The Hunter hits the wine-red velvet with a muffled thud, upside down and defiant. For the eighth night in a row, the card stares back at Odile with its reversed, predatory gaze. Outside, the New Orleans rain turns Royal Street into a blur of neon and wet slate, but inside the narrow shop, the air is thick with the scent of sweet olive and old paper. She shuffles again, her thumb catching the edge of the deck, but the weight of the cards feels wrong, as if the paper itself has grown heavy with a two-hundred-year-old secret.
He’s coming back, Mama Cleo’s voice whispers in her memory, a ghost-hush that smells of rock salt and river fog. Odile touches the silver locket at her throat, the metal cool against her skin. She should close the till and bolt the door, but the shop feels like a trap she helped set herself. The cards stay flat, the silence in the room stretching until it rings with the humid pressure of a coming storm.
The brass bell above the door chimes, and a massive shadow fills the frosted glass from the rainy street.
