Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets by Guy Adams, Kasey Lansdale, Glen Mehn Page B

tobacco smoke. “Oh! Well, then I might be able to help you after all. Come.” She wrapped on the table twice. The chair across from her slid away from the table, and a brown work boot withdrew beneath the cloth. “Have a seat and we’ll see what we find.”
    With the stiffness creeping into my left thigh, I didn’t so much walk as hobble over to join Yvonde. Trying to keep my discomfort to myself, I bit down on my lip as I slipped uneasily down into the chair. Scooting closer was a whole other bargain that I wasn’t prepared to make without a shot of whatever liquor the Seer had beneath those rags of hers.
    In the flickering candlelight, Yvonde’s face wavered in and out of focus. Layers of pancake smeared over fishbelly-white skin. The makeup flaked at the edges of every deep wrinkle, particularly around her lips where she’d stolen the pink off a peony to color her flabby mouth and bony cheeks. Those pale eyes of hers—all done up with black paint like a kewpie doll— drooped and fluttered. One of her false lashes threatened to fall off at any moment. I could see the fibers of her wig coiling out from beneath the scarf on her head.
    Yvonde held out a bony hand and snapped her fingers. “Cross my palm, sonny.”
    “I paid out front,” I said.
    “You paid for the circus. Now you pay for the pleasure of my company.”
    I pretended to wrestle with the notion of parting ways with my hard-earned dollar before reaching into my coat and plucking a bill. I handed it to her, and she crumpled it in those skinny fingers. Yvonde grinned around her pipe as the money disappeared. That smile held a sinister edge, but her teeth were straight and white as a Connecticut Sunday social.
    “Now, you were looking for someone, were you?”
    An arc of cards appeared on the table. The drawings were intricate, and had probably once been lovely. Now they were just as faded as the rest of this damn circus. Yvonde tapped a card.
    “The World,” she breathed hoarsely. “You are a traveler. No roots, just boots. Stomp, stomp, stomping on the ground.”
    I bristled, my blood running cold. She came close to making me think of old times.
    “I’m not here about me.”
    “Aren’t you? You’re looking for a man, but you haven’t stopped to consider that you’re searching for yourself. Aimlessly going from South Carolina to Alabama. Over an ocean and back again. Boy, you’ve just been rooting along the Southern states like a dog hunting for a master that’s left him behind.”
    “A master?” I snarled, balling my fist on my lap. “That supposed to mean something?”
    She waved me off with a jingle of her bracelets. “I don’t give a flop about negroes, boy. Your money spends just as well as the next man’s. But you’ve chosen the hardest fields to plow, haven’t you, soldier?”
    Her cold eyes fixed me with a challenge. Tell me I’m wrong, she seemed to say. We both knew that I wouldn’t. Couldn’t. We stared at one another, sharing only that meaningful look.
    “What else?” I asked.
    With a flourish of scarves and skeletal hands, the arc of cards vanished. Only three remained on the table. The World still stared up at me.
    “The Empress,” Yvonde sang as she slid the card toward me. “Lovely thing that you can never touch. Wouldn’t want to get her pretty blonde hair dirty with those dark hands of yours, would we? Not that she’s noticed you. She’s too busy with her eyes on some other prize.”
    The old gypsy slammed her knuckles on the next card, a sound like a gunshot. I didn’t jump, but my hand flew to a sidearm that was no longer there.
    “The Devil! You seek him out, but beware, little soldier. Hellfire awaits you down this path.”
    “Hellfire,” I whispered, “is behind me.”
    Her lip hitched up in an ugly sneer, smoke curling up from the pipe. “Sure it is, soldier.”
    The curtain behind Madame Yvonde twitched with a breeze, and I coughed at the smells stirred around. The pipe, the reefer. Shalimar