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walked.
    “This is Stephie,” Roy said. “She’s a friend of a classmate of mine.”
    Connie smiled at me. “So you’d like a Tarot reading.”
    “I…I’m not sure.”
    “Trust me, you’ll enjoy the experience.”
    Oh, what the hell? I followed Connie, and I couldn’t help thinking she didn’t look anything like a psychic. Thin, pretty, wearing jeans and a light blue top, she looked more like a college student than an expert in the occult.
    She sat me down at a small, round table, and took the seat across from me.
    “I have to tell you, I don’t believe in this Tarot stuff.”
    Connie spread a red velvet cloth on the table and laid a deck of cards in the middle of it. “Honestly, I didn’t believe in Tarot either until I started reading them.”
    Maybe the sun really had cooked some of my brain cells. “Why would you start reading cards if you didn’t believe in their power, or whatever?”
    The young woman’s gentle, tinkling laugh was relaxing. “I was a bit of a rebel back in high school,” she said. “Whatever would upset my parents appealed to me. I dressed in black clothes, dyed my hair a different color every week, bought pentacles and anything else that would freak them out. One day, I saw a gorgeous set of Tarot cards on the Internet and I bought them. It was supposed to be one more poke at my folks. Turned out, I was the one freaked by the things. The cards felt good under my fingers, like they were supposed to be mine. I did the spread like it said in the little booklet that came with them. And when I turned the cards over, I saw my life laid out before me. I’ve been working with Tarot ever since.”
    “Are the cards ever wrong?”
    “No. But my interpretation is sometimes.”
    “That doesn’t make sense.”
    “I’m going to shuffle until you tell me to stop.” She smiled as she worked. “The cards give us the information; it’s up to us to interpret it.”
    “Now.”
    She nodded, then spread out the cards, facedown, in an odd pattern. When she finished she turned over one card. “This is your past. The card is—”
    “Don’t tell me the names of the cards and all that, please. I’d prefer to just hear the weird news straight.”
    “Okay.” Instead of being insulted, like I was afraid of, she chuckled. Then she turned over more cards, and her smile vanished. “Your past shows pain and betrayal; also the leaving behind of something important.” She continued turning over cards. “Your present includes hard work, skill, and success.”
    All right, the woman seemed to hitting the right notes, but she might have been reading my expression, or even just guessing. I’m not a believer, okay, Aunt Octavia notwithstanding.
    The way Connie tipped her head to the side and frowned slightly had me wondering if she was trying to come up with something believable—or seeing something weird. Wait a minute, crap! “Is that the death card?”
    “That’s the common name for it, but it usually doesn’t mean death. In fact, in this case it definitely means change.”
    “Change?”
    “Change, decisions, the ability to see hidden truths—and the potential for love.” She grinned. “You have a very interesting spread.”
    “Um, thanks, I guess.” Decisions again?
    “It’s good, I promise.”
    Apparently the “spreading” was over, so I stood.
    “I’m really interested in how things turn out. Do me a favor and let me know.” She handed me a business card.
    “I’ll do that.” I turned to go.
    “I’m serious,” she said. “Your life is about to change.”
    “Hopefully for the better.”
    “That’s up to you,” she said, then turned her attention to picking up her cards.
    As I headed out to meet Maddie, my head spun with the weird psychic stuff. First Octavia, now Connie. I was looking forward to hearing how the brunch went. How weird was that?
    Maybe after lunch I could talk Maddie into going back to her mom’s and relaxing for a while. I knew there was something