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CHAPTER ONE

Autumn

The inside of Madame Zelda’s tent smelled like cinnamon.

It was coming off the brooms hung along the canvas walls and the candle warmer sitting on the table. Darlene Pike — assistant baker six days a week, fortune teller when somebody let her put on a headscarf — sat in the middle of the tent behind a wood table, her arms covered in bangles and her usually gray hair covered by a jet-black wig.

“Sit,” Zelda-slash-Darlene waved me into a folding chair that barely looked like it could hold my curves.

Not an invitation. A demand.

I sat, because my best friend June had metaphorically dragged me here by the hair, and arguing with June was like arguing with a pitbull. Tonight Lone Mountain’s festival was for the haunted house, the hayrides, the street dance, and, of course, the fortune teller’s tent. Tomorrow the vendors set up. I was one of the vendors. I had soap towers and pumpkin chai candles and two cases of lotions and beard oil waiting for me to label back at my shop. Apparently, beards were still very popular.

I did not have time to let a woman who sold me cinnamon rolls once a week read my palm.

“You don’t believe in this,” Zelda said before I even opened my mouth.

“I believe you make a hell of a cinnamon roll. I believe in insurance and double-checking my till at close. The jury’s out on the rest.”

“Give me your hand.” I gave her my hand.

Her fingers were warm and dry. She turned my palm toward the lantern hanging from the tent pole, traced a line, frowned, and set my hand down with the same disappointed sigh my mother gave every time I called and told her, no, I still didn’t have a boyfriend. Zelda picked up a deck of oversized tarot cards that were still factory sealed. I didn’t know if that was a good omen or a bad one. No one’s fortune had been told using them yet. She shuffled them and laid down three off the top.

If nothing else, I was impressed by the artistry on the cards. The middle card was a moon — round, yellow, watching — and something about it made the back of my neck prickle. I blamed the draft that wafted in through the curtain at the tent’s opening. The night was chilly, as expected this close to Halloween.

“You’re about to meet someone,” Zelda said. “Tall. Dark.” She hesitated a moment before continuing. I appreciated the dramatics. “Troubled.”

I laughed before I could stop myself. “That’s not a prediction, Darlene. That’s my dating history.”

She didn’t smile. She tapped the moon once.

“When the ghost steps out of the dark, his guardian beside him, don’t mistake his scars for danger, or his silence for indifference.”

“A ghost,” I said. “With a guardian. Is that a two-for-one?”

“You joke because it’s easier than admitting you want to be touched.”

That landed someplace I usually didn’t think about.

“I joke because I have a booth to set up tomorrow and I am not prepared. Thanks for the reading. I’ll keep an eye out for tall, dark, troubled, and apparently accompanied.”

“No need. He comes to you.” She gave me a knowing smile as I left.

I ducked out into the chilled October air with the unnerving sense that something had been set in motion.

Outside, the festival was still loud. Music. Laughter. Kids too old for trick-or-treating had gathered for their own Halloween magic. My palm started itching where Darlene had touched it. I rubbed it on my jeans and told myself I did not believe in fortune tellers or destiny or anything like that. I’d learned long ago that if you wanted something, you had to get it for yourself. I completely ignored the part about wanting to be touched.

June caught me before I could escape to the shop.

“Well?”

“Apparently, I’m doomed to date a moody stranger with a spirit animal. Or a service animal. She was vague about that detail.”

“Darlene’s never wrong about the big stuff. She called Bree and Tom’s engagement before Tom bought the ring.”

“Last week she told me my soap display needed more earth energy.” I glanced at my empty booth frame on the street and felt that small, steady tug of ownership I got every time I looked at something with my name on it. My shop had been open six months and I was making enough to pay my bills and feed my cinnamon roll addiction. “I’ll see you in the morning. Early. Before the crowds.”

“You better be, because I’m going to need your help again.”