29. Tallus

29

Tallus

“ H ow do you know my name?”

Rowena caressed the silky tablecloth with her long, dainty fingers like she was giving it a massage. Her nails were painted what appeared to me as midnight blue and were artfully dotted with constellations of silvery-white stars.

Again, I found it remarkable how ageless the woman appeared.

“I was told you were asking questions about me, inquiring into matters that don’t concern you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you do.” She picked up a stack of tarot cards and pushed them toward me. “Two can play this game. Shuffle.”

I didn’t want to. An uneasiness had crept up my spine, and my stomach was in a knot. I’d been had.

But how?

Her unwavering gaze bore into me. Bold. Assessing. Demanding. I didn’t want her to see me sweat, so I took the deck and gave it a half-hearted shuffle before placing it back on the table.

Madame Rowena retrieved the stack and dealt three cards between us, face up. I knew nothing about tarot readings or what the images meant, but I felt sick. Trapped.

“A simple three-card spread.” Rowena pointed from one card to the next. “They represent the past, present, and future.”

I glanced at the images. The first, the one she’d said represented my past, showed a tall building of some kind, windows exploding with flames. Two figures were shown. If they were flying or jumping out the window, I couldn’t tell. Were they superheroes? Did they have capes? I didn’t understand.

“The Tower.” She caressed the card I’d been puzzling as though absorbing its meaning into her fingers. “It represents chaos, upheaval, crisis, but also liberation. An awakening. At some point when you were growing up, you reached a pivotal moment of change. A crux. Illusions were shattered. A life-altering decision was made. The Tower signifies a time when you questioned your core beliefs during a moment of peril.”

A slippery grin appeared on the elderly woman’s face. “Tell me, Tallus, does this sound familiar?”

I didn’t have to say anything. She knew the answer.

I was fourteen again, bullied and teased by the people who were supposed to love me most. It had been going on for years. Exhausted from living a disingenuous life, it hadn’t taken much to set me off. The dam burst one night when my father told me my outfit made me look like a fag, and where had I bought it? Forever 21? My uncle, who had been visiting at the time, laughed. It was an outfit I’d specifically coordinated to be more masculine-presenting, to appease their cruel nature, to hide the truth. Somehow, I’d failed.

My control had slipped, and in a moment of teenage rage, I’d lashed out. I’d come clean.

I’d told them what they’d been longing to hear.

Peril. Shattered illusions. Life-changing decisions. Chaos. Upheaval.

Liberation.

Breaking the chains that had bound me was the best thing I’d ever done. I’d never looked back.

A shiver raced along my nape and over my scalp as I stared at the strange woman across the table. At the card supposedly depicting my past. What was she doing? How did she know?

Her fingers slid to the middle card. “The second, the present, is upside down. The Hierophant. It represents rebellion. It suggests you’re tired of following the rules and want to break free.”

“Sounds about right,” I mumbled. The words were out before I could stop them. I didn’t want to give the woman any reason to continue this nonsense.

“Look at you. A lowly records clerk with far bigger aspirations. You like poking your nose where it doesn’t belong, don’t you, Tallus? It thrills you but will get you in trouble someday.”

How did she know?

“You’re asking yourself, ‘How does she do it?’ ‘How does she coax unsuspecting souls into going along with her madness?’ ‘How does she persuade them to stay?’ ‘Why, why, why?’”

I pushed back from the table and was about to stand when Madame Rowena slammed a fist on the surface, upsetting the remaining stack of cards and making her bracelets jangle. “Sit down. We aren’t finished.”

Her voice was so compelling and demanding that I landed back on the velvet cushioned seat, sweat beading along my temples. The fumes from the candles and incense were getting to me. The air was thick with it, and it tickled my lungs unpleasantly.

“You don’t like my reading? You came here, didn’t you? This is what you wanted, isn’t it?”

“It’s not a reading. It’s bullshit. Anyone can do research. Clearly, you’ve looked me up.”

She snapped the tarot deck from the table and tossed it into the air, plucking a single card from the chaos and slamming it down on top of the card she’d called the hierophant. “Maybe you like this one better.”

She didn’t look at the image printed on its surface as she continued.

“Seven of Swords. Someone is trying to deceive you or maybe it is you the deceiver. Are you being lied to, or are you the one doing the lying?” She stabbed a finger on the card. “Dishonesty. Manipulation. Cunningness. Are these familiar?”

I stared at the old woman, unsure what to say, shaken to my core and wanting nothing more than to escape.

“How about this?” She leaned closer, lowering her voice to a hiss. “The Seven of Swords is a spy. An enemy. A thief. This”—another finger-stab—“is your present Tallus. This right here is who you are, isn’t it?”

“I have to go.” I didn’t know what was happening, but I was done hanging around. The woman was on crack. She was so far off her rocker she’d fallen into Crazyville. If she’d manipulated and murdered eleven people, I didn’t want to know about it anymore.

I wanted out.

“What about your future?” she said when I reached the door and rounded the corner into the hallway. “Aren’t you curious?”

“Nope. At this point, I’m going to play it by ear.”

The house was dark, and I tripped and stumbled over obstacles as I scrambled to find the front door. Shadows reached out, spindly fingers belonging to nightmarish horrors. I brushed against a hanging fern and almost screamed. The botched session with Madame Rowena had sent my imagination into overdrive.

“I suggest minding your business, Tallus .” My name came out like a whipcrack, arising from somewhere close behind me. Was she following? “There is nothing to find. If you keep it up, the Devil card stares you in the eye. It is he who…”

I crashed into a side table, knocking something over, but didn’t stop. The door lay ahead. I saw it. My sweaty fingers slipped on the knob. Taking a firmer grip, I yanked it open and flung myself into the night, intent on running to my car and not looking back. I didn’t care if the cardio killed me. It was a better way to die than suffer whatever ominous threat Rowena suggested. But my escape ended abruptly when I collided with a brick wall.

A brick wall that oof ed and stumbled backward off the front stoop but at least had the good sense to secure me in his solid arms so I didn’t fall and break my neck with the speed of my foiled exit.

From inside the house, Madame Rowena was still giving me my fortune —if that was what you wanted to call it—shouting ominous threats about the Devil card, loud enough for the neighbors to hear. Or the gods? Maybe she was conjuring Satan himself to take me to hell. Who knew?

“Goddamn her,” I said, straightening, peering back over my shoulder as the heavy door slammed shut. “I’ve had it up to here with witchy women.” I cut a hand above my head before adjusting my crooked glasses and admiring my savior. “Hey, Guns. Am I ever glad to see you. You will not believe the shit that just went down.”

Diem scowled and shifted his gaze between me and the front door. “What the fuck is—”

“I’ll explain later. We need to get out of here.” Since the Jeep was running in Rowena’s driveway, I added, “You drive. We’ll come back for my car when it’s safe.”

Diem, likely overwhelmed with the dumpster fire of chaos he’d walked in on—or was my Tower card rearing its ugly head again?—stammered and stuttered and didn’t object when I snagged his arm and physically dragged him away from the house.

“She knew me,” I hissed once we’d gotten into the Jeep and were on the road. “She knew I wasn’t Memphis. She knew we’d been investigating her. She knew about my past and present, and although I didn’t stick around to find out how I was going to die, she probably knew that too. Fuck me sideways. My heart is pounding.”

I clutched my chest and winced. “Diem, she was inside my head. I felt her fingers trying to rearrange my brain. Oh my god, that was so creepy. I need a shower. An exorcist. Stop at a church. Preferably one whose god doesn’t already hate me because I don’t need more problems. For real though. She touched my brain. Whatever you do, do not leave me alone. I can’t be trusted not to walk into traffic or try to slit my wrists.”

“Sally Soape,” Diem spat through gritted teeth.

“What? Soap?”

“Brodie Newall’s mother.”

The non sequitur was à la Diem, but I was not in the mood, not after the escapade at the psychic’s.

I removed my glasses and rubbed my eyes. “Look, sweetie, babe, doll.”

“Don’t call me that. I’m not your fucking Memphis.”

I chuckled. “No, no, you aren’t. You’re my cuddle bear, like it or not.”

“Not.”

“I need you to do me a huge favor.”

“I’m not taking you to a church.”

I laughed, and it took far too long to get a hold of myself. Diem continuously glared from the driver’s seat like I’d lost my mind, which, maybe I had.

“D, I need you to think really, really hard about what you want to tell me right now. Put all the sentences together into one big paragraph, then say it out loud. I was ten seconds from being mind-controlled by a psychotic serial killer. I have no patience to play Guess What I’m Trying to Say. Can you do that for me? Just this one time. I’ll never bug you again. I swear.”

Diem growled under his breath and squeezed the steering wheel, eyeing me a few times, but, shockingly, he did as I asked.

“Sandra Morgenstern, Brodie’s mother, according to his birth certificate, worked at Thrill Ville fair when Rowena Fitspatrick and William Hilty performed the dreaded show that landed them in cuffs after two men died under suspicious circumstances. The husband-and-wife duo roomed with Sandra. Years later, after having a baby and losing her husband, boyfriend, or whatever the fuck he was, Sandra landed in debt up to her eyeballs. She lost her house and ended up declaring bankruptcy. After that, I couldn’t find any trace of her. She vanished. No driver’s license. No health card. Nothing. I found out she’s going by a different name. Sally Soape.”

“Why is that familiar?”

“Hilty’s secretary.”

“Oh my god. Sally Soape Opera.” I jolted. “Wait. Whoa. She’s Brodie’s mother?”

“Yes.”

“Brodie, who worked for Janek?”

“Yes.”

“Brodie, who was arrested in the cemetery last week.”

“Yes.”

“His mother works for Hilty?”

Diem growled and glared across the middle console. The look was affirmation enough.

“And Sally knows Rowena.” I turned the question into a statement so the bear would go back into hiding as I absorbed the information.

“Rowena knew you because we went to talk to Hilty last week and asked about his past. We got him fired up.”

“And you think Hilty told her about us?”

“Or Sally Soape. We mentioned the incident in eighty-six to her, remember? It probably raised red flags.”

“And she’s watching us now?”

Diem grunted indeterminately.

“So what do we do? What does this mean? Should we go to the police?”

“With what?” Diem sped up to get around another car and changed lanes. “Think about it. What do you have?”

“Why are you asking me? I don’t know.”

“It’s your case, hotshot. Talk it out.”

“Okay. We have eleven dead people and a psycho who tried to rape my brain not five minutes ago. That’s what we have, and I don’t like it. I still feel her finger-fondling my frontal lobe.” I shivered. “It’s disturbing.”

“You’re fine, and it’s not enough.”

“How are eleven dead people not enough?”

“Because, according to their autopsies, they have perfectly explainable reasons for being dead.”

“Yeah, but—”

“It won’t fly, Tallus. We need proof of something truly sinister, and we don’t have it yet.”

“But we’re closer, right?”

“I don’t know. There’s something shady going on, but I’m not sure what. Although, we’re starting to see more players on the field. That’s good. Call Sally Mrs. White if it helps. I don’t fucking know. Think.”

I internally smiled at Diem’s reference to Clue as I glanced out the window. Cars moved along beside us. We were on an overpass. The city stretched for miles, gray and dingy, steel, glass, and concrete. Night lingered on the horizon, leaching the color from the sky and the world. It edged closer as Diem took an exit.

“Where are we going?”

“Office. We need to consider the evidence and stop running around like chickens with our heads cut off.”

“Speaking of chicken. I’m starving and left Kitty’s wonderful chicken alfredo in my car. Dammit. I’ve been looking forward to it all day. Turn around.”

“No.”

I whined and pouted. “But I’m hungry and broke. Please.”

Diem ground his teeth, growled once, then turned around because the poor man had no backbone when it came to me, and Kitty was right. I was a manipulative asshole who used it to my advantage.

I retrieved my car and met Diem at the office, where I reluctantly shared the enormous serving of homemade pasta Kitty had so graciously given me.