Page 34 of Vengefully Matched

Connie eyed her with disbelief. “You want me to actually read palms and fortunes?”

Hart nodded. “Cards, too, if that’s your bag. Anything that might let the powers out gradually. How many days is Crystal Balls to the Wall open?”

“I close up on Mondays and Tuesdays, but business has been slow since the whole coma incident.”

Agatha raised a finger. “When did you change your name?”

Connie shifted in her seat. “After. When it stopped being, you know, all for show.”

“Cut the new name, Connie.”

The woman raised her hands, the dark brown shawl she wore flapping outward like she was a giant moth. Her hair was graying blond, frizzing out large enough to reach her shoulders, and long enough to hit her waist. She frowned, pouting. “You’d deny an old woman her jokes?”

“ ‘Balls to the Wall’ doesn’t exactly inspire trust in real psychic abilities.”

“Exactly,” said Connie. “I stopped dyeing my hair, and I stopped with that silliness to ward off the tourists.”

“We need you to inspire enough trust to do a sold half hour of real prediction every day you’re open.” Hart crossed her arms. “Letting off psychic steam will help.”

Connie looked at Agatha.

“She’s correct,” said Agatha. “Practice makes perfect.”

Connie sighed, sitting down in the chair behind the table.

“I suppose I do still have the Madam Cleopatra’s sign.”

Agatha nodded in approval.

“Good,” said Hart, smiling crookedly. “Go on, then. Shall we start today?”

Connie stared at her for a moment, as though reading her face. A smile pulled across it, the mischief of the thing enough to show that Constance Witherspoon, for all her complaining, couldn’t be that old.

“Very well,” she said, rising and turning the lock of the trailer door. She flipped the little sign so the READING IN PROGRESS side faced outward, and pulled the curtain in the door’s window, and then the other two.

The room was dim now, and Connie flipped a light switch. Hundreds of fairy lights lit the curtains and the ceiling, and the room was suddenly a magical wonderland.

“Constance Witherspoon,” said Hart, impressed. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“I didn’t,” said Connie. “But Madam Cleopatra? She was a showman. The real deal in setting a mood. Now come closer, my pretties, and let Madam Cleopatra read your palms.”

It was a show, and an overwrought one, and it shouldn’t have affected her so much. And yet a shiver shot down Agatha’s spine. She set her hand across the table anyway.

Madam Cleopatra picked her hand up, staring at it for minutes that dragged on, saying nothing. Her eyes seemed unfocused until finally she shut them, humming slightly, and reached to the side for Priscilla’s hand, without even looking to see where it was. Her nimble fingers worked over Priscilla’s far more quickly, and her eyes shot open.

“Ah,” she said, nodding. “Yes. You two are truly made for each other. That’s nice, dears.”

“I thought you said she was a real psychic,” hissed Agatha, blushing.

“She’s new to this,” said Hart, “and being a real psychic doesn’t mean she can’t also be really delusional.”

She expected Connie to have something to say about that, but the older woman simply smiled, nodding.

“Yes. That will do. Let’s move on to scrying, and then tarot.”

She pulled out what looked like a bowling bag, unearthing a filigreed metal stand and setting it gently on the table before pulling out a crystal ball that appeared to be made of smoky quartz with some sort of glittering liquid swirling inside of it. Setting the ball gently in the holder, Connie took a deep breath.

“You can’t rush the production of scrying,” she said quietly. “And I’m willing to bet that it’s the same when the scrying is real.”