by Brenda Drake
Jan gave Reese a concerned look. Reese returned it with a brave smile. Jan was the only one who knew Reese’s troubles. Even his parents hadn’t learned that he had discovered the truth—that Reese had uncovered their secret.
“There it is,” Jan shouted as though the others were across the boardwalk and not standing right next to him.
The four took turns getting head shots in the booth. They were to meet up with Jack, a scoundrel for certain, who could forge identification cards for them. Satisfied with the outcome of the photographs, Jan and Lars set out to locate Jack’s bumper sticker stand at the end of the boardwalk. Jack had asked that only two of the friends meet him. He didn’t need a group around him raising suspicion.
Reese and Henry strolled the boardwalk as they waited. People of all shapes and sizes snaked around one other, eyes focused on the attractions and signs above the booths. The smells of fried meat and baking breads swirled in the air.
The rubbish playing in Reese’s thoughts never silenced. The only time it was quiet was when he’d had a few drinks too many. He replayed what he and Jan had learned repeatedly in his mind. He knew the reason his father’s older brother had died at eighteen, and why his father and his father before him died at the same age. A family curse, is what the tarot reader had told him. A curse exacted on his family by a jilted lover.
Reese hadn’t believed it, not until he found the records confirming it. The first-born males in his family all died, at the exact second of their birth, on their eighteenth birthdays. Their hearts simply stopped. The coincidence of the deaths could only be magic. Cursed magic. The only cure could come from a fate changer, and they had gone into hiding centuries ago. Using their gift carried too great a cost.
Henry suddenly veered in the direction of three girls buying ice cream at a nearby stand. The blond girl’s long, tanned legs were the obvious beacon catching his attention. Reese followed, stopping in the queue beside Henry.
“I heard this was the best ice cream on the boardwalk,” Henry said loud enough to hook the girl with his British accent.
It worked. The girl spun around. “It is. You should totally get the rainbow sprinkles.”
“Thank you,” he said, giving her that sexy, cocky grin that made girls drop their panties. “I shall.”
She smiled, revealing straight white teeth, the apparent handiwork of an orthodontist. The girl’s left eye was a little off, but their dark blue color was hypnotizing. Reese was disappointed he hadn’t spotted her first. She was nearly perfect; a little too thin, though. But there was an understanding among him and his mates; they didn’t pursue the same girl.
“My name is Leah,” she said, placing her hand on the younger girl’s shoulder. “This is Daisy, and that’s Aster.” She looked at the other girl’s back.
Aster didn’t turn around, ignoring the exchange happening behind her. The girl’s auburn hair was tied into a messy knot, her body toned. She was a little shorter than Leah, with more curves that pleased Reese. He tried to keep his eyes off her round bum. The line inched forward, pushing him closer to the girl. He strained to keep from bumping into her.
The small one, Daisy, he recalled, rocked on her feet, apparently not knowing what to do. Definitely younger than the other two, she had the same color hair as Aster. They were probably related, Reese assumed.
“I’m Henry, and this is Reese.” He leaned closer, which, with his height, made him look like a canopy over Leah.
Classic move, Reese thought. It had gotten Henry many dates. Now all he has to do is—
“You smell lovely.” And there it was—the compliment, the smoldering eyes, the complete focus on the girl. “But indeed a flower like you would, now, wouldn’t you?”
“Thank you. It must be my perfume.” The pink in Leah’s cheeks told Henry all he needed to know; he had her under his control. Guilt rippled through Reese. It was possible this girl would want more from Henry than he was willing to give.
“Puh-lease,” Aster said, reaching the stand. “He’s coming on to you. Ignore him. He probably says that to all the girls. Three cones with rainbow sprinkles, please,” she called through the booth’s window.
The girl’s astute. I’ll give her that. It impressed Reese that she hadn’t succumbed to Henry’s charms.
Henry acted wounded. “I’m being completely honest.”
“She does smell like a garden,” Daisy offered, fidgeting with the hem of her shirt.
“Whatever.” Aster sighed and returned her attention to the girl behind the counter.
Reese was about to shove the boy behind him, who kept knocking into his back, but he thought better of it, imagining it causing a human domino effect.
Leah gently elbowed Aster in the side. “Don’t be so rude, Aster. They’re guests in our country.” She flashed a sweet smile at Henry. “So how long will you be in Ocean City?”
“Here,” Aster interrupted, handing off a sprinkle-covered ice cream cone to Leah, then one to Daisy. She spun around with her own, the cone squishing into Reese’s chest. She paused, mouth open, as their eyes met. The candied mound slipped down his shirt, leaving a globby vanilla trail. “Oh shit, I’m so sorry.”
She frantically yanked several napkins from the dispenser and wiped at Reese’s chest. A chill ran down his spine and he shuddered. “Forget it,” he said. “It’s only a new shirt.”
“You really shouldn’t stand so close to someone.”
Is she fooling with me? She knocked into me. “You really should be more careful,” he said.
“Well, I didn’t expect you to be all in my space.” She scowled as she rubbed at the stain, working down his abs. The motion sent awareness to all his muscles, and he quickly gripped her hand, stopping the assault.
“I said, forget it.”
Her eyes locked onto his, and instantly the anger on her face dissipated. Something passed between the two, something that caused a tug inside Reese.
It took her several seconds before she swallowed hard and spoke again. “I…um…right. Here,” she said, handing him the napkins and diverting her eyes away from him.
Just a minute, he thought, tossing the used napkins in the trash barrel by the stand. What was that? Does she fancy me? He was very certain there was a connection between them. As Aster ordered another cone, Reese inspected her body again. She rose to her tiptoes to reach the cone the girl behind the counter passed through the window. Aster’s calf muscles flexed, revealing her obvious athleticism.
Reese could see himself asking Aster for a date under other circumstances. She was cute. Her nose was slightly upturned with a dusting of freckles, and her eyes were a golden brown, full of warmth and wonder. But her attitude was anything but warm. In fact, she was quite rude.
“Perhaps you might show us around?” Henry pressed. “Show us the local hot spots?”
Leah’s smile widened. “We’d love—”
“Sorry, we can’t,” Aster snapped. “Remember, girls only. Let’s go, Leah. Daisy.” She headed down the outer side of the queue. “Nice meeting you guys.”
Reese doubted it had been anything close to pleasant for her.
Leah frowned at Aster’s retreat. “All right,” she said, and gazed up at Henry, a pout on her full lips. “Will you all be around later?”
“Possibly,” Henry said.
“No,” Reese said at the same time and added, “We should find Jan and Lars.”
Aster rushed back and tugged on Leah’s arm. “Come on, already.”
“Bye, enjoy the boardwalk.” Leah frowned as Aster coaxed her away. “Stop pulling on me,” she muttered.
Daisy didn’t say anything. She merely shuffled after them.
Reese watched as the girls disappeared into the crowd. Leah glanced back several times, Daisy a few, but Aster hadn’t, not once. He wondered about that. Was she trying not to or was she really disinterested in him? There was a moment. He was confident she felt something, just as he had. What was he doing? She wasn’t his type, surely. He h
ad his pick of the girls, usually. There was something special about Aster, certainly. But he didn’t have the time or energy to pursue his feelings. If he even knew what they were.
“Where have you vagrants been?” Jan wedged between Henry and Reese, four identification cards fanned between his fingers. “We are in business, as Jack said. New York driver’s licenses.”
Henry snatched them from Jan’s hand. “That was swift.”
“He has a machine hidden in his booth,” Lars said.
“Brilliant,” Henry said, handing out the licenses. “Now, where’s the nearest pub? Preferably one with eager birds.”
Jan turned back in the direction from which he and Lars had come. “We passed one earlier. It’s just a ways back.”
Reese took his fake card from Henry. “Marvelous. Let’s get pissed.”
Chapter Three
Aster
The crowd on the boardwalk swarmed around Aster. She refused to look back at Reese. It didn’t matter that he was extremely hot or that he had six-pack abs. And she didn’t care that his eyes were an amazing blue or that his dark blond hair was on the long side and brushed his brows just right. She didn’t care. No way.
“I said, forget it,” she mocked him under her breath, using a very poor attempt at mimicking his accent.
What an ass. Like I meant to smash my ice cream all over his new shirt.
Leah was like a lost puppy, sneaking glances over her shoulder at Henry, her forgotten ice cream melting down the cone and running over her hand.
Daisy darted a curious look at Leah, then back in the direction of the ice cream stand. “They’re watching us.”
“They are?” Leah said, all giddy. “I don’t get why we couldn’t hang out with them. I thought we were going to divide and conquer.”
“Maybe you should worry about conquering that mess in your hands instead,” Aster said, holding out one of her napkins.
“Oh, crap.” Leah snatched the crumpled paper from Aster and wiped her hands. “What’s wrong with you lately? I don’t see how hanging out with them would be bad. They’re foreigners. We could actually learn stuff from them.”
“I’m not sure you could handle their lessons.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“You fall in love too easily,” Aster said.
“I do not.”
“You do, too.”
An older couple, seeing the anger on Leah’s face, scrambled out of her way. “You’re the one who picks the bad boys,” she said. “Every time.”
What the hell?
Their argument was beginning to make her ice cream taste sour. “Yeah, well at least I stay with them longer than a week.”
Leah spun on her heels. “Do you know how ridiculous you sound?”
Daisy glanced wide-eyed from Aster to Leah.
It wasn’t something Aster liked to admit, but Leah was right. She was definitely attracted to bad boys. Who could blame her? They were hot. All Aster’s relationships (three to be exact) started off like fusion and ended up like fission—she and a guy would collide, releasing so much energy that they’d become unstable, making their relationship susceptible to outside influences (like other girls), and they’d split up. She desperately wanted to overcome her attraction to rebellious guys. She even made a pact with her mom—the next guy, she’d date against her type.
“Hello? Aster?” Leah stood there frowning at her. “Let me guess…you’re spacing out on equations or atoms or something again?”
“Um, no, just guys…and atoms.” Aster laughed. “But yeah, what I said before was totes wrong. I’m sorry. New starts, right?” She searched behind them, barely able to make out the ice cream stand. There wasn’t any sign of Reese or Henry near it. “Should we go track those guys down?”
“No, it’s okay.” Leah locked an arm around Aster’s and ushered her through the crowd. “Just girls today, right?”
Daisy struggled to keep up with Leah’s and Aster’s pace. “Now can we go to the amusement park?”
“Yes,” both Leah and Aster answered at the same time.
Aster shoved the last bit of cone in her mouth, considering the zing she’d felt rush through her body when her eyes met Reese’s. She hadn’t felt that before, not even with the delinquents she’d dated lately. Her gut told her he was dangerous and to stay away. But his eyes were filled with a sadness he was trying to hide behind his smile.
After a few spins on the roller coaster, the girls grabbed small buckets of french fries and strolled the boardwalk. It was getting late. Lampposts flickered on. A chilly wind came off the ocean. Aster hugged her bucket and zipped up her sweatshirt.
Daisy tipped her bucket to her lips, emptying the last bit of fries into her mouth.
“Now what, kiddo?” Aster handed Daisy her remaining fries.
“The haunted house?” she answered with a full mouth. “Or…or games?”
A guttural sigh came from Leah. “Really? That ride is lame. We do it every year and it doesn’t get any scarier.” She pointed out a small white house with red-trimmed windows. A neon sign glared Tarot Card Reading. “How about it? We’ve never done that.”
“Can we?” Daisy looked at Aster, hopeful.
“We can’t. Mom would kill us,” Aster said.
“We won’t tell her or Gram,” Daisy said. “They won’t know.”
“I’m with her,” Leah said. “What they don’t know won’t get you into trouble.”
“It costs too much.”
“I have money,” Leah offered.
“I’m going to regret this.” Aster paused. Ugh. This is going to bite me one day. I just know it.
Leah bumped Aster’s side. “Come on. You’ll only regret it if you get caught.”
Gram had a thing against tarot card readings. No matter how hard Aster pressed for a good reason—other than it was evil and right up there with using Ouija boards—she’d get silence. Even her nonreligious mom went along with Gram and enforced a ban on readings. To add to Aster’s suspicions, the price for disobeying was insane. No driving, phones, or internet for a year. Aster didn’t want to risk getting caught, but seriously, how would they find out about it?
The line into the house was shorter than she’d seen in the past. Through the window, she watched the tarot reader flip cards for an overly excited woman with big blond hair and bigger boobs. The reader’s clothes were all the colors of the rainbow. Dark, wavy hair hugged her head like a bathing cap. She looked like she was stuck in the seventies.
Aster’s stomach clenched. “This is definitely a bad idea. What if the reader says I have two days to live?”
“They’re not allowed to tell you that,” Daisy said. “It’s a code of ethics thing.”
“What if I want to know?”
“Why would you want to know that?” Leah frowned. “Stop overthinking it, Aster. Just go with it.”
They waited in line until it was their turn.
Sitting at a small table covered with a purple tablecloth, Leah twisted her fingers, smiling nervously at the woman across from her. Candles flickered around the room. The woman was obviously obsessed with the Doors. Along with the many posters of the rock group, there was a multicolored mural of Jim Morrison painted on the wall. It was a replica of the iconic image of him without his shirt on. A quote was written in elegant script just below his nipples, “Love cannot save you from your own fate.”
Through the window, Aster could see the anxious faces of those waiting outside staring at her. Geez. No privacy? Anyone can see us here. She was sure they’d get busted.
The reader shuffled the cards, then had Leah cut the deck. Then she laid ten cards out on the table in a pattern of some sort. “In your past, you have had a lot of uncertainty in the matters of love,” she said.
What teen hasn’t? Aster thought, watching the reader point out the cards.
“But see, the ace of swords here means you have clarity now.” She touched a card with a woman and man holding two cups. “There ar
e new starts and opportunities for you. There’s someone coming forward with love on his mind.”
“Oh, that’s exciting,” Leah cooed.
“But he’s the fool. He wants to have fun without commitment.”
“See, I told you,” Aster whispered, shifting her weight anxiously.
“You’re not supposed to interrupt,” Daisy said.
The reader gave Aster a warning glance, then gave one to Daisy before continuing, “The lovers’ card. There may be another romantic interest in your near future.”
Aster thought she noticed someone familiar in the window, but it was getting dark and she couldn’t see clearly. She leaned over the table slightly, straining to look outside.
“And here we have the star reversed,” the reader said, tapping the upside-down image. The card had a naked woman pouring water from jugs into a lake and onto the ground with a large yellow star above her. “Hmm…you are blinded to which romantic interest is the best for you.”
Bracing herself with her hand on the table, Aster stretched to get a better view outside. No one she knew was in line. I must be seeing things. The table wobbled under her weight, tipping slightly and causing the cards to slide toward her.
“Aster!” Leah snapped, pushing the table down.
Aster slapped her hand on the star card before it could fall off the edge. A brilliant electric spark zapped between her hand and the card. Pain shot up her fingers and burned the inside of her wrist. Tillie’s face flashed in and out of her mind. Then she saw Leah, sad and distraught as Henry walked away from her with his arm around another girl. The card flew up, two spinning hologram images of the star card separating from the original. They spun in different directions before pausing and turning the opposite way they were before.
It was just like quantum entanglement, Aster thought, just staring at how the trajectory of one card affected the other.
The images snapped back into the card, and it dropped onto the table.