked.
“Patience,” the woman said, then pointed to yet another card. A skeleton holding a scythe. “Here is your stranger. The Death card. He is the cause of these things. The reason you have been put to the test.”
Anna sucked in a breath.
“But do not fear,” Madam Zala continued. “This card merely represents change. Transformation. Your life has been altered in significant ways, and you must adapt and change or suffer the consequences.”
Anna now wished that she had simply gone for the direct approach. She’d always thought of fortune-telling as a con game, designed to part unsuspecting fools from their money. What Madam Zala had just told her, however, was eerily accurate. Then again, it was also fairly generic and might apply to anyone who sat in this chair.
Enough of this, Anna thought. Time to get down to business.
Taking the photo of Chavi out of her pocket, she laid it on the table.
“What about this one?” she asked. “What does she represent?”
Madam Zala froze, staring at the photo, then her head jerked up, her gaze meeting Anna’s. “Who are you?”
“A woman on a journey,” Anna said, then unfolded the Temptress and Slave print-out and placed it in front of Madam Zala, pointing to the boy in the wagon. “And this is the stranger I seek.”
Madam Zala’s eyes widened. She jumped to her feet, nearly knocking her chair over as she backed away from the table. The candle wobbled, threatening to fall.
“Jozef!” she shouted. “Jozef, get your ass out here! Now!” Her accent had mysteriously disappeared. “Hurry, Jozef! It’s her! She’s here!”
They heard the pounding of heavy steps on a wooden floor, then the beaded curtain parted with a sharp snap as a large, twentysomething lunk stuck his head into the room. In a dark alley, Anna might have mistaken him for Red Cap.
“What’s wrong, Ma?”
“Get them out of here! Get her out of this house!”
Clenching and unclenching his fists, the lunk moved toward them aggressively, and Pope rose to meet him. “Easy, pal.”
But the lunk ignored the suggestion, grabbing a handful of Pope’s shirt as — Anna quickly reached back and brought her Glock out, pointing it at him. “FBI! Let him go.”
The lunk’s face went white at the sight of the weapon and he released Pope’s shirt, stepping back to join his mom, who was now flat against the wall, her eyes narrowed in anger.
“What do want from us? Why did you come here?”
“The photo,” Anna said. “Tell us about the boy in the photo.”
“I don’t know anything about him.”
“Bullshit.”
“I swear to you, I’ve never seen him before.”
“Then why did you react that way? Like you recognized him?”
“You startled me, that’s all. When I’m in the middle of a reading, I’m deep in concentration and-”
— a shout from the back of the house cut her off. “Stop, Tatjana! Stop with the lies!”
It was a woman’s voice, the interruption so unexpected that they all froze in place.
“Bring her back to me,” she shouted. “I want to see her face.”
“But, Mother-”
“Don’t argue with me, girl! What have I told you about that?” Madam Zala, or Tatjana, or whatever her name was, lowered her gaze to the floor, then gathered herself, looking at Anna.
“You won’t need the gun,” she said. “It won’t protect you from the truth.”
4 4
The old woman was the size of a small tent.
Sitting on a daybed in a poorly lit room, she was so enormous that it would take a crane to lift her off of it. Anna had seen people like this on the news and in movies, but she wasn’t prepared for the real thing.
The room had a gamey smell. A hint of urine. A walker stood at the foot of the bed, but Anna doubted it had been used in recent memory. The bedpan beneath it, however, obviously got regular workouts.
The sight made Anna’s stomach churn with revulsion and she was pretty sure her expression showed it.
“I am what I am,” the old woman said. “Think what you will.”
She was close to eighty years old, with dirty gray hair and stark brown eyes. That she’d lived this long without succumbing to a heart attack or some obesity-related illness was a miracle.
