Shadows Out of Time

“He was also known as Rama IV,” Miss Theresa purred. You would have thought she was related to the old potentate. “The monarch of The King and I was based upon his illustrious life,” she added.

It sounded like hyperbole, but my psychic guts were telling me it was the truth. That impressed me. I sensed that the Terrills owned King Mongkut back in those days. Nothing ever changes. Not politics or power. That’s why I figured on setting up shop in Washington DC when I scored what I wanted. My chart was presented to me on Halloween night. Miss Theresa analyzed it for me in the kitchen, after closing.

“You are ambitious,” she began. “Over-ambitious, actually, and need to curb that tendency, as you are inclined to overreach. I see great intelligence, but this is a difficult chart. You are used to it, but it would break a lesser man.”

“I consider myself strong,” I allowed.

“Scorpio Moon. Moon on the ascendant. Twelfth House Moon. Twelfth House Neptune. Pluto in Leo on the Midheaven. All powerful psychic indicators. You are in the correct profession.”

“I hope so.”

“I see an ocean voyage in your future, Mr. Shaner.”

I started slightly. Thom had seen that too. It wasn’t unusual for confirmatory information to surface astrologically after it had been picked up by other psychic means. In fact, it was more the rule than the exception.

“I have nothing planned,” I told her.

“I see you being impressed.”

“About what?”

“In reference to the ocean voyage,” she said thinly. “It is a long one. And quite challenging for you. Like nothing you have ever experienced.”

“Can you see where I’m going?”

“Asia. Have you ever desired to see the Orient?”

She was getting too close.

“Never. Furthest thing from my mind, in fact.”

She pursed her lips. I expected more, but she eased off into another subject. “Venus in Aries. You do not remain in love for very long, and I fear you may never marry.”

I let out my breath, realizing for the first time it was as pentup as if I were awaiting a judge’s verdict.

The reading told me little about myself that I didn’t already know. She wrapped it up by saying, “I see that you will remain in my employ for a very long time, and you will be a very agreeable servant of this enterprise.”

I smiled as sincerely as possible. That part was probably employer-employee encouragement, and not predictive. At least, I trusted not. The only way I would stay with Theresa Terrill’s Tea Room was if she bequeathed it to me. And I wasn’t getting that. I wasn’t getting that at all.

November was unusually brisk, business-wise. I found myself working six days a week. By this time, I had all but abandoned my cards. When I read clients, I read their tea leaves. And I read them superlatively. Some days it got so hectic, Miss Theresa would stir from her second-floor aerie and read clients as well. If required to read cards, she used ordinary playing cards. You have to be very good to do that. There’s not much help in a fifty-two-card Bicycle deck.

“Why are we so busy lately?” I asked Starla one day.

“Kingsport society knows we’re shut tight between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. They’re getting their New Year’s readings early.”

“What does the crew do during December?” I wondered.

“I go to West Palm Beach. There’s a New Age bookshop down there where I do progressed charts. I make almost as much money in December as I do the rest of the year here.”

“There’s a lot of money down there,” I admitted. “Where does Miss Theresa winter?”

“I really don’t know.” Her voice turned tight and bloodless, like a constricted artery.

“I’m getting a weird vibe from you,” I prompted.

Starla hesitated. If she hadn’t been so fried from doing too many readings, she might not have given me anything. But her guard was down. “One year I came back from Florida a week early,” she said, her voice growing furtive and whispery. “I took a walk, thinking I’d drop in on Miss T.” She looked around.

“And?”

She whispered it: “The tea room wasn’t here.”

I looked at her. Starla had been a practicing astrologer so long she could tell a person’s sun sign at a glance. If you asked her the planetary positions on a given day, she invariably rattled them off from memory. Consequently, she walked around in a state of perpetual Alpha spaceyness. She had surrendered to the timeless flow in return for the powers granted. I didn’t know whether or not to believe her.

“What do you mean—‘wasn’t there?’” I asked.

“There was just a wet cellar hole. I thought Theresa’s had been blown out to sea in a storm, and I was out of a job. But a week later Miss T. called me in. When I showed up, this place was sitting right here, where it always was.”

“Maybe Miss Theresa went to Florida, and took her house with her,” I joked. It fell flat.

Starla’s voice was thin as glass now. “I saw what I saw,” she insisted. “I told no one.”

“Wouldn’t someone have noticed a missing house and reported it?”

“Down here in this lonely back end of Kingsport?” she countered. A shudder seized her.