Foretold Read online

  Something I read earlier in my book comes to mind. “Maybe they drew pictures in the sky to try and make sense of the unknown. Maybe they thought it impacted their lives because…”

  “Because?”

  “Because it made them feel like they had some control.”

  He looks contemplative, then stands abruptly and pushes his chair over with his foot until it’s touching my own. He lies back down, and I’m keenly aware of how close he is. It’s as if his body is pulsing in the darkness next to mine, a boy-sized heartbeat. “Well, if they could draw crabs and fish in the sky, we can draw you.”

  “Crabs and fish and me. Flattering. Okay, let’s see what you’ve got.”

  Colin laughs and points up. “Look there.” He sketches out a shape with his finger.

  “I don’t see it.”

  He sits up and grabs my hand, pointing my index finger toward the sky, which means my stomach erupts into a beautiful mess. His warm hand holding mine and his upper body leaning into me send wave after wave of electric, chaotic feeling rioting through me. My breath locomotives out of me in shallow huffs. What is he— He tips his head close to mine, sending my stomach tumbling over itself further, and traces my finger from star to star. “Now do you see it? Constellation Cass.”

  I nod my head slowly, and my lips curve at the whimsical nonsense. “That looked like a big circle. You just called me fat?”

  Colin turns his head and looks at me. “This is why we can’t have nice things, Cass.” His desert dry tone makes me laugh. “The stars are not cool with body shaming.” He smiles warmly, still holding my hand as he lowers both our arms.

  I go still.

  Panic. The hamster wheel of anxiety roars to life inside me. The door to the roof. Did I prop it open? I’m locked out here. This is bad. Very, very bad. The need to go back and fix things, touch something, the handle, five times claws its way up my insides. Oh God. Count. Make it to ten. Count.

  He releases my hand and looks back at the sky. My heart jackhammers against my ribs. The impulse passes eventually, but I’m drained. I close my eyes and mentally lash myself. Why can’t I be normal?

  Colin looks over at me again and gives me a crooked grin. I try not to picture his broken body lying on blistering asphalt.

  Chapter 5

  I scrape the bottom of my sneaker against the subway step with a grimace: a psychic reading coupon and a wad of gum are stuck on good. It’s okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. I climb out of the Timbits Waterway subway station after I’ve dislodged them, eagerly anticipating breathing untainted oxygen again. The relief doesn’t last.

  The sky has taken on a reddish cast and darkened under threatening clouds. The street is mobbed. Chanting picketers flow around me like a river around a boulder. The press of hundreds of bodies amplifies the humidity. A low rumble sounds. I mistake it for thunder until I hear a bullhorn-amplified voice:

  “Hey, hey, ho, ho! Jon Clay has got to go!”

  The protesters repeat it in a roar.

  I push my way to the front of the Rise and Grind Café and press through the crush inside, dodging picket signs and their caffeinated owners passionately arguing politics.

  A girl at the counter with a nose ring and blue apron rolls her eyes when I tell her I’m there to interview. “We filled that spot last week,” she says over the noise. She gestures to a guy in a matching apron whose upper lip can’t restrain his jutting two front teeth. “I don’t know who called you, but I’m the manager and it wasn’t me.”

  I decline her offer of a free drink and leave, pulling out my cell to call back whoever lured me out here. The out-of-service message is easy to hear despite the crowds. The air takes on an electric hum, and a creeping prickle of unease moves down the back of my neck.

  A scream sounds, followed by others, and suddenly the steady stream of protesters becomes a torrent. Someone shouts “bomb!” I don’t need to hear more. I run like a scared animal, all sweat, instinct, and terror. I crash through crowds, blindly pushing, my heart thudding. Thunder rumbles and the heavens open up, dousing everyone in sheets of cold gray rain. My mind supplies an explosion of body parts behind me that, blessedly, doesn’t come in reality.

  A hot dog cart is upended, sending scalding meat water everywhere. I veer to the right, down a narrow side street, wiping rain from my eyes and leaving the heaving, straining masses and their now muted cries behind me.

  I spill onto a cobblestone stretch of road and slow, bending and sucking in shallow breaths, practically tasting the damp decay of the sluggish river nearby.

  I fall, but the crowd doesn’t realize. I’m trampled.

  The police think I did it. I look suspicious. I—

  Stop.

  I straighten and give my head a vigorous shake, peering through the silver mist around me sent up by the rain-cooled cobblestones.

  It’s an older, quieter part of town here, a vestige of the city’s quaint fishing days. The bite of the pelting rain finally registers, and I press myself into the meager shelter that a window’s overhang provides. There are no sidewalks, and the aging red-brick buildings sit right at the road’s edge—just wide enough for a single car to pass through with care—lending the place a claustrophobic feel. If a car were to drive down this road—

  I glance up the way I came, weighing the danger of returning the way I came against staying in the dubious sanctuary of this narrow, oppressive deathtrap of a road.

  Aunt Bree is standing in a gated alleyway tucked between two buildings, directly diagonal from where I’m shivering, watching me. She draws on her cigarette and shifts her hold on her umbrella. A manila folder is tucked under her arm, and above her swings a small black iron sign with the words “Theban Group” laser-cut out in blocky letters.

  I cross the street slowly. “What…”

  “What am I doing here? Waiting for you,” she says with a Cheshire cat grin.

  “But… I don’t understand.”

  Aunt Bree tosses her cigarette onto the ground and turns on her heel, gliding away on a precarious pair of stilettos. “Chatting in a monsoon is less than ideal. Come with me.”

  I follow her through the gate dazedly and down the alley, sidestepping a puddle of mustard-colored nastiness the rain is intent on splattering everywhere. We reach a scarred wooden door, and Bree tugs it open to lead me into a lobby that calls to mind my dentist’s office: cramped though free of clutter, and neat but leached of all color and personality. It’s so boring that it’s put the guard behind the check-in desk to sleep.

  “What do you mean, you were waiting for me?” I ask.

  “I went through a good amount of effort to get you here,” Aunt Bree says, as if that explains anything. She folds up her umbrella and tosses it near the door.

  The rain has soaked through my clothes and drenched my shoes. I blink away droplets from my lashes. “That doesn't make any sense.”

  “Dominoes, Cassandra.”

  “The pizza place?

  “Yes, I orchestrated your being here via fattening cardboard covered in cheese,” Bree says. Then she lets out a long, slow sigh. “I set up a series of dominoes and watched as they tipped over in exactly the way I wanted. One by one.”

  I struggle to digest what she’s saying. A question suddenly crystalizes. “Were you the one who called about the job at the coffee shop?”

  She shakes her head, her smile sympathetic, as if I’m being hopelessly dense.

  We’ve reached the ancient snoring man seated at the reception desk, eyebrows hanging heavy over his eyes. His arms are crossed over his large belly and his head is bent forward, a down-on-his-luck Santa Claus. Aunt Bree tosses the manila folder onto the counter.

  “Stack sounds thin, Ms. Morai. Your guest is missing an MV-77, I’d say,” the man rumbles, his sleep-thickened voice echoing. He cracks open his eyes. “Looks thin, too.”

  “Noted, Theodore. Now, if you don’t mind?” Aunt Bree picks up the file.

  “One, three, seven today,” he says.
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br />   Aunt Bree circles the desk without another word. I glance back at Theodore. “Thank you,” I offer uncertainly.

  Theodore smiles. “You’re very welcome, young lady,” he says. “Good luck to you.” He’s back to snoring by the time I catch up to Aunt Bree.

  We’ve entered a room full of soul-suckingly dreary cubicles. Phones ring in the distance, and flickering florescent ceiling lights stretch back deep into the room, casting everything in a faintly greenish tone.

  I have no idea what is going on or what we’re doing here, but my upset suddenly has an outlet in Aunt Bree. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what is going on,” I call out as she picks her way down an aisle.

  Aunt Bree turns and rolls her eyes. “I’m trying to help you, but you’re making it hard.”

  “I don’t need your help.”

  “Really? Everything is fabulous for you, then? No unexplained intuitions or strange dreams? Instincts about what might happen next?” She pauses and eyes me up and down. “Clearly no instincts about what not to wear, but none of the rest rings a bell?”

  I tremble. It’s an unpleasant feeling being wet, but that’s not why it feels like an ice-cold finger is sliding down my back. How does she know?

  “Let me ask you a question: How would you like to have some control over your life? Real control. Be more than a pathetic feather in a tornado. Please don’t make that face, Cassandra, it will give you wrinkles. I’m not trying to offend you. Most people live like you, stumbling around waiting for things to happen to them. I, on the other hand… I manifest my own destiny.” She smiles and takes a step toward me. “You’re either a queen or a pawn in this world. I am very much a queen.” She raises her eyebrows and lifts one shoulder in a very continental shrug. “Even if none of what I’ve said applies, you are looking for something to do this summer, aren’t you? At the very least, this will get you out of the house while your father is busy with that girlfriend of his.”

  I wince, and then hesitate for just a second, her words caressing my mind seductively. I don’t know how I ended up standing across the street from her earlier, and I’m pretty sure I don’t believe she orchestrated everything that had landed me there, but… “Dad doesn’t want me working with you,” I say, because I can’t think of anything else.

  She smirks. “Jeff is already planning on sending you here. He just doesn’t know it yet.”

  I eye her suspiciously and heft my backpack higher on my shoulder. “Why are you doing this? Why me? Why now?”

  “Oh, Cassandra. You simply weren’t ready before. But I’ve always cared about your future.”

  I snort.

  “There’s a pleasant sound. Come with me, please. There’s someone I want you to meet.” Bree continues along and I force myself to follow, peeking into the cubicles as we pass. Family photos, cat calendars, stuffed animals… random pops of personality dot the walls and surfaces of the desks, as if to remind the people working in them that there is still life on the outside, that they aren’t corporate Russian nesting dolls—people stuck in a beige box, in a beige room, in a beige building, in a beige world. And Aunt Bree wants me to rot here all summer.

  We approach a bank of three elevators on the far side of the room and enter the one in the center. The doors close behind us with a worrisome grinding sound, and Bree presses the buttons for the first, third, and seventh floors, followed by the button for the alarm.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “The combination changes every day,” she says by way of explanation, her meaning opaque as ever.

  Before I can ask, the metal panel behind me—the one I thought was a solid elevator wall—slides open. I turn around and gasp.

  Chapter 6

  It’s as if someone set fire to a rainbow.

  I trail Aunt Bree into a cavernous space topped by a stained glass dome. Brilliant morning rays filter through the colored glass to illuminate a place alive with noise and movement and life. I try not to gawk, but when Aunt Bree isn’t looking, I crane my neck as far back as it’ll go to stare up at that ceiling.

  “How is this… what…?” I can’t spit out a coherent question. My head is on a swivel. It was raining outside not five minutes ago, and here it doesn’t look like there’s a single cloud in the sky beyond the dome.

  There are three vaulted halls branching off from this area like the bent tines of a fork, the rough stone walls speckled with windows and doorways giving it the feel of an indoor city. In front of us, crowds mill about dozens of vibrantly colored caravans and carts dotting the expanse.

  “This is Rhodes Rotunda. Your one-stop shop for food, supplies… tetanus. It’s where most people your age tend to congregate, so I expect you’ll probably take most of your meals here. It’s… popular,” Aunt Bree says.

  Aunt Bree expertly weaves her way through the cart-made alleyways, avoiding the zigging and zagging patrons with ease. I swim against a current of humanity after her, my gaping making it impossible to dodge the merchants hawking food and random bric-a-brac.

  “How is this place so huge? Why?”

  Bree smiles. “We don’t use it all. Room to grow. We take what we’re given.”

  She hasn’t answered my question, and I hate riddles. Before I can tell her, a man jostles me with his shoulder as he passes.

  “Give her back her wallet, Marko,” Aunt Bree says, barely pausing. “She keeps her money in her shoe anyway.”

  I frown after her, wondering how she landed on that info, and turn to the man.

  “Sorry, Miss Aubrey. Is a habit,” the man calls out in a thickly accented voice. He gives me an apologetic puppy dog look from behind long, dark eyelashes. “I am working on quitting,” he says, handing me back my X-Men velcro wallet. It was buried in my backpack and carried for luck since Mom bought it for me. I yank my backpack around to my front, shoving my wallet back in the bag. When I look up, he is dancing away behind a cart loaded with knives, and Aunt Bree is gone. I scan the unfamiliar faces, the jarring chaos around me, and the mammoth space around me immediately seems to contract, squeezing down on me. A burst of panic sets me to running. The colors blur around me. You’re okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.

  I spot her between a cart selling silk hangings and another selling bleach-white bones.

  “We’ll get your registration finalized, and then you’ll meet with Martin Pict. He’ll serve as your mentor,” Aunt Bree says as I nearly careen into her back.

  I draw a shuddery breath. It takes a few before I can trust myself to say anything. “What exactly do you do here?”

  “Insurance. Risk management.” Bree looks back at me and winks.

  I stare after her. “What?”

  “Oy!” A toadstool of a woman points at me and Aunt Bree. The object of her shout, a pretty girl a little older than me rushes over with a tray strapped to her shoulders.

  “Breakfast meat pies!” the girl says. My mouth waters as the savory smells of garlic and onions and mystery meat waft over and set my stomach growling.

  Aunt Bree catches my wistful look. “Magpie meat pies are more butter than anything else. A second on the lips, a year on the hips.” She soldiers on, refusing to pie-gaze with me.

  “There’s magpie in those?” I ask, horrified.

  “The magpies aren’t in the pies. We’re the Magpies,” the girl gestures to all of the rickety caravans and their vendors peddling goods. “You want one or what?”

  I decline and race after Aunt Bree with only a tiny longing glance back over my shoulder. “Do you expect me to believe you sell insurance here?”

  “Yes. We can see the future, darling. What else do you think we’d do to make money?”

  My pulse quickens. I mentally ease my toe into the insanity of her comment. “Win the lotto?” I offer, carefully.

  Bree chuckles drily. “That’d be nice and inconspicuous, wouldn’t it?”

  “You’re not serious,” I insist, waiting for the moment my gullibility become a punchline. The rimshot never c
omes.

  A portly little man ahead of us holds a large crystal orb over his head. It reflects the dome’s rainbow glow in brilliant flashes.

  “Crystal balls! Made from the finest imported Egyptian crystal. Clearest crystal for the clearest visions of the future or your money back!” His reedy mustache twitches with every syllable. “No inclusions, no imperfections, no problems!”

  I whip an incredulous look at Aunt Bree, who is eyeing me with amusement. She shrugs. “I told you, everyone here is a scryer. Like you.”

  Like me.

  A woolly mammoth of a man at a candle cart pulls on an oven mitt and pours melted candle wax into a bowl of water. “According to this, he isn’t cheating,” he says. The morose woman next to him bends to look at the side of the bowl, her worry giving way to joy as she observes the floating wax shapes. She claps in delight. I don’t get to see her expression when the man adds, “Course, this doesn’t mean he won’t,” because a willowy woman is tugging at my arm as we pass, trying to draw me to her cart of wooden sticks.

  I apologetically decline her wares and shake my head. It takes me a beat to understand why my cheeks ache; my smile is face-splitting. I can’t help it.

  “Who are they? The Magpies?”

  “A lawless bunch of mediocre scryers we tolerate because they provide a service,” Aunt Bree says with a sigh. “Every Theban Group location has some, but we’ve been blessed with a critical mass thanks to Jordan’s bleeding heart; some nonsense about respecting the old ways while moving to the new, as if there’s something worth preserving in this.” Bree’s movements give away her growing irritation as she warms to her subject. “We opened a new satellite location last year, and within a week a batch of these vagabonds made their way in, like mice, pressing through cracks, and…” At my look she adds, “Magpies are Magpies no matter where you encounter them. Whether they’re born in the outside world or in here, whether you run into them at a county fair, or in their strange little camp, they’re all the same—they’ve all suckled at the same anarchist teet.” Bree pins an approaching Magpie with a severe look, and the poor man almost trips over his own feet to scramble away. “You forget how annoying the Magpie camps are when you’ve been traveling. I need to talk to Jordan about creating an executive entrance. So much to do.”