For Dad—I miss you terribly.

       Chapter 1

      A thin pink line across light brown flesh.

      She’d cut herself … again.

      Shauna MacDonald looked up from the palm she’d been reading and into the wide, bright eyes of its owner, Lurnell Franklin. Lurnell was a large Creole woman in her mid-thirties with an affinity for spandex and a rocksolid determination to be married before she hit forty. She visited A Little Bit of Magic, the mystic shop Shauna owned with her sisters, Fiona and Caitlin, at least twice a week for a palm reading. For some reason Shauna still didn’t understand, Lurnell had zeroed in on her. Fiona was very gifted at reading tea leaves, and Caitlin was exceptionally intuitive when it came to Tarot cards, but Lurnell would have nothing to do with either of them. She always sought out Shauna for a reading, then would argue adamantly that the marriage line, which didn’t exist on the side of her palm, just below the pinky of her right hand, was certain to appear any day. Even if she had to produce it herself.

      “Didn’t I tell you?” Lurnell said, tapping a three-inch, hot-pink fingernail on the reading table. “It’s like I been sayin’, right? I know you was thinkin’ I was crazy, but this big girl here, she knows what she’s talkin’ about. You feelin’ me? You hearin’ what I’m sayin’?”

      Shauna eyed her.

      Lurnell waggled her head. “Oh, uh-uh. Don’t you be givin’ me eyes.” She kissed the palm of her left hand and held it up. “Look here. I swear, hand to God. All I did was wake up this mornin’, and there that line was, all pretty and pink.”

      Shauna took hold of Lurnell’s right hand and turned it pinky side up. “That’s a cut, and you know it. And you know it because you put it there. You can’t make a marriage line, Lurnell. It’s either there or it’s not.”

      Lurnell cocked her head, narrowed her eyes. “You sayin’ I’m lyin’ about it being for real?”

      “Yep.”

      Shauna let go of Lurnell’s hand, sat back and folded her arms across her chest.

      Lurnell mimicked the pose. “And what makes you so sure, Ms. Big Drawers? You don’t have no second sight. You just a reader, and look at you actin’ like you all that, tellin’ me I’m lyin’.”

      “Because you are. Just like you did the last two times you tried pulling this stunt. Look, just because you don’t have a marriage line doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world. Time changes things, and palms change with it, so if you’ve gotta cut something, cut yourself some slack, will you? If you keep cutting your hand like that, you’re going to wind up with a bad infection.”

      Lurnell tsked loudly and unfolded her arms. “Who taught you palm readin’ anyways, girl? You don’t know nothin’.”

      Shauna grinned. She couldn’t help it. Lurnell always brought the same banter to the table, and she enjoyed swatting it back. “Well, if I don’t know anything, how come you keep asking me for a reading?”

      Pursing her lips, Lurnell turned sideways in her chair. Shauna knew from experience that this was her way of regrouping, thinking of a good comeback. Normally she would have pounced on the opportunity and thrown out a one-liner just to fluster Lurnell, but a sudden uneasiness settled over her.

      An intuitive whisper.

      She sat silent, keeping her facial expression neutral while she listened for her inner voice, waiting for it to identify the source of the unrest.

      The only thing that came to her was the scent of cinnamon wafting through the air.

      King