He exhaled, the sound of someone letting the air out of a tire real slow. “Maybe. I’m as afraid of what you’ll find as you are.”

That made sense. Nobody wants to receive bad news any more than I want to deliver it. Goddammit, I thought I was done with this for good. Bracing myself, I reached for the token before I could think better of it. It burned a little before it kicked in and I felt the pain on my palm where the metal blistered my skin.

You see, my gift springs from my mother’s sacrifice, dying for me in the fire, and every use of it carries me back to that night. But I didn’t let go. I accepted the price and let the vision come.

Fear subsumed me, bolstered by the resolve of a woman who made the better of two bad choices, a woman walking with a lesser devil. She definitely went of her own free will, though. No force, no physical coercion. But there’s no sound track; I can’t hear what’s been said; I just feel what they feel, see what they see.

Details were fuzzy, like I was looking through a dirty lens, but beyond the door, I saw a white truck parked. On the side it read Something Sanitation or maybe Salvation. My head throbbed, almost overwhelming the pain in my palm. Holding on, I watched while the pewter Buddha slipped from her fingers, bounced twice, where it lay until Chance found it.

Done.

The token clattered to the glass countertop as I let go and wrapped my wounded hand around my Coke bottle. It took a minute before the nausea subsided enough for me to speak, but I got it out in fits and starts, knees threatening to give and let me fall to the floor. Not the most horrific handling, but the mystery of Yi Min-chin reminded me of trees that grow in bayou country, miles of root hidden by dead green water.

I couldn’t figure why she’d left her luck. Did she think it was tapped out? She wouldn’t need it anymore? Well, if she’d known Chance was looking for me, she might have left it as a record. She’d seen me handle, and she knew the scars on my palms didn’t come from a self-mutilation fetish. So maybe that was why. Or maybe it was a map; maybe something I’d seen could help us find her.