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”You’re a hard woht I’d be glad to see him “I could almost be hurt by that, Corine”

Well, I couldn’t really argue, as I’d left hi here?”

“I need you to handle so for me, just one job I wouldn’t have co, he fixed striated a I was a sucker for that look

Or I used to be I wasn’t anymore

Chance wasn’t er Or ed objects, didn’t want to tell people their loved one had been strangled while wearing that sweater I didn’t want to do that anymore

We had a hell of a run, him and me For as an witches, truck-driving enuine lucky charms out of the trunks of their cars, and folks who simply defied description hat they could do and why they did it Soels and deht

Chance had a way of ferreting out the weird and the is, quivered with unseen divinations And he looked beautiful while doing it

My heart gave a little kick After all this tienius genetics had gone into Chance’s uely Asian look, capped by uncanny tiger eyes and a mouth that could tempt a holy sister to sin I wondered if he’d felt the last kiss I brushed against that o I wondered whether he’d missed me or just the revenue

To make matters worse, he kne to dress, and today he wore Kenneth Cole extremely well: crinkle-washed shirt in Italian cotton, jet with a muted silver stripe, dusty black button-fly jeans, polished shoes, and a black velvet blazer I didn’t need his sartorial elegance to reauze blouse with crimson embroidery around the neck and a parti-colored skirt I was even wearing flip-flops They had a big red silk hibiscus on each toe, but were flip-flops nonetheless It was aht face

But then, he’d been raised well His reat ki such knowledge granted too ured it was just more of his bullshit, but with Chance, you never could be sure He had the devil’s own luck, and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Lucifer himself someday came to claim him

“It’s never just one job with you,” I said with a trace of bitterness “I’ h et out, and if you ever felt anything for me, don’t tell anybody where I a at the end

I’d built this life I didn’t want to have to parlay to keep it

Without a word, he flattened his pallass case that housed my rare treasures When he lifted his hand, I expected to see his coin because the ite that sent snakes disco dancing in my belly

Because it meant I had to help him

The Pewter Buddha

Hard to believe such a small item could cause me so much trouble

I stared at it for a longit to disappear, but like Chance, it wouldn’t Not until I handled it and followed the trail to its source The last time I saw this little pewter pocket Buddha, it had been cupped in Yi Min-chin’s hand

It wasn’t valuable—such things sold for around two bucks—but his mother rubbed it for luck or when she was nervous, and it had never been out of her possession before to the best of e The fact that it lay on my counter

Well, I understood Chance’s expression a whole lot better now

“Tell me what you know” I still didn’t touch it, but he knew one conclusion Over the course of our benighted relationship, I came to love his mom more than I ever loved him

Soht I’d see hiain My life tends to run by chapters, and when I close one, there are no recurring characters, mainly because they lie beneath six feet of cold dirt So I suppose Chance did well enough withwhen I left him

While he seehts, I knelt and fished froe a couple of old-fashioned Cokes, the kind that coure Because I was shaken, the Cokesplant and the truck that carried them to the store, the sweaty man with a coht them

FocusingI have to choose to read so; it takes pure focus born of necessity and habit to keep e an ite that whatever his mother’s Buddha held would be bad