“Depending on what?” my client squawks, as though she’s been personally and deeply offended and wronged. Her aura suddenly flaming, wavering, as though she doubts not only me but everything I just spent the last hour telling her, no matter how spot-on my predictions were. “Just who the heck are you?” she says, looking at me as though she’s about to report me to—well, she hasn’t decided yet—but someone, someone will get a report, that’s for sure.

But Sabine’s back on her game, her voice calm, collected, and just a tad attorney-like, when she says, “Ever’s my niece. And apparently she has a lot to explain.”

And just as I’m about to do just that—well, not explain exactly or at least not in the way that she wants—but still, just as I’m about to say something that’ll hopefully calm everyone down and put an end to all this, Jude makes his way over and says, “Everything go all right with your reading?”

I glance at my client, Sabine’s friend, knowing that with my energy now so improved, so super-charged with the cleansing and healing meditations Ava’s been putting me through, it was one of my best readings ever—and yet I failed to predict this. But also seeing how reluctant she is to pay for it now, now that she knows me as her friend’s juvenile delinquent niece who moonlights as Avalon, the Shady Psychic Reader, I don’t even give her the chance to respond, I just jump in and say, “Uh, no worries, this one’s on me.” Jude squints, his eyes darting between us, but I just nod firmly and add, “Seriously. No worries. I’ve got it covered.”

But while that seems to settle the client, if not Jude, it doesn’t do much for Sabine whose aura is in an uproar and whose eyes are severely narrowed on mine. “Ever? Don’t you have something to say for yourself?”

I take a deep breath and meet her gaze. Yeah, I’ve got plenty to say but not here and not now. There’s someplace I need to be!

And I’m just about to say something to that effect, only nicer, gentler, in a way that won’t piss her off any more than she already is, when Munoz jumps to my aid and says, “I’m sure you two can discuss this in the morning, but for now, we really should go. We don’t want to risk losing our reservation after it was so hard to get.”

Sabine sighs, conceding to the wisdom in Munoz’s argument but still unwilling to let me off the hook quite so easily. The words coming from behind clenched teeth when she says, “Tomorrow morning, Ever. I expect to see you first thing in the morning.” Then, seeing the expression on my face, she adds, “No buts.”

I nod, even though I’ve no plans to make that appointment. If things go the way I plan, then tomorrow morning I’ll be about as far from that kitchen table as it gets. Instead, I’ll be sprawled out in a suite at the Montage with Damen beside me, the two of us finally fulfilling those long-ago plans . . .

But it’s not like I’m about to tell her that, so instead I just nod and say, “Um, okay.” Well aware that as a trial attorney, she always insists on a verbal response, that way the meaning can’t be twisted or misconstrued. And just when I think that the worst is over—or at least for now anyway, she insists I apologize to her friend—as though I committed some crime against her. But even though I know I’ll pay for it later, that I won’t do.

Instead, I just look at her and say, “None of this changes what I told you in there.” I gesture toward the back room. “Your past, Tommy, your future—you know what I said is true. Oh, and about that choice you have coming up?” I glance between her and her date. “Well, as much as you may doubt me right now, you’d still be wise to heed my advice.”

I glance at Sabine, watching as her aura flares up in a bout of anger that’s just barely subdued by the presence of Munoz’s arm slipping tightly around her waist. Winking at me conspiratorially, he turns her away from me and out the door as their friends follow behind.

The second they’re gone Jude looks at me and says, “Dude, that was some seriously bad mojo that just went down in here. I feel like I should smudge the place with some sage to help clear it out.” He shakes his head. “What gives? I thought you’d told her by now?”

I look at him. “Are you kidding? You saw what just happened. That’s exactly the kind of scene I was hoping to avoid.”

He shrugs, counting up the cash in the drawer as he says, “Well, maybe it would’ve gone better if you’d warned her, if she hadn’t felt so sucker punched when she walked in and saw you were working here—giving readings no less.”

I frown, scrounging around in my wallet for the money I owe him for the pro bono reading I just unwittingly gave.

“You sure you wanna cover it?” he says, refusing to take it when I offer it to him.

“Please.” I thrust it at him, seeing his brows lift and knowing he’s about to insist otherwise when I add, “And keep the change too. Think of it as payment for all the—bad mojo—I caused. Seriously.” I wave it away. “If that hadn’t happened, who knows, she might’ve become a regular, so, you know, just look at it like payment for all that future lost revenue.”

“I’m not so sure you lost her,” he says, shoving the money in the bank bag and slamming the register shut. “If you gave her as good a reading as I think, she’ll find her way back, or at least tell some friends, who’ll come out of curiosity if nothing else. That sort of thing’s pretty tough for most people to resist. You know, straitlaced lawyer takes in scam artist niece who, unbeknownst to her, spends her spare time moonlighting as an insanely accurate psychic reader—could be a book or, at the very least, a movie of the week.”