All Seeing Eye (5 page)

I paused in the absent shuffling of my cards. They weren’t tarot, just a normal deck, slick and yellowed from a thousand fingers. It didn’t matter. I could’ve played at tarot until the end of time and not seen a goddamn thing. Not from a factory-fresh deck of cards, anyway. It had taken a while to learn to shuffle with the gloves on, but it was time well spent. I could’ve spent the two-fifty on a new deck and handled them with my bare hands, but it wasn’t worth it. I could’ve touched the cards, but I couldn’t have handled the money or the occasional brush of a customer’s hand. Gloves were just safer all the way around. Now I looked up at the girl who wanted to know why. I’d been lurking and working the carnival for two weeks, and she was the first person to actually talk to me … other than those unbelievably fascinating “shoo, shoo” conversations.

She was younger than me by four years at least. Eleven or twelve, probably. Dressed in a white unitard that was spangled from neck to ankle, she had a cascading mass of pale blond hair that reached her narrow hips. She also had a horn. Yeah, a horn. It was planted right on top of her head and protruding
from the thick hair. Obviously papier-mâché and not fastened as tightly as it could’ve been, it wobbled precariously when she tilted her head to look at me. “Do you have warts? Huge disgusting warts all over your hands?”

There in the sweltering heat and stink of roasting mystery meat, sitting cross-legged on the ground, I looked up into round amber eyes and felt my heart stutter with a painful squeeze. It wasn’t love. Hell, she was a
kid,
barely past the Barbie stage. No, it wasn’t love but a surge of homesickness so strong that the card in my hand bent double before falling to the velvet. I’d seen the look in her eye before. Curiosity, impatience, troublemaking through and through, she would’ve skipped hand-in-hand with Tess and Glory … perfect synch. She was older but had the same spirit, the same “Look at me, world. Just look how amazing I am.” It would’ve been annoying if it hadn’t been true.

I let my eyes drop and swallowed against the strangling heat in my throat. God, I missed them. “No.” I cleared my throat, and the next words came out a little more smoothly. “It’s hair. All over my palm, just like Granny said would happen.”

She scowled, pale eyebrows pulling into a confused V. “Huh?”

“Never mind.” I picked up the card and tried to straighten it out. “I just like gloves, okay?”

A pink shoe and gloves. One led to the other.

The shoe had been the first time. I’d picked it up
and known … just like that. I’d seen Tessie’s strawberry blond hair floating in a cloud, her blue eyes wide and empty, her mouth open just wide enough to show a flash of tiny white teeth. Tess was dead. Tossed into the old well as if she were garbage. Everything in her that made Tess Tess was gone. The fits of giggles, the smell of ninety-nine-cent honeysuckle shampoo, the absolute loathing of Brussels sprouts, and the forever love for her shiny pink shoes. All of it, gone forever. There was no more Tess, and it didn’t take any big jump of logic to know who was responsible for that. Chicken pox, Boyd playing babysitter, Boyd who would get bored easily, Boyd who drank until it was coming out of his pores, Boyd who’d thought Mom was a little too old when he married her at seventeen … so many thoughts in such a short moment of time as her shoe had tumbled from my hand.

So very many.

It had slowly gotten worse since that first time. In the beginning, I could touch something and see only a flash, a current slice of time. Hand me someone’s keys, and I could tell you where they were right then, but that was all. That changed. Little by little, I would see more of the past, until eventually I saw it all. I’d never much cared for history in school, and here I was condemned to relive it constantly. Wasn’t that a bitch? The past was all I saw, though, and I was glad of it. The future … who would want to see that? Unless you could change it,
and it was safe to say with the way things worked, that wasn’t possible. Forget physics and math and all that geek crap, that wasn’t what would stop you. It was the universe, uncaring and oblivious, that was holding the cards on this one. It wasn’t about to let you change the shit coming your way.

“I want a pair of gloves,” the girl said imperiously. Quite the princess, this one was. She held out her hands in front of her, palms down, and looked them over seriously. “White, I think. With diamonds.
Real
ones,” she emphasized. “To match my costume.”

I gave a snort. “Sorry, kid. I’m all out of diamonds.” Picking up the stray card, I shuffled it back into the pack.

She gave an exaggerated sigh and flopped down opposite me, skinny legs folded beneath her. “That’s okay. They’d be too hot, anyway. My name’s Abigail.” Sticking out her nonexistent chest, she fluffed her long hair and preened. The horn wobbled so strenuously I was surprised she hadn’t put an eye out yet. “Abigail the Amazing Unicorn Girl.” The capitals were as clear as if they’d been letters of fire.

“Is that so?” I tried hard to stop the quirk of my lips. She was just a bored girl, bugging me for no good reason. She wasn’t Glory, and she wasn’t Tess. She was just a girl.

“Yep.” She touched a curious finger to the midnight-blue curve of my “crystal” ball. “First I was the One and Only. Then I was Unique. Like the
Unique Unicorn Girl. But Daddy decided Amazing was better. ’Cause that’s what I am.” Actually, she was probably all three, and I was glad she had a daddy who knew it. “What are you?” she went on, eyes bright and curious.

“What am I?” I laid out a row of solitaire. Business tended to be slow this part of the day.

She shifted, pulling her knees up and resting her chin on them. “You know. Are you Stupendous or Super or Marvelous? You’re doing the whole psychic thing, you need
something
.” Hastily, she cautioned, “But Amazing is mine.”

My lips twitched again uncontrollably, and I agreed, “Amazing is yours.” Maybe she was right. Maybe I did need an Amazing of my own. Jack the Psychic didn’t quite get it for flash and flair.

“So?” she demanded impatiently. “What are you?”

I stared at the cards blankly for a moment, and then it came to me. “All Seeing.” Jackson Lee Eye, the All Seeing Eye. That was who I was. Blind as a bat in the past but all seeing now. Talk about your too little, too late … no one was better at that than me.

“All Seeing.” She didn’t seem too impressed, sighing and shaking her head. “Well, okay, but there’s no pizzazz.” The hands she threw out gave the word its own special effects. “That’s what Daddy says you need in an act, pizzazz.” She lingered lovingly over the word, emphasizing the
z
in a sizzle sound.

“I’m sure he’s right.” Giving my own sigh, I put the cards away and began to fold up the velvet. My stomach was growling loudly enough to scare any potential clients away. It was time to invest in a hot dog. “It was nice meeting you, Amazing Abigail. I’m going to grab some lunch. See you later.” Actually, I wasn’t quite sure that I wanted to see her again, but in the small confines of the carnival, there was probably no avoiding it. Not that she wasn’t a nice kid, but she reminded me of things I’d rather not be reminded of. Life was a helluva lot easier to bear when you could forget.

“Lunch?” She bounced up, surrounded by a cloud of hair. “You can have lunch with us. My mom loves company, and Daddy can help you think of a better name.”

I was happy with the name I’d come up with, but somehow I ended up being pulled in her wake. Not caring could work against you sometimes. When you didn’t care, it was hard to muster up the energy to stand in the face of Hurricane Abby. Not giving a shit: as philosophies went, it had its flaws. Two years later, I was still going to lunches and dinners at Abby’s trailer.

I stuck with the name, though.

Then I was eighteen and had a small tent that was my home. I didn’t buy a trailer. I was saving my money for bigger and better things. Abby’s parents had smoothed over things with Mr. Toadvine, the carnival’s owner, and I’d been allowed to eke out a
little corner of the place for myself. When I wanted to shower or clean up, I went to Lilly and Johan’s place and locked the door. Abby had dumped enough cold water over the shower curtain to do a good imitation of Niagara Falls. Following me like a puppy, she’d adopted me wholeheartedly as her older brother. Every time I had that thought, my chest ached fiercely. Two years with Abby was still four years without Glory and Tess. That truth was inescapable.

But now I would be leaving soon, and that led to another inescapable truth. I’d be losing another sister, no matter how hard I’d tried to make sure she didn’t creep her way into my heart. She was fourteen now, the same age I was when it had happened. When it had all happened. I buried the thought and carefully covered the table in imitation silk. The velvet had long since raveled away. Abby … I’d been thinking about Abby, fourteen and thought she was all grown up, although she was still stuck in a training bra to her mortification. A sound of the tent flap being raised had my head coming up. Speak of the devil … if the devil were a flat-chested teenage girl in sequins. “Hey, Amazing, what brings you around?” I drawled as I polished the tried-and-true bowling ball of the future.

“I’m bored.” She flounced into a folding chair, then grimaced and pulled her tail from beneath her. Johan had decided the horn wasn’t enough and had added a full fall of white polyester hair in a cascading
tail. Abby had swished it with enthusiasm for a day or two before getting tired of it. Twisting the end of one blond strand, she said with a hesitancy that was completely un-Abigail-like, “Somebody said you were leaving.”

“That so?” I took a rubber band from the pocket of my black jeans and pulled my hair back. There was barely enough to make the stubbiest of tails, but I was getting there. I’d pierced my other ear to go with it. Small gold hoops and a hokey billowing black shirt completed the look. There weren’t many red-haired gypsies out there, in real life or the movies, but I gave it my best shot. “What’s Lilly say about you listening to gossip?”

“My mom is the one who told me.” The lip was out in full force, pouting and sullen.

Lilly was one to know and tell every little thing going on at the carnival. Gossip with a side of grocery-bought cheesecake. Overly sweet with a rabidly red strawberry topping, you would eat it anyway to please Lilly. Gossip being her only vice, she was a nice woman, and she loved Abby. Took care of Abby, would never let anyone hurt her. Never. Good intentions only went so far in this world. It was the actions behind them that mattered. Yeah, a nice lady. The nicest. She would’ve been a mother figure to me if I’d let her. I wouldn’t.

Couldn’t.

I sat down opposite Abby and fell into a now old and established habit. I reached for the cards. The
thin silk gloves slid with comforting grace over the surface of the slick cardboard. Shuffling them from hand to hand with a skill more suited to a blackjack dealer than a psychic, I exhaled, then shrugged. “Nothing is forever, Amazing. You’re old enough to know that.” It was a bitch of a thing to say, whether it was true or not, and I didn’t have any excuse for having said it. I dropped the cards back onto the table and with a feeling of acid self-disgust started to apologize, “Ah, hell, I’m s—”

I didn’t get any further than that before small bony fingers cut me off with a sharply painful pinch to my forearm. Luckily, I was wearing long sleeves, and she hadn’t touched bare flesh, or I’d have had more than a pinch to deal with. Ignoring my yelp and glare, she ordered angrily, “You’re being mean. Stop being mean.”

I rubbed the abused flesh of my arm through the cloth. “Okay, okay. I
was
saying I was sorry before you tried to rip off a piece of me as a souvenir. Jesus.”

She leaned back in the chair with thin arms folded tightly across her nonexistent chest. “You know what you are, Jackson Lee? An asshole,” she said triumphantly, so obviously proud of her daring that I had to smother a grin. “A big, flaming a-hole. Just ask anybody.”

“Is that so?” I said with careful gravity. “Makes me wonder why you’re hanging out here, then, Miss Amazing. By the way …” I checked my watch. “It’s
time for your first show. You better get out of here, or there won’t be any cheesecake for you tonight.” As far as I could tell, that was the worst punishment Abby had faced in her short life, and that included the time she’d turned the poodle trainer’s entire curly pack loose. The vicious little ankle biters had spent hours terrorizing the entire carnival until they’d been cornered after they took the Dog Boy down. Ten tiny sets of furry hips humping against both of his legs, Artie had never quite been the same. For that escapade, Abby had been sent to bed an hour early. With a big piece of cheesecake.

Shaking my head, I repeated, “Go on, Amazing. Be nice to your parents; they’re damn nice to you.”

She slid out of the chair and rocked back and forth on her heels. “Will you …” Chewing her lip, she scowled and tried again. “Will you write me?”

It would’ve been easier to lie, kinder, too, like I had done to that kid Charlie at Cane Lake, but I didn’t. My entire childhood had been a house of cards built of lies. I was tired of it. I wasn’t going to build my own house of the same. “I don’t know.” The flash of utter hurt in her eyes was a harsh kick, to the head, to the stomach, to the balls. It didn’t matter. It was still painful as hell. “I’ll try,” I amended. “I can’t make promises, though, Amazing. I’m …” I was what? An outsider deep down? Someone better off alone? A psychological study that would have a grad student pissing his pants in joy? A screwed-up son of a bitch who already had
sisters, one dead and one lost, and didn’t want to take that risk again? I didn’t have a clue. But I did know I couldn’t make promises I didn’t have the inner resources to keep. “I’m not much of a letter writer,” I finished with a faint curl of my lips. “But I’ll give it my best shot, Amazing. For you.” She wasn’t Charlie, not old enough to know that sometimes things don’t work out. After a few months, she would forget me, anyway, mostly. She’d find a boyfriend or discover some new hobby besides a messed-up psychic. She would pass the way of all sisters, one way or the other. I could write a letter or two until then. It wouldn’t kill me.