Veiled Revenge by Ellen Byerrum

illusion, or is there really something magical about it? Do you bring it out again and again to revive that blissful mojo? Or what about the suit you wore when disaster struck? Is it really cursed or just a reminder of bad times? Whichever it is, do you avoid it like the plague?
    Of course you do—we all do. Even if we don’t admit it. We all invest what we wear with memories, meaning, and personality.
    Clothing preferences start in the nursery. Children often have clothes they cling to—the shoes they won’t take off, the dress they wear until it’s in tatters. Perhaps they refuse to wear any color but red or periwinkle. They grab hold of what they love, what makes them feel good, with joy and abandon. And stubbornness. But they know what they want. That’s one of the privileges of childhood. Your personal style hasn’t been drilled out of you yet by people telling you what you should want to wear.
    Our clothes become personal symbols to us. You might have a dress you wore when trouble struck. You wore it again: more bad luck. Someone lost a love, or a loved one lost his or her life. You will never wear it again, and no one would blame you, because the very sight of it brings back sad memories.
    Is there a summer frock somewhere in your closet that you can’t bear to part with? It’s long out of style, the sleeves too puffy, the skirt too full, and it’s too optimistically pink (or green, or yellow). But it’s the dress you wore when you first fell in love. And you’d like someone to someday rediscover the dress that drew Cupid’s arrow. That dress will never get thrown away.
    Women are drawn to style, and men are drawn to a woman with style. It may be the way her silver hoop earrings catch the light with just a hint of the Gypsy. It reminds him of something he can’t quite recall. Ask him years later if he remembers those exact earrings and he won’t—but he’ll remember you.
    He remembers the red dress you wore on your first date. Not the style or the cut or the length, but the color. The lure of the red dress, celebrated in so many songs, may be only a biological imperative, but guys are crazy about the lady in red. Is the magic in the red dress—or in you?
    Another man might fixate on that long-lost girl in that perfect miniskirt he can’t quite forget. Or the aquamarine sweater that matched her eyes. Even if her eyes weren’t really quite aquamarine. He may dwell fondly on the black tights and plaid skirt that a certain girl wore in high school. He may even remember her cowboy boots and her silver spurs as they jingle-jangle-jingled.
    Our clothes help us create our own aura, our own style, our own magic. Some days our clothes just do their jobs and we do ours, no magic involved. But think about this the next time you’re dressing for a big event, a first date, a special party, a wedding: Is the magic in the clothes we wear, or is the magic in us? And does that magic linger in what we wear, even after we’ve put the clothes aside?
    Of course it does. That old black magic might just be a Little Black Dress.

Chapter 7
    The purple AMC Gremlin was parked illegally in front of
The Eye
’s offices, next to the flower seller hawking fresh violet-hued irises.
    There could only be one bright, shiny, freshly washed grape Gremlin like that in the entire Washington, D.C., area. Some people called Marie Largesse’s mid-1970s psychedelic survivor of a vehicle
ugly
, but Lacey thought it had an undeniable air of goofy cuteness. In many ways, a Gremlin seemed like the perfect car for an ex–New Orleans fortune-teller—her mechanical
familiar
, so to speak.
    Lacey was heading to the Metro to travel to that very car’s owner when she spied the purple Gremlin parked in front of
The Eye
. A tourist aimed his camera at the ancient purple car juxtaposed with the violet flowers. The Gremlin was empty, and Marie was supposedly sleeping late today.
Who’s got the Gremlin?
    Someone grasped her arm. Before she even