Didn't matter. Weird guy. He might be into a menage à trois. Hell, why not, weird good-looking guy with a weirder, voluptuous wife. And Megan. Beautiful blond Megan, a total contrast to all that black, except for the cloak she is wearing…
Don't be a complete asshole! he warned himself firmly before speaking.
"Megan is always gorgeous!" he called back. He excused himself to the woman at his side bemoaning the cost of a pair of earrings and reached his wife's side.
"Finn. "Joseph shook his hand. "So—how are you enjoying Salem?"
"It's great," he lied.
Morwenna slipped from behind the counter to join them, despite the long line. Jamie had come in to man the cash register. She looked anxiously at both of them.
"Heard there was a commotion at the B and B," she said. Though she looked at her cousin, Finn was certain there was a note of accusation in her voice and that it was meant for him.
"My God, it is a small town!" Megan said with a sigh. "I had a nightmare and woke up screaming."
"Bizarre," Joseph said, and his single word seemed like an accusation to Finn as well.
"No more scary tales late at night for either of us," Finn forced himself to say lightly. He wasn't going to take offense—at least he wasn't going to let them know he was offended.
"I think I should read your palm," Morwenna told Megan seriously.
"You all are way too busy in here," Megan said, and Finn was glad.
"Jamie has the register, Joseph can watch the store, and hey! We've got a new girl working for us who is great. Actually, she's not so new, we went to high school together. Sara. She'll give Finn a reading while I do yours."
Megan laughed, shrugging, and looking at Finn. "You did say you were going to have a palm reading."
He wanted to protest. No. This was all silly. He had said he was going to do it. Be nice to her weird relatives no matter what. Have a palm reading.
"Sure."
"Call Sara," Morwenna told Joseph.
Sara didn't have to be called. Finn knew that she had to be the woman who emerged from the curtain at the back with another young woman—one with piercings in her brow, her lip, and her nose, who seemed to be mulling over whatever the palm reader had told her as if she had just immersed herself in a serious article in Time magazine.
Apparently, some people took their palm readings very seriously.
"See you next week," the pierced princess told Sara.
Then he was somewhat unnerved himself when Sara instantly turned to him, studying him with grave eyes.
"You're my next reading?" she queried. She was a small woman, no more than five-foot one or two, with deep, dark, soulful eyes and long brown hair. Though small, she was shapely, like a compact dynamo, except that she didn't seem to move a lot, just to exude some kind of air that spoke of a leashed energy.
"Sara, this is Finn Douglas, my cousin Megan's husband," Morwenna said, in way of introduction. "And, of course, this is Megan. You two haven't met yet."
Sara turned to Megan first, smiling. "Hi. Morwenna talks about you all the time. Nice to meet you."
"A pleasure," Megan murmured.
"And Finn! Hm. Interesting. I must admit, I'll find this an intriguing reading," Sara said.
Finn looked at Megan, trying to control a rueful grimace. "Well, what the heck? I'm all for a reading."
Megan didn't reply with words. He could see the laughter and gratitude in her eyes.
"We're this way," Morwenna told Megan.
Megan wiggled a brow to Finn and followed her cousin through a beaded separator to the back, where, behind the wafting beads, he could see worktables, chairs, and to each side, doors to small little square rooms within the large rectangle of the shop's layout.
"That means we're behind the door to the right," Sara told Finn.
He had a strange feeling of being manipulated and overwhelmed again, but without being completely churlish, he couldn't back out now. And he was angry with himself; it was all ridiculous, and he wasn't going to take any of it seriously. They were in Salem for a week. He could be decent to Megan's relatives for that amount of time. He could listen to people extol the virtues of incense and gemstones. He could let a woman stare at his palm and pretend to see his past, future, and present.
"She's the best," Joseph said lightly, moving back toward the register to help Jamie, since the line of customers eager to pay for their wares was growing larger.
Finn followed Sara. The door to the left was already shut. Sara preceded him through the right doorway.
The tiny room was what he had expected. Dark. There was a table, and a chair on either side of it. There was a crystal ball on the table, Tarot cards to the right of it, and a lamp. Sara turned on the lamp. It emitted a small pool of blue light.
"I'll need your palm," she told him.
"Oh. Sure." He extended his palm.
"Intriguing lifeline," she said immediately. He felt a featherlight touch as she ran her forefinger down the length of what must have been his "life" line. He was surely supposed to ask if he could expect a nice long life, but stubbornly, he refused to rise to any such bait.
"Very strange."
"Really? Does that mean long or short?"
"Disrupted," she said distractedly.
"That means I'm dying and coming back?" he queried skeptically.
"Not necessarily. It just means… that the regular tenor of what we call life may be disrupted."
"Sorry, I'm not really up on any of this. Now, I'm alive. One day, I'll be dead. There is no in between."
For a moment, she glanced up at him. The strange blue lamplight seemed to put an unearthly glow in her eyes.
"Really?" she said simply.
She shook her head, bending to study his palm again.
"There's a strange jag… and then lesser lines. Looks like children… but the lines are faded, as if they might just be dreams. There's… violence ahead for you. Danger."
"I'm in danger?"
"Maybe… or maybe you're the cause of the danger."
It was her words, the blue light, the darkness of the tiny space surrounding them, but he suddenly felt as if the temperature dropped by thirty degrees. He was icy cold. And the hand holding his… felt like nothing but a skeletal icicle. He was about to speak when Sara suddenly pushed back from the table. Her eyes rolled back, white orbs against her face, then white orbs washed with the uncanny blue light of the lamp.
"You'll hurt her… You'll hurt her. You're dangerous… Megan… Stay away from Megan. You'll hurt your wife. There's evil. It touches you. You are the evil…"
At first, he couldn't move. He just sat there, frozen and paralyzed, as the seer went into her weird, trancelike oracle.
Then he tried to move, and couldn't. He just kept hearing her, like a broken record,
"You… evil… you'll hurt her… I see blood… smell blood… evil… Finn Douglas… you're the evil… it's your touch… she'll die… evil, evil, evil, evil, evil…"
The words seemed to have a grip on him as powerful as the trance that seemed to have taken over the seer. He felt nothing but cold, and a seeping sense of raw terror.
He fought it.
And anger kicked in.
Fuck this whole place. It was a setup. These people knew that he and Megan had been split up.
They'd heard about Megan screaming in the dead of night, and they weren't about to believe it had been a dream, no— they were all just convinced that he was one real bastard, beating his wife
.
With a rush of fury and determination, he wrenched his hand free and stood.
The woman immediately seemed to snap out of it—maybe because he almost knocked the table over.
She jumped up as well. Staring at him, her eyes rolled back into a normal position, she looked as if she was terrified herself.
"That's bullshit!" he swore.
"What?" Sara gave a good impression of being out of it.
"Look, I don't know what you've heard, or what you think, but I love my wife, and I'd shoot myself in the head before I hurt her."
"I said that you'd hurt your wife?" She sounded truly baffled.
He fought to control his temper. They weren't going to get the best of him.
"You know what you said."
"I don't, but… hey, whatever. Yes… of course, whatever I said… it's just a tale, a story, what might be… bullshit!" she said herself. She shook her head strenuously, looking from where he stood to the two inches to the door, as if she wished desperately that he weren't there, blocking it. "Morwenna should give you a reading, not me… not me. I'm sorry. I suck, really, I'm new… I… Let's go out, shall we?"
He turned, nearly slamming open the door.
The scent of incense wafted over him again. There was an Enya CD playing. There was light, pouring in then from the work area.
The cold fell from his shoulders like a discarded cloak. He felt like a fool. He had been scared in that room, really scared. He was an adult male in his prime, in pretty damned good shape, and he'd been scared by the silly words of a little five-foot-two woman in a blue-lit closet.
He turned to her. "Sorry—but you shouldn't do that to clients. No matter what you might have been told."
She gazed at him, then carefully stepped a distance past him. "You know, I'm new here. I don't know anything about you, or Megan, except that she and Morwenna are cousins. I told you, I'm sorry. I'm not… never mind. You should go to someone else."
She was irritatingly believable, and he was appearing like a royal idiot. He gritted his teeth, determined to calm down, or else he'd have her thinking the whole Shakespearean thing— Methinks thou doth protest too much.
"I don't believe in readings," he said flatly.