Free The Emerald Talisman by Brenda Pandos Page B

her, Sam put down
another $10 and plunged my hand into the old woman’s.
    She latched on like a crab and her distrust
overwhelmed me. I recoiled, but she didn’t let go. Her feelings
seemed ironic since she was the one who made a living deceiving
others in the first place. I wanted to laugh, before running out of
the place, but I was slightly curious at what she had to say.
    “Hmmm,” she said, as she studied the lines on
my hand.
    Her long boney finger traced along the ridges
of my palm then froze. Her dark empty eyes fell into slits. She was
afraid.
    “You’ve got quite a life line here,” she said
quietly.
    I tried to pull my hand away again, but she
held on, her grip amazingly strong.
    “Danger surrounds you… danger unknown to
you.” She paused and furrowed her brow. “Ah…and you bear the mark…
the mark of the innocent one.”
    I started to feel unnerved because as far as
I could tell, she told the truth.
    “The innocent human… the one to rid us of them .”
    Sam sat next to me with her mouth gaped
open.
    “Them?” I asked.
    “You don’t know about them yet, do
you?”
    The old woman looked deep into my eyes. I had
no idea what she meant; her words gave me goose bumps.
    “But what about Nicholas?” Sam said.
    I kicked Sam under the table. The last thing
I wanted was to reveal anything private to this looney. Sam felt
confused and clammed up.
    The old woman’s eyes shifted from Sam and
then back to me. She dropped my hand.
    “He’s trouble. Stay away from him.”
    I rubbed my hand, grateful to have it back,
wanting to wash it off.
    “That’s all I can see. You can leave now,”
she said, getting up abruptly.
    I wanted out of there, so I got up too,
grabbed my crutches and headed toward the door. Sam led the
way.
    “When you want answers, you’ll be back,” she
said quietly behind me.
    I pretended I didn’t hear her.
    Once outside, I hobbled quickly down her
walkway and took a deep breath to cleanse out my lungs. She
disturbed me. Her touch unleashed a wave of toxic emotions, as if
she poisoned me. I moved as fast as my crutches allowed, down the
walkway, relieved that with each step, my feelings began to return
to normal. No way would I ever return to her house again –
never.
    “Sorry about that,” Sam said as we rounded
the corner of the theater. “She was totally weird.”
    “Yeah –” I looked back towards her house. “–
she was.”
    I tried to process what the woman said. What
did she mean by them ? And being innocent? She sounded like I
would save the world, from some unknown darkness, like a super
hero.
    And then her insistence to avoid Nicholas?
Not that I had any choice in the matter seeing how he completely
avoided me like the plague. Could she have been anymore cryptic? I
looked at my palm for a special mark, but saw nothing out of the
ordinary.
    I wanted to tell Sam about how I believed the
mountain lion incident and the old ladies rantings were more than
coincidental. I might have told her, if I could’ve done so without
disclosing my lie. I marveled at how insane my life had become, as
if I was on a collision course with some crazy alter universe. I
wished for normalcy.
    There was a line outside the theater. We
walked to the end of the line to wait our turn. I checked the time.
We had ten minutes until the movie started.
    “What do you think she meant by ‘you bear the
mark’?” Sam asked me.
    “I have no clue. She’s crazy.”
    “I thought she was okay at first, like when
she said – “
    Sam kept talking, but I didn’t hear her. The
same eerie stalking hunger-filled feelings from the forest were
here. I whirled around to find the source.
    I spotted a group of college-aged people
walking in our direction. Something about them seemed unnatural,
almost surreal, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I stiffened and
felt the need to protect Sam who still prattled away about the old
woman. I put my arm around her and ushered her closer to the wall,
away from