Page 6 of Divine Oaths

Saint James. Anyone who knew Westfield recognized that family name. This guy—the Westfield heir—he hadn’t been lying. He was actually going to inherit Westfield University and the man speaking to him was his bodyguard.

“We’re in the middle of something,” the Westfield heir said. “Can you give us some time?”

“Sir, I wouldn’t advise that.” The bodyguard gestured behind us, and we followed his gaze to the back of the shop. Gus was hiding, but he peeked out from behind a curtain with a phone pressed to his ear, like he could tell he’d been caught.

The Westfield heir laughed, his voice tinged with irony.

“I guess money can’t get me everything after all,” he said.

Even I, as combative as I was, had no answer to his words.

“My offer stands,” he said. “If you’re ever at Westfield, find me.”

He, his friends, and the bodyguard swiftly left. Moments later, security entered the store. They took a few moments to question me, and I made up some story about how Gus had dialed by mistake.

“Are they gone now?” Gus asked, retreating from his hiding spot.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” I snapped, frustrated. I grabbed the two-piece set from where he’d placed it on the counter and shoved it in my bag with the rest of my things.

“Your shift isn’t over yet,” Gus complained.

“Yeah,” I said. “Well, I quit.”

By the time I left the shop, though, the Saint James heir and his friends were gone.

I was never early to Louisa’s psychic booth. But as much as I searched through nearby stores and combed through aisles, I couldn’t find the Saint James heir or his friends anywhere. So, with two grand short and nothing but time on my hands, Louisa’s stall it was.

It’d been raining all day, so the mall was more crowded than normal for a Sunday so close to June. Shoppers streamed in and out of stores, jostling one another and leaving tracks of rainwater and mud in their wake. And then, there was the smell. On the upper levels of the mall, the fragrant, oily scent of the food court always clung to your clothes, making everything reek of hot dog sweat and grease. My stomach growled, but as starving as I was, my mind couldn’t wander to food.

All I could think about was him.

None of what he’d said had made any sense. He was going to die. He knew when. At least, he’d claimed to. But even if I had tried to see into his future, could I change his fate?

I mean, it hadn’t stopped the fire. Even when I’d warned the crowd during my audition, the flames consumed the auditorium moments later.

Yet a part of me felt guilty. As arrogant and entitled as he was, he’d genuinely been asking for help. My help—to the point that he’d offered to bring me to Westfield.

That place was inescapable. From my looming scholarship deadline to his request, something was pulling me to Westfield. Something I fought with every fiber of my being.

I took the escalator to the third floor, scanning the vendor booths until I found one displaying a whiteboard with the word Psychic written in colorful marker.

As expected, Aunt Louisa hadn’t arrived yet.

But Jojo Charles, Louisa’s newest hire, sat in my aunt’s regular seat next to an empty chair meant for me.

My Jojo.

“You’re early,” he said.

The sound of his voice made me act completely outside of myself. From the ridiculous puppy dog grin that stretched across my face, to the very non-platonic thoughts swirling in my head, he had a frustrating effect on me, despite the fact that we were just “friends.”

When we’d first met last fall, Louisa and I had been coming up on four years of living together following my brief stint in foster care. Jojo was finishing a graduate program, and Louisa, like she’d always seemed to do when the college students new to our building wandered our way for free food, adopted him as her own. She’d feed him home-cooked meals when he was cramming for classes, and the two of us would check on him. His own family wouldn’t. Louisa even offered him some shifts at the psychic stall to help him stay afloat. She didn’t have a ton to spare, but he became like family.

And in the weeks leading up to his classes ending, Jojo had started taking more shifts at the booth. His inadvertent smiles and the jokes he cracked at some of our more unsavory customers had sparked the beginning of my terrible crush on him.

“Am I?” I answered, trying to play coy. “What do I win? Employee of the month?”

“Technically, I think I won that, since I’m not supposed to be on the schedule today.”