Page 5 of Divine Oaths

Shame burned against my cheeks. “You’re the one who needs it to get what you want.”

“But you’re the one who needs it,” he said. “Isn’t that worse?”

I held out my hand, ready to take his palm and end this interaction as soon as possible.

“I need a date of some kind,” I told him. “And something from your past if you want a specific reading from a certain place or time period. But if you want me to just look into your lifeline, I can do that too. Just give me your hands and don’t move for a few minutes, and I’ll tell you what I see.”

He hesitated.

As the self-proclaimed heir to one of the oldest institutions in the country, he was probably used to getting what he wanted. But now he seemed unsure. Nervous, even.

“What about Westfield?” he said. “Will you come?”

“I’ll give you a reading now, for the next five minutes. That’s it,” I said. “So, what do you want to know?”

Again, there was that hesitation. He glanced at his friends and then to the exit of the store, as if, at any moment, some mystical force or entity might drag him from Gus’s shop. When he spoke this time, it was in a whisper.

“I need you to look into my future,” he said. “I need to know how I die.”

CHAPTER TWO

All ways do lie open

AT FIRST, I WASN’T SURE I’d heard him correctly. When people asked for readings, it was usually for one of two things: to learn about their future or to commune with a lost loved one. Who will I marry? Will I get the job? Can you speak to my deceased grandmother? The normal musings. But death? Learning how you’ll die? That was… different; tragic, even.

I drew away from him, my mind racing.

“Are you—sick or something?”

He seemed to consider that.

“Something like that,” he said finally. “But it’s—let’s just say it runs in my family.”

“And you want to find out when you’ll die?”

“Not when I’ll die,” he clarified. “How. I already know when. It’s going to be this year. It’s going to be soon. So I just need to know how it happens.”

He was serious.

“But if it’s an illness—shouldn’t you… know?”

“I never said it was one.”

“But it runs in your family?”

He sighed. “Look, will you help me or not?”

To be honest, I wasn’t sure myself. As much as my powers easily let me see into the past, the future was more nebulous. Whenever I tried to do readings of a timeline beyond the present, I’d get migraines and glimpses of shadowed figures and forms.

Except for the fire.

That had been the only time I’d seen a concrete vision of the future. And a moment after I saw flames in my mind, that horrific scene played out before me.

But since then, I usually just cobbled together my predictions of the future from what I could see in a person’s past. If someone asked whether they’d get a raise at the end of the year, I’d look into their past and glean what I could from their history. Which, in my opinion, made me better than a charlatan. At least my readings of the future were informed by some sort of real visions.

Behind us, the shop bell rang, its cheerful chimes an eerie contrast to what was unfolding between me and the Westfield heir. An older man in his forties approached us. Against the dark gray of his suit, a lily was stitched, just like the ones on their blazers.

“Mr. Saint James,” he said, discreetly flashing a holstered gun at his waist. “I suggest you and the others leave. There’s been a report of disorderly conduct.”