Free Undenied by Sara Humphreys

Chapter 1
    “What do you mean you rented the room to someone else?”
    Lillian attempted to keep her voice calm, but her temper was getting the better of her. She glanced around the shabby apartment house and found it difficult to believe that it was booked solid. With all the gorgeous rentals in New Orleans, how on earth could this dump have no vacancies—especially since she had booked a room here for the next six months?
    “Sorry.” The old woman took a long drag off her cigarette and blew the smoke into Lillian’s face. Her pale blue-gray eyes stared back unapologetically as she shifted her rotund frame in the chair behind her desk. “I sent you an email, but you never responded, so I figured you were just pissed.”
    “Well, I am now.” She ran her hands over her face and let out a sound of frustration. The row of silver bangles on her wrist jingled their familiar tune and instantly calmed her. Something about that tinkling sound always brought her a certain level of serenity.
    “Here’s your deposit back.” The woman shoved the envelope into Lillian’s hands.
    “Thanks… I guess.” She sucked in another cleansing breath and braced both hands on the desk, hoping to appeal to whatever human decency this woman may have. “Gladys, I’ve been on the road for almost ten days, and my computer died right after I left Washington, so I haven’t had Internet access. That’s why I didn’t answer you—because I never got the email. What am I supposed to do now? I gotta tell ya, Gladys… you’re asking for some bad juju. How can you do this to someone?”
    “Aren’t you a fortune-teller?” Gladys looked at her suspiciously and pursed her lips. “Must not be very good at it if you didn’t see this coming.”
    “I’m a palm reader.” Lillian adjusted the leather satchel slung over her shoulder. “I read palms—not minds.”
    And she did. She could run her finger along the deep-seated lines in a person’s palm and see their past, present, and future. She tried to read people in other ways, but it never worked. It wasn’t just a touch of flesh. Touching someone on the arm or anywhere else didn’t tell her squat.
    It was the connection to those creases in the hands… the ones created in the womb that stay with us until the grave… those held a multitude of secrets and truths.
    “Yeah?” She stuck her meaty hand out to Lillian. “Prove it,” she sneered.
    Lillian bit back the urge to tell the old bag off and took the woman’s plump hand. She turned it over and sucked in a deep breath before trailing her finger along the deep lifeline.
    Her eyes rolled back in her head and her lids fluttered closed. Images flashed through her mind as she moved her finger slowly along the crease in her palm—like a slide show of Gladys’s entire life.
    Playing in the bayou as a child. Sitting on Santa’s knee at Christmas. Fooling around with a boy behind the bleachers of her high school football field. Stumbling drunk out of bars on Bourbon Street. Coughing up blood, and finally, lying in a casket—not long from now.
    Gladys tugged her hand away. “I said, let go.” She rubbed her hand and looked at Lillian with a scowl. “Well? What’d you see?”
    “Been to the doctor lately?” Lillian flicked her gaze to the still-burning cigarette dangling from her lips. “They call those coffin nails for a reason.”
    “Whatever.” She shrugged and took another drag off her cigarette. “The holidays are just a few weeks away, and the tourists have already invaded the Quarter, so I doubt you’ll find anything around here.”
    The cell phone on the desk rang, and the horrible creature picked it up without sparing a glance at Lillian. She started yelling at the caller. It was someone named Bob, and from the way she was screaming—Bob was in deep shit.
    Looking around the beat-up old place and listening to Gladys berate poor Bob, Lillian decided that perhaps it was better this way. The old bat was not someone she