There was only room to cram one tiny table inside the wagon.

“And what does this one say?” the man asked, tracing a gnarled and sunburned finger over the weathered card.

Esmi glanced down at the Tower card and tried to recall what she had been taught to say. “It means you’ve got, uh, a good future ahead of you… a strong future…”

“Really? So I’m not going to be sick?” The old peasant sitting opposite her drew back almost seemed disappointed. “I’ve been to another one of you gyppos and she told me I might get sick.”

I’m getting sick of you, thought Esmi. For the last week she had done Manu’s bidding and put her services at the disposal of these geese, but it was becoming clear she didn’t have it in her to become a card reader. For one, there were too many cards and too many meanings and combinations; worse still, the geese that came knew what they wanted to hear already, and they seemed to get upset when what they were told didn’t go in line with that. They weren’t coming to have their destinies be read by a card-reader, they were coming in to have their own thoughts told back at them by a face-reader so they could feel content.

If she said terrible things, they walked out angry. And if she told them good things, they were unwilling to buy into it. What the hell did they want from her? Not like I want to be here anyway.

“You’ll survive,” said Esmi shyly.

“Bah! You have no idea what you’re doing.” The old man stood up.

“Say that again and I’ll put a curse on you!”

“Take your coin, you damned gypsy,” he spat, throwing them at her disdainfully. Only one of them fell on the table and spun; the other two clattered somewhere in the darkness at her feet. As she glanced out the window, she could see a spider dangling before it. Her mother had always been good at keeping the wagon clean, but at this point it hadn’t been giving a thorough scrubbing since she died. Spiders were probably the least of it.

It had been three years now since Sandra got killed along with Deniz. Somehow, things had only gotten better for the clan in the meantime—materially, at least. Under Manu, they secured a spot for their camp in one of Rovina’s most bustling centers, in Marash, and most of the clansmen were getting rich and mingling more and more with the geese. Manu and his new friends were within the town proper almost all day long.

Even Esmi was allowed in so long as she could pass a coin to each one of the guards. If not, she could just sneak in, since no one would bothered to throw her out once she was inside. Marash wasn’t a particularly big town by most standards, and was certainly smaller than Rovina’s great cities like Arlat and Duina. It had started out as a convenient outpost for travelers at a crossroads between the great cities, right by the river’s edge, and the fortuitous position slowly raised it into a wellspring of commercial activity. On any given day, many of the people going through the town were transients. For once, Esmi actually felt more like the geese and less like a gypsy when greeted by new arrivals on the daily. As the months went on, though, she began to pick up on patterns, and soon the same faces began to switch, disappearing and reappearing like the changing seasons.

There was no joy for her in any of it. For starters, she didn’t want to do what the other thirteen-year-olds were doing, which for girls mostly involved looking as pitiful as possible and going around begging on their knees. Following Manu and his friends would’ve been much preferable—every time Esmi saw the sort of expensive objects he was handling she was in awe: silks, silverwork, goldwork, exquisite swords and armors, holy ikons, alchemical ingredients, and even a couple of paintings. On the other hand, with Razlan falling apart the way he did, she had to take care not only of herself, but of her father as well.

In truth, Manu probably should have sent them away ages ago with how little they contributed to the welfare of the camp. There was no way they made enough to eat and drink along with the others and most of the coin Esmi got her hands on ended up getting drunk away by Razlan; but because of what had happened three years ago, they were allowed to stay…

There was nothing to do but wait to be free of him somehow. In a few years, she would be old enough to be on her own, or potentially even marry, something that did not make her happy but was nevertheless more exciting than dealing with all this. Nowadays he was drunk of his mind from dawn till dusk, though some days he never found his way back to home at all, and sometimes it took either Esmi or somebody else going out to look for him, only to find him passed out in some ditch. It was difficult to imagine the haggard, smelly, raggedy man he had devolved into as the prim and charming hunk he had been before Sandra’s death.

Esmi had been impacted by her mother’s death, but it had hit him a lot harder.

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At first it seemed not to matter at all, especially not right after it happened. Esmi was in such a state of shock that no tears could flow, and they still hadn’t after two days when she was buried. It seemed unreal that such a thing had actually happened to her mother. That vampires not only existed, but attacked them and snuffed Sandra’s life out for no reason.

Razlan was his old self up to and during the funeral, but past that, on his return to their wagon, he collapsed to his knees and began to weep hysterically and howl without any prior warning. He beat his head, slammed his fists into the ground, and told the gods to bring his Sandra back. He became so maddened and inconsolable that he had been dragged away from Esmi by the others and put up in another wagon to get better.

Esmi had felt sorry for him then, though she had been ashamed from the start. It was a disgusting display for the strong man he was supposed to be, and she knew her mother would have thought the same if she had been alive to witness it, or if she looked down on them from heaven.

Still, she was understanding at first, and even allowed him to cuddle her up at night despite all the weeping and reminiscing about her mother. A week passed. Then a month passed. And still there seemed to be no improvement at all. He just wept and wept, without any end…

Then the others offered him a bottle of fine brandy purchased when they got to Rovina, and insisted he gulp it down for his own good. That was nice at first, because at least he was too drunk to cry and curse the gods. But once he got a real taste for it he became such a drunkard that he could barely make his way up the three steps leading up into the wagon. The first time that Esmi came out in the morning and found him collapsed near the stairs, cradling a bottle, and reeking from having pissed himself, she wanted to die on the spot out of shame.

All that time she had spent wondering how Adda could ever become the way she was, and somehow she had become the same. Except, of course, that her friend was gone: gone with that stupid fucking vampire after destroying their lives and nearly bringing the clan to ruin.

I’ll find them and kill them both, Esmi told herself, and lurid fantasies followed. She was still too young for that now, much too young; but she would not be young forever. And one day, friend or not, vampire or not, she would make them both suffer for what they did to her mother.

They robbed her not only of one parents, but both.

Seeing as there were no clients, she placed the cards back in their ivory box, took off the silly gypsy headdress with clinking silver coins that Manu told her to wear for effect, and left the wagon.

The tightly-knit gypsy camp of her childhood was now a dispersed sprawl that occupied a large territory to the east of the town by the river, and many of the wagons had been replaced by permanent tents. In the warm summer air, Esmi could pick up on the acrid smoke of grilled meat. Their own wagon was placed right by the road, and from the threshold she could look up and see the high stone walls of Marash, and the steeple of the church, the only building large enough to go over them.

Esmi thought of maybe going to the town, but there was no coin to waste. As she stood there thinking things over, she noticed Manu coming down towards camp.

Now the boss of a wealthy clan, Manu walked with a swagger that would have made even Deniz blush. He was not only smartly dressed now, but genuinely fancy, in silken blouse with and damask vest of pearl buttons, with jewelry draping down his body and a feathered hat sitting at angle on his head.

Esmi ran up to greet him. “Manu! Manu, wait.”

The handsome gypsy stopped in his track and peered at her with his shadowy blue eyes from under the wide brim of his hat. “Why, if it isn’t my favorite kid. How’s business?”

“Awful. That’s what I wanted to talk about. I can’t keep doing this…”

“Well, Esmi, you gotta do something,” he said thoughtfully. “You won’t beg, you won’t peddle, you won’t do card-reads, and you’re too young to whore yourself, so what do you want?”

Esmi struck a steely pose. “I can steal.”

He snorted. “Steal? Come on. What are you gonna steal, an apple? You’ve never stolen anything in your life. Besides, we live here now. We do business with these people. It’s just not worth it. You wanna get some fingers cut off for stealing a moldy loaf of bread? Just do the cards. It’s easy, I told you. You’ll get used to it. Most would kill for that easy job, you know that?”

“But—”

Manu raised a finger and booped her nose. “No buts.”

“But people don’t like me.” Just thinking about the day’s encounters made her exhale with frustration.

Manu sighed and crouched in front of her, then leaned in intimately. Esmi could smell something intoxicatingly sweet coming off of him, almost alcoholic, but it was not booze. Perfume. “Has anyone hurt you?”

“No.”

“Have they slapped you around? Kicked you in the butt? Taken you by your hair and dragged you out of your wagon kicking and screaming?”

“No…”

“Then it’s not that bad, is it? So they say a few bad words. So what? You think priests don’t get the same? It doesn’t matter. You’re lucky, because you’re a damned cute kid. “

“I-”

Manu clamped his hand over her mouth quickly. “Enough. Keep trying.” He reached down, plucked his satchel of coins, then told her to hold her hands out. Into them, he poured coins freely. “There, that should last you for a few days. Go into town. Have some nice food. Meet some boys. Relax. Then, you come back, and you read the cards. Got it?”

Seeing his generosity, Esmi could scarcely afford to spit in the face of it. After all, they would be homeless without him. “Yes, Manu.”

He kissed her forehead and sought her eyes. “Good girl. Bad things happened to you. And to me, Esmeralda. We’re bound by blood in a way, and I think of you as my little sister. You know my father was always very fond of you, so I feel it’s my duty to make sure you don’t end up one of these thieves and whores. Use your mind, it’ll get you a lot further.”

“I’ll try.”

He rose, then gave her a playful kick in the butt. “Well then, off you go. Go and have fun!”

How she was going to have fun Esmi didn’t know, but she nodded along gratefully and padded towards the town gates at a quick pace.