Zodiac

Josie knew it was a scam. She knew it was a scam, and she knew that Santiago knew that she knew. She could see it in his sparkling brown eyes, in the flirtatiously crooked smile he wore on his russet cheeks, in every knowing murmur he uttered in her ears. Even the parts of the scam she hadn't yet figured out, Josie still recognized as part of a system of scammery that she just wasn't familiar enough with the art of the con to understand the mechanism of... but that made them no less deceptive and dishonest and genuinely fake.

She knew it was a scam. But he was cute and he was charming and he hadn't asked her for sex or money yet, so she went along with it. "This little dimple at the very beginning of your lifeline," he purred, caressing Josie's palm delicately with a single finger and gazing seductively into her seafoam green eyes. "It's very interesting. It almost has a little bit of a snowflake shape when you trace it... were you born in a snowstorm, perhaps? Somewhere around the end of February? Maybe your mother had just a little bit of trouble getting to the hospital."

It was very clever of him to ask questions like that when he was touching her hand so delicately. Josie might have tried to play dumb under other circumstances, just to see if Santiago's supposedly mystical intuitions could pick up a garden-variety deception on her part. But when he had such a gentle, intimate caress up and down the lines of her palm, tracing her ivory skin so carefully that he was sensitized to even the slightest motion, Josie couldn't hide any of her emotional reactions from him. "Y-yes," she mumbled, blushing hard. "February 27th. Mom always said she thought she was going to give birth in a ditch on I-81."

She didn't know how he knew. It could have been a lucky guess, of course; Josie remembered reading somewhere that half the job of a successful psychic was learning how to give out twenty different suggestions while leaving the audience remembering only the one that turned out to be true. But it seemed more likely that he found it out from someone else. Santiago Delgado had been drifting through the wealthy social circles of upstate New York for a few months now, charming his way into fancy parties just like this one with his mentalist tricks--one of the other young women he'd flirted with had no doubt dropped a few tidbits of information about her, and he was just using them to prime the pump. It was a very clever scam, but Josie knew it was still a scam.

But it was an entertaining scam, at least, well worth whatever it cost in food and drink to bring the handsome young man to Carli's party, and Josie wasn't done being amused by it yet. "I thought you felt like a Pisces," he crowed, his voice still soft and mellow and cheerful but now filled with a subtle triumph that Josie wasn't entirely fond of. "They're the most empathetic and sensitive of all the signs, you know. Filled with creativity and vivid imagination." Josie nodded despite herself, her long dark ponytail bobbing up and down in unconscious agreement with Santiago's words. She'd just come home from her first semester at Cornell, and while her grades hadn't been the best, she'd already impressed a couple of professors with her artistic style. It was hard not to enjoy that feeling of being recognized for something so personal and vital.

But of course, that was how astrology worked, wasn't it? Josie might have been young, but she wasn't entirely naive. Even at nineteen, she knew that someone filled every horoscope with enough vague and positive descriptions that pretty much anyone could who wanted to could see themselves in them. Nobody would read the list of traits associated with their sign and say, 'What? Brave, imaginative, passionate, and hardworking? Boy did they peg me wrong.' Josie could appreciate the compliments without believing that Santiago had any special insights into her personality or her mystic destiny or whatever.

Still, it was hard not to flinch just a little when he said, "I can see from your heart line that you've been developing your skills in interesting directions lately--working in a new medium, perhaps? Charcoals? I can sense that you put a lot of passion into your art." She--she didn't know how he knew that. It couldn't have been any of her friends, they hadn't seen any of the work she'd been doing at Cornell. None of her professors were here in Syracuse, and she hadn't put any of her stuff onto social media, either; she wasn't quite ready for that, not while she was still experimenting and discovering what she could do.

Had... had he noticed a smudge on her hands? That had to have been it. Some little trace of charcoal left behind even after hand-washing, a tiny smear that a clever, observant scammer like Santiago spotted and used to try to trick Josie into falling under his spell. It was really smart, and Josie had to admit that she couldn't wait to see where he took it. But she wasn't fooled. Not yet. She fixed her gaze on his deep brown eyes and said, "What else does my heart line tell you?"

He gave her a playful little chuckle and traced his finger seductively along her palm. "I would love to tell you, Senorita Vogel," he purred, in a Latin accent that sounded just a bit too rich to be real. "But I'm afraid it's just a trifle too noisy in here to hold a serious conversation--to say nothing of the interference I might get to any psychic emanations you're sending out." He gave her the subtlest of winks, almost subliminal in its momentary motion, and Josie knew he really just wanted to get her alone. He wasn't really psychic. He wasn't really getting inside her head.

But she decided to play along anyway. "Of course," she murmured demurely, nodding over to the door without looking away from his charming gaze. "I believe Carli has an unused guest suite we can slip away to? She's an old friend, I'm sure she won't mind if I monopolize your time for a little while." The words felt oddly hollow in Josie's mouth, as though she was reciting them from a script written for Polite Society Ladies while her actual mind resided somewhere else entirely. She'd been to so many parties like this, gone through the motions and formalities so many times that she didn't really need to think about what she was saying.

But then... what was she thinking about? Of course, she realized, rising from her seat automatically to follow Santiago out into the hallway and down the dimly lit corridors into the unused wing of the house. She was staying alert for the scam. She was observing Santiago closely, watching his body language and listening carefully to his intonation and paying focused attention to his every word, ready to catch his confidence trick when he finally unveiled it for her to stumble into. That was the important thing. She could play along as much as she wanted so long as she kept an eye out for the trap when it closed.

Josie's brow furrowed slightly in confusion when he led her directly to the exact guest suite she'd pictured in her mind's eye the moment he suggested going somewhere more private. "H-how did you....?" she mumbled before she could catch herself; Josie didn't intend to give Santiago even a single moment of suspicion that his confidence tricks were actually working on her, but at the same time she had no idea how he'd managed to pull off this particular stunt. Carli's family had six guest suites, and only two of them were occupied. How could he possibly know that she was thinking about this particular bedroom?

But he only smiled and chuckled and led her inside. "I'm psychic, remember?" he said, closing the door behind them and turning the key in the lock. "I know all sorts of things about you, Josie. It's all written right here on your pretty hand." He took her wrist again, and Josie couldn't help letting out a tiny sigh of comfortable relaxation as he began to trace his fingers back up and down lines of her palm. Something about his touch felt so soothing, so calming that it centered her right back into the peaceful and pleasant experience of staring into his eyes and listening to his mellow baritone unpick the secrets of her mind. Not that they were really secrets. Not that he was really psychic. But it all felt very good anyway.

She settled into a chair across the room's small table from him, the experience somehow so much more intimate in the warm silence that was soaked up by the suite's dark, burgundy walls. It occurred to Josie that her dress had a very similar color, and she wondered absently if that had tipped Santiago off; he'd probably stayed here in the past, perhaps even very recently given Carli's mom's interest in astrology, and perhaps he'd seen inside the guest quarters. If he had, and if he recognized her favorite color... yes. That all made sense. He was clever, but Josie was still smarter. She could keep playing along, keep enjoying his flirtations without falling victim to his tricks. A broad, satisfied smile spread slowly across her dimpled cheeks as she let herself relax again.

"So where were we?" he asked, his gentle tones barely even breaking the hush in the room. "Ah yes. A Pisces. An artistic one, at that, very passionate and imaginative, but the Pisces is a water sign, not a fire one. Your passion flows in a smooth, liquid current, carrying you deeper into that which you most desire. Your hands are water hands as well, making you... even more sensitive." His fingers caressed her soft palms with butterfly touches that made Josie feel ever so slightly spaced out from the endorphin rush. That was part of his plan too, no doubt--get her nice and punchy and naturally high, then spring whatever con he was planning once she was all gullible and susceptible to his mind-reading routine. She would be ready for it.

"But of course being doubled in your sign and your hand carries certain dangers as well," Santiago purred, his rich voice and seductive Latin accent making Josie squirm ever so slightly in her chair. She knew that he was probably from Paramus or somewhere, really, but so long as she didn't let herself be fooled she could just enjoy the illusion he was weaving around her. She could drift along on those gorgeous tones, those smoldering eyes, and have a little fun occupying his time and attention so he didn't prey on someone more vulnerable.

"That imagination of yours can be a wonderful gift, allowing you to easily and effortlessly picture anything your mind can conjure... but sometimes that inner world, that inner life can be so compelling that it's easy to get lost in it. It's so easy to drift deeper on those currents, deeper down until reality becomes the illusion and your mind only sees and hears and thinks what it wants to." He kept tracing his fingers along his palm as he spoke, following a different path each time, never letting her become accustomed to the sensations. Josie could feel her head bobbing up and down in vacant, unthinking agreement with his words; she didn't know how Santiago knew, but she'd often lost herself in daydreaming during classes. It was the one problem that kept her grades from being their best.

"And as sensitive as a Pisces is, and as empathetic and as they can be, it leaves them very trusting. Pisces open themselves up so easily to new experiences, new people, new situations. It's a beautiful thing, senorita, but it can leave a girl very vulnerable. When you drift along those currents, always going deeper, always following your passions and desires, sometimes it's simply impossible for you to stop." There was something odd about his voice and his cadence, but Josie was still stuck on trying to figure out how he knew she was so prone to daydreaming. He was pouring on the tricks faster than she could solve them, especially when her thoughts felt so unaccountably sluggish for reasons she couldn't describe.

"And because you're also a water hand, that makes you even more empathetic and attuned to the feelings of others." Josie caught herself nodding again, her ponytail bobbing thoughtlessly up and down at every pause. She realized her breathing had synchronized with Santiago's, slowing down and becoming more even and regular as she stared and listened and sank into his soothing touch. She hadn't blinked in a couple of minutes now. It somehow didn't feel like she needed to anymore.

"Feel here, pretty girl? Feel how long that heart line is? It's much longer than your head line. When your passions drive you, when you're caught in that current and it sweeps you along deeper away from reality and into fantasy, your head simply can't catch up. You can't think, and you don't want to think. Not when you can feel instead, not when you can let go and enjoy the profound stirrings of sensation flowing down and down and down into peace and pleasure." Down. Somehow the word echoed in Josie's head like the tolling of a bell, drowning out all her other thoughts. Down. Deeper down. Deeper....

Of course. Josie realized what he was doing. He was hypnotizing her. She'd never experienced it personally before, but she knew a few people who had and they described very similar sensations. Difficulty thinking. Pleasant relaxation. Slow, even breathing. A lack of blink response. A sense of heaviness to the limbs, as if moving was too much effort. The more Josie catalogued the signs, the more she recognized exactly what Santiago was doing to her. It was a clever trick, and it had almost caught her, but she'd spotted it at last.

"And this elevated spot here, just below the thumb... that's the Mount of Venus," Santiago went on, oblivious to the fact that Josie had figured out exactly what he was trying to do. "Feel how elevated it is, how sensitive it is? That signifies heightened sensuality, a deeper desire for indulgence and passion. Notice how good it feels when I stroke it like this. That tells me that once you've been swept away by your desires, once you've stopped thinking and let your fantasies take over, you're going to be driven into a deeper and more potent arousal. And your weakened mind won't be able to stop it from happening. You're just going to relax into pleasure and let yourself be drawn down by the currents, down by the pleasure, down and down, deeper and deeper until all you want to do is go with the flow of events as they happen. Isn't that right?"

Josie's head bobbed up and down again, her dreamy smile slowly widening as she watched Santiago's eyes gleam with triumph. He really thought he had her. He thought she was too deeply hypnotized to escape, and he could just twist her mind around his little finger until she would do anything to please him. He thought she was a blank, empty puppet for him to mold and manipulate... but he didn't know. He didn't know that Josie knew it was all just a scam.

But leaving now felt far too much like work. And besides, Josie was getting really horny listening to all this. She could play along a while longer until he did whatever he was planning to do. "Let's take this over to the bed, senorita," and Josie nodded vacantly and allowed herself to be led.

THE END