“I can’t believe you invited that weirdo into our house,” Beth bellyached.“I didn’t hear you complaining,” Rudy refuted.“Well, you do now. He’s…scary.”“You don’t believe all that mumbo-jumbo, do you? It’s just a bunch of schizo crap be made up.”“It’s not made up, Rudy. I majored in ancient history, that is, before I had to quit school and go to work to keep you out of cement loafers. Cenotes, ziggurats, alomancy—it’s all straight out of Babylonian myth. This guy says he’s possessed by the spirit of a Nashipu salt-diviner. That’s the same as saying he’s a demon.” Rudy chuckled outright. “Somebody hit you in the head with a dumb-stick? He’s a flake, Beth. He probably escaped from St. Elizabeth’s in the back of a garbage truck and read about all that stuff in some occult paperback. He thinks he’s possessed by a demon. And so what? Let him think what he wants. What’s important to us is the guy’s genuinely psychic. You heard him, he predicted that fat barkeep’s squeeze was cheating on him.”“That could be just coincidence, Rudy.”“Coincidence?
