None of it was real anyway. Right?

I pushed open the door and tiny brass bells tinkled above my head as the wood floor creaked beneath my feet.

“Come on in, child. I could feel your curiosity from outside.” The woman, tall and thin with skin the color of café au lait, greeted me from behind the counter.

“Hi?” My greeting sounded more like a question than anything else.

“What can I do for you today?”

She folded her arms on the glass in front of her and studied me. I wondered if she could see everything.

No way. That would be impossible. I chided myself for letting my imagination get the better of me.

I cleared my throat and pulled myself together. “My fortune. I’d like to know what you see.”

“Ah. We all want to know our future, don’t we? Luckily, you came to the right place. Come on back.”

She pushed away from the counter and gestured to the gap between it and the wall. I followed her as I soaked up the ambience of the shop. The lower shelves were lined with books and boxes of tarot cards, and the upper shelves were filled with glass jars of different teas and herbs.

Rather than spooky, it felt only slightly unnerving. She led me to a table and indicated that I should sit. Hands folded tightly in my lap, I waited for her to speak.

“Do you have a preference? Tea or tarot?” She nodded to a cup and teapot. “I read the leaves at the bottom. My grandmother taught me when I was a child.”

I’d seen the fortune-tellers with their card tables and tarot decks near Jackson Square, but it hadn’t occurred to me to stop. But tea . . . that sounded intriguing. What could someone actually tell you from reading tea leaves?

Somehow, it seemed safer too.

“Tea.”

She nodded. “Very well.”

She set about brewing a fresh pot and placed the teacup on the table. I waited, wondering if this whole process was drawn out to give more authenticity to the supposed fortune-telling.

But my doubts drained away when she started to speak.

“You’ve felt trapped. Kept away from the things you truly want.” Her gaze flicked up to mine. “And now you’re finding freedom because that’s what your future holds. Freedom . . . but at a price. You face a very tangled web where nothing is as it truly appears, and when it untangles, you will have to make a choice.”

Although her words were generic and perhaps could have applied to anyone, they struck a chord inside me.

Trapped. Freedom. Tangled.

“What . . . what’s going to happen?”

“I can’t see specifics. I only know that you will be tested and when you think you have failed, you must look deeper.”

This last part was cryptic, and apprehension curled through me at the word failed.

Failed at what?

I wanted to continue to ask questions, but she rose from the table. “If you have more questions, come back and see me again, child. I’d be happy to tell you what the next cup says.”

I stood, with more questions than answers swirling through my brain.

When I followed her out to the front of the shop, I dug into my wallet and pulled out enough cash to pay for the reading and a tip. I knew I should be watching my finances more closely considering I only had cash to rely on now, but one indulgence wasn’t going to break me. I handed over the bills, and she tucked them in the register.

“Thank you,” I said before turning toward the door. I was already telling myself that the generic fortune she’d read me didn’t necessarily have anything to do with my future.

“Consider this my free advice. That inked man is more than what he appears. Guard your heart.”

My hand froze on the doorknob and I whipped around.

“Excuse me?”

Her smile took on a decidedly feline quality. “Ah. You were wondering if I could truly see anything. Now you know for certain. Take care now.”

My hand shook on the doorknob, but I managed to twist it hard and burst out of the shop onto the street.

How could she possibly know that? Inked man. There was no way. Fortune-tellers weren’t real. Were they?

A cold gust of wind sent more shivers racing across my skin.

This town was a way more eerie than I gave it credit for, and Madame Laveau was either a first-class guesser or she saw something when she looked at me.

I hugged my arms around myself and made my way back to Voodoo.

WHEN I PUSHED THROUGH THE door of the tattoo shop, everyone turned to stare at me. Immediately, I dropped my gaze to my shirt to see if I’d spilled food on it during lunch and Vanessa had failed to mention it.

Not seeing any stains, and after surreptitiously checking to make sure the zipper of my jeans was in place, I glanced back up at Con, Vanessa, Delilah, and a girl I remembered from Dirty Dog—JP.

Most notably absent was Bishop.

The inked man.

I tried to inject humor into my voice when I asked, “Did Bishop eat and run?”

Con’s elbows rested on the counter with his fork hanging midair over his takeout container. He held off on shoveling the bite into his mouth before answering me.

“He had to take care of something. He’ll be back. He took your shit.”

Took my shit?

I bolted toward the counter and looked behind it. “He took my suitcase?”

It was quite literally the sum total of everything I had to my name at this moment, excluding my purse.

“Where did he go?” My tone crept up two octaves and Delilah held out a hand.

“Whoa, simma down, girl. He’s taking care of shit for you.”

“He’s got it bad for you. I see it now.” JP was back to her melodramatic self, looking heartbroken.

Delilah laughed. “JP, I told you that you needed to lose that schoolgirl crush. Bishop wasn’t ever gonna touch a girl ten years younger than him anyway.”

“Not even a full ten. I’m going to be twenty-three in a month.” Her pixie-like features narrowed. “Just let it be known that if you and Bishop get married, I’m not coming to the wedding and I’m sure as hell not going to be a bridesmaid. You’d pick some godawful dress in revenge for me having a crush on the groom and it would just be petty revenge, so let’s just get all that out in the open, m’kay?”

What. The. Hell?

“Wow, she skipped right to the wedding,” Vanessa whispered. “Did the fortune-teller mention a wedding? You might as well put JP out of her misery right now. She’s going to give up on ever finding herself an alpha of her own, and retreat to her apartment with seventeen cats and eight subscriptions to different wine-of-the-month clubs.”