Page 77 of Tony

“Why?” I whisper.

“Because all I’m going to be thinking about is the way you wrapped your arms around me on the ride today. And the way you smiled at my nieces. And the way your hair felt in my fingertips when you let me braid it. And how tonight, after we leave work, I’m not going to let you go up to that garage apartment.”

“No?”

“No.” He shakes his head. “You’re coming home with me.”

He nudges me backwards so he can stand up. Then he takes my hand and leads me through the small crowd of loitering college kids. And then we walk into Sick Boyz together.

CHAPTER NINETEEN - TONY

OK. Let me set the scene here at Madam Ameci’s House of Fortunes. That’s the name on the small shingle sign swaying outside the small garden-level storefront tucked away down a flight of nearly hidden stairs on the outside corner of the Pearl Street Pedestrian mall in Boulder.

First of all… finding the hidden half-flight of stairs that leads to the entrance is kind of like looking for that Harry Potter train stop in London. You have to walk down four steps then duck under a curtain of fake plastic ivy and turn a corner before you finally see the lacquered red Dutch door built into the side of a brick wall.

The shingle hangs outside and I’m beyond bewildered at how anyone finds this place if you can’t see it from the street, but when we pass through the door and jingle a set of small bells that announce our arrival, half a dozen faces of various ages turn to look at us as soothing meditation music flows down from speakers in the ceiling.

Soshee smiles at them and takes my hand, leads me across the teeny-tiny waiting room to a beaded curtain—now I know where she steals her home décor accessories—and creates a little entrance for me. “She’s back here,” Soshee whispers.

“Should we wait?” I ask. “Until… you know, she’s done with her client?”

“Oh, we’ll wait in the break room.”

I shrug and duck through the beads, then wait for Soshee to slip past me and lead the way down the dark hallway lit up with a long shelf of flickering votive candles.

I can hear whispering from behind a silk curtain as we pass, but once we enter the break room and Soshee closes the door, the whole mystic vibe disappears. It’s a white room with a single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling and a small, old-school TV playing black and white movies on silent.

Soshee points to one of four chairs around a vintage red dinette table. “Sit. She’ll come in when she’s done.”

“Don’t we have to tell her we’re here?”

“Well, she is psychic.”

“Right.” I laugh.

“Kidding. I mean, she is psychic. I suppose. But she’s got a security feed on the wall in her office, so she saw us come in.”

“Doesn’t hurt to stack the deck.”

“Never hurts to stack the deck.” I sit and she takes the seat across from me. “She’s going to flip out when I tell her about you.”

“Because Zach Boston is my sort-of cousin-in-law?”

“That. And”—Soshee cocks her head at me—“well, she’s gonna know.”

“Know what?”

“That you and I are now… you know.”

“We’re… what?”

She shrugs. “Connected.”

“By Zach?”

“No. Just connected. In her mind, this is all fate.”

“Well, it could be fate. Or it could be a sequence of events that led to this moment. Rosalinda saw something she shouldn’t have. The dirty FBI has, for whatever reason, made Fort Collins their home base. Rosalinda got sent there. Tara got sent there. Vann is one of those people who pays attention and they all ended up on my family street in Key West because the past finally caught up with everyone and bam. Here we are.”