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Sliding green out of sweaty palms came naturally to me, an instinct so strong I probably popped out of the womb with it. Lifted the doctor’s wallet before he had the chance to slap my ass. Outright stealing and unabashed conningwere long behind me, though. The tricks I’d picked up in a state-sponsored home for the tragically unadoptable and the permanently screwed had gotten me through some hard times, but I’d moved on to other things. That long-gone carnival had taught me a better way, a safer way.
    I was the real deal now. I genuinely earned the money I made. If people chose to pay me more money than they had, hey, whose fault was that? If they used what I gave them as an uncertain prop to a shaky life, that wasn’t my lookout. My product was solid for what it was—I never lied to a client. If they took it to be something else, took me to be something more than I was, all I could do was lean back and rake it in. I never claimed to be a saint. What you did with what I gave you wasn’t my concern.
    What was my concern was an absent secretary. Abigail, who had never given up on me and had written enough letters to fill a steamer trunk, was off visiting her family. It was a different carnival but in the end just the same. It had come to roost for a while in a podunk town about an hour south of Atlanta, and she’d jumped at the chance to see her parents. Sticky cotton-candy fun for her, but for me it was a different story. No secretary meant calls would be missed and walk-ins turned away. That, in turn, meant a steady stream of twenties and fifties flapping their wings elsewhere. It wasn’t a mental image to put me in a good mood as I opened theoffice. Neither were the horns, curling mustache, and pitchfork some Bible-thumping delinquent had drawn in marker on the glass over my poster. Displayed prominently in the picture window, my face stared back at me with uncannily penetrating eyes. A brown so dark they appeared black, they delivered a gaze both brooding and knowing. Impressive, and it should be. It took me a good hour in the mirror to get that look down pat.
    The rest had been easier. Dark red hair was pulled back tightly into a two-inch ponytail, and my work wardrobe was exclusively black. I’d decided a goatee might be pushing the envelope and went clean-shaven, but I still looked like every Hollywood image of what I was. On that note, I tilted my head and reconsidered as my hand hovered to rub the marker lines away. Who was I to say that the devil wasn’t a good look for me?
    It is all in the advertising.
    Snorting at a conceit that was pretty big even for me, I went ahead and wiped the glass clean with my glove … including the “Repent” sign above my head. I had some older clients. It wouldn’t do to scare them into heart palpitations on the sidewalk. Unlocking the front door to the office, I walked in with a shadow following at my knee and dumped the mail on Abigail’s desk. Small and dainty, it was all whites, golds, and ornate curlicues … much like Abby herself. Twelve years, and she hadn’t changed all that much, the same Amazing Unicorn Girl. Therubes hadn’t minded her glaringly fake special effects then, and their equivalent still doted on her today. There hadn’t been many kids cuter than Abby had been, and there weren’t any women more incandescent.
    As for my truth, a runaway from the state who could see what lurked behind the mundane, I’d been different from Abby. Not as cute, for one. As for the seeing, it’s sad but true that most people have done things they regret. Add to that people who have done things, hideous things, that they don’t regret, and it was a lot for a homeless kid to know, to see. That’s why I’d gotten the gloves, wore long sleeves. It was why I’d only conned them at the carnival, but I’d known that if I wanted to move up one day, that would have to change.
    When I left the carnival, I sucked it up. I used my ability; I didn’t fake it. I started