Scythe & Sparrow (The Ruinous Love Trilogy, #3)(11)

“Everything okay?” I ask. Her hand is trembling around mine.

“Yes.”

“Are you sure …?”

Her attention darts toward the door and back to me. Her eyes are so dark they’re nearly black, but in them I can see every shade of fear and pain I’ve come to know in women who ask for my help. I know what she’s about to say when she leans closer and whispers, “I saw you at the circus. You’re the tarot reader, aren’t you?”

I nod.

“The Sparrow.” It’s a reverential prayer. The sound of hope that I’ve come to know. A secret kinship, bonded by suffering that transcends blood.

I remember her face now, the woman who was approaching my tent with a rolled twenty-dollar bill in her hand. A spike of chemical impulse hits my veins. Everything sharpens: the details of the room. The sounds of staff who pass in the corridor. The smell of antiseptic and industrial cleaner. The spark in Naomi’s eyes when I reach for the deck on my side table.

I shuffle my cards.

“If we’ve got a minute, maybe I can give you a quick reading before the bath.” I know the card I’m looking for by feel, by the fray at the edges, by the crease at one corner. I flip it over. “Ace of Cups,” I say. “It represents following your inner voice. What does it tell you? What do you want?”

The hope brightens in Naomi’s eyes, and my heart responds with a quickened beat.

“To take flight,” she says.

I smile. And though Naomi’s spirit might be bruised, it’s not broken. I can see it in the way she smiles back.

I draw the next card. Maybe it’s not what you’d expect. It’s not Death. It’s not the Knight of Swords. Not harbingers of chaos. I draw the Star. Hope on the horizon. Because in killing, there can be living. There can be rebirth.

Naomi shares her secrets in whispered notes. Stories of a man. One who demeans her. Belittles her. One who threatens her and harms her and controls her. One she can’t break away from, not on her own. She asks me for help. And my heart swells until it aches. Because I know this is something I can give, even if it takes a little time.




My thumb caresses the tattoo at my wrist.

I might have been abandoned here, left in a cage. Maybe my wings have been clipped. But I can still fly.





PRAIRIE PRINCESS


ROSE



There aren’t many people around the Prairie Princess Campground when the taxi drops me off on the gravel driveway, the driver waiting patiently as I wrangle my aluminum crutches out the car door and shimmy my way free of the vehicle. There’s only a smattering of motor homes. I guess it’s not super popular to camp in a flat grass field outside Hartford, population 3,501. The taxi drives away and leaves me to the sound of children in the playground, all three of them pinning me with unnerving stares, the metronomic squeak of the ancient swings a sad melody within the downtrodden campground. I pause long enough to give them a half-hearted wave. All three stop swinging in a synchronized, sudden halt of motion. They don’t wave back.

“That’s … yikes,” I whisper. “That’s just fucking weird.”

One of them tilts her head as though listening, even though there’s no fucking way she heard me at this distance, and then all three resume their swinging at the exact same moment.




“I guess at least I know how I’ll die.” I swallow the sudden tightness choking up my throat and start to hobble my way across the unkempt gravel, my leg throbbing. My RV stands out among the others strewn across the clearing. Big ol’ Dorothy might be closing in on thirty years old, but she’s pretty as hell, with polished chrome bumpers and a custom paint job of a flock of sparrows over a sunset of pink and yellow and orange. I’ve put every spare penny into Dorothy’s needs. She’s my year-round home. But this is the first time I’ve ever walked up to my RV and wished I had something more permanent. Maybe the kind of place where it’s not so easy for the rest of your home to just go and leave you behind.

“You’re just being sore. You’ll be back on the tour in no time,” I whisper above the clink and rattle of my crutches. “You’ll be fine on your own. You’re not afraid of the murder children. Because you’re a fierce, independent woman.”

And I believe that too. At least, I do until I stop at the door of my motor home.

“Fuck.”

It’s hot as Satan’s ball sack out here beneath the unobstructed prairie sun, and all I want to do is get inside so I can lie down and, let’s be real, probably ugly-cry myself to sleep. Problem is, I don’t know how to do that with crutches and a brace through a narrow door that’s two feet off the ground and a set of narrow steps on the inside. I’ve never thought about buying folding or temporary stairs to get in. It wasn’t something I ever needed.

My shoulders sag as I press my weight into the padding of the crutches, my body already protesting this foreign way of moving.

I’m blinking away exhausted tears when I hear a vehicle slowly roll to a stop behind me. I sweep a quick pass of my thumb beneath my lashes and then grip onto the handle of my crutches with renewed determination. I don’t need people staring. I hobble closer and slide the key into the lock and turn it. And then a large hand reaches above me and pulls the door open.