Day Dreamer Read Free Page A

garden, ran across the low porch. Her breath caught. The front door was ajar.
    “Persa?” She crossed the threshold into the shop. It was too dark and still. Something was definitely wrong. She felt her way through the familiar room.
    The table where Persa conducted her readings was overturned, its velvet cloth, worn and shiny, pooled on the floor. Amid the folds, glittering shards and spears of shattered crystal reflected what little light filtered in from the streetlamp outside.
    Celine rounded the table and nearly fell over Persa’s body. Her guardian lay stretched out on the cypress floor amid the crumbs of soft brick she had just that morning carefully sprinkled about to absorb moisture and dirt.
    She knelt down and reached for Persa’s hand. It was as cold and lifeless as the broken crystal ball. She recoiled in shock and horror. The scene was just as she had envisioned.
    Celine didn’t think her legs would hold her, but somehow she made her way to the shelf where they kept the sulfur matches. Her hands shook so hard it took many tries to light the lamp. Afraid of sloshing the lamp oil and burning the place down, she set the lamp on the floor. The flame was reflected in the countless crystal splinters. She knelt over Persa again.
    Her beloved guardian’s lips were indeed blue, just as Celine had seen in the vision. Persa’s face was stark and horrifying, her expression was paralyzed into one of abject terror. Celine reached out and lovingly closed the eyes of the patient, caring old woman who had been both mother and father to her for so very long.
    Then she leaned back on her heels and covered her face with her hands. Celine could not recall the last time she had cried. There had been no reason to until now.
    Her first rush of soul-wrenching tears were spent in a matter of moments. There would be time to mourn after she saw justice done. Determined to find a policeman and lead him back to Perot’s, she stood and shoved her hair back off her tear-streaked face.
    The curfew cannon boomed on the square marking eight o’clock, the hour when slaves, sailors and soldiers were to clear the streets. Perot’s slaves would soon return to find him lying in his own blood, the hilt of her knife protruding from his ribs.
    They would know it was she who had stabbed him. His house slave would surely recall serving her chocolate. The Durels had spoken to both Perot and her on the street.
    Perhaps a hue and cry had already gone out and the police were on their way to question her. As Celine stood up, she nervously brushed at her damp skirt and glanced around the room. She had nothing to fear. Jean Perot was the murderer. Why, then, did she feel so frightened? Why did she feel such a strong urge to flee?
    She had killed in self-defense. She would show them Persa’s body, show them what Jean had done. She had seen it all in her vision—
    In her vision.
    Would they believe her?
    She paced the room with her hands clasped, her fingers as cold as ice, as cold as Persa’s. Shivers ran up and down her spine. She was nearly soaked through to the skin and could not get warm. A light weight cloak of forest green was hanging on a nearby peg. She quickly drew it around her shoulders and tied the cord at her neck. Still she shivered, as her mounting panic chipped away at reason.
    The Perot family was one of the oldest, most revered in the city. The elder Perot, a banker, had served as a legislator. She was no one. She was a fortune-teller’s ward. She raised her fists to her forehead and closed her eyes. The gold coins in her bodice pressed against her breasts.
    Think, Celine
.
    It would be her word against the Perots’. Her word against that of a rich Creole family with a pedigree a mile long. They could afford the best legal counsel. She could not afford to keep herself out of the old prison in the Cabildo for more than a day. Besides, who would care about finding the murderer of an old fortune-teller when there was the murder of a