“Tarot cards.”
“Tarot?”
“You use them to read the future. Allegedly.”
One of Ellis’s dark brows goes up. “Are you a psychic, Felicity Morrow?”
“No. But they’re fun to play with anyway. I don’t really believe in…all that.”
The words taste false on my tongue in a way they didn’t before. Maybe it’s how the air in the room has felt heavier ever since Ellis came in, a prickle rolling along the back of my neck. I shift my weight, and my chair—balanced on three legs with this uneven floor—wobbles.
Ellis picks up the deck and flips through my cards, pausing on Death. Everyone does.
“Can you read mine?” she says abruptly.
“Right now?”
“Unless you’d rather wait for the witching hour.”
The choice of words makes me flinch. Even so, a part of me wants to say yes, just for the aesthetics. Another part of me wants to refuse entirely—because this feels like a play, like a move on a chessboard, a game for which I don’t know the rules.
But if I say no, that would answer Ellis’s suspicions in a different fashion. It would show her I can be rattled.
I slip out of my chair and we move to settle on my bed instead, Ellis passing me the deck to shuffle. She reclines back against my pillows, elbow propped on the mattress and her hair pooling black atop the duvet.
“Do you mind if I smoke?”
I do mind. But for some reason I shake my head, and she withdraws a silver cigarette case from her jacket pocket. There’s a pack of matches with the candles lining my windowsill; she steals one, lights her cigarette, and waves the matchstick to quench the flame. The scent of red phosphorus lingers in the air.
“You need to think of a question to ask the cards.” I split the deck again, reshuffle.
“Do I have to tell you what it is?”
“It will help me interpret the cards if you do.”
“All right. Ask them about us. You and me.” Her lips quirk. “Are we going to become friends?”
I almost laugh, but she seems serious, so I bite my cheek and draw three cards. “Fine. ‘Are we going to become friends?’ The first card is you.” I tap the back of that card. “The second is me. The third card is us together.”
Ellis pushes herself upright, crossing her legs and placing her hands in her lap like a child in school. “I’m ready.”
I turn over the first card. It depicts a woman riding a stallion, her sword held aloft and her hair streaming out behind her like a banner. “The Knight of Swords,” I say. “You’re—surprise, surprise—ambitious and driven. You know what you want, and you pursue it at any cost. That can be a good thing, of course, but it has downsides; you can be impulsive and reckless, too, more focused on your goal than on its risks.”
She nods, and from the set of her lips, I take it she’s rather pleased with herself.
The next card: “The Hermit. This one’s me.” Cloaked and bearing a staff, my free hand extended to hold a lamp. The light cuts through the dark landscape around me, a star held in my palm. “I should prepare for a journey of self-discovery and introspection. Not everything will be clear at once; I’ll only ever be able to see a few steps ahead. I have to trust myself and my own intuition.”
I glance up at Ellis again. She has leaned forward slightly, her elbows braced against her knees and her gaze fixed on the cards: the twin pale faces of the Hermit and the Knight, the botanical design etched into the back of the third card still facedown.
“And the last one? Us together?”
I turn it over. It’s the card from before, the same one that had so fascinated Ellis when she first looked at the deck.
Death rides a pale horse, the light of the setting sun glinting off the blade of her scythe. Peasants and queens alike are slain by her passing. In her wake, a white rose blooms.
“That doesn’t look good,” Ellis says dryly.
“Death isn’t as fatal as you might think,” I tell her, trailing my fingertips over the card’s linen face. “It can mean change or upheaval of any kind. Something vital will come to an end. But”—I touch the five-petaled rose—“something new grows in its place.”
There’s an odd look on Ellis’s face when our eyes meet again. A crack in the mask, something once hidden shifting behind the lacquered facade.
Ellis sweeps the cards into her hand and leafs through them one after the other. She lingers on the last again, skimming her thumb over Death’s face. “Did you draw cards for her, too?”