Extraits

The fluorescent pink light that advertised Madame Zulenka’s Fortune Telling Salon flickered anemically against the smoky glass of the shopfront as the rain pounded down outside.

As the pink light washed over the dark brown of her skin in a haunting pattern created by the droplets of water that streaked across the window, Zuli sent up a prayer to anyone who might be listening that the tubing for the light last another few weeks. Business had not been…good ever since that changeling fox “influencer” –a.k.a. rich trophy fox on a doddering old whale’s arm—had “outed” Zuli as a fraud.

“She’s no more a foreseer than I am!” Foxface had screeched in her upload. “According to my sources, she’s only 2 on the Gradient. A 2! Gawd. I can’t believe I almost fell for all the fake reviews. If I’m shelling out money for a fortune, I want at least a 5.”

As if a Gradient 5 F would be out there trying to earn a living as a street fortune teller. Zuli snorted. 5s were strong enough to be embraced by the PsyClans. And those clans made serious money doing commercial forecasts and the like.

Zuli sometimes wondered what would’ve happened to her had she been born into the famed PsyClan NightStar, the most powerful clan of Fs in the world. Would they have deleted her the instant it became clear that she was only a measly 2? Just barely enough to cling to the PsyNet and be denoted a Psy rather than a human?

Standing behind the glass of her shopfront, she hugged her arms around herself. She knew that in the times of the Council, psychically weak children had suffered convenient “accidents” with alarming regularity. The only reason Zuli was still alive was that her parents were Gradients 2 and 3 themselves. They owned and operated a small grocery store in New York, her mother doing the books while her father took care of front of house.