Page 31 of A Moth to the Flame (Utopia #1)

The lady sprawls her left hand toward us, palm up. Her nails are long and pointy at the tips, just as red as her lips. “Forty for each of you. If you want a combined fortune, that’ll be another forty.”

I cough. That’s a hell of a lot more than I was expecting. Most people don’t carry that much cash around here, not even for festivals.

She must sense our hesitation to pony up so much dough. Her smile looks almost sorry. “Your auras are locked down tighter than Fort Knox. Whatever gold you’re hiding inside will take me considerable effort to break out.”

Cordie bites my lip, cutting a questioning glance my way.

I nod. We have to take every chance we can to fix this.

She fishes all the bills out of my wallet and slaps them on the table.

I empty her wallet, too, then set her heavy purse on the floor beside my chair.

The fortune teller swipes our money and deposits it under the table.

She stares at each of us like we’re the circus acts in this tent, and then she shakes her head and waves her hands over the glass bowling ball.

“Names?” she asks as she stares into the glass.

On instinct, I don’t want this chick to know my name. She’ll probably use it to clean out my bank account the second she leaves these mountains and gets internet again.

“Duke Athol Castellaw,” Cordie answers immediately.

A soft hiss comes from behind me. The fortune teller’s eyes widen.

How does Cordie even know my middle name? I hate it, so I never use it.

She shrugs, like she heard the question I didn’t ask.

“Athol,” the chick still playing with a giant ball repeats. “That’s a very old name. Not common around these parts.”

I didn’t name myself. Never questioned my parents about their choices, but I’ll admit I always thought it was weird that me and my brothers all share the same middle name. That’s not common around these parts either.

She turns toward me with a curl to her mouth. “And yours?”

“Cordelia Diane McCoy.”

“Interesting,” the woman murmurs. “Do you know what your name means?”

Trouble, in my experience.

“Heart divine,” the woman says, her voice raising goosebumps on Cordie’s arms. “That’s a lovely name.”

“What does my name mean?” Cordie asks with fake excitement.

“The leader of New Ireland,” the woman answers with a smug smile.

Either she doesn’t catch Cordie’s flat tone, or she doesn’t care.

“Did you know that there’s a Duke Atholl of Scotland?

To this day, it’s the only duchy in the United Kingdom that’s permitted to maintain its own independent army.

In fact, the Atholl Highlanders are the only private army remaining in all of Europe. ”

I could care less. I live in West Virginia, not Scotland. Unless the duke knows something about body swapping, random trivia isn’t what we spent all our money on.

“Really?” Cordie frowns like this useless information matters. “I didn’t know that. Why is that army allowed to exist? Seems like a security risk.”

“Why does that name mean leader of New Ireland if the duke has an army in Scotland?” I ask, just to prove a point.

The woman smiles at us. “Fate works in mysterious ways. Let us see what The Fates have in store for you.”

Shit. Sounds like she’s about to feed us fake winning lotto numbers, too.

She pops her gaze up from her little ball, then ping-pongs between me and Cordie before settling on me again. “Your surname is McCoy? Truly?”

I glance at Cordie, who suddenly looks as nervous as I feel. It’s all I can do not to glance behind me at the cat. “Yeah. Why?”

“That’s not right,” the woman mumbles as her eyes dart back and forth across the crystal ball.

Cordie leans forward in her chair and presses, “Why?”

The fortune teller furrows her brow and bites her lower lip. “Are you married?”

I raise my left hand. “Do you see either of us wearing wedding bands?”

It’s worrying to watch my own face pale so fast. Cordie murmurs, “No. We’re not married.”

“But…” The fortune teller’s gaze bounces between us again. “You’re mates.”

The silence that follows is deafening.

I glance around, half expecting to see smoke or sparkly fog filling up the tent, or for the cat to claw Cordie’s back.

I can’t shake the sense that’s something’s about to happen. Since I don’t know what, I’m on full alert.

“What did you say?”

I turn toward Cordie at the sound of absolute horror lacing my voice.

She looks like she’s going to blow chunks at any second. My body is absolutely, unnaturally still, like I’ve been frozen the way her cat clock was .

Mates must be a bad thing, for people anyway. When it comes to animals, mates just fuck and make babies.

It takes me a few more seconds to grasp what this chick is saying.

All those fantasies I couldn’t escape. All the ways I took her, like I was nothing more than an animal. The dark turns those dreams have taken since we switched bodies.

Mates.

I can’t shake the image in my head of a buck mounting a doe.

They don’t have to love each other.

They don’t even have to like each other.

They can hate each other.

Because it’s not about feelings.

It’s about animal instinct.

That’s why I’ve always been drawn to her.

Like a moth to the flame.

And I hated her for it. I blamed her for what was wrong with me.

I can’t hate her anymore. Not after all I’ve seen and all I’ve heard.

I’m still fucked up. I just have a name for it now, a diagnosis for my disease.

Maybe this fortune teller knows the cure.

My attention lurches to the woman when she taps her bowling ball then leans forward over the table. “That’s why your wish didn’t turn out the way you hoped.”

My face pales. We have to be matching shades of white now.

“How do you know about the wish?” Cordie asks, my voice dangerously low.

The fortune teller frowns. “Your lives are linked. That’s likely why The Fates didn’t see fit to grant your wish. Mates are exceedingly rare.”

“What does that mean?” I ask, panic making Cordie’s heart race. “Why do you keep using that word—mates? Like we’re animals.”

“Anything that isn’t a rock or a plant is an animal,” she replies coolly.

The cat hisses again, but it’s all I can do to breathe through the pounding in Cordie’s head.

She’s being quieter than expected, but it’s no wonder.

This woman knows shit. The cat brought us in here for a reason .

“How do we fix this?” I choke out. I can ignore the pain, the panic. I’ll channel my inner Cordelia. I’ll ask a million questions until I get every answer I need to fix this.

The fortune teller stares at me for an eternity. “What is there to fix?”

“You just said this is rare,” I grit out. “It’s not normal . How. Do. We. Fix. It?”

“If that’s what you really want…” The lady sits back in her seat and rubs her chin. Her eyes glaze over as she thinks. “Ten thousand bucks, and I might be able to help you.”

“Why ten thousand dollars?” Cordie asks, my voice flat.

I cut her a side eye, but she’s staring at her bag on the ground.

“I’ll have to confer with some contacts, but I’ve heard of cleaving spells.

” The fortune teller sighs—not like she’s irritated, more like she’s disappointed in us for asking at all.

“They require ingredients that can’t be found at a local grocery store.

It will take me weeks and money I don’t have to acquire them all.

Not to mention bribery to get my hands on any specific scrolls we may need. ”

I’m ready to hand her both of my kidneys if she’ll take them as payment. I don’t have even half of her asking price to my name, and I’m not about to ask Cordie to give more than has already been taken from her.

“Do you have a card?” I ask, trying not to wheeze. “It might take me a while to get that kind of money. I can call you as soon as I have it.”

The fortune teller twirls her hand, and a business card appears between her pointer and middle fingers.

“I travel constantly. If you contact me when I’m in California, then I won’t be here at your beck and call.

Like I said, it will take me considerable time to find what we need for a spell of this magnitude.

I won’t begin purchasing the grocery list until you’re able to pay for the items. If the cost of goods or the price of information goes up in that amount of time, so will your final bill. ”

I try to snatch the card from between her fingers, but Cordie’s hand is shaking too badly.

The woman takes pity on me and places it on the table, sliding it in my direction .

“Thank you.” The words slide over Cordie’s tongue like sandpaper against glass. “We’ll be in touch.”

Cordie leaves the tent before I can force her knees to stop shaking enough to walk.

I don’t know where the cat goes. I don’t care. I find Cordie waiting for me just outside, and I tuck the business card into her bag.

“You can just throw that away.” Her words don’t match the tone of my voice.

She sounds off. As disturbed as I feel.

I study her carefully, but the expression on my face gives nothing away.

“She said she could help us,” I argue, but I stutter through the words. I’m fucking shaking. Sweating. Close to losing it in the middle of town. “It’s a fuck ton of money, sure, but do you really want to be stuck in my body for the rest of your life?”

What happens when I can’t resist those dark fantasies anymore?

What happens if we’re not in our right bodies when I give into them?

“She played us,” Cordie insists. “It was a scam.”

“How was it a scam?” I know, deep in my fucked-up head, that it wasn’t. “She even knew about the wish!”

“She suggested that one of us made a wish,” Cordie explains with a disgusted curl of my lip. “She probably saw the well in the middle of town when she was setting up. Most people wish for something at wells. She never specified which one of us wished for exactly what.”

“What about the mates thing?” I choke out. “Why would she have guessed that?”

Cordie cocks my jaw back and forth like she’s trying really hard to control my body. “I dunno, Duke. Why did you feel the need to put one of my old fantasy books in my purse this morning?”

“I—I grabbed it out of your room. Thought you might…want it.”

Because I couldn’t fucking not provide her some kind of comfort before dragging her here today. Because I fucking know that books have been there for her in ways no person ever has. Because I don’t fucking understand half of the shit we just found out, but I fucking know it’s true .

Cordie rolls my eyes. “Fated mates? That’s a fantasy romance trope. She just played up what she thought I would latch onto.”

“It’s still a shot,” I insist, even if it’s only a shot for her. “Nothing else has worked. Unless we find something in your Granny’s collection to help us…”

Cordie sighs, long and loud. “If you want to waste that kind of money, then be my guest. I quit believing in fairy tales that end in happily-ever-after a long time ago. I can’t stop you if you’re hellbent on hanging all your hopes on lies.”

She walks away without a backward glance.

My heart lays at her feet.

Cordie McCoy, know-it-all bookworm, quit believing in happy ever afters.

And I’m one of the reasons why.

I’ll get that money somehow. The cleaving spell will work.

It has to.

Mates or not, I was never meant to be Cordelia McCoy’s happily ever after.