Chapter Text
The chairs were velvet. Gold-trimmed, obnoxiously tufted, and too stiff to be comfortable, as if they’d been engineered to make the spine reevaluate its priorities. The table—seventy percent floral centerpiece, thirty percent bad decisions—groaned under the weight of enough soufflé to reupholster every car in Beverly Hills. The air smelled of money, Botox, and Chanel No. 5 in that exact order.
Avis Amberg had attended more brunches than she'd had hot meals in the past month (and she was very partial to hot meals), but this one took the proverbial cake. Hosted by one Mrs. Lenora Langley-Higgins, who had three chihuahuas, one personality, and exactly zero functioning brain cells, the event had all the makings of an aneurysm waiting to happen.
That was before she walked in.
Lilia Calderu moved through the room like fog moves through a graveyard. Her heels barely made a sound against the marble floor (Avis clocked them immediately: black, patent leather, toe slightly pointed, witchy as hell). Her gray hair, piled high in soft, sculptural waves, looked like it had been sculpted by a particularly vain Italian deity. And her dress, an emerald green, floor-length thing, with bell sleeves that could double as wings, left no doubt: she was either going to tell your fortune or curse your family line. Possibly both.
Mrs. Langley-Higgins gasped like she was seeing Jesus. “Lilia! Come, darling, come! Read my palms, tell me if I’ll ever get my figure back!”
“You’d have better luck asking Saint Anthony,” Lilia said smoothly, taking a seat with the composure of someone who knew she was the most interesting person within a fifty-mile radius. Her accent was rich and vaguely threatening, like something that belonged in a Fellini film or a particularly expensive hit job.
Avis didn’t look up from her mimosa.
Of course she’d heard about her—the “Sicilian sorceress of Sunset Boulevard,” the “Tarot Tigress,” the woman who’d reportedly warned Dean Martin about an affair and ended up crashing his third marriage. Rumor had it she read palms at orgies and once hexed a studio executive into a week-long bout of explosive diarrhea. Avis, being a woman of reason (and more importantly, a woman of taste), didn’t buy a word of it.
Unfortunately, Lilia Calderu seemed to buy her.
“You,” Lilia said suddenly, eyes landing on her like a trap snapping shut. “You have very interesting hands.”
Avis lifted a brow. “That so?”
“Yes,” Lilia purred, taking a sip of her espresso (where did she get it? No one knew. It simply appeared). “They belong to someone who doesn’t believe in anything but likes to pretend she does.”
Avis made a noise halfway between a scoff and a laugh. “Darling, I don’t pretend anything. I run a studio, not a circus.”
Lilia’s eyes glinted. “Oh, but Hollywood is a circus. You’re just its lion tamer.”
And just like that, she reached for Avis’s hand.
Now, Avis Amberg didn’t let just anyone touch her. She’d once fired a secretary for breathing too close. But something about the way Lilia’s fingers brushed hers—cool, slender, absurdly confident—froze her in place.
“You have a long life line,” Lilia said softly, tracing it. “But you carry too much. You hold on to control like it owes you something.”
Avis arched an eyerow. “And does it?”
Lilia smiled like a knife being sharpened. “It owes you nothing. But someone might.”
Now, to be very clear, Lilia’s thumb might have brushed her wrist a second too long. And she might have tilted her head with a gaze that could melt film stock. Avis, who was very good at pretending nothing ever affected her, did not twitch. But internally? Internally, something short-circuited.
“You’re flirting with me,” Avis said coldly.
Lilia blinked. “I’m reading your palm.”
“You touched my wrist.”
“You have a very readable wrist.”
Avis stood up so quickly her chair screeched. “This was delightful. Really. I’ll be sure to recommend you to the next desperate housewife I meet.”
Lilia blinked, momentarily stunned. Then she smiled—wider this time. Crueler. “Don’t worry. I’ve already read your future.”
“Oh?” Avis asked, arms crossed.
“You’re going to be absolutely insufferable about this.”
Avis didn’t even dignify that with a reply. She downed the rest of her mimosa, made eye contact with precisely no one, and swept out of the room like a hurricane in heels.
Behind her, Lilia Calderu chuckled under her breath and whispered something in Sicilian that sounded very much like, “Quella donna mi farà impazzire.”
(That woman will drive me crazy.)