Read Online Shadow Falls: Badlands by Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff - Free Book Online

emotion. He smoothed a spot on the blanket for her.
    “Been here long?” he asked.
    “Mebbe, tuh— tuh— two years.”
    Galen suddenly realized why she barely spoke. Daisy turned her eyes downward, obviously ashamed of her stutter.
    “Daisy, that’s a pretty name.”
    She nodded sheepishly.
    “My name’s Galen,” he said—then wondered why he’d done that. Not even the rancher knew his name. It had to have been the whisky talking.
    “Guh— guh— Galen, that’s nuh— nuh— nice.”
    “You always talked like that?”
    “Yuh— yuh— yuh— yes.”
    Galen scratched his head. It had been so long since he’d had a proper conversation with a woman that he had no idea what to say.
    “I sh— should prolly get back downstairs,” she finally said.
    Together they left the room, not speaking. As Daisy took her usual spot on the staircase rail, Galen went back to the bar to get another drink.
    He had no idea what time it was when he stumbled out onto the street. He had watched another man—a dandy in a cheap suit—take Daisy to her room and decided he wanted to leave before she came back out.
    Why did I even care? he wondered. A woman with a crippled voice like that was lucky to make a living selling herself, he figured.
    The snow continued to fall lightly. As he crossed Washington Street heading back to the boarding house, he noticed the Gypsy’s window was still lit as the old crone sat in her rocking chair, unmoved since he last saw her. Her raven colored hair still shone in the firelight.
    He had no intention of getting any closer, but before he realized it, his feet, which seemed to obey some external call, had brought his nose to within inches of the painted, gold-trimmed “Fortune”. As his feet entered through the front door a single bell jangled pleasantly above his head.
    “Please sit,” mewed the crone, proffering a red cushioned seat across a table in front of her. Up close, Galen could see that the crone’s craggy face was older than he had first thought; her pale skin clung tightly to her skull and looked as thin as paper.
    She slid a tin plate across the table. “Six bits,” she ordered.
    It took Galen a moment to understand, but when he did he took the money from his pocket, then hesitated.
    “If you want a reading from Madame Zenitska, you pay six bits.”
    “And if I don’t want a reading?”
    “Then you leave; but instead of an illuminated path, you choose to walk a darkened one,” the Gypsy told him. “And guessing from the looks of you, I’d say you’ve been treading a darkened path indeed.”
    With a dismissive huff, Galen dropped six bits onto the tin plate. The Gypsy withdrew the money and pocketed it. “You are too curious to find out what your future holds, no?”
    From her lap came a deck of cards, their red backs worn from constant use.
    “You know what this is?”
    “I gamble,” answered Galen.
    “These are not what you think. These are tarot,” she said as she laid out seven cards in a diamond shaped pattern on the table.
    “You’re not from around here,” the Gypsy told him.
    “You say that because you’ve never seen me before.”
    “You have a troubled past.”
    “Every man has a troubled past.” He was becoming impatient.
    “Wait, that’s not exactly right.” The Gypsy paused. “You have passed through much disruption and uncertainty. In the future you will come back into contact with a man you have known before—a mysterious man with a coldness shrouded under an exterior charm. He is highly intelligent and sometimes manipulative. This man has a very strong impact on you—”
    The Gypsy woman stopped, her fingertips tracing the outline of the diamond shaped layout of the tarot.
    “You must leave,” she said, her voice shaking as she gathered up her cards.
    “Hold on.”
    “No. No, you must leave here now.” She rose from her seat and began pushing Galen toward the door.
    “You have to tell me what you saw.”
    “I cannot.”
    “Lady, you