Page 27 of Harnessed in Gold

Topaz rolls her eyes. “Let’s just get this over with.” She’s dressed in skinny jeans and a hoodie, but she still looks like a mythical creature. A goddess of the dark.

“Everybody got cash?” Aaron asks.

At our nods, he claps his hands. “Alright then, let’s do this.”

“Team up!” Avery commands.

With a grin, Rime jumps to my side—Rime, my Irish boyfriend.

“Come ‘ere, ah grawl.” He threads an arm around my waist and pulls me tight to his side.

“What did you call me?”

“A ghrá,” he answers, close to my ear. “It means ‘my love.’”

Leo’s hands curl into fists. “We’ll go in first,” he blurts, even though he doesn’t move.

Avery spins him toward the doors, but his head lags, his eyes locked on Rime’s hand on my hip. Before the door slams behind him, he turns back again, his gaze holding mine, and suddenly nothing makes sense anymore. Why am I on one side of the door and Leo on the other? Why am I standing here with Rime? He’s too big, and he doesn’t smell like books and trees.

A gentle understanding flows from him as I shelter under his arm. We wait another minute, then head inside just in time to see Avery and Topaz leave the pay line with their bags of cards and daubers. Meanwhile, at a table in the center of the vast room, Leo and Aaron unpack their supplies. They’ve strategically placed themselves between a pair of middle-aged women on one side and an elderly couple on the other. Our target demographics.

When Rime and I step up to pay, the heads of the two women collecting cash tilt slowly up, and their mouths part in wonder.

The Rime Effect.

Stifling a giggle, I request two beginner’s packages.

“You each get two daubers with that,” says the woman handing out the cards, a forty-something with frosted tips and inordinately long fingernails. She tosses two dauber bottles into my bag and shoves it at me, not even looking in my direction.

“And you, young man?” She bats her lashes at Rime. “Do you have a color preference? Yellow?”

“Yellow’s grand,” he answers with a smile. “And perhaps green?” His perfectly rolled R’s have every woman within hearing distance fanning herself.

It’s going to be an interesting night.

At his urging, I scan the hall for a good place to set up camp. Since Leo and Aaron are in the middle, I steer my ‘boyfriend’ to the side furthest from the entryway. The tables are quickly filling, but I spot two seats together at a table already occupied by four women. I’m guessing their ages range from fifty-five to seventy-five,and they each seem to be here alone. As we approach, I sense their loneliness and their eagerness to connect and interact. Perfect.

Rime and I seat ourselves at the far end of the table, across from a lady wearing a mauve sweatshirt that saysGrandma’s Garden. Underneath the phrase, embroidered flowers each bear the name of one of her six grandchildren. She’s busy arranging Beanie Babies, a pink rabbit’s foot, and several Troll dolls around her game cards. The oldest woman, who sits beside me, does the same.

Sweetly, I ask Grandma, “Are those good luck charms?”

“Sure are,” she says with a denture-y smile. She lays out a glittery purple barrette that I’m guessing once belonged to Madison, the yellow tulip on her sweatshirt. “You ain’t got any?”

I shake my head. “No. I didn’t know we could bring them. This is my first time.”

“First time, eh? Hope you can keep up.”

“Yeah, me too,” I say honestly. “I’m Betts, by the way.”

“Linda.”

I watch, speechless, as she opens a cardboard necklace box and produces a potato chip. She smirks when she catches my expression. “From the bag I was eatin’ that time I won twelve hundred dollars.”

“Oh. Well then…” Well, then, if she’s superstitious enough to have a stale potato chip for a good luck charm, then there’s a decent chance she’s well-versed in local legends and hauntings.

The elderly woman beside me leans in close and asks me, her poor, cloudy eyes on Rime, “And who’s this fella?”

“My boyfriend, Ryan.”