The Serpent Read online

  “She still won’t tell me,” said Dia. “All she says is that it can’t be real.”

  Someone banged on the closed bathroom door. “Hey,” the person yelled. “There’s gonna be a river of pee out here if you don’t let us in!”

  Ernie yanked open the door and faced the crowd. “Board the lifeboats and woman up, then!” she barked. “We’ll be out when we’re done.” She slammed the door.

  “Jules,” said Dia. “Come on, baby. Talk to us.”

  “It can’t be real,” she whispered, then covered her face.

  “I talked to the guy,” Ernie said.

  Jules’s hands dropped, and her face crumpled with sorrow. “Oh no,” she said. “Please tell me he didn’t—”

  “He was just trying to scare you,” Ernie said. “The bartender said he’d been doing that to girls all night.”

  “Doing what to girls all night?” asked Dia.

  “Telling their fortunes,” Ernie replied with air quotes, hoping that this tiny lie would calm Jules a little, maybe get her talking. “That’s what he did, isn’t it, Jules? He had some tarot cards or something?”

  Jules grimaced. She was more superstitious than Ernie, who’d grown up rolling her eyes at her mom’s weird habit of scattering bay leaves across the floor before sweeping them out the front door (“For protection,” Mom always said with a solemn voice and faraway eyes), wearing goofy-looking sachets stuffed with dandelion leaves and hibiscus flowers (“So I can see what’s coming,” she always claimed), and constantly slipping random talismans—the pentacle had nearly drawn blood—into Ernie’s purse or shoes or jacket pockets (“You never know when you’ll need it,” she’d mutter when Ernie tried to return them). Jules had grown up a Baptist, so maybe that explained her twitchiness around occult stuff, but the look on her face now said she was beyond twitch territory and deep in genuine terror. “It wasn’t just tarot,” she whispered. “It was more than that.”

  Dia laughed. “Sounds like he was just a carnie. What did he do, tell you that you were gonna die young or something?”

  Jules started to sob again.

  “All right,” said Ernie as someone forcefully jiggled the handle on the locked door. “Let’s get her out of here. We can’t camp in the bathroom all night.”

  Dia bent down and helped Jules to her feet. “You were right,” she assured Jules. “It wasn’t real, and you don’t have to be scared. He was being an ass. I totally picked the wrong guy for you, and now I owe you a drink—in a place that is definitely not here.”

  “I think 5 Walnut might still be open,” Ernie said, trying to think of Jules’s faves, all the places she loved and would miss. “Or Wedge? That could be fun.”

  “I just want to go home,” said Jules, giving Ernie a pleading look. “Take me home?”

  Together, Ernie and Dia got Jules out to the sidewalk and ordered a ride. The late October air had turned as bitter as the mood, and their breaths puffed out of them in little clouds. As Dia looked after Jules, Ernie rubbed her goosebumped arms and scanned the street for the jerko with the cards, seeing only a few scruffy homeless guys curled up against closed storefronts. If she saw the card man, she was going to give him a piece of her mind. Instead, she spotted the hottie who had nearly caused her brain damage earlier—he was down the street, swinging one of his long legs over the seat of a motorcycle. He pulled a helmet over his head and rode past, turning to glance at her and her friends before speeding up the street and disappearing around a corner.

  “What a night,” muttered Ernie as she took a turn comforting Jules. “You need to just forget about whatever that horse’s ass said to you.”

  Jules leaned her head on Ernie’s. “Did you see his cards?”

  Ernie nodded. “Had a freaking snake on the backs, because of course. Creep.”

  “Did you touch them?”

  “Touch them? Maybe for a second as I was shoving them away from me.”

  Jules gasped. “Did you feel anything?”

  “Huh?”

  “Did it happen to you, too?”

  “Did what happen, Jules? You need to fill in some of the blanks for me, sweetie.”

  Jules’s eyes were huge. “He said he could tell me what my future would be, then he pulled out a few of the cards and waved them over the others, just like a magic trick, right? I thought we were flirting, like he was about to say, ‘and your future is me,’ but he had me pick a card. And when I pulled it out of his deck, I . . .” She moaned. “I felt it. Just like it was happening to me in that moment.” She was whispering, the words coming fast now that she’d finally started to speak. “It was awful. God, Ern, it was so awful!”

  “Your future?” Ernie asked.

  “No,” Jules wailed. “My death.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Ernie was yanked from sleep by the sound of a siren. Judging from the shouting down in the parking lot, the Paynes were at it again, and one of them—or possibly one of her other neighbors—had called for backup. Yeah, Asheville proper, and especially downtown, had gone all high-end, franchised, and out of reach for people like Ernie in the last few years, but West Asheville was still reasonably affordable and totally charming, if you could ignore a few discarded syringes and drunken midnight visits from Frederick the elderly Deadhead whenever he forgot he lived on the first floor instead of the second. Still, Ernie could feel the creep of trendiness that had overtaken Asheville heading west, opening craft doughnut shops (which she appreciated) and raising rents (which she did not), slowly erasing the frayed, unpredictable, and never-boring freakiness that she grew up with. Maybe Jules wouldn’t miss Asheville so much after all; maybe it was becoming like everywhere else.

  Ernie peered at the grayish-yellow light filtering in through her blinds, then grabbed her phone and looked at the time. Half past three in the afternoon. She groaned. She was supposed to meet her Spartan team for training at seven this morning, and she’d let them down.

  It had taken half the night, but Ernie and Dia had finally convinced Jules that her “vision” had not been a premonition of her imminent demise but instead had been a product of too much alcohol and panic over the major life transition she was going through. It made sense, and it had calmed Jules enough to enable her to set out on her cross-country odyssey with her dad, who was helping her move. The goodbye had been hard, though. Jules was obviously still shaken, and no amount of cheerfulness from Ernie had perked her up.

  It had exhausted Ernie, though. As soon as she’d reentered her now half-empty apartment, she’d collapsed on her bed and slept for hours—but it still didn’t feel like enough. She dragged herself out of bed, took a shower, tossed on some leggings and a hoodie, arranged her hair into something vaguely resembling civilized, and headed out. Although her bed was calling her name, Mom would need her at the shop.

  Sometimes being a grown-up sucked, especially when your own parent seemed more like a child with every passing day.

  The parking lot of the complex was littered with broken glass but quiet by the time Ernie reached the mailboxes. She used her key to open hers, pulling out the little stack of junk mail, which she leafed through as she walked to her car.

  When she saw the postcard, her heart lurched. With shaking hands, she got into her car and sat behind the wheel, staring. It was addressed to Ernestine Philomena Dixon Terwilliger, her full name scrawled in a looping hand she knew as well as if she’d written it herself. Hoping I’ll be home before Christmas, it read. Miss you so much.

  “Liar,” Ernie whispered. “I don’t even know why you bother.”

  Her eyes stung as she looked down at the sign-off.

  Love, Daddy

  He’d been gone for twenty years, and Ernie knew full well he was never coming back.

  Ernie flipped the postcard over to see a vintage ad for a “pain annihilator,” featuring a miserable-looking man with what appeared to be monkeys crawling out of his ears. As usual, and she was never sure how this happened, the postmark had been obscured. Water dam
age, it looked like, causing the postmark to blur and fade. Every. Single. Time.

  This was the nineteenth postcard she’d received from her father since he’d abandoned her and her mother all those years ago, but she’d never been able to use them to figure out where the man was or what he was up to. It would have been better if he never sent them at all.

  After spending a moment imagining lighting the card on fire and watching her father’s handwriting go up in flames, Ernie sighed and carefully tucked it into her bag. She would add it to her collection later.

  On her way to the shop up in Woodfin, the tiny town just north of Asheville where she’d spent much of her childhood, Ernie turned off Riverside to grab herself a cup of coffee at High Five. It was delicious, though probably unwise, seeing as caffeine tended to turn her jumpy and irritable, but she decided that mental state was preferable to her current funk. She sat at a little picnic table and watched the French Broad River flow by, the water muddy from all the recent rain, tree branches heavy with yellow and red leaves dipping toward the river’s turbulent surface. Her phone rang just as she took her last sip of java, and she answered without even looking at the caller ID.

  “Just wanted to see how you’re doing,” Dia said. “I know last night was rough.”

  “Seemed like it was rougher on Jules. Have you heard from her?”

  “No, but I’m sure she’s somewhere in Tennessee by now. Her dad’s with her, Ernie. She’s fine. You don’t believe anything she said last night, do you?”

  “You mean, do I believe a guy with a magical deck of cards accurately predicted that she’s going to die painfully, and soon? Um, no. But she was so shaken up.”

  “Anxiety does that to a person. She’s all happy on the outside, but you know this move is already scary and hard for her, even though she’s thrilled about it.” Dia cleared her throat. “You know how that is, right? Pretending to be happy on the outside while you’re falling apart inside?”

  “What are you implying?”

  Dia laughed. “How has your mom been doing?”

  Ernie slumped. “I’m headed over to the shop now. Sometimes she forgets to close up, so anyone could just walk in there at any time and rob the place.”

  “We’re talking Woodfin, kiddo. It’s not Baltimore.”

  “On Thursday I didn’t get over there until late, and I found her passed out under her desk.”

  “Oh my god.”

  “She said she was taking a nap, but for a minute I thought she’d had a stroke or something. The place was filled with smoke, and I thought I smelled weed.”

  “Whoa. Mama Terwilliger was baked?”

  “I almost wish it was that. She’d been burning catnip and mugwort. Claimed she was trying to scry and just got a tad faint.” Ernie winced. “Not a great moment. It made me feel guilty.”

  “Huh? Why?”

  “Because maybe I should go back to living with her, D. She’s not even sixty, but I think she needs to be . . . watched. I checked the smoke detectors—she’d removed the batteries because she said the beeping irritated her.”

  “You’ve been taking care of her since your dad left,” Dia said quietly. “You shouldn’t feel guilty for wanting a little space.”

  “And yet . . .”

  “Too bad you don’t have any family around to help.”

  This was not the first time Dia and Ernie had had this conversation.

  Ernie glanced toward her bag. “I got another postcard from Dad today.”

  “Hoo boy. What timing.”

  “It’s never good timing.”

  “And when does he say he’s coming home this time?”

  Ernie let out a bitter chuckle. “Christmas, of course.”

  Dia whistled low. “That’s messed up.”

  “Yeah, well, I guess it’s no mystery how I turned out this way.”

  “Says the woman who has faithfully and selflessly looked after her mom for the last twenty years, even though what she’s dying to do is drop everything and travel the world.”

  “You make it sound so noble.”

  “Because it is noble, dammit.”

  “I’d prefer to just be happy with things as they are, seeing as I can’t change them,” said Ernie.

  “That’s super twelve-steppy of you. Or maybe you’re using your mom as an excuse.”

  “Did you or did you not just tell me I was noble?”

  “You are, girl, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t also scared.”

  “This is getting a little heavy for a Sunday afternoon.”

  “Fine. We can pick this up tomorrow during lunch break.”

  “I might have a meeting.”

  “I’m gonna walk those halls until I find you,” said Dia. “Don’t make me bust into your fake meeting with a bag of tacos. Hmm. Actually, you know, Mamacita’s is sounding really good right about now . . .”

  “I’ll check my schedule and text you. It’s a date.” Ernie ended the call and stared out at the river. Was she scared to leave? It seemed like everyone wanted to be in Asheville these days. Hell, half the folks she talked to had Yankee accents, all flat, no warmth. There were new restaurants and breweries on every block, more tourists every season. But Ernie had been here all her life, and she’d wanted to escape for years, or so she’d thought. Was she using her mom’s needs as an excuse not to get out there in the world and explore?

  She’d take some time to think on that after she made sure Mom had eaten something today.

  The autumn sun was still high when she pulled off Riverside at the hand-carved sign that read “Terwilliger Antiquities.” The shop—an old Victorian built in 1927, in which her mother had basically lived since dear ol’ Dad had abandoned them—couldn’t be seen from the road, but people who had business there knew how to find it. Mara Davis Jefferson Terwilliger had a reputation. She might be a harebrained pagan hippie, but she sure did know her antiques.

  Her mother’s old Volvo was in the carport when Ernie pulled into the curved driveway. There were two cars—one a minivan and one a Mercedes coupe—and a motorcycle parked out front. Sunday afternoon was often more busy than other days, with tourists and weekenders chasing away the quiet, along with serious collectors for whom Terwilliger Antiquities was a destination rather than a casual roadside stop.

  Ernie slung her bag over her shoulder and made her way up the steps to the wraparound porch, listening to her steps creaking, and inhaling the faintest whiff of polecat. Her mom hadn’t yet been able to oust the stripy critter who’d taken up residence under the porch, and one day, it was going to get one of them, Ernie was sure. Probably it would be her, as that was the way things usually went, like that time with the raccoon in the back shed. She’d had to have six damn rabies shots and still bore the bite scar on her right wrist—and a grudge the size of the Smokies.

  She pushed the door open, jangling the bell. An older couple was browsing the officers’ swords in the Civil War area, which was less cluttered than the rest of the store, with objects sitting in dusty glass-covered cases. Everything on the left side of the room was nudged up cheek by jowl on eight-foot-high shelves—dusty Bibles and other books, wooden humidors, box upon box of daguerreotype photographs and antique postcards, glass jars and vases and trays, cartons of noisemakers and dolls and wooden horses. A giant spinning wheel sat near the window, and a dress form bearing a fancy muslin gown from the 1850s stood next to it. She could hear someone walking along one of the aisles, maybe deciding whether or not a certain colonial-era jug or bowl or frame fit with their collection or décor. Ernie trudged past the shelves, sneezing as the dust wormed its way into her nasal passages.

  The door to her mom’s office—which used to be the kitchen—was open a few inches. As she approached, she heard her mother speak.

  “—no idea what you’re talking about, sadly. I really do wish I could help.”

  “If you’re not helping me, you’re helping someone else. And you may not like who.”

  That voice was awfully
familiar.

  “What are you implying?” her mother asked.

  “Don’t be thick, Ms. Terwilliger. You’ve taken a seat at the grown-up table now.”

  Irish accent. She could picture the guy’s face from last night. Was he threatening her mother? “Sorry I’m late, Mom,” she said loudly as she pushed her way into the office.

  The hottie who’d nearly knocked her through a wall was standing in front of her mother’s cluttered desk, looking enormous and menacing. Today his hair was loose around his shoulders, and he was clad in a canvas motorcycle jacket, jeans, and boots. As he turned to see who had intruded on his meeting, he was smiling. “Hello again, love,” he said. “How’s your noggin?”

  Ernie’s mother stood up from her rickety chair, frowning, her smudgy horn-rimmed glasses hanging on a dainty chain around her neck. “Ernestine, do you know this fellow?”

  “Oh, we met last night,” said the guy. “We’re fast friends.”

  Ernie could have sworn that fear flashed in her mom’s eyes. “What he means is that we literally ran into each other in a cramped hallway, he might have given me a minor head injury, and I don’t even know his name.”

  “Or you don’t remember it,” the guy said with a wink. “All concussed as you are. Might be whole sections of the night you can’t recall.”

  “Dear lord,” her mother said, sinking back into her chair, which objected with a loud squeak. Her fingers scrabbled for a cross-shaped amulet partially hidden under a stack of invoices, and she clutched it tightly.

  The guy chuckled. “I always considered myself rather memorable, though.”

  “Mom,” Ernie said, glaring at him. “We are complete strangers, in every way.”

  “Oh, have it your way, love. My name is Gabe,” said the guy. “Gabe Carrig.” He turned back to her mother and seemed to be looking past her—at the big wooden Hoosier cabinet behind the desk. The cabinet was stuffed to bursting with documents and artifacts from her mom’s personal collection of occult objects, which were usually not for sale. “I’m a collector.” He smiled. “Also, I happen to be a bit of a dealer myself, you could say.”