Finishing his pie, Rhys dusted off his hands, and tapped one of the sets of tarot cards sitting on the counter of the booth. “Are these your creation?”
Hopping down from her perch, Gwyn nodded and went to stand across from Rhys. “We sell lots of decks in the store, but my handmade ones are our biggest seller.”
“She says modestly,” Vivi teased, elbowing Gwyn, who elbowed her right back.
“Can you read the cards?” she asked Rhys.
He shook his head, both elbows on the counter. “I have a sort of rudimentary understanding of some of them, but no, not my magical strong suit.”
Their area of the festival was still kind of dead, so when Gwyn glanced at Vivi and said, “Mind if I read for him? Might help with the whole,” she lowered her voice, “curse thing.”
“Go for it,” Vivi said, looking up at Rhys. “If you want to?”
“Might as well,” he said, cheerfully enough. “Vivienne and I haven’t made any breakthroughs on that front.”
Not that they hadn’t been trying. It hadn’t all been sex.
Okay, it had been a lot of sex, but in between, they’d been deep in research mode, mostly on Vivi’s laptop since she didn’t trust them in the study room at the library again. And given how pissed off Dr. Arbuthnot had been about the Eurydice Candle, they probably wouldn’t have been allowed in anyway.
So far, Vivi knew more about curses than she’d ever thought possible. She knew the best moon phases for casting them, knew that wormwood made them stronger, knew that in 1509, a witch had managed to curse not just a town, but six different German principalities at once.
What she didn’t know was how to lift a curse.
Typical that that was the bit witches wanted to be vague about.
Distracted, she moved to the other end of the booth, rearranging the display of candles, making sure the something wicked—come visit us in town! sign was straight, and only when Rhys called her name did she look back over at them.
He was holding The Star, her card, and smiling. “This seems like a good sign.”
Vivi wandered back over, leaning against the counter as she plucked the card from Rhys’s hand. “Depends on where it is in the spread,” she said, and Gwyn tapped the spot where the card had been lying.
“We’re going simple past, present, future. You’re the present, obviously.”
“Obviously,” she echoed, and her eyes met Rhys’s again. He was smiling at her in that way he had that was both sweet and fond, and also somehow let her know every filthy thing he was thinking of doing to her.
It was really one of her favorite smiles on the planet.
Gwyn was turning over the third card, the future spot, as Vivi looked at the past. Rhys had pulled The Lovers there, also not a surprise, but when Gwyn laid the third card down, she scowled at it.
“Ugh, The Emperor.”
“He’s not bad,” Vivi objected, but as she looked at the version Gwyn had drawn, she had to admit, he looked a little foreboding. It showed a man in a dark suit sitting on a wooden throne that looked like it had been carved out of an ancient tree. There was silver in his beard, and he was frowning out from the card, a heavy ebony cane in one hand.
“It’s not bad,” Gwyn agreed, tapping the card. “It’s just, you know. Authority. Rules, structure . . .”
“My father,” Rhys said, and Gwyn nodded, picking the card up.
“Exactly, he totally represents—”
“No,” Rhys said, and something in his voice made Vivi look up at him.
He had turned around and was looking out into the crowd, his expression grim, as a dark-haired man in black made his way across the fairground to them, Aunt Elaine several steps behind.