The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [166]
Marji clucked her tongue. “Nonsense, queen. Luck had nothing to do with it. It was fate, pure and simple. Now, watch the pearls.”
“Oh,” Grace said, and stepped back.
“Good-bye, Marji,” Travis said.
She moved to him, closed her eyes, and kissed his cheek.
“Marji …”
She stepped back, grinning. “Don’t worry, honey. There’s already plenty of competition for your heart. I know, I’ve seen it in the cards. Just indulge Sister Marjoram for a moment.”
Travis hesitated, then leaned forward and kissed her ruby lips. Marji stepped back, eyes wide, then fanned herself with a hand, at a loss for words for the first time since they had entered her shop. Travis smiled, then turned away.
Vani gazed at Marji, her gold eyes thoughtful. “My people are great seers and oracles, and they have wandered far over the years. Perhaps, somehow, it came to pass that others found their way here, and that their blood runs in your veins.”
Marji squeezed her hand. “I like thinking that, sugar.”
There was no more delaying Farr. He moved to the door of the shop. The others followed.
Deirdre turned to tell Marji thanks one last time, but all she saw were blue beads, clacking faintly. Then the door opened, and they stepped into white-hot sun and the future.
56.
Marji hung up the telephone, then turned and gazed at the pattern of cards on the séance table.
“I sure hope that was the right thing to do, girl,” she said with a sigh.
But they needed help, that much was clear. She moved to the table, sat, and studied the cards again. Marji had never seen so many dark signs come together at once before. Not even the day she lost her bid to become the Queen of Denver’s Rainbow Court, and that fat little tart Chi-Chi Buffet won solely because she lured three of the judges into the bathroom for some very personal persuasion.
She tapped one of the cards in the center triangle—the Devil—and a shiver coursed up her back. She felt so cold. But that’s what happened when one chose fashion over comfort.
Like you’re ever going to change your ways, girl. Being beautiful is your burden.
Although it hadn’t always been. Once, years ago, she had been Martin J. Morris, a gangly black teenage boy living in Five Points with an uncle who only ate food that came in cans, only drank things that came in bottles with bulls on the labels, and only spoke in words that would have been bleeped out on the TV reruns Martin liked to watch.
Fame? What’s that crap, Martin? You should be watching The A-Team. Mr. T—now that’s the man you want to be. ’Cept without all that jewelry. Spin like them dancer boys, and they’ll be calling you Fartin’ Martin. Are you listening?
Martin wasn’t. He did spin, at night, alone in his attic bedroom.
Things hadn’t been so bad when his aunt was alive. She had laughed when Martin had danced for her, holding an egg beater like a microphone as he lip-synced to her old Billie Holiday records. Then, one day Martin had glanced into the mirror in his bedroom, only he hadn’t seen his own reflection. Instead, as clear as That Girl or Ginger on Gilligan’s Island, he had seen his aunt walk across a street he knew was two miles from their house. Then he had watched as a garbage truck ran a red light and struck her.
He had always thought people flew through the air when they got hit by cars, tumbled to the pavement, rolled, and got up just like Lindsay Wagner, the Bionic Woman. Instead, his aunt had exploded, as if the frail, heavy fruit of her body had been just barely held together by the force of her life. For a moment the mirror had turned crimson, then he had stared at his own wide eyes.
By the time he got downstairs, the police were there, and his uncle had already popped the top on a bottle.
It was about a year later, one day when his uncle was snoring wetly on the couch, that Martin sneaked into his uncle’s room, raided the closet of his dead aunt, and ran back to the attic with an armload of chiffon, velvet, and crisp polyester. And that gray afternoon, at the age of sixteen, color finally found its way into Martin’s life in shades of canary,