Mezzanine

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"So, what's your name?" Tessa sat on the ornate, antique chair across from me. She held my right hand over the table between us, palm up, her mascara-rimmed eyes focused on it.

I shifted on the wooden bench. The cold, slightly damp seat made it impossible to get comfortable. "Jay," I replied.

"Just one letter?" Her gaze flickered up to meet mine for a second.

"Well, it's spelled with three. J-A—"

"I'm just kidding with you." She smiled at me with an unexpected warmth and kindness. Her heavy makeup, facial piercings, and tattooed arms gave her a dark, striking appearance, and I'd been expecting her to have more of a cold front.

"You can relax, you know." Tessa's eyes slid closed as she let out a deep, calming breath. "I don't bite."

He seems nervous, she thought as her cool fingers traced over the patterns in my hand. Like he's afraid of what he might find out. He must be dealing with something stressful right now. Afraid of finding answers he doesn't like, perhaps.

I frowned. The fact that her quick assessment of me was so accurate freaked me out just a bit.

She ran a finger along the crease in my palm. Fire, she thought.

Immediately, the flames in the hearth at the factory flashed through my mind, followed by a vision of a blaze consuming the building the day it burned down. I swallowed the lump in my throat. It couldn't be connected, right?

But why was it the first thing she thought?

"From the shape of your hand," Tessa finally began, "I get the sense that you are passionate and driven in your pursuits." She kept her eyes fixed on my palm and her voice low, barely more than a whisper.

"Those are very good qualities to have," she continued, "but they are also ones to be wary of. There is a fine line between passion and obsession, and if you are not careful, your goals might become consuming."

She paused as a gust of wind pulled at the heavy curtains surrounding the porch. They cloaked the entire space, like the rest of the world had ceased to exist around us. The sudden realization that I couldn't hear anyone's thoughts outside dawned on me. The drapes blocked out everything.

Was that...intentional? Was it possible Tessa and Madame Leclerc actually did have some sort of psychic abilities, and the curtains helped them focus?

"Hand shape is usually something that is inherited," Tessa finally continued once the wind had died back down to a dull moan. "Much like the general nature at your core, it's ancestral."

I clenched my jaw as I thought about George Renson. I didn't want to be like him, so driven to complete his ritual that he ended up killing a dozen innocent workers. I didn't want to be defined by something evil that had been done by someone in my family. I tried to keep my right hand from moving, but I could feel my left hand curling into a tight fist.

He's upset by this, Tessa thought. Perhaps he has a family member in his past he is ashamed of or was let down by.

At that, I thought about my brother. About how he ran away and abandoned us. I thought about my father and how he got himself killed before I was even born. Was I destined to let people down too?

"What else do you see?" I asked, shaking myself from the thoughts and trying to focus. I couldn't forget my goal in speaking with her—to find out more about Damien. Why was he fired...and most importantly where was he now? I needed an opportunity to bring him up again without pissing her off.

"This is known as the heart line." Tessa traced a finger over a crease at the upper portion of my palm. "It can reveal more about your passions, which are linked closely to the course of your life."