Page 109 of The Widow and the Wanted

Warm lamplight washes over velvet wallpaper and polished walnut furniture. Boone and Okee sit cross-legged atop one of the beds, wearing bathrobes cinched loose at the waist. Between them lies a sheet of paper covered in hurriedly scrawled letters and numbers.

A silver coin rests at its center beneath both their fingertips.

I stop dead in the doorway.

Boone glances up first and bursts immediately into laughter.

“Welp,” he says. “She caught us summonin’ demons.” His brow furrows deep. “Why you dressed all fancy? Goldie already put you on her payroll?”

“I ought to smack your mouth,” I snap, before turning to Okee. “You said this was divination.”

Okee doesn’t smile. His dark eyes remain fixed on the paper. “That was before we rode into a brothel with our mark hanging over its door,” Okee says. He gets up, snatches a gilded picture frame from atop a polished dresser and holds it up too close.

I step back, the photograph of the Gemini coming into focus. The building looks brand new, freshly painted with its crisp sign on display. It’s no different than the first time I saw it. Two women turned away from one another, each posed beside a Greek column, a gold star centered between them. He lowers his arm, taking the photo with it before yanking open the top of his robe to reveal his chest. His tattoo.

The mark is not exactly Mother’s painted sign downstairs. But it is near enough to make my mouth go dry. Behind Okee, Boone slowly sits up straighter in bed.

Okee’s brow furrows. “How do you explain this?”

Chapter 29

Okee

“How should I know?” Lula says with a scoff.

There must be some way to get to the bottom of this.

All those little coincidences I let pass unremarked—the storm, the Gemini sign, the Aces Suite, the timing of Mr. Everett’s arrival, Lula herself appearing with a suitcase full of tinctures and powders—now seem less like chance and more like design. Something so sinister it makes my skin itch.

The devil works in patterns. Men only notice once the noose is already fitted around their necks, the nuns at Tullahassee Mission School used to say.

Lula’s chin lifts, defiant as ever, but there is too much that is strange about her. Too much that arrived at once.

Boone gets up and groans loudly. “Oh, for Christ’s sake.”

Neither of us looks at him. I cannot stop now. This has burrowed too deep into my bones.

Boone has lowered himself to the ground, kneeling in front of Lula. He pats her leg, and she raises it so he can get a grip on her shoe and help her tug it off.

“Your arrival marks the start of a series of strange happenings. Signs. Sudden weather. Coincidences⁠—”

I know how it sounds. That is perhaps the worst part. A clever man should not feel his thoughts slipping toward omens and signs like an old clairvoyant reading tea leaves. Yet once the mind begins arranging chaos into a pattern, it becomes near impossible to look away.

Boone sets down the second shoe, then throws both hands into the air. “You have officially lost your goddamned mind.”

Lula stiffens and hurt flashes across her face before she smooths it away into anger.

“You think I bewitched you.”

I comb my fingers through my hair and find my nape damp. It might be bathwater. It might be sweat from this panic poisoning my blood.

“You suspect me of witchcraft?” she asks, louder.

“Those are your words,” I say, “not mine.”

“How else does a woman control the weather?” she asks, with a stomp of her foot.

It is a fair question. One I cannot answer. It is precisely this ignorance that has braided a knot in my gut. “If there were any explanations compatible with truth or reason, I would offer them. But I cannot explain any of it. I can merely point out a correlation between your presence in our lives and these strange happenings.”