I was hoping he wouldn’t shut down as Zeke had. Zeke was a telepath, but Galileo was a psychic. Zeke saw some things; Galileo saw everything, and no matter how worthless a creature, he excelled at it. Elvis might have been the King of Rock and Roll, but Galileo was the King of Psychics . . . at least in Vegas, probably in the entire Western Hemisphere. He was disgusting, perverted, greedy, and an entire dictionary full of more slimy adjectives, but he did know his business. He didn’t have talent. He had Talent with a capital T, and throw a little boldface on there while you’re at it. Zeke was good, but no better than your average angel . . . ex or otherwise. Galileo was an Einstein, and one with an excellent sense of survival. He might be able to see from a safer mental distance with that talent of his.
If it didn’t burn out like a flickering lightbulb. Zeke had gone down. If Galileo went down, considering his physical health, he might not get back up. As long as he did it after giving over the information . . . what will be, will be. The psychics said it often enough—now one of them would have to live with it.
Or not.
If Galileo had ever done a selfless thing in his life, I might have cared. But I knew his type. I’d known those like him for a long, long time. They were born without that ability to care for anyone but themselves. Despite psychology textbooks, loving yourself doesn’t automatically mean others will love you. My hand might rest on the back of his, but I wasn’t feeling any love. “The demon blood, Galileo. What took the demon? What destroyed his mind? And hurry up,” I added, “because you’re looking a mite peaked there, sugar.”
The pale violet color of his round moon-pie face was only darkening. Leo exhaled and heaved out of the chair. “I’ll call 911. If you get anything out of him before he hits the floor, dinner’s on me.”
“Galileo,” I said sharply. “Now. Now. Tell me what you see.”
His lips framed a word, but I didn’t hear it. He tried again. “Sic . . . kle.” He wheezed and repeated, “Sickle.”
His forehead hit the table with a thunk, but he was still there . . . barely, but still there, eyes rolled back—the yellow a dull shine. “Am . . . I . . . dying?”
“Galileo, sweetie.” I patted his hand that rested beneath mine. “You’re the psychic. You tell me.”
He’d live, the EMTs said, although their best guess was that he’d end up in open-heart surgery.
If so, the surgeons would probably pull Wilbur from Charlotte’s Web plus his five piggy cousins out of the man’s heart, and he’d live to destroy someone else’s hopes prematurely. Take away their few days of blissful ignorance that they had left to them.
What will be will be.
Or maybe not. Maybe Galileo had learned his lesson when he was allowed a peek behind the curtain. He hadn’t seen the wizard, that was for sure. I didn’t pass out hearts, courage, and brains—I tested them. And Leo . . . Leo in the past would’ve taken them and kept them on a shelf as souvenirs. So perhaps Galileo would behave. As a matter of fact, he’d damn well better, I grumbled internally as I cleaned the table he’d collapsed onto. Leo had hauled away the dishes, but there was still an ample amount of drool and crumbs to take care of. The psychic wasn’t a neat eater by any stretch of the imagination. He ate like a fifteen-year-old toothless Saint Bernard, spreading morsels of food up to six feet away.
Oh yes, he’d better behave. I would never forget Jake Stein, a hopeful man with even more hopeful eyes shortly followed by a noose. And I wouldn’t forget this outrageous mess either. Galileo didn’t need a lobster bib; he needed a tablecloth tied around what passed for his neck.
“A sickle. That’s all you were able to get?”
I looked over my shoulder with ill temper at Leo’s patronizing tone. “I could’ve gotten more if you’d held back a bit. I wanted you to give him a glimpse of the Loki trailer, not the whole movie, IMAX and all. You’re the one who all but stuffed a grenade into his heart and pulled the pin.”
“Sometimes an artist needs recognition of his work. Past or not,” he said complacently as his hand moved in a brisk slapping motion toward my ass. The ill temper on my face darkened into something that would’ve blown Galileo’s heart to pieces just like that metaphorical hand grenade and destroyed everything else within a fifty-mile range.
Leo let his hand drop casually as if it had been a joke all along and he would never possibly ever consider slapping me on the ass no matter how frisky he was feeling. Men. Gods. Or a mixture of the two. All the same. “Remembering the bad old days get you a little worked up there?” I lifted my eyebrows. “Just don’t forget why everyone who knows you or has heard of you or done a book report on you calls them the bad old days, all right?”
He grunted and fetched another towel to help me. “I won’t forget. I won’t go back. You know that.”
“I do,” I said, and smacked him on the butt instead. And I did know. I had more faith in Leo than anyone in the world except my mama. The two of them tied.