Was it just that I’d been fired from the Hollows Group?
Well, I had three hundred, and while it was maybe stupid, I felt compelled to make a solid point. Or two.
One, I wasn’t going anywhere.
And two, she was not scaring me off with a high number.
“You want that in fifties or hundreds?” I reached into my bag and peeled off six fifties. “Never mind, here.” I slapped the bills onto the counter next to me.
Annie’s face was a thundercloud if ever I’d seen one, but she gathered up her tarot cards and sat at her small table with a heavy flop of her body. The table was set against the far wall, and my back would be to the glass door, but I felt better with it there, than my back to her. I could see just past her shoulder into the back room, and I was half hoping Bridgette would show herself. To our right was the chest-high counter with the cash register on it. Thickly made of old railroad ties, or maybe wood ballast off the ships from the river, that was more likely.
With a motion of her bejeweled and braceleted hand, Annie waved for me to sit across from her. I did, but I found myself putting a hand against the knife sheath on one thigh.
She shuffled the cards as she spoke. “You have caused some serious grief for me.”
“Really, how so?” I didn’t so much as twitch as I watched her shuffle the cards. “I’ve barely spent any time with you.”
Having spread the cards across the table, she leaned back and folded her arms over her chest. With my left hand, I swept my fingers over the deck. It didn’t take long for a single card to attach itself to me. I flipped it over and found myself staring at the Devil himself.
“Ego,” Annie breathed. “It will be the death of you and your friends. Or the death of a relationship.” Her eyes hooded slightly and her breathing hitched; her one hand resting on the table began to shake as she read the card for me. “For you, Breena O’Rylee, there is danger at every turn, in every aspect of your life. Danger and seduction, temptation and choices.”
“Sounds fun,” I muttered.
Her breathing hitched again. “Cage. I see a cage made of iron surrounding you, and the only way to break free is to destroy it.” She blinked and looked straight at me. “Satisfied?”
I scooped up the devil card and stared at it, at the artistic lines and the style of the image, from the horns to the empty eyes staring at me. Something in me made me pull out the first card I’d drawn when I’d come back to Savannah, right here in Annie’s place.
I laid the death card down first, then pulled out the second card I’d drawn, the moon card, and finally the devil card. The moon card I’d pulled from a deck down by the river, a deck belonging to the tarot card reader who’d been killed by Sean O’Sean.
“Quite the lay if you look at them together,” I said, running my hands over them, seeing something beyond the cards. I scooped them up, fanning them to show her the faces. “But you know what stands out to me the most?”
Annie stared hard at me. I could feel the weight of her eyes. “What is that?”
I lifted my eyes finally and peered over the top of the cards. “That they are all from the same deck. How is that possible when two are from you, and one is from the deck that belonged to the tarot card reader O’Sean killed? Unless O’Sean had your deck for some reason?”
She stood, sending her chair scooting backward until it slammed into the wall behind her, her hand reaching for something at her side, hidden by her voluminous skirts.
I dropped the cards and threw myself to the side as the boom of a gun went off, rattling the air. The feeling of something zipping by me had me flattened to the ground, but I couldn’t stay there.
Crash had said O’Sean’s sister was quick with a gun.
Oh. Shit.
Guns had more than one bullet, the last I checked, and I’d taken a bullet to the leg a little over a week ago. Once a month was plenty in that department.
I scrambled around the back side of her counter. “Annie, you really going to kill me?”
“You killed Sean.” The hitch in her voice made me grimace. Yeah, this was going to go badly.
“Well, to be fair . . .” I moved so I could peek around the edge of the counter. She had her back to the wall, and she saw me and pulled the trigger.
I yanked myself back, and the corner of the counter exploded in a shrapnel of splinters. “To be fair, he was trying to kill me.”
“I don’t care,” she snarled. “But rather nice of you to come to me, rather than making me come to you.”
How the hell was I going to get out of this pickle? I could throw a knife, but if I missed, I was down a weapon.
Unless I managed to get her to empty her gun. How many bullets in one round? Five? Six?
She’d shot twice already. I took a deep breath and forced myself to look around the corner again, pulling back even before she shot, which she did.
Three. That was three shots.
“Annie, this is not a good way to deal with things,” I said. “Don’t you know O’Sean was trying to take over Savannah?”
“I didn’t agree with him,” she said, her voice as strong as ever. “I told him that it would get him killed, but he didn’t listen.”
“Well, men rarely do until their balls are in a squeeze,” I drawled as I dropped into a crouch. My hamstrings screamed at the tension, and then screamed a little more when I forced myself to pop up like a freaking groundhog.
Or maybe whack-a-mole. My head cleared the top of the counter and I was back down again as she shot not once, but twice. Five shots. Was there a sixth?
The scuff of a foot on the wooden plank floors told me she was coming in for the kill, in the most literal sense.
“Annie, don’t do this. The O’Seans weren’t the only ones dabbling with dark magic in this town. I’m trying to protect Savannah. You said it yourself, you told him not to do this.” I shifted my weight on my heels at the sound of her shuffling around the side of the counter, crouched just out of sight, no doubt.
“Brothers rarely listen,” she said.
I blew out a slow breath, understanding dawning. “Annie, I’m sorry he died. I am.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“You have to believe me. I don’t want you to have the same fate as him and your father.”
“My father? What do you know about my father?”
Well, shit.
She whipped around the counter, gun raised, and I found myself staring into the barrel as I slowly stood, one knife in hand. Annie tipped the gun, motioning for me to step to the side. Maybe she figured she had me cornered and wanted to shoot me somewhere less messy. But as soon as the muzzle flicked away, I lunged forward, grabbed her wrist, and yanked her arm underneath mine so my back was to her chest, the gun pointing away from both of us.
She screamed and the gun boomed twice more. Man, I’d been seriously wrong about the number of bullets.
The door at the back of the shop rattled and Corb yelled my name. “The door is jammed!”
“Kinda busy in here!” I grunted and rolled with Annie through the shop, fighting for control of the weapon. Sure, she’d fired seven times at this point, but I hadn’t heard any empty hammer clicks. For all I knew, there was some kind of magic on the gun, granting her extra bullets.