“Are you serious?”I asked.
“Dead serious.Move in.I’d love the company.”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t have much stuff,” she coaxed.“I’ll help you pack.”
I almost said yes immediately, but something in me hesitated.I’d lived my whole life expecting nothing to last — nothing good, nothing safe.
“What about my job?”I asked.“It’s far from your place.”
“So what?Quit.You’ll find something closer.I’ll help you look.”She nudged my hand.“Come on.It’s not like they pay you enough to stay loyal.”
That made me smile.It was only a small tip of my lips, but it was the first real one in hours.
“Okay,” I whispered.“I’ll move, but not until the weekend.Let me at least give the restaurant notice.”
She grinned like I’d just made her entire week.“Good.That’s settled then.”
I took a sip of my coffee, and for the first time since last night, I felt something close to relief.Someone else was in my corner.Someone who saw me.Someone who cared.
But the comfort didn’t last.
Because even then, sitting in a crowded café, I felt it — that lingering prickle along my spine.The sense of eyes on me.The memory of the man in the alley.The memory of a presence at the market… had he followed me from the market to that alley, only to lose his life there?
“Let’s go,” Zelda said suddenly.“I need to pick up something from my tent.”
We walked back toward the market together.It was quiet that day, not loud and messy the way it was on weekends, and I welcomed the quiet.
When we reached her stall, she paused, her expression shifting.“Come here.”She pulled me into the tent.
“What’s going on?”I asked.
She didn’t answer.She reached for her deck of cards.
“No,” I whispered automatically.
“Yes.”She cut the deck with practiced ease.“Sit.”
I hesitated.Yesterday was still crawling under my skin, refusing to let go.Part of me wondered if a warning would have changed anything — if seeing danger before it found me would have spared me from what happened in that alley.
But I shut that thought down as quickly as it formed.
The cards had always been wrong for me.
They had never predicted anything real, anything true.
There was no universe where they would have told me what waited for me the second I stepped out of the market.Nothing could have prepared me for that.
So why would today be any different?
And yet, I sat.
She drew the first card.Her mouth tightened.Then the second.Then the third.
When her eyes lifted to mine, the color had drained from her face.She didn’t say a word.And yet her silence said everything.
“What is it?”I asked.Suddenly, I was anxious to know.