Bad Influence (Seven Deadly Sins #2) ✅ Completed

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Fortune's Prophecy

Fortune’s Prophecy

“Okay, move that tower piece next to the space next to that little horse piece,” I said, pointing a finger to which little tower I was talking about.

Spring Dawn glanced at me from the other side of the large mirror I’d propped at the foot of my bed. The young ghost of the Creole girl my Aunt Celeste had trapped in a mirror so many years ago had startled me half to death the night before when she’d popped into my bathroom mirror – or at least part of her anyway. I was brushing my teeth before bed when her head had made its unexpected reappearance. Her body had been conspicuously missing.

After the drama with my great Aunt, Spring Dawn shyly admitted to staying away from the Emporium out of fear of retribution or retaliation on my part. It was only after I’d assured her that I was quite grateful for her interference (it was her quick shout of using the mirror against Celeste that had saved my life after all), and that I wasn’t angry at her role in my aunt’s master plan (she was as helpless as I was in everything) that she felt comfortable enough to fully materialize in the mirror. She looked exactly the same, a thin girl with rich honey colored skin and large brown eyes. She'd been around nine or ten years old when she died, and was dressed in a white ruffled dress and a long braid that reached the center of her back.   

I didn’t ask her too many questions about where she’d been and she seemed grateful for my respect of her privacy. I did have a burning a desire to question Dante about her origins however, but he was MIA the next morning. There was only a brief, yet fittingly cryptic note telling me he would be gone until lunch time and to keep a low profile until his return. Spring Dawn had offered to show me how to play chess to pass the time, and since Chase was still not returning my calls and it totally beat cleaning the shop room floor, I was all for it.

She found a chess set on her side (thankfully since I had no clue where to find one on mine) and we’d spent the first hour just going over the board, the pieces and how they moved. I'd never really had any desire to learn chess even though I’d watched plenty of old men play it in the parks around my old Brooklyn neighborhood. My mother didn’t own a checkerboard, much less a chess set so it was a finer point in my education that had been sorely missing.     

Now her young face frowned doubtfully at the board as she considered my request. “Are you sure about that, Miss Eliza?” she asked carefully, her voice sweet and slightly accented. I'd tried to get her to call me just Eliza but since Celeste was gone and I was now the new "owner" of the Emporium, as well as everything else that came along with it, she insisted on using the more respectful title.  

“Definitely,” I nodded.

She moved my piece then quickly put me in Check.

Okay, so Bobby Fisher I wasn’t.   

“Unbelievable,” said an exasperated voice. Dante was leaning against the doorjamb, a mild look of disbelief on his dark face. He was dressed in his standard black t-shirt, jeans and motorcycle boots. I wondered if he even owned any other kinds of clothes.

“Only you would spend the morning playing chess, badly I might add, with a double-crossing ghost trapped in a mirror.”

Spring Dawn disappeared as quickly as she’d arrived, with only an echo of a choked cry to indicate her departure. The chessboard was gone as well. I glanced from the mirror back to Dante. “Was that really necessary?”

“What?” he asked.

“Not only were you really rude, but you scared that poor girl half to death,” I said, standing up.