So Predictable

Prologue: Do You Believe in Magic

It was the one spontaneous thing I ever did with my life.

"You come seeking wisdom," she said, her beautiful olive face gazing deeply into the white orb in the center of the table that separated us. The gold bangles on her wrist jingled mysteriously and her earrings glinted in the miniscule light that flickered from the array of oddly scented candles that surrounded us.

I didn't roll my eyes. Although it was a bit of a no brainer what I was there for, I was too concerned with the aforementioned wisdom to care that "Madame Zulu" was most likely a crock.

Madame Zulu held her hand above the glass orb, wriggling her fingers and waving her hand dramatically. "You want to know about your soul mate."

I gasped lightly and my eyes grew wide with shock. How did she know? It suddenly hit me that she probably gets tons of desperate women in here. Like me.

"Y-yes," I stuttered, tripping over my words as per usual. "I-I just want to know his name."

Madame Zulu nodded once and slowly stood from her chair, her dark brown braids tossing around her head and the beads that were twisted with the strands of hair clicked together as she searched through a drawer for her cards.

She sat back down heavily, her beads clicking, her bangles jingling. She was a like a human musical instrument. I sat up a little higher in my dark wooden chair, trying to peer at the dirty old cards as she deftly shuffled them between her fingers.

She looked up at me, then slowly flipped the first card as I waited in anticipation. The first card she flipped was a king of hearts. She raised an eyebrow and looked at me without a word. I opened my mouth to ask her what it meant, but found that I'd lost all words. She quirked a secretive smile and pulled the next card from the center of the deck. It was a jack of spades, and my curiosity was more than piqued.

"What does that mean?" I breathed, still staring at the king of hearts, while the jack sat by unnoticed.

Madame Zulu shook her head slightly and turned a third card. It was a queen of hearts. Zulu picked up the queen and held her before me. "You'll have to make a choice," she said, her rusty voice scratching over the words with sensual ease. "There's the jack and the king, but you can't have them both."

She looked up at me, moving only her eyes while the rest of her body remained statuesque. "You'll have to choose between your heart and your mind," she said touching her chest lightly as she said heart, and brushing her index finger over her temple as she said mind.

She suddenly stood from her seat again and returned to her drawer, rummaging through its contents for something of great importance. My eyes remained trained on the cards, the king of diamonds winking at me from its grimy surface. I had the strange impulse to break out my bottle of antibacterial.

Suddenly, Zulu was back in her seat, smiling mysteriously at me and holding out a crumpled sheet of paper. My eyebrows creased in confusion as I stared unrelentingly at the little ball of paper in her hand.

"Take it," she commanded, impatient but still smiling.

I suddenly snatched the paper from her, but she held tight, her eyes locking with mine. "It's not really a choice. You'll know the right answer all along," she said in that same grainy voice.

I nodded once and took the paper.

Zulu suddenly grinned. "That'll be $22.50."

After rummaging through my purse for the exact cash, I finally exited the dingy room and entered the bright light of the city street. My first impulse was to disinfect, squirting ample amounts of Purell onto my palms.

What a crock that had been. A jack of spades and a king of hearts? Could she have been any more ambiguous? Those weren't even real Tarot cards. Honestly, I don't think I believed a word she'd said. I'd come looking for answers. I left with even more questions.

I reached into my purse again and pulled out the same wrinkled piece of paper. It took me longer than it should have to unfold the paper. My hands were shaking just a tad. When I finally did, I snorted a shock of derisive laughter, and tossed the paper back into my bag.

It was stupid to think that a fortuneteller could give me the name of my soul mate. I paid $22.50 and all I got was a piece of paper with one word written upon it.

William.


A/N: So I wrote this prologue forever and a half ago and then forgot about it (and all my other stories apparently... I swear I'm going to try to get back to them! Please, please forgive me!). Then I was going through my desktop to organize all my stories and stuff and while making folders I found this along with a couple of other things I like and would like to put up someday. Well after thinking about it all for about three weeks this was the story I ended up just sitting down and working on. I haven't written much and I don't know how much I'll get to, but I thought I'd leave that up to popular opinion. Do you guys want to hear more? Let me know! I have some crazy stuff up my sleeve for this story.