It was a risk, but he didn’t have much to lose at this point.
So he said it.
“Ten yearsiskind of a long time,” he said sympathetically. “But I guess I didn’t take you for a chicken.”
And Gabe went off to do his time in the dunking booth. To literally drown his sorrows, and cool down the rest of his body, and he was glad none of the carnival games nearby featured actual darts, because he was pretty sure one would be twanging between his shoulder blades right now.
Chapter 11
Eden watched him go, her jaw dropped for so long it was a wonder someone strolling by didn’t take her for a coin-operated game and drop a quarter in.
Achicken!
He had a lot of fucking nerve!
A lot of fucking nerve to pinpoint the teeny tiny kernel of doubt about that very thing at the very center of her entire rationale!
It wasn’t as simple as that, was it?
That this was new, she didn’t know how to do it, she wasscared, and so she was walking away.
When she lost sight of him in the crowd, panic flurried in the pit of her stomach like the little popcorn cyclones in the rented machines studding the walkways.
“Hey, Eden, come on in here.”
She gave a start.
Greta was standing in the doorway of the little fortune-telling tent, beckoning with a sweep of a hand, her spirally black curls leaping gaily in a breeze.
“Hey, Greta! How are things going?”
“I’m making bank reading tarot cards, that’s how things are going. Sent some people out glowing, some crying, you know how it goes.”
Eden didn’t, really, but apparently Greta was accustomed to making people cry or exult.
“I have a lull,” Greta said. “Let me do yours.”
“Um, yeah, I don’t know about that.” She didn’t need the tarot cards ringing in on her future. Her life was complicated enough at the moment. And as much as she adored Greta—and she did—her own innate self-protection didn’t want yet another person privy to her angst.
“It won’t hurt, Eden. Lord, girl, what are you, chick—”
“I’M NOT CHICKEN.”
Greta blinked.
But apparently not much fazed her. “Then come on in,” she said mildly.
She sighed and followed Greta into the tent, which was moodily lit with glowing amber lamps, because apparently the future could only be told in dark places, not, for instance, in the fluorescent glow of a school gym.
Or maybe it was because the future was so bright you needed protection from the glare. Heh.
“Hold these and think about your question. Then shuffle them. And cut them,” Greta ordered.
She did. She took the sturdy, clearly well-used cards in her palm and held them, feeling a little foolish as she shuffled them, and into them soaked all of her angst about Gabe and life in general.
Greta pulled a card from the top.
“Ah, here we have Death,” she said cheerily.