Shaking her head, Vivi pushed that thought away.
It didn’t matter now. She had exactly as much magic as she liked, no more, no less.
Gwyn had set the silver bowl on the rug and affixed a fat white candle to the bottom of it. Now, she ran her hands over her cards, humming softly as she slid one from the deck.
The Magician was dressed in bright red robes, a white crystal crown on her head, and Vivi smiled as she realized the figure was clearly modeled on Elaine. She could even spot Sir Purrcival winding himself around her ankles, his eyes a glittering green.
“So,” Gwyn said before taking a sip of her own wine. “First things first, we find out if you have any bad luck right now. Bad luck, they send Rhys. Good luck, it’s one of his brothers or his dad. Maybe a hot cousin.”
“That seems much more likely,” Vivi admitted, as Gwyn lit the candle in the silver bowl. “I mean, Rhys hated dealing with family stuff. I can’t imagine he’d want to come back here.”
Not after I threw his own pants at him and called him . . . something bad?
“We’ll soon find out,” Gwyn said, pulling four more cards from her tarot deck.
She slid The Magician in with them, her long fingers dexterous as she shuffled the five cards, sliding them back and forth over one another until Gwyn had no idea just where The Magician had ended up.
“Okay. The simple part. Turn over these cards one at a time,” Gwyn said, laying the cards facedown on the floor. “If The Magician pops up in the first three, bad luck.”
Frowning, Vivi studied the cards in front of her. Gwyn had painted the backs, too, a swirling pattern of green and purple spirals, and Vivi let her fingers dance over them for a moment before turning over the first card.
A man stood at the edge of a cliff, one foot lifted like he was seconds from stepping off, his eyes blue over the rim of a pair of sunglasses, his shirt unbuttoned to the middle of his sternum.
Vivi’s heart did a little flip-flop in her chest because that sure was a familiar face.
Then she looked at what card it was.
“The Fool?” she asked, lifting her eyes to Gwyn’s.
Gwyn just shrugged, leaning back on her hands. “I take inspiration from everywhere, and when it came time to paint that one, he just . . . leapt to mind. Am I wrong?”
The Fool was all about risks and chances, leaping without looking, so no, Rhys was not necessarily a bad model for that card. Still . . .
“So is this bad?” Vivi asked. She lifted it between her thumb and index finger, shaking the card slightly. “Does this mean it is him?”
“No,” Gwyn said firmly, shaking her head. “Well. I mean. Probably not? I don’t know. Let’s see what the next card is.”
Vivi turned over the next one.
The Magician, wearing her aunt’s calm face, stared back up at her.
“Rhiannon’s tits,” Gwyn said, sitting up so fast that her knee nearly clocked her glass. “They are sending him.”
Vivi wished her pulse hadn’t suddenly sped up at that, wished her hands weren’t trembling slightly as she reached out to flip over the last three cards.
The Star, which was clearly Vivi, standing on a desk in a classroom in a polka dot dress, an apple in one hand, a glowing orb in the other; The Tower, Elaine’s cabin, but with a massive crack up the center of it, half the house sliding off a cliff; and last, The Moon, which was a . . .
“Werewolf?” Vivi asked, holding up the card for Gwyn, who rolled her eyes and plucked it from Vivi’s fingers.
“Do not question my artistic vision, Vivienne,” she said, sliding The Moon along with the other four cards back into her deck.