September 20th, 1895 — Tarot Tea House & Parlor, Horizont Alley

Gwen didn't know why she was outside the parlor, but it felt...right. Then she saw him. Well. For the second time. She'd seen him come in to speak to one of the older matchmakers at the tea house not even a week prior. Intuitively, she knew it wasn't the right time for her to speak up.

Well.

This was the time.

"Pardon me, sir," she said, stepping out towards him. "Might I interest you in a reading?" She'd offer a discount if he pressed, but she also knew that the other matchmakers on staff liked to charge more and pocket the excess, so in all honesty, it would likely be the same cost he should have paid the first time, less the excess that she didn't really need.

Barnabas Skeeter

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   Barnabas Skeeter

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I push you to the darkness just to pull you to the light
'cause I can take away your breath or I can bring you back to life

It may have been the grumpy aura he gave off, the cane he used, or something else, but it wasn't often that women approached Barnabas on the street. He'd been out running errands, distracted and thinking of what else he needed to get done before heading back to the townhouse. The young woman, who looked barely out of school, had caught him by surprise.

At first, it took him a moment to understand what she was asking. It was then he realized his location—that they were just outside the Tarot Tea House & Parlor. He'd made a fool of himself here no less than a week ago... though that didn't stop him from asking her curiously, "A reading for what, precisely?" Not that he put much stock into divination and the like, for the time being, anyway.

  

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Barnabas walks with a cane. Set by Lady.

Gwen smiled, though she sighed internally. "Your future, of course," she answered easily. "You seem like a man in search of something. If I can help you find it, I shall do my best."

She sincerely hoped he would follow her; after all, this was part of how she got paid. Satisfied customers were her bread and butter. She didn't even know why her family sometimes used unethical practices, like outright tricking their clearly desperate clients. Why trick them when you could manipulate things in such a way that the client is happy rather than disdainful?

But she was pretty sure he didn't want reassurance on her methods, so she didn't provide them. Instead, she just continued to smile.

Barnabas Skeeter

  

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I push you to the darkness just to pull you to the light
'cause I can take away your breath or I can bring you back to life

Barnabas narrowed his eyes suspiciously. She likely said that to every patron. Not that he could judge her for needing to make a living, it was what she did for a living that him second guessing her sincerity. A few years ago, he may have scoffed at her offer and walked away. But this year, he was feeling his age, his rather lonely bachelor status, and his many very recent failures. Curses, potions, and good old-fashioned research be damned. Those had compounded with the last six years of his many other failed attempts to secure a wife, and now he was in a rather desperate (and likely unattractive) place.

If another option popped up that had even the slightest chance of helping him achieve his goal, who was he to deny it? "Alright," he said after a moment, sounding rather defeated. What she had to say couldn't be worse than what he was already dealing with anyway.

  

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Barnabas walks with a cane. Set by Lady.