The Witch and the Huntsman Read Free Page B

next Christmas at my folks or just me returning home again and turning on the coffee machine or opening a bottle of wine. This is called ‘clairvoyance.’
    But this time, I couldn’t see anything past the moment I arrived at the Chasse. And no matter what I did, I still couldn’t get the picture of that movie, The Shining, out of my head.
    Damn you, Stephen King.

 
    Chapter Three
     
    Three hundred and five dollars a night it was going to cost me to stay there!
    And that was for the cheapest rooms they had, the little squished-up ones that overlooked the parking lot! Plus $500 for a round-trip ticket to Portland on Alaska Airlines, the cheapest I could find on such short notice. And speaking of parking lots, I’d have to leave my Camry in short term parking at LAX—and who knew for how long? Smithy was right; throw in a rental car, and this crazy trip to rescue a person I’d never even met before was easily going to cost me two grand! Holy crap ! My Visa card was going to be underwater for the rest of the year.
    “ What was that?” snapped my boss. “I didn’t hear it.”
    “ I didn’t say anything.” At least I thought I hadn’t. Not out loud. Maybe I had, though—this was going to be two thousand dollars I couldn’t really afford. Especially if I was losing a whole week of paid work.
    “ I don’t think a week’s suspension is unfair in this case,” continued Donna, like a true mind reader, which she claimed to be. Not that that was any tough trick at the moment.
    I’d gone in for my punishment at noon, as commanded. Her ‘offices’ consisted of a single loft over a pool hall that was filled with tables and banks of phones. And her desk. All the furniture there looked like it had been inherited from a bookie’s office, which it probably was.
    “ It could have been two weeks, you know. Or we could have just fired you. You’ve been blowing off the thirty-minute rule a lot lately.”
    The ‘thirty-minute rule’ is how long we’re supposed to keep the client engaged in chatting on hotlines. The first twenty minutes’ profit all goes to Donna; after that, our commission kicks in. After thirty minutes, a client will begin to relax and pour out all her personal details—and in our business, it’s almost always a “her” — so reaching that golden $150 hour, when you’ve established a relationship and the big money call backs are in the cards, gets easier and easier from there.
    “ Look, Allison,” Donna went on, her voice softening just like I was one of her palmistry marks back in the day, “you’re one of my best readers, and I personally don’t want to lose you. We feel you’ve got really great potential. But you need to pay more attention to the micro-economics of the industry. Take this week to brush up on your Cheshires and get your act together, okay?”
    Cheshires are these flexible scripts we read from where we’re supposed to get personal info and do ‘high-dollar’ readings. Why they’re called Cheshires, I have absolutely no idea. And Donna’s not the worst in the business by a long shot—she’s like Honest Abe compared to some of the other outfits I’ve worked for. At least she doesn’t use ‘fishing and baiting’ techniques to illegally obtain credit card info or do ‘curse removals’ for an extra fee.
    Beware any psychic who tells you there is a curse on you, by the way; those are always phony. Unless, of course, it’s me saying it...
    Since I really am a psychic, I mean. For instance, right now I could read Donna’s bullshit like a book. For all her talk about how great I was, she just plain didn’t like me.
    I fumed about our conversation on the plane all the way to Portland. I kept coming up with petty little ideas for revenge. I mean, I was a witch , for crying out loud! I should be able to hex her pretty good in revenge for that week I’d been suspended—nothing terrible or tragic, you understand, but just a sort of subconscious reminder that it’s