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His lips fold in and he shakes his head. He wants out of here. I can feel his edginess.

“Maybe we should go back and ask her more detailed questions,” I suggest.

“No way,” he says. “I’m not entertaining that again.” He starts to walk away, and I consider going back in there myself. I’m just about to take my first step toward the shop when the “Open” sign in the window turns off. The shop is in sudden darkness. I chew on the inside of my cheek. I could come back when Silas isn’t around. Maybe she’d talk to me more.

“Charlie!” he calls.

I run after him until we’re walking side by side again. We can see our breath as we walk. When did it get this cold? I rub my hands together.

“I’m hungry,” I say.

“You’re always hungry. I’ve never seen someone so small eat so much.”

He doesn’t offer to feed me this time, so I continue to walk beside him. “What just happened back there?” I ask. I’m trying to make a joke of it, but my stomach feels funny.

“Someone tried to scare us. That’s it.”

I look up at Silas. Mostly everything together except those shoulders, which are tense. “But what if she’s right? What if there weren’t any blank cards in her tarot deck?”

“No,” he says. “Just no.”

I bite my lip and sidestep a man dancing backward down the sidewalk.

“I don’t understand how you can dismiss something so easily, considering our circ.u.mstances,” I say from between my teeth. “Don’t you think—”

“Why don’t we talk about something else,” Silas says.

“Right, like what we’re going to do next weekend? Or how about we talk about what we did last weekend? Or maybe we talk about…” I smack my hand against my forehead. “The Electric Crush Diner.” How could I forget about that?

“What?” Silas asks. “What’s that?”

“We were there. You and me, last weekend. I found a receipt in my jeans pocket.” Silas is watching me recount all of this with a look of mild annoyance on his face. “I took Janette there for dinner last night. A server recognized me.”

“Hey!” he yells over my shoulder. “If you touch her with that I’ll break you in half!”

I glance behind me and see a man pointing a foam finger at my b.u.t.t. He backs off when he sees the look on Silas’s face.

“Why didn’t you tell me that?” Silas says under his breath, directing his attention back to me. “That’s not like tarot readers, that’s something important.”

“I really don’t know. I meant to…”

He grabs my hand, but this time it’s not for the pleasure of our palms pressing together. He drags me down the street with one hand while typing something into his phone with the other. I’m both impressed and mildly annoyed at being spoken to like that. We may have been something in our other life, but in this life I don’t even know his middle name.