Theo and Mia exchanged a wary glance before indulging her with nods.
“Cool.” She took a seat, then studied their research pile. “Well, no wonder you’re confused. These books are crap. If I really wanted to stick my nose in your business, I’d put you in touch with an experienced augur. I mean a real one.”
“Frankly, we’re not sure there are any real ones,” Theo said.
The girl grinned at him with enough mischief to make Mia suspect a flirty hidden motive.
“Oh ye of little faith. Are you familiar with the Gunther Gaia Test?”
Theo nodded. It had come up several times in research. In 1988, a wealthy skeptic named George Gunther publicly offered twenty million dollars to anyone who could correctly predict five natural disasters in the course of a calendar year. The test had become an annual lottery to the would-be augurs of America, with thousands entering each January. So far only a handful had managed to get even one forecast right, an endless source of swagger for the nonbelievers.
“Well, I have it on good authority that this year’s challenge isn’t going quite the way Gunther likes,” the girl told them. “There’s a man who entered a whopping seventeen predictions, and so far he’s been right on the money. He has four guesses left, all for the last three months of the year. I have no doubt they’ll happen too. You might want to steer clear of Tunisia this Christmas.”
Mia sat forward in rapt attention. “Who is this guy?”
“He says his name’s Merlin McGee, though I know for a fact it isn’t. Young fella. Very shy. Very cute. I’ve met him twice now. He’s the real deal. When I congratulated him on his impending wealth, he merely shrugged. He said he’s not sure if Gunther will honor the arrangement.”
“If he can truly see the future, wouldn’t he know?”
The girl tapped Mia’s hand. “I asked him the same question. You know what he told me? He said he only wished that people were as easy to predict as God.”
Theo winced as a hot knife of pain cut through his mind. The first one had hit him three days ago. Now they seemed to come every hour.
Mia held his arm. “You okay?”
“Yeah. I’m all right. It’s nothing.”
From her sympathetic expression, the girl clearly disagreed. “You know, there’s a health fair going on at the other side of the park. You don’t need insurance. They’ll take anyone.”
“I appreciate it, but I’m okay.”
Despite the kindness of their new acquaintance, Theo grew suspicious of her. It seemed odd that a person so friendly hadn’t offered her name by now, or asked for theirs.
Mia brandished Quint’s book to the girl. “This guy says a real augur wouldn’t know anything because he’d see every possibility at once.”
“Oh, please. There’s an expression people like to give me whenever they notice my wrist. They say, ‘A girl with two watches never knows what time it is.’ That’s bullshit.” She checked her dual timepieces. “It’s 3:30.”
“How do you know for sure?” Theo challenged.
“Because they’re synchronized. That makes me twice as sure. What Sterling Quint, God rest his missing soul, doesn’t take into account are the redundancies. You look at a million possible outcomes, you start to see repeats. From repeats come patterns. From patterns come probabilities. A true augur can look at the big quilt and see which futures have the best chances of happening.”
She tilted her head at Mia as if she suddenly just noticed her. “You have amazing hair.”
Mia fought a bashful grin. Theo remained skeptical. “It’s still guesswork though.”
“So?”
“It wouldn’t matter for coin tosses, but for life-or-death situations . . .”
The girl waved him off. “Oh, suck it up, man. You’re never going to be a good augur if you live in fear of regret.”
“Who said I wanted to become an augur?”
“You’re already an augur, Theo. You’re just not a good one.”
Now both Silvers stared at her in hot alarm. She sighed at herself.
“Shit. I didn’t want to make a whole thing of this. I don’t even know why I came here. This isn’t my battle.”
“Who are you?” Mia asked.
“I’m nobody. Just a stupid girl who can’t mind her own business. You both seem like nice people and you looked so lost. I just wanted to give you a push in the right direction and then flutter away.”
“You won’t even give us your name,” Theo griped. “Why should we believe anything you say?”
The girl shrugged. “You don’t have to believe a word, hon. Doesn’t affect me one bit. It also doesn’t change the reality of your situation. Big things are coming, whether you like it or not.”