The Hitwoman Gets Lucky (Confessions of a Slightly Neurotic Hitwoman) by JB Lynn

Chapter One
    I hate my job. My real job where I answer phones and take claims at Insuring the Future. I hate my boss, Harry, who constantly reeks of pepperoni and who, up until recently, hit on me incessantly. Which brings me to the one thing I don't hate about work, my friend Armani Vasquez.
    Armani somehow managed to threaten Harry into leaving me alone, which would be enough reason to like her, but she's also smart, funny, and a fairly accurate psychic... if only we could figure out what her predictions mean before they happen.
    If she wasn't constantly urging me to let my "inner-Chiquita out and have some fun" and if she didn't have such weird food habits, we'd be best pals.
    Still, I sit with her at lunch where she offers to share her crazy culinary creations and she spouts her predictions. On this particular day, she was eating a liverwurst and grape jelly sandwich, which not only looked disgusting, but smelled like something straight out of a garbage dumpster.
    "Want some?" she asked, waving it at me.
    I swallowed the urge to retch and held up my classic peanut butter and jelly sandwich as a defense. "I'm good."
    "I brought you something," she said, using her good hand to reach into her Hello Kitty lunch tote. Her other hand, along with one leg, were crushed in a tragic Zamboni accident that she could have avoided if she'd just paid more attention to her premonition of Vanilla Ice crooning "Ice, Ice, baby." Like I said, tragic.
    The mouthful of PB&J I was trying to swallow lodged itself in my throat as I braced myself for whatever horrid concoction she planned on force-feeding me.
    But she didn't pull out food. She pulled out a red rabbit's foot on a keychain, a horseshoe caked with dirt, and a hard-looking triangular thing.
    "For you," she said with a smile.
    "Why?" I asked, not really wanting to know.
    Every time Armani makes a prediction about my future, my life gets even crazier than usual. Considering I go around killing people for money in order to pay for my hospitalized niece's care and that I have actual conversations with my lizard and my dog, Doomsday or DeeDee as she now prefers to be called, when my life gets "crazier," you know I'm in trouble.
    "I had a dream about you." Armani flipped her beautiful, black hair that belonged in a shampoo commercial to signal her satisfaction.
    I waited, knowing from experience there was no way to rush her through her dramatic reveal.
    "It was a very clear dream," she elaborated.
    Her dreams are never clear. I know this better than she does. For example, she once told me to "meet the man" and I ended up going out with a guy I probably should’ve stayed away from.
    "Lucky," she proclaimed seriously.
    "Lucky?" I'm the unluckiest person I know. If you knew my family history, you'd know that's true.
    "Lucky."
    I eyed the stuff on the table. "Okay, I get the rabbit's foot and the horseshoe, but what's with that?” I nodded to the pointy triangle thing.
    "It's a shark's tooth."
    "A shark's tooth? Is that supposed to be lucky?"
    Armani nodded emphatically. "They're supposed to have protective and healing powers."
    "Maybe I should give it to Katie," I mused aloud. My little niece was badly injured in a terrible car crash months ago. An accident that Armani sort of, kind of predicted... even though she didn't know it at the time.
    The accident killed my sister Theresa and her husband, Dirk the Jerk, leaving Katie an orphan and  me her legal guardian. The doctors keep assuring me that Katie’s making progress, but she could use some turbo-boosted healing powers about now.
    The crash also left me with the ability to talk to animals. Not as much fun as you'd think—lizards complain a lot.
    Ignoring me, Armani continued, "You should wear it as a necklace. It's said to bring good luck."
    I wrinkled my nose. "You couldn't have gotten me a four-leaf clover? You had to get me two pieces of dead animals?" I eyed the horseshoe suspiciously. "And how do they get the shoe off the horse?