Southern Alpha Book One (Southern Alpha Serial 1) by Carina Wilder

Author:Carina Wilder [Wilder, Carina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-10-07T16:00:00+00:00

Madame Lola. I wondered if she was one of the psychics that Louis had mentioned, some kind of fortune teller who spoke with a fake accent and told you that you’d be wealthy one day beyond your wildest dreams.

I was oddly tempted.

Come on, do it, I told myself, this is why you came to this crazy shindig. You wanted to experience weirdness.

As I let the thought sink in that I’d pretty much missed my one chance with Trick, I made my way through the door to discover a small table draped in a burgundy cloth, a crystal ball at its center. On a smaller table set against the far wall sat a deck of ancient-looking tarot cards.

A woman stood near the smaller table, her dark hair wrapped up in a red and gold silk scarf. Her face, which was mapped by a series of expressive lines, was an impossible combination of young and old. Her eyes were bright green—probably from a set of novelty contact lenses. That kind of green didn’t exist in nature, at least not in my experience.

Well, whether she was the real deal or not, I couldn’t say she hadn’t committed to the role.

“You must be Madame Lola,” I said, knowing full well that she was. After all, who else would she be? The woman standing before me was a living, breathing cliché.

She nodded. “Yes, I am. As for you, you don’t belong here,” she said. Her accent sounded part French, part ghost, and part drunk.

“It doesn’t take a fortune teller to figure that out,” I chuckled. “Everybody I’ve talked to tonight has pointed it out. Apparently, I’m a freak.”

“Hmm.” She looked mildly annoyed, as if I was wasting her time. Still, she limped over to sit down on the opposite side of the table.

“Would you do a reading for me?” I asked. “Even if I’m an oddball who doesn’t fit in?”

“Of course. Sit.” She gestured towards the other chair.

“Thank you.” I sat myself down on the seat opposite hers, bracing myself for whatever nonsense was to come.

“Show me your palm,” she said as she perched on her own chair, reaching two gnarled hands out towards me. I was shocked to see how skeletal they were, how frail-looking. Her face had so much strength and vitality to it, yet her extremities reminded me of the talons of a bird.

All of a sudden, she seemed more legitimate.

I held out my left hand, palm up, and she took it, leaning over to stare at the lines crisscrossing its surface.

“You’ve come from far away,” she said.

I resisted rolling my eyes and told myself that I should open my mind to the experience. If I was going to write about the Big Easy’s dark secrets, I needed to be open to all of them, right?

“The accent’s a dead giveaway, huh?” I asked, just barely masking my sarcastic tone.

She narrowed her eyes at me. “You don’t believe in my abilities,” she said. “You think my gifts are a fraud.”

“I’m a skeptic,” I told her, a pang of guilt hitting me for being so blatantly untrusting.

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