He nodded, reddening slightly.
“You’rea true believer?” I asked, my nose wrinkling. I couldn’t help my skepticism. Even considering the psychic’s varied clientele, he was an anomaly. Thirty-something men who looked like they were half Viking, half Unabomber didn’t often seek out spiritual guidance from women in caftans.
He continued to redden, far more than slightly. I couldn’t tell if it was anger or embarrassment. “It’s a standing appointment set up, twice a month, at my mother’s place,” he rumbled. “She was supposed to come two nights ago. She never showed up.”
I knew Zelda did house calls in addition to her readings at the shop. But as far as I was concerned, what she did on her own time was her business. I didn’t interfere with her extracurriculars any more than she weighed in on mine.
“She hasn’t been around for a few days.” I threw out my hands in a ‘what can you do’ gesture. “I’m sure she’ll turn back up soon. Just call to reschedule your appointment.”
“Her voicemail is full.”
“Right.” I swallowed. “I’m sympathetic. I am. But I don’t know what I can do to help you.”
“She’s your employee.”
“Not exactly. She’s more of a freelancer.” I shrugged. “I let her use my space, she brings in a steady stream of clientele. Mutually beneficial relationship. Symbiotic. Sort of like a clownfish and a sea anemone.”
He stared at me blankly.
I figured he wasn’t well versed in clownfish coexistence, so I launched into an explanation. “See, the anemone provides a home for the clownfish, and in return the clownfish scares away—”
“I don’t give a fuck.”
“Fine! Jeeze.” I held up my hands defensively at his blunt interjection. “Sue me for trying to spread a little knowledge.”
“The only knowledge I’m interested in concerns where I can find Zelda.”
“Right. Zelda.” I shrugged yet again. “Like I said, she’s not technically my employee. I don’t pay her. I don’t make her schedule or oversee her appointments. I don’t keep tabs on when she comes and goes.”
“You have her home address?”
My brows shot up. “If I did, I’d hardly give it to you.”
“It wouldn’t violate any privacy laws or nothin’. You just said she’s not your employee.”
“She may not be my employee, but she is an… associate. Whereasyouare a stranger.”
His face clouded over with a mix of anger and frustration when he realized I was not about to budge on this front. His hands, which were currently folded across his barrel chest, fisted tightly. “It’s important that I see her as soon as possible. Today.Now.”
“Well, buddy, as I said, I have no idea where Zelda is. And I’m certainly not about to give up her personal information to a vaguely threatening dude who cornered me in an alleyway.”
His eyes flared with undeniable rage. He took a lumbering step toward me. “Look, lady—”
I wasn’t about to wait around to see what he intended to do next. I pointed at my bare wrist, as though there was a watch adorning it, and cut him off mid-sentence. “Would you look at the time? Your point-two seconds are over. I’ll be going, now.”
This time, when I darted around him, he let me go. But his voice called after me as I reached the end of the alley. “You see Zelda, you tell her Mickey is lookin’ for her. You tell her he’s not going away — not until he gets back what she took. You tell her she can run, but she can’t hide. Not for long.”
I picked up my pace, as if to outrun his threatening words. But they followed me all the way back to the main drag, sending a chill down my spine despite the sun-drenched afternoon.
* * *
By the timeI left the shop for the night, darkness had fallen. Hetti was long gone — as soon as she shut off the espresso machine and wiped the tabletops, she disappeared out the door in a blur of black fishnets and magenta hair, lugging a bursting trash bag along with her. Hopefully, her alleyway experience would be less dramatic than mine.
Alone in the storeroom, I’d spent the next two hours hunched over my desk balancing the books, paying bills, processing payroll, and placing next month’s inventory orders. The lead-up to Halloween was always our busiest time, the city increasingly overrun as the spirit of the season descended in full. Last year, Salem saw nearly a million visitors in October alone. By the end of the month, my shelves had practically been bare and I’d turned away plenty of paying customers with money to burn. I was doing my best not to repeat my mistakes this time around, unwilling to foolishly squander the income opportunity the next six weeks presented — even if it meant placing an order with so many zeros on the end of the total, my eyes bugged out of my head.
Anxiety furled through me, churning from the pit of my stomach up the path of my esophagus. The hard truth was, I might be making a massive miscalculation. I didn’t have an MBA or any formal business training; I only had my gut to follow. I hoped like hell it wouldn’t lead me astray. So far, the decisions I’d made for the shop had been solid enough. And I didn’t need a fancy degree to know that old adage was true.
No risk, no reward.