Rarities Unlimited 02 - Running Scared

probably.
    The boy was beautiful and could fuck her blind, but he had the IQ of hominy grits.
    Virgil gave her a little shake. “Dawn’s coming, Lady Faulkner.”
    “Of course.” Belatedly she realized that Virgil was no longer holding the wooden box. She looked around, then jerked. The box was in the center of the ragged circle made by the stones. Some trick of moonlight was making the cracks between the slats glow. “What—” she began, then cut off her own words. Scammers didn’t ask the dumbs any questions. “I presume you wish to speak with Merlin.”
    “You got that right.”
    Mother Mary, not again . Cherelle bit back her irritation at doing the same old same old one more time. She wondered if that was how Broadway stars felt when they repeated the same performance night after night after night and twice on Wednesday and Sunday.
    “Many people wish to communicate with Merlin,” she forced herself to say calmly. “As we have discovered, he rarely wishes to communicate with them.”
    “Hell, I know that. Had more than one so-called channel claim he had a direct pipeline. It was crap. Not a one of them could tell me what was in the boxes under my bed.”
    When Cherelle understood what Virgil meant, she wanted to scream. He was after a mind-reading act, not a chat with a mythical magician.
    And she was no mind reader.
    “Someone else in Arthur’s court would be eas—” she began.
    “Merlin,” Virgil cut in. “He’s the only one with the power. Let’s go. We’re wasting time. It has to be before dawn, when they’re all shooed back to hell.”
    For a moment Cherelle didn’t know what he was talking about. Then she remembered it was Halloween, when spirits supposedly were let out after dark and then harried back into their dank holes at daybreak. She wondered if he also believed in flying broomsticks and dancing toadstools.
    She bit the inside of her mouth again, forcing herself not to laugh in the old man’s face.
    “Mr. O’Conner has a point,” Tim said, smiling.
    Only Cherelle saw malice in the beautiful curve of her lover’s lips.
    That was one of the problems with being smart in a world full of dumbs. You saw too much and most of the time couldn’t do squat about it.
    Tim barely smothered his yawn.
    She wanted to kick him in his ever-ready balls. He always left it all up to her. She had to carry off the whole channeling act with him yawning in her face.
    “Of course.” Cherelle’s voice was smooth despite her anger and the constant prickling of gooseflesh on her body.
    She really hated this place. Somehow she had to figure out what was in the boxes under Virgil’s bed, and then she could “channel” it to him straight from Merlin and get the hell out of here.
    She shuddered. She couldn’t wait to see this creepy place in her rearview mirror for the last time.
    With a toss of her head that sent her pale, elbow-length hair flying, Cherelle stepped around the wooden box until she stood in the small area at the center of the three rocks. And she damned her overactive imagination for making it feel darker and colder between the stones, empty, bottomless, like she was falling down a well.
    She had done that once as a kid. It wasn’t one of her favorite memories. Lately channeling always reminded her of it. It was making her sick to her stomach.
    Screw the past, she told herself. I got out of that trailer park, and I’m on my way to real money. No motel clerk with bad breath and dirty hands will ever look me over and ask for cash up front or a blow job behind the counter .
    All she needed was one good break and she would be set for life. She wouldn’t blow all her money like a dumb. She was way too smart for that.
    One good score.
    Just one.
    Holding on to her dream with every bit of her determination, Cherelle ignored the sickening lurch of her stomach. She forced herself to close her eyes and go into her channeling performance. Gradually she changed her breathing, deepened it, held it until she was almost dizzy, and slowly, slowly let it trickle out between her teeth. Most people did the channeling gig sitting down, but she had never liked putting her butt on bare ground. The one time she had brought a blanket to sit on, her ass had started itching like she was on a nest of fire ants.
    So she stood up and breathed in and out, in and out, until the sound of her own breathing became a kind of liquid rushing, a whispering of phrases that described a shaft of white light flooding