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the shape of the grim reaper. Wooden masks hung at various intervals on the packed walls and tufts of feathers poked from the tops of jars. It appeared to be a shop, but nothing was marked with a price.
    Wafts of smoke puffed at odd intervals from an unseen source behind a counter covered in painted fabric. The distinct sound of a reco rd player spat out unknown drumbeats from somewhere in the back. The muddling of sensory overload made my head swoon a bit with a feeling of disorientation.
    A teeny tiny girl emerged from behind a colorful silk curtain in a far back corner. Her smile was welcoming but the aura she projected let me know she held some sort of power. I respected that and smiled back, allowing my suddenly fast heartbeat to slow to a more manageable pace.
    “Aye, dawlin’. What bring you here?” Her voice was a hiss in her quasi-French accent you could rarely hear anywhere but in Louisiana.
    “Actually, your nifty sign out front .” I said, shifting on my feet uncomfortably.
    The small woman stared at me through a thick caking of charcoal eye make-up. Her hair was flopped up to the crown of her head into a large poof of thick, dark dreadlocks held together with a skinny strip of leather. The stark contrast of her nearly black hair against her butter--colored skin shocked me, but the sky blue eyes peering out at me from black smudges on her lids scared the shit out of me. Other than the eyes, she didn’t seem to be wearing any make-up. Two shiny silver rings adorned her nose and her ears were filled from the lobe up with oddly shaped rings and plugs. She had beautiful skin. Or it may have been the dim light brought from the kerosene lamps that hung from sconces on each wall. I wondered why Mr. Edison had skipped out on this particular establishment, but decided it was best not to ask.
    “Your future you seek?” The girl slithered her body toward me like a snake on two legs. Her eyes looked me up and down as her head shifted on her shoulders. From the neckline of her bohemian half-top, I could see a black-inked tattoo nestled neatly in her modest cleavage that reached up toward her neck. Simple, single lines creating some kind of symbol I wasn’t familiar with.
    Her eyes were so intense it felt like they were crawling on my skin, feeling every inch of me with her stare. “A charm? For protection m‘be?”
    Her voice didn’t quite match her body. A near baritone, her voice slipped out with an accent I pegged as Cajun, or as close to it as I could recognize anyhow. I wasn’t really good at that sort of thing.
    “Do I need protecting?” I asked, honestly concerned she knew something I didn’t. I’d heard of people like that. People that could sense death coming. I didn’t necessarily believe in that sort of thing, but if someone were to tell me I was going to die in a bus accident on a Friday, I’d likely not ride a bus on Fridays for a while. Just in case.
    The little woman stepped back a step or two . “Protection you have.” Her head snaked again and her eyes focused over my shoulder.
    A second later, I heard the distinct sound of wooden beads softly clanking against each other. I turned to find Tatum in the doorway. Cyrus stood behind her, nearly beside, but Malcolm peered over their shoulders from the street. Pussy .
    “Hey, Dylan, let’s go,” Tatum said from the doorway.
    “Yes, let’s,” Cyrus said from over her shoulder looking overly concerned.
    I rolled my eyes and ignored them both. “My future. I’d like you to read my future.” I turned to the girl and nodded my head confidently.
    “Come, ‘ cher ,” the girl beckoned me with a crook of her finger.
    I followed her behind a silk curtain and away from my friends. No one said a word. Not one of them tried to stop me. So, fuck ‘ em.
    “A man…two men?” she asked over her shoulder before she even sat down.
    “No men,” I said with a smirk.
    “Yeah, heaps and heaps,” she smiled right back as the two of us sat across a