CHAPTER 42

I tried not to squirm as I sat at Klaire’s vanity table. Her bedroom was another surprise in her outwardly dilapidated and seedy home. At the back of the house, invisible from the street, the room rose to a cathedral ceiling, punctuated with skylights. Klaire’s cottage took “shabby chic” to new extremes. Through the room’s tall French windows, just visible in the dusk outside, thick hedges and palms shielded this part of her house from her neighbors’ eyes and the street.

Klaire stood next to me attaching another auburn-and-copper-streaked extension to my hair. She’d rinsed it earlier with copper color.

She wore a head cloth and peasant outfit in dusky purple-and-black. She had a can of mace on the table and had armed herself with a full set of astrological rings and necklaces. A large leather bag lay on the floor next to her. I didn’t want to know what was in there.

“You make a pretty gypsy woman,” she said, studying me in the vanity’s mirror. “The men will flock to get their palms read.”

“But I don’t know anything about reading palms.” In vain I tried to scratch the back of my head. Klaire had sprayed, ratted, and pinned my hair to death.

“It’s very simple. Let me explain it to you again,” she said patiently. “Read their dominant palm.”

“I know, I know. Ask them if they are left handed or right handed.” I was going to be so busted when I tried to do this.

“Exactly. Tell them lines are not written into the human hand without reason. Get them in the mood.” She grasped my left hand, pointed at the marks she’d inked into place earlier. “Life, head, and heart,” she murmured.

The astrological symbols she’d drawn on the “mounts” of my palms looked like art from a medieval scroll. I especially liked the little quarter moon she’d inked onto my “luna” mount, the area near my wrist below my little finger.

“Won’t they think I’m using a cheat sheet?” I asked.

“No. They’ll love it. It validates you in their minds. Gives them something to focus on, encourages them to reveal themselves to you.”

Nikki Latrelle, con artist.

* * * *

By the time Klaire finished with me, coppery hair cascaded down my shoulders, over my low-cut peasant top. I wore a turquoise plastic wrist band that identified me as a party employee, a long blue skirt, moccasin-boots, and a heavy necklace made of astrological symbols. Beneath the skirt, I wore nylon cargo shorts. Side slits hidden in the folds of the skirt allowed access to the pockets of the pants.

Klaire had spread grease paint the color of café latte over the pale skin of my face, neck, and chest, and smoked my eyes with dark blue shadow, heavy black liner, and mascara. I looked pretty cool, but was too nervous to enjoy it.

It hadn’t helped when Klaire told me she’d been receiving dark messages from the other side. She’d refused to tell me what they were, other than we had to be very careful. Carla, too. Hadn’t helped when she’d given me a small dagger, a tiny vial of knock out drops, and a little can of pepper spray to stash in one of the pockets of my cargo pants. The other was loaded with a handful of three-quarter-inch cherry bombs.

What was her plan? Knock everyone out and blow the place up?

As she finished her own makeup, I pulled the two-inch glass vial from my cargo pocket and held it up. “Will this stuff really knock someone out?”

“Cold enough to take their money or anything else you want. One drop will do it.”

“What happens if I spill it? Will it absorb through my skin?”

“Better you don’t find out,” Klaire said.