Next to the table were French doors that opened into an equally overgrown back garden. They were ajar, but they didn't do anything to disperse the smell of…God, what was it? It smelled like road kill with a hint of infected dog's ear and rotting rubbish.
We sat down opposite Marie.
"You want some tea?" she asked.
"No thanks," Brad and I said in unison.
If that was what she was boiling up on the hob, I'd rather drink liquefied fish eyeballs.
Marie sat back in her chair, eyes narrowed. "Why not? I make it special. Special tea for a special couple." She grinned, revealing crooked teeth. "What's wrong with my tea?"
"Er…nothing. I'm sure it's lovely," I said. I didn't want to piss her off by refusing her tea, but who knew what the hell would be in it? What if it was some weird kind of potion that turned me into some kind of half-human, half-chicken woman?
"Everyone who has a reading must have tea. It's part of the ritual so I can tune into you better." She stood up, went to the boiling pan, and gave it a quick stir. Then she poured it into two teacups. As she carried them toward us, some of the dirty green liquid sploshed onto the saucers. "Here." She set them down in front of us.
It looked like iguana piss. I stared at it, then picked up the cup as she watched me. It smelled even worse close up. I tried hard not to heave, and quickly placed it back on the table out of sniffing range. No way was I drinking that.
"Something wrong with the tea?" She tilted her head.
"Looks lovely," Brad said.
"Lovely." I nodded my head in agreement. "It's probably a bit hot. I'll wait for it to cool down." I gave her my best smile.
"So, you want to know what the future holds for you?" Marie asked, sitting back and studying us both carefully like she could see into our souls.
I nodded. "We want to get married soon, but we've both been married before and we want to make sure we're doing the right thing."
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Brad glance up at me sharply at that little fib.
"Give me your hand," Marie said to me, holding out her callused one.
I obliged and she stared at my palm for a few minutes.
"You will have a long and happy life." She roughly dropped mine and took Brad's. "You will travel and have good fortune," she said to him.
What? Wasn't that what all supposedly psychic people said? She was definitely a fake. What had I been so worried about?
Marie stood. "Let me get my cards. I'll be back in a minute."
As she shuffled out of the room, I looked around for somewhere to pour the foul-smelling tea. The kitchen sink was out of bounds as it was already piled high with clothes, soaking in washing powder, so I sprang over to the French doors, yanked one open, and swiftly poured the contents of mine and Brad's cups into a nearby giant rhododendron bush. The bush made a loud screeching sound as Marie's cat shot out of its depths, dripping from whiskers to tail in green liquid.
My eyelids flipped open in surprise.
The cat flew into the kitchen like Concorde, closely pursued by me. I put the empty cups back on the saucers and looked around frantically for a cloth to wipe the cat, and then spied some kitchen roll.
"Foxy," Brad hissed. "What the fuck are you doing?"
"Shush!" I undid a whole bundle of kitchen roll and crept toward the cat that was now crouched under the table. A loud, throaty growl stopped me in my tracks.
"Here we are." Marie wandered back in the room. "Oh! Snowy, what's happened to you?" She bent down, picked up the cat and sniffed its fur. Then her eyes flickered slowly in my direction. "Strange, smells like tea." She peered at the lump of kitchen roll in my hand.
I gulped.
Uh-oh.
I was going to get a humongous curse for this!
"Er…I…the cat went to jump up on my lap and knocked the tea out of my hand." I bit my lip. "I'm really sorry. It was an accident."
"That's funny, Snowy's never sat on anyone's lap before. He hates it." She did the narrow-eyed thing again. It didn't do much to enhance her good looks. "You're very accident prone, aren't you?"
I figured it was a rhetorical question, so I didn't answer.
She put Snowy back on the floor. He gave me a filthy look then went into a fur-licking frenzy. "You should be careful. One day an accident might be dangerous." She emphasized the word "dangerous."
A cold shiver danced up my spine. My neck gave an involuntary twitch.
"Let's do the reading. I haven't got all day," she said gruffly, and we sat back down again. "I need to call upon my spirit guides." She closed her eyes and her head flopped forward onto her chest, her hands clasped tightly together. Then her eyelids sprang open, her eyes rolling into the back of her head. She threw her head back, her lips distorted with weird moaning noises coming from deep in her throat. This carried on for a few minutes.
I glanced at Brad, whose face was expressionless, taking it all in. I mouthed the word
fake
to him.
Then, in a manner that I can only call miraculous, she relaxed again and started acting normal. Well, as normal as she could for a creepy black magic woman, I suppose.
She passed me a set of cards, but these weren't the usual kind of tarot cards I'd seen before. These had numbers on them made out of skulls.
"Shuffle them," she ordered.
I shuffled the cards and handed them back to her.
She took a card from the top of the deck and placed it on the table.
Ten of skulls.
"Happiness will soon come. Either something pleasant or joyful will happen, or a situation will come to a happy conclusion." She laid out another.
Eight of skulls.
"Beware of a new path, as it may lead to misfortune or danger." She glanced up at us both, making sure we were taking it in.
I eyed the cards warily.
She laid out another one.
Six of skulls.
She tapped the card. "A festive atmosphere. This card could signify an enjoyable social gathering."
Yeah, yeah. Blah, blah, blah.
She wasn't fooling me. She was definitely a fake.
She was just about to lay another card down when I felt Snowy nudge his head against my leg. I glanced down and he looked at me all cute-faced and purring. Oh, bless him, just because he looked ugly and was owned by an evil voodoo priestess didn't mean he wasn't a nice cat. And I felt really bad for chucking that disgusting tea over him. I reached my hand down to stroke his head, keeping my eyes on Marie. Then I felt something hot and wet on my right leg and boot.
"Agh!" I glanced under the table to find Snowy spraying on me. I pushed him away with my foot and he glared at me, growling.
Marie looked at Snowy and chuckled. "He doesn't like you."
No kidding.
"Have you got a piece of kitchen roll I can use to wipe this off with?" I asked.
"I think you used it all up. Ain't karma a bitch?" She grinned at me, and the hairs on her mole twitched. "Back to the reading." She barked and laid out another card.
Sixteen of skulls.
"This card represents loss. This could be in the form of losing someone you love, a friendship, a financial loss, a job, or a home."
Well, that pretty much covers everything.
"Even death," she hissed.
The way she said it made my skin scrawl. I fought the urge to scratch myself.
"I'm going to read the asparagus now." She stood up and went to the fridge.
Brad and I exchanged a confused glance. Did she just say asparagus? Nah, she couldn't have.
She came back with a bunch of asparagus spears.
"You're going to read…asparagus?" I stifled a laugh.
She looked up sharply, clucking her tongue at me. "Yes, haven't you heard of veggiestrology? I'm also an asparamancer. You can read the future by seeing the pattern they form when they land."
"How…interesting." I raised an eyebrow as she threw the spears on the floor.
Brad and I leaned over the table to get a look.
She studied the spears on the dirty carpet thoughtfully. Then she pointed at me. "You can't make up your mind."
That part was true. Still, she'd just made that up. She couldn't really predict the future.
She tilted her head, examining the spears again. "Troubles you've been having in the area of love and happiness should be lifting soon."
Brad elbowed me and mouthed,
Set the date!
I rolled my eyes at him.
"You will find something that's lost," she said.
I nearly snorted at the vagueness of it. That could mean anything. Keys, mobile phone, biro, the socks that always get sucked into a giant abyss at the back of the washing machine, never to be seen again.
I'd had enough of listening to her rubbish. "I heard on the news your niece, Chantal, went missing," I said, faking wide-eyed innocence. "I'm sorry to hear that."
Marie glanced up sharply. "Yes. It's bad news."
"Do you know where she is? You and all the family must be so worried," I said.
She nodded. "I'm sure they are." She picked up a piece of asparagus in her hands, turning it round and round, not answering the question.
"I mean, if you can see into the future and all that, can't you tell what happened to her?" I waved a hand around casually.
"You don't always get to see the things you want." She studied me once again like she could see into my soul.
Goose bumps rose on my skin.
"Can't you see anything about her disappearance at all?" I pressed her.
Her eyes flashed with anger. "You ask a lot of questions, don't you, missy?"
"If we wanted something bad to happen to someone, could you do it with your voodoo?" Brad interrupted.
She cocked her head in Brad's direction, interest piqued. "What sort of something?"
Brad leaned forward conspiratorially. "Well, we weren't exactly honest with you earlier."
"Really?" she said in a sarcastic tone of voice.
He paused for a moment. "You see, my girlfriend here is already married and her husband won't give her a divorce. Could you arrange for something bad to happen to him to get him out of the picture?"
Marie sucked her lips for a few minutes, eyes summing up Brad and me. "You don't need me for that. I can see you've killed before." She stood up, giving us a glare that could've seared through glass. "Now get out of my house and don't come back," she spat in a voice loud enough to raise all her zombie mates from whatever in-between world they were living in.
Ooooh! Grumpy knickers!
Wait a sec, how did she know he'd killed before? No, she couldn't be genuine, surely. Could she?
Brad and I strode back down the hallway to the front door. Snowy was sitting on a pile of books, watching us leave. I gave him a wide berth in case he decided to aim his pop-up lipstick in my direction again. This place was freaking me out.
I breathed in gulps of fresh air as we strode to the Hummer. Spider's Web and his gang were sitting on a wall next to it. Brad nodded at Spider's Web. Spider's Web nodded back, then the gang all wandered up the road.
"Well, that was fun." I got in the passenger seat. "Ew, she is one creepy woman." I did a mock shiver and looked down at my smelly, wet foot.
"If she knew I'd killed people before, what else did she know about us?" Brad put it into gear and screeched off down the road like he was freaked out, too. Not much scared Brad, but I had a feeling Marie had got under both of our skins.
"I think she knew exactly what we were doing there. Hacker was right about her." I sighed, snorting in fresh air through my nose. I couldn't get the rotting smell of decay out of my nostrils. "So much for my plan. She didn't give anything away about what might've happened to Chantal. Maybe we need to break into her house to see if there's any evidence Chantal was there. We might find some kind of altar inside with human sacrifices."
"I know Chantal was there." Brad glanced at me.
I turned to face him in my seat, ears pricked up. "What? How do you know?"
"Those lads who were so kindly looking after the Hummer in our absence. I showed them Chantal's picture and persuaded them to tell me if they'd ever seen her go into Marie's." He paused for dramatic effect. "A couple of weeks ago, they saw her on the doorstep, ringing the bell. They remembered her because they thought she was pretty hot."
"Did they see her go in?"
Brad nodded. "Marie let her in."
"Then we definitely need to break in and have a look around."
"I'll get a guy to watch the place. As soon as we know the coast is clear, we'll check it out."
"In the meantime, I need to change." I pulled a face at my stinky foot. "Then I'm going to pay a little visit to James Langton."
My phone rang as we pulled into Hi-Tec's car park. "Hey, Dad. How's it going?"
"If I have to ask 'Would you like fries with that?' one more time, I'm going to scream!"
I chuckled.
"But I managed to check out Steven's handwriting and compare it with that love letter to Chantal."
"Yes?" I breathed with excitement.
"It's not a match. Steven didn't write it."
So the questions was, who the hell did? And how, exactly, did it contribute to Chantal's disappearance?
I headed back home to grab a new pair of jeans and boots. Marmalade greeted me at the front door with a dead mouse in his mouth, looking pretty pleased with himself.
"Hey, boy. Catching lunch?"
My stomach growled at the thought of food. With everything going on I'd completely forgotten it was that time of day.
He dropped the mouse, narrowing his eyes at me accusingly, like he'd had to resort to a spot of mouse killing because I never fed him. He sniffed the air, then crept closer to smell my UGGs. He narrowed his eyes, glared at the offending item, and hissed at it. Was that a reaction to Snowy's pheromones or a sixth sense about Marie and her bad voodoo? They said animals were extra sensitive to things, didn't they? Often I'd catch Marmalade staring at things I couldn't see. What could he see now that might help me crack this case?