The younger man in the leather duster and hat apparently took his with four cubes. She couldn’t imagine it tasted anything like actual Earl Grey by the time he was done. She couldn’t help but smile at him, finding his sweet tooth disgusting and charming at the same time. The young man smiled back. “And you are?” she asked.
“My name is Eddie Jenkin.” His accent was thick and labeled him clearly as somewhere west of Boston. Although being east of Boston and still being American was rather a trick, so she supposed it wasn’t hard.
“And I am Bella Corallo,” chimed the blonde woman. She had a beautiful smile, one full of happiness and life. One that perfectly covered the tragedy Maxine could sense dwelled in her past. She wore it better than the other two. It might even be invisible to the naked eye.
But Maxine’s empathic gifts extended to more than just her ability to read emotions. Flashes of memories came with it. Images of Bella as a young girl, cowering under a bed, weeping. Clutching a ratty stuffed animal to her chest as blood pooled on the ground nearby.
As for Eddie, there was more grief than there was fear. A loss—something taken from him. A small body in his arms. But both flashes of sensation carried one thing in common. Tears.
“What is it?” Alfonzo broke her out of her thoughts. “Are you all right, Miss Parker?”
“Hm? Yes. Sorry.” She shook her head and forced a smile back on her face. “Forgive me. It isn’t often that I am around people with such stories. It is hard not to get lost in the hallways looking at the paintings on the walls.”
“I…don’t think I understood anything you just said,” Eddie muttered. He glanced at Alfonzo as if to ask if she was crazy. She didn’t take it personally. Most people assumed she was. Or they were too afraid to accept what it might mean if she wasn’t.
She shut her eyes. Correction—she tried not to take it personally. It still stung. She opened her eyes again after a moment and knew her smile was now marred with the sadness that always seemed to plague her. “What is it that brings you all here?”
Alfonzo was the one to answer, and she wasn’t surprised. He was clearly their leader. “You were recommended to me by a colleague. He said you are quite talented in your ability to identify artifacts and answer certain…enigmatic questions regarding personal histories and motivations.” He scratched at his stubble with his fingertips. It was obvious he wasn’t a diplomat. He was dancing around the subject with all the grace of a drunken boar.
Maxine laughed at the piss-poor attempt.
“What?”
“I am an empath, Mr. Van Helsing. Is that what you’re implying?”
“I. Uh. Yes.” He blinked, clearly surprised she had come out and said it. She knew he was shocked. One, because she could see it clearly on his face. Two, she could feel it from where she was sitting a few feet away. Emotions traveled in the air around her like the scent of flowers.
“And you wish to request my assistance?”
Alfonzo cleared his throat and nodded. “We can pay you, if that is what you require.”
“It depends on the nature of the work and how long it will take me to complete.” She paused thoughtfully. “And the risks involved.”
The three of them traded glances.
Maxine sighed. “There are risks, then.”
All three of them nodded.
“Well, then,” she leaned back in her chair, “allow me to give you a piece of advice when dealing with someone with my talent. Do not lie to me. I can sense it as easily as I can see the sun. Do not hide things from me, as I will find out in due time. Tell me the full of what it is you wish me to do, and I will tell you if I can help you and whether or not there is a price involved.”
She often took unpaid work to help those who needed someone with her particular gifts. But that was not to say she was a fool, nor was she a pauper. She had learned how to turn her trade into an asset. It had bought her the brownstone she lived in, after all.
“How do we know you’re for real?” Eddie sniffed. “No offense.”
“None taken.” She watched him for a moment and let herself examine the “painting on the wall” a little closer. She let her vision go unfocused as she dug deeper into what she could sense from him. “I can prove it to you, Mr. Jenkin, but I fear it might become personal.”
After a long pause, and likely exchanged looks from the others, the young man reluctantly replied. “That’s…that’s fine.”
“I see you holding a body in your lap. A young girl. Blood stains her dress, her hands…and her mouth. You killed her. But you loved her. It was an act of kindness that made you do what you did.”
She heard a chair screech loudly on the floor as he jumped to his feet. That wasn’t an uncommon reaction to her gift the first time it was witnessed. She let herself come back to the moment and pushed away the rest of the memory. She looked up at Eddie and saw him staring at her wide-eyed in shock.
“You’re—you’re a psychic?”
“Yes, but I cannot read minds. Not like you may think.”
“Then how did you—how—”
“I read souls, Mr. Jenkin. And you carry that moment around with you like it is emblazoned on your sleeve, I’m afraid. It has come to define you.”
Eddie walked away, rubbing his hand over his face and went to stand by the window and gaze through the glass down at the street below.
She felt her heart break for him. The memory she had dredged up was the worst day of his life, and he was now reliving it thanks to her words.
Maxine knew she was an overly sympathetic creature.
Alfonzo reached into a leather satchel he carried with him and pulled out an object wrapped in red cloth. He laid it down in the center of the table, crimson velvet over white lace. He parted the fabric and revealed a small brooch lying in the center of it. She guessed that it had belonged to a man by its design. In the center was a ruby, thick and dark, the color of blood.
Instantly, it made her skin crawl. She felt goosebumps spread out over her arms underneath the sleeves of her dress, even in the warm summer air. When Eddie, Bella, and Alfonzo came to her door, she had known they had carried death with them. She had assumed it had been their own doing. It was not.
It was the doing of whoever had once owned that jewel.
Cold swept over her, and she felt as though something had breathed icy wind down her spine. She shivered and leaned farther back.
“You can sense it already,” Bella said, watching her with a bright-eyed look of awe and curiosity. “It’s true what was said about you. You read from more than just people.”
Maxine greatly disliked that she had a reputation. Reputations meant trouble. But they also meant business. And therefore, they were a necessary evil. “Why have you come to me?”
Alfonzo spoke up. “We need your help to find the creature who owned this.”
Creature. Not “man.” Mark those words. She watched them warily. “And tell me…who was it who once owned this?”
“The one we’ve come here to kill. The one responsible for turning the moon to blood and controlling that which runs the streets.”
No one commands the moon. “I told you not to lie to me. I told you not to withhold information. Already, you haven’t learned.” She shook her head. “Give me an answer, Alfonzo Van Helsing, or our time is over. To whom did this pin belong? Who have you come to Boston to destroy?”