Eureka hurried to catch up. “So you think we should take the book to …?”
“She’s a little eccentric, a self-taught expert in dead languages,” Rodney said. “Makes her living telling fortunes. Just ask her to look at the text. And don’t let her rip you off. She’ll respect you more. Whatever she asks for, offer half and settle for a quarter less than her original price.”
“I’ll bring my calculator,” Eureka said.
Rodney reached across Cat, pulled a napkin from the dispenser and scribbled:
Madame Yuki Blavatsky, 321 Greer Circle.
“Thanks. We’ll go check her out.” Eureka slid the book back in her bag and zipped it up. She motioned to Cat, who unpeeled herself from Rodney and mouthed, Now?
Eureka rose from the booth. “Let’s go make a deal.”
13
MADAME BLAVATSKY
Madame Blavatsky’s storefront was in the older part of town, not far from St. John’s. Eureka had passed the neon-green hand in the window ten thousand times. Cat parked in the potholed parking lot and they stood in the rain before the nondescript glass-panel door, rapping the antique brass knocker shaped like a lion’s head.
After a few minutes, the door swung open, sending a clatter of bells ringing from the inside handle. A stout woman with wild, frizzy hair stood in the entry, arms akimbo. From behind her came a red glow that obscured her face in shadows.
“Here for a reading?”
Her voice was rough and raspy. Eureka nodded as she pulled Cat into the dark foyer. It looked like a dentist’s waiting room after hours. A single red-bulbed lamp lit two folding chairs and a nearly empty magazine rack.
“I do palms, cards, and leaves,” Madame Blavatsky said, “but you must pay separately for the tea.” She looked about seventy-five, with painted red lips, a constellation of moles on her chin, and thick, muscular arms.
“Thank you, but we have a special request,” Eureka said.
Madame Blavatsky eyed the heavy book tucked under Eureka’s arm. “Requests are not special. Presents are special. A vacation—that would be special.” The old woman sighed. “Step into my atelier.”
Blavatsky’s big black dress wafted the stench of a thousand cigarettes as she led the girls through a second door and into a main room.
Her atelier was drafty, with a low ceiling and black-on-black embossed wallpaper. There was a humidifier in the corner, a vintage hot pot on top of a perilously stuffed bookcase, and a hundred old frowning portraits hanging in slanted frames on the wall. A broad desk held a frozen avalanche of books and papers, an old desktop computer, a vase of rotting purple freesias, and two turtles that were either napping or dead. Elegant gold cages hung in each corner of the room, holding so many birds Eureka stopped counting. They were small birds, the size of an open palm, with slender lime-green bodies and red beaks. They chirped resoundingly, melodically, incessantly.
“Abyssinian lovebirds,” Madame Blavatsky announced. “Exceptionally intelligent.” She slid a finger coated with peanut butter through the bars of one of the cages and giggled like a child as the birds flocked to peck her skin clean. One bird rested on her index finger longer than the others. She leaned close, puckering red lips and making kissing noises at him. He was larger than the others, with a bright red crown and a diamond of gold feathers on his breast. “And the brightest of all, my sweet, sweet Polaris.”
At last Madame Blavatsky sat down and motioned for the girls to join her. They sat quietly on a low black velour couch, rearranging the twenty-odd stained and mismatched pillows to make room. Eureka glanced at Cat.
“Yes, yes?” Madame Blavatsky asked, reaching for a long, hand-rolled cigarette. “I can surmise what you want, but you must ask, children. There is great power in words. The universe flows out of them. Use them now, please. The universe awaits.”