Chapter Four

Santino stretched, moving through his morning flow. Limber and strong, he’d taken to doing yoga early on, before he was even a teen. Next to him, Cam worked her own flow. They were both putting off hitting the books, so to speak, and digging out things that thinned auras, needing time to decompress. However, after the first date on the river, Santino finally considered he had reason to linger in Florida for the first time. Ryan had been fun, sweet, if maybe a little shy and somehow embarrassed about being a homebody.

Santino felt a little bad. What was he doing trying to date, knowing he was transient? Because you want to lure Ryan into the Aspida. A real psychic will be a boon. Would a homebody be willing to leave his home? He sighed. Maybe it’d be nothing more than a summer fling. There was something to be said for the release of oxytocin during sex. It might not fulfill his long-term needs but did improve his mood in the short term.

Lost in thought, he misstepped moving into grasshopper and toppled onto his mat. The musty carpet under it made him sneeze. Why would anyone have a carpet in a Floridian house? Did they hate people with allergies?

“What are you doing?” Cam shot him the gimlet eye, holding her grasshopper perfectly.

He grimaced but admitted the truth. “Thinking about Ryan.”

“And your erection off balanced you?” She smirked, flowing into child’s pose.

“Cam!”

She lifted her head, grinning. “What?”

“The innocent look doesn’t work on me. And no!” He twisted onto his knees and assumed child’s pose as well, his face so hot he was shocked it didn’t set off steam in the humidity. “Cam, what am I doing going out with him, knowing we’ll be leaving?”

“You’re hoping he’s coming with.”

“True.” Sure, he’d considered it, but he hadn’t held out as much hope as he should have. How sad that he was mired in the pessimistic side. He straightened up on the mat and went into corpse position.

“Ending early?”

“It’s too hot for tying ourselves up in knots.”

“Agreed.” She flowed into corpse as well.

As he let his body relax, Santino’s mind drifted back to Ryan, but he carefully edited those thoughts or he’d be a very excited corpse. Cam would be merciless. When he was done, he planned on texting Ryan to see if he was free.

As it turned out, Ryan wasn’t free, but he was deeply bored. Apparently, on Mondays, the Camp was a ghost town. Santino hiked to the Davis building with one of the dusty, not-scanned-in tomes in Italian under his arm.

Ryan grinned at him when he entered and pointed to a stool at the end of the display case. “Thanks for joining me.” He jutted his chin at the book. “Do I want to know?”

“Work for when you have an actual customer.” Santino patted the cover.

“You might not get anything done in that case. I can be here hours with no one coming in.” Ryan rolled his eyes, tapping his fingers on the glass case. Under it lay a collection of Celtic jewelry.

“Sounds incredibly tedious.”

“It is. We’ve considered only opening on weekends, but we do get the occasional customer so…” Ryan swept his gaze over Santino. “Anything more you’d like to tell me about why you’re here in Florida?”

Santino shook his head. Though the psychic center appeared currently empty, he didn’t want to talk in so public a place. “Leave it at…we’re on a scouting mission. Our bosses like to play it close to the vest.”

Ryan wrinkled his nose, and Santino mentally shrugged at how cute he found the gesture. “Like for one of those TV shows?” he asked. Santino gave him a noncommittal shrug. “I’m not sure I like that.”

Santino blinked. “Oh?”

“Ever get the idea they started out with the best of intentions, and then the producers say ‘okay this is too much of the same thing, we need to spice it up’? I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a psychic so accurate. And let’s not get into how the ghost shows have gone from ‘it’s a ghost’ to ‘it’s a demon’ in every basement and earth spirits lurking in the bushes and an army of ghosts in the attic?” His tone, more bitter than kale, resonated with Santino.

“You’ll get no argument from me.” He often thought the same himself. “That said, I sort of wish I’d come up with going on TV.”

Ryan laughed. “Me too. I’d buy myself one of those Victorian homes I covet.”

“Or a place on…well, I was going to say an island, but I don’t like the heat much.”

“Keep it as your winter home, and summer in Maine along the coast.” Ryan shrugged. “It seems lovely there.”

“Oh, it is,” Santino assured him. “I love Maine.”

Ryan’s shoulders slumped. “I’ve never been. I’m jealous of all the places you’ve been, but I’ve no one to blame but myself.”

Santino wasn’t entirely sure Ryan had the means to travel long and far. He imagined a psychic here made little money, but it certainly wasn’t something he’d ever say. “A lot of it has been for the job, but Cam and I do try to make a minivacation out of every trip if we can. You’ve been more than helpful in that regard.”

“Speaking of which, what’s your take on antique markets?”

The rough segue made Santino blink. “I’m not a collector of old stuff. My mother is though, so I wouldn’t say no to one, why?”

“I was planning to go to Renninger’s flea market this weekend. It’s a hundred and fifty acres of flea market and antiques with hundreds of vendors. From there, I usually pop over to Mount Dora which is the cutest little town with lots of unique shops.”

“Did you say acres?” Santino tried to picture it and failed.

“Well over a hundred of them. It’s so big you usually can’t see it all before you tire out. I have a client who is bonkers for keys and doorknobs. She trusts me to get them for her, but she only wants them if there’s no negative spiritual attachments to them. It’s my job to find them and make sure they’re clean.”

“That sounds a bit…”

“Crazy obsessive? True, but she’s an old woman and set in her ways, and I’m well compensated, so why not? If you’re still here, you might like to go. It’s huge.”

Santino tried on his best salacious smile. “I like huge.”

Ryan leaned forward, resting his hand over Santino’s on the display case. “I bet you do.”

Before he could kiss Santino, the door bells jingled, and Ryan sat back, trying to look professional instead of a bit frazzled and deeply disappointed. The woman who’d given Santino the terrible stink eye on his first day stomped in. Didn’t Ryan say this was his sister? Why did she look ready to go to war? Ryan stiffened his spine.

“What’s up, Mary?”

She scowled at him before sweeping her hot gaze over Santino. “You stole another client!” she snarled without preamble.

The change enveloping Ryan shocked Santino. Ryan found his steel as he stood, facing off with his sister. “Can we not do this here?”

“Why? He’s not a client, now is he?” She stabbed a finger at Santino.

“He’s my friend, and what are you talking about?”

“Did I stutter?”

“Look, we’ve had this conversation how many times now, Mary? I’m not stealing your clients. I don’t want your clients. There’s enough clients for both of us.”

Her pale face turned splotchy. “There aren’t, and you know it.”

Santino suspected Mary, as unpleasant as she was, might be right, at least as far as face-to-face clients went. He suspected they all probably had online ones. He froze as she whipped around to face him.

“Let me ask you—if you found out the client referred to you ended up seeing your brother, wouldn’t you think he poached them?”

“I suppose if the referral only gave a surname, it might be an honest mistake since the client came looking for a Doyle rather than you hunting them down. Or maybe once they got here, they decided they were more comfortable talking to a man versus a woman.” Santino tried to be diplomatic. He’d gain nothing by antagonizing Ryan’s sister. What he wanted to say was: maybe they heard about how much like a grapefruit your personality is and ran screaming right to Ryan.

Diplomatic or not, it was wasted on Mary. She pinched up her features. “You would say that. Sleeping with him?” She jutted her chin at Ryan.

“Not yet, but I certainly hope to,” Santino replied sweetly, watching Ryan go scarlet.

“I’m wasting my time here. If you refuse to leave town, maybe you should at least change your damn name so honest mistakes don’t happen.” She air quoted “mistakes.”

“Why don’t you change yours?” Ryan said.

“Because I’m the elder, and I’m keeping the name. It’s not like you’re passing it on to anyone. Go be someone else.”

“I just might,” he retorted.

“Good!” With that, she stomped off.

Ryan sighed, sagging back onto his stool. “I’m sorry about that.”

“It’s not your fault your sister is harsh as hell.”

“She is, no doubts about it. She was even before Mom died.”

“Sorry,” Santino said.

“Thanks. You didn’t make her a bitch. She got there all on her own. She really wishes she’d been the only one to inherit the family powers. I did tell you Mom was psychic too, right?”

Santino nodded, so Ryan continued, “From what I know, everyone in the family is psychic. I guess I’m not sure if Dad was psychic.” He glanced away for a second. “I’m not entirely sure who dad is, or if he is even alive.”

Santino didn’t really know what to say. He didn’t need to be psychic to know it bothered Ryan. “That’s hard.”

“Yeah. There were a few pictures of my dad, but Mom refused to speak of him, taking all the secrets to an early grave. Mary is only two years older than me, and she doesn’t have any clear memories of him either. As far as I know, he left when I was two. So me, Mary, and Mom were on our own, and we were pretty happy. Mom had a way of keeping Mary calm that I obviously don’t possess. Mom trained us, honing our psychic abilities.” He paused, his eyes sheening over. “I really miss her.”

“Of course you do.” Santino leaned in close and brushed his lips over Ryan’s softly. “Want to go somewhere after work and forget all of this?”

“Absolutely.”

Santino grinned, turning over in his mind the prospect of Ryan leaving this environment. Mary being so unpleasant might work in his favor. He wouldn’t want to be someplace where he got yelled at repeatedly. Mary might tip Ryan into leaving, and having him come along suited Santino just fine.