The Grift Read online

  She pulled her front door open to the wet air outside and the smell of rot hit her like a wave. There was an empty rectangle of light in her doorway. Mrs. Golden was nowhere in sight. It took only a second for Marina to look down and see the dead snake, stuffed with foul dark matter, coiled on her front step. Even as she was slamming the door shut, adrenaline shooting through her veins, Marina knew she had to open it again and get rid of the thing. Sweat sprang from every pore in her body as she moved fast to the closet to pull out a broom and a rolled-up grass mat. No time to make this neat. Perspiration pooled under her eyes like still tears. Marina opened the door again, breath held and eyes averted, and hit the thing hard with the broom, sweeping it off the step and into a clump of half-dead birds-of-paradise. One more swipe at the grimy black smear it left behind and then Marina threw the broom after it. She didn’t have time to look for a hose or a bucket now. She unrolled the mat and tossed it on the step. She could still smell the thing, but at least she couldn’t see it.

  Marina went back inside and scrubbed her hands until her palms were red and throbbing. She wiped the slick sweat from her neck and pulled her thin shirt away from where it had become glued to her back. She laughed; a hard crazy sound that had nothing to do with amusement. So now they’d decided to leave their voodoo trash at her doorstep. Curses, spells and hexes—Marina believed in none of them. But she did believe in the power of bad intentions. The snake was a particularly crude warning, and Marina suspected there wouldn’t be many more. She couldn’t afford to wait two more months. She had to find a way to get out now.

  There was another knock at the door. Mrs. Golden had arrived exactly on time. Marina pictured her client standing on the grass mat and knew she needed to answer the door before the old woman smelled what was hiding in the flowers. But if I make her wait, Marina thought, she’ll be frantic and desperate by the time I let her in. Frantic and desperate were good for business, and that was exactly what Marina needed right now. She had to think, calculate, speed up her mental process. She glanced at her table, where she’d laid out the cards for Mrs. Golden, and a decision began forming in her mind.

  This would be Mrs. Golden’s last reading, and it would be very expensive. Mrs. Golden knocked again. “Hello? Are you there? Hello?” Her voice was high and urgent. Yes, Marina thought, Mrs. Golden was ready. The old woman was always on the edge anyway and hardly even needed a push. Her worries had been escalating over the last few readings. Concerns over the state of her own health had turned into irrational fears that her dead husbands—she’d outlived two of them—were unable to rest in peace. She’d developed a morbid curiosity about the nature of her own death: when and how it would happen. Mrs. Golden’s need for bad news had been increasing with every appointment, and she’d been scheduling her sessions closer and closer together. Tell me something bad, Marina. Tell me something terrible. Her eyes begged for it, searched for it every time she came for a reading. Today, her search would be over. It wasn’t Marina’s business to understand why Mrs. Golden or any of her clients had such a powerful need for calamity. But it was her business to give it to them.

  Marina smoothed the folds of her skirt and wiped the beads of moisture from her lip. She willed herself into stillness for a few seconds, controlling her breath and allowing her professional mask to drop and settle over her. She could feel her face relax, her back straighten and her eyelids fall. When finally she made her way over to the door, Marina had, by sheer force of will, transformed herself from a frazzled, ordinary woman in her thirties to an ethereal, ageless psychic.

  Appearances counted for a great deal indeed.

  “Hello, Mrs. Golden.”

  “Marina…I was worried that you…you…”

  Marina fixed her eyes on Mrs. Golden with the careful, studied gaze she’d perfected over years of training. Mrs. Golden’s usually well-maintained auburn hair was showing white roots, and her cheekbones were sharp against the glare of the afternoon sun. Her fingernails, digging into the tired beige leather of her handbag, were uncharacteristically unpolished and uneven in length. The coral lipstick she had hastily applied was dry and feathery, long past its prime. She was wearing polyester taupe slacks and a matching blouse. The outfit was outdated and too warm for the weather. Nor did it go with the shoes, child-size clear jelly sandals available for $1.99 at any drugstore. She was letting herself go, Marina thought, and it wasn’t for lack of money. Marina knew the old woman had plenty of cash on hand and much more in the bank. So either dementia was setting in or Mrs. Golden was just sick of keeping up the facade. Marina could certainly relate to that.

  “Not to worry, Mrs. Golden. Please come in.” Marina’s voice was low and even, but friendly and familiar.

  The old woman stepped inside and blinked in the dimness of Marina’s small shuttered house. “I thought you…when you didn’t answer—”

  “Don’t be silly,” Marina interrupted. “You know I’ll always be here for you.”

  Mrs. Golden smiled, showing the perfect white teeth available only to those who could afford them, and loosened her grip on her handbag. “Yes, dear, of course you will.”

  Marina offered the smallest of smiles in return and gestured toward her table. Today, she would be the daughter Mrs. Golden had never had—one of many roles she was able to adopt. She was sometimes the best friend, sometimes the mistress, the child or the parent. The medium became the message—and it was all the same to Marina as long as they paid in cash.

  Chapter 2

  “Let’s get started, shall we?” Marina said.

  Her table was covered with a dark blue silk square, bare but for the stack of tarot cards in the center. Mrs. Golden eased herself into a low wingback chair on one side of the table while Marina slid into her own slightly higher chair across from her. Marina dipped her head, narrowed her eyes to slits and breathed deeply. This was the part where she contacted her spirit guides, marshaled her psychic energy and opened her aura. At least, this is what the clients believed she was doing. In reality, Marina used these moments to organize her observations, detect the client’s mood and plan the reading accordingly.

  Marina had been making her living as a psychic for so long that this little act of hers was pitch-perfect. So immersed had she become in her own psychic persona that she was sure she could have passed a lie detector test. The deep irony of it was that Marina did not—now or ever—believe that psychic ability existed at all. She did believe in intuition and that everyone possessed it in equal amounts but that most people couldn’t or wouldn’t tap into it. But what Marina considered intuition had nothing to do with the unexplainable “woo woo” visions of the future that everyone so desired. Intuition, for Marina, was all about observation and appropriate response. It was as simple as being able to pick up on what the people in front of you were thinking or feeling based on what you knew about them. And people gave away so much about themselves in their words, gestures, clothing and faces—especially those people who came to a psychic for readings. Half the time, Marina was convinced that her clients knew this was exactly what they were doing. This was the best part of the reading, really, for both her and the client. The client telegraphed what he or she wanted to hear and Marina picked up the message.

  Mrs. Golden was perhaps one of Marina’s easiest clients in this regard. Although Marina never got emotionally attached to her clients, she did appreciate the old lady’s generosity, and not just the financial end of it. For Marina, Mrs. Golden’s willingness to both lead and be led counted for just as much. As they both waited now, Marina strategizing and Mrs. Golden anticipating, it occurred to Marina that she was sorry to leave this woman behind and that she might even miss her a little. But there was no time for sentimentality. Marina had a job to do and needed to get on with it. She raised her head abruptly and stared straight ahead, focused on some unseen point.

  “Please touch the cards,” she instructed. Mrs. Golden placed her blue-veined hands on top of the stack and Marina covered them with her own. Mr
s. Golden’s hands were cold, even in this heat, and Marina could feel them trembling. After a moment, Marina lifted her hands and gestured for Mrs. Golden to do the same.

  “I have had a dream,” Marina said, “and I am very disturbed by it.” Again the strange lightning flash crossed Marina’s eyes, followed by the fading image of her mother and a sharp spike of discomfort. There were probably better ways to handle Mrs. Golden than summoning a nonexistent dream, and normally Marina would have taken another approach. But today, maximum impact was necessary, and now that she’d plunged in there was no turning back.

  “A dream about me?” Mrs. Golden asked. There was a note of hope in her voice. Tell me something bad. Please tell me something awful.

  Marina watched as the woman raised her right hand to her neck and unconsciously began to rub the ring that dangled from the end of a long chain. Marina knew this ring well, having long ago extracted the details of its provenance from her client. The multicarat trillion-cut ruby set in a simple gold band had been a gift from Mrs. Golden’s only son. It was extremely valuable, Mrs. Golden had told Marina, because “rubies are rarer and worth much more than diamonds, you know.” She didn’t trust a safe-deposit box to hold this one-of-a-kind piece and never left her house without it. In addition, it was “a good luck thing,” and Mrs. Golden made no secret of being intensely superstitious. The ring had been given to her with love and it would be bad karma to put that kind of love away in a dark place where nobody could see it. So she wore it on a chain because, she’d told Marina with pride, it was “too heavy” for her finger.

  Mrs. Golden’s eyes searched Marina’s face for an answer while her thumb rubbed, back and forth, against the ring. The son was her greatest love, Marina knew, and with the greatest love came the greatest fear. This is what she wants, Marina thought. And I can give it to her one last time.

  “The dream was about your son,” Marina said.

  Mrs. Golden’s reaction was instantaneous. Her hand formed a fist around the ring, her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. “What about my son?”

  “He is in danger,” Marina said without hesitation, “but he doesn’t know it.”

  “But I spoke with him the other day. He’s fine. He told me—”

  “I know,” Marina said. “The problem is that he thinks everything is fine. But my dream was clear.” She sighed heavily as if struggling under a great weight. “It is very unusual for me to have these kinds of dreams,” she said. “My visions are usually in the conscious moment. It has to be this way or I would never rest. I would be tormented day and night with the cries and wishes of the dead and living alike. I don’t want to dream. But the dreams come when they must. We’ve never discussed my dreams before, have we?”

  Mrs. Golden shook her head. “No,” she said, “we never have.”

  “This is why I know we have to pay attention to this one. I saw your son. I saw the danger surrounding him. Dark, evil forces around him.”

  “Evil forces…” Mrs. Golden seemed momentarily stunned. And then, as if something peculiar had just occurred to her, she drew back, eyebrows raised, furrows deepening on her forehead. “You saw my son?” she asked. “What does he look like?”

  Marina’s face was set in its professional mask and gave no indication of her surprise. Clearly, Mrs. Golden’s tatty outfit and grown-out roots had nothing to do with dementia. Mentally she was still all there. Marina smiled inwardly. Good for the old girl, making her work a little harder. Marina liked to earn her money. Nothing of real value was free. She looked into her client’s eyes now, for the first time since the session had started. They were a deep brown; no hint of lighter color. Dark, Marina thought. Dark meant dominant.

  “He has…your eyes,” Marina said. The words found their mark. Mrs. Golden bowed her head and clasped her hands.

  “What danger is he in?” she whispered. “You have to tell me.”

  Marina straightened in her chair. “I need to be sure,” she said. “Let’s look at the cards. They may tell me something different or give me more information than the dream.”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Golden said. “Yes, please.”

  “Would you like to choose the cards today?” Marina asked, but she already knew what the answer would be.

  “No, no.” Mrs. Golden shook her head hard and drew back from the table. “You choose them.”

  Marina breathed in and held her hands over the cards for half a minute. Then she cut them three times and fanned them out in the center of the table. She selected a card and placed it facedown in front of Mrs. Golden. The next card Marina chose went to the left. The final card went to the right. This three-card spread was less exotic than the more complicated Celtic Cross or pyramid spreads, but it packed more of an immediate punch, which was exactly what Marina was going for. She gathered the remaining cards and made a neat stack of them on the edge of the table.

  “The first card represents the Issue,” Marina said, turning over the center card, the Knight of Cups. She gave Mrs. Golden a few moments to absorb the image of the armor-clad knight on horseback. “This is your son,” Marina said. “He is kind, dedicated. Cups signify water. Your son is a water sign—a Cancer, born in July.” Mrs. Golden’s sharp intake of breath, along with another reflexive hand movement to the ruby—July’s birthstone—gave Marina license to continue. She turned over the second card and Mrs. Golden gasped. The card showed three swords piercing a heart, with a violent rainstorm in the background. “This is the Situation,” Marina said. “Your son is involved with…evil people. He has business dealings with people who want to harm him. There are people, one person in particular, whom he trusts. That person is plotting against him with the help of two others.” Marina watched as Mrs. Golden processed the information, wondering, no doubt, who her son trusted and why anyone would be plotting against him. Marina sat patiently, waiting for Mrs. Golden to imagine and conjure suspects in her mind. At last, she gestured to the final card. “This card represents the Outcome,” she said, and turned it over.

  The Death card stared up at them.

  “No,” Mrs. Golden said, her voice hushed.

  “This is very serious,” Marina said, after allowing the image of black skeleton Death atop his white horse to sear itself into Mrs. Golden’s brain. For a moment, Marina wondered if she might have gone too far. The Death card was so recognizable that it was almost a cliché, yet it never failed to make an impression. The irony of it was that in traditional interpretation of the tarot, the Death card didn’t signify physical death at all, but a profound spiritual change. But Mrs. Golden did not know that. Nor, Marina suspected, would she want to.

  “He’s going to die?” Mrs. Golden whispered finally. “Are you saying he’s going to die?”

  “I’m not saying anything,” Marina answered. “But the cards—and my dream—are saying plenty. I am just the vessel through which the spirit guides speak.” She paused, almost able to hear the turmoil raging in Mrs. Golden’s head. On the table, the Knight of Cups stared at Death as if waiting for an answer.

  “The person…,” Mrs. Golden began. “The one who wants to hurt him. Is she…is it a woman?”

  Marina placed her hand on top of the Knight of Cups and closed her eyes, calculating. There was fear in Mrs. Golden’s voice, but also a faint thread of territorial jealousy. It was ever so with mothers and their sons, Marina thought. “I see…” Marina paused and furrowed her brow. “I see someone very…beautiful. An image of beauty—that is what I am receiving. Beautiful…but deceptive. Yes, I believe it is a woman.” Marina opened her eyes and stared at Mrs. Golden, gauging her expression. “A woman who uses her beauty to mask inner ugliness.”

  “Yes.” Mrs. Golden sighed. “Yes, that’s her. I told him about her. He laughed at me, told me I was meddling…”

  Marina leaned forward and looked directly into Mrs. Golden’s eyes. “A mother’s intuition is the most powerful of all,” she said. “You were right to suspect. I am just so glad you’re here before it’s too lat
e.”

  The two women sat in unsettled silence, the space between them thick and weighted with the mingled scents of sandalwood incense and Mrs. Golden’s rose perfume.

  “What can I do?” Mrs. Golden asked finally. “Can you help me?”

  “I believe I can,” Marina said. “And I believe that is why I had the dream. But it is not easy to reverse a destiny. It will take some time and…certain resources.”

  “What kind of resources? Please tell me. I’ll do anything.”

  Marina shifted in her chair, aware once more of the heat, of the moist motionless air in the room. She could feel her scalp prickling with fresh perspiration and the damp in the small of her back. Mrs. Golden’s hand had gone once more to the ring around her neck. Marina caught the deep red gleam of the ruby as it shifted between the woman’s worn fingers. Once more, unbidden and unwanted, the vision of her mother skirted the corner of Marina’s mind. Although she’d never had the means or the inclination, had Marina ever given her mother a gift like that, it would have disappeared instantly, transformed into the only thing that had real worth to her. Nothing that couldn’t be smoked, swallowed or injected had any resonant meaning for her mother. In this way her mother was a true alchemist, with the ability to turn anything beautiful into ugliness and waste. Tiny slivers of resentment stabbed at Marina now and old wounds, long scarred over, began to ache. She felt a hot wave of anger pulsing through her throat. The hellish heat, the dead snake, the unrelenting tension and even the sight of this superstitious old woman were starting to swirl into a potent brew, and Marina could feel herself losing the control she’d worked so hard to maintain.