Written in the Stars

by Alexandria Bellefleur

  “I know it’s such a hardship, but at least try to pretend you like me. That’s the whole point, isn’t it?”

  Elle ducked her head beneath the tablecloth, squinting into the dusty darkness. She sneezed twice back to back and sniffled. Smitten, her ass. If Darcy didn’t step it up, Brendon was sure to catch on and that was the last thing Elle needed. Maybe this hadn’t been her idea, but she’d committed. If this thing fell apart? Brendon would think her a total liar. Not the best way to begin a business partnership.

  Using her hands as eyes, Elle felt along the legs of the table, searching for something that stood out, something different, anything that could be a clue. On the other side of the table, she could hear Darcy shuffling around, but she couldn’t see her, couldn’t see anything.

  “It’s not,” Darcy whispered.

  “It’s not what?” Her nose tingled as she staved off another sneeze.

  “A hardship. Liking you . . . pretending . . . this—” Darcy sighed heavily. “You took me by surprise, okay?”

  Suddenly there was a hand on the bare skin of Elle’s thigh where the hem of her skirt met her leg. Elle’s breath caught and a sharp gasp escaped Darcy’s lips, no doubt realizing what she was touching, where she was touching. Only, Darcy didn’t immediately move her hand. Instead her fingers twitched and Elle heard her swallow in the darkness, her breath quickening. Elle held so still she nearly shook as Darcy’s touch lingered, frozen, before Darcy finally yanked her hand away as if she’d been burned. If the rest of Elle’s body was as scorching as her face, it was no wonder.

  Surprise was right. If it hadn’t been for Darcy’s muttered, “Fuck,” Elle might’ve wondered if she’d imagined the whole thing.

  “Hey, keep it PG under there,” Brendon joked, making Darcy groan.

  Elle shook off the shock and snickered, though her pulse still raced, her skin tingling where Darcy had touched. “Nothing about me is PG, Brendon.”

  Brendon laughed. “Not trying to ruin the mood, but we’re down to fifty minutes.”

  Elle changed trajectory, tracing her fingers along the bottom of the table above her head. Her thumb raked over a rough notch, an inconsistency in the wood.

  “I found something.” Elle scrambled out from under the table and blinked, eyesight adjusting. She whipped back the tablecloth as a neon-red-faced Darcy straightened, brushing invisible dust from her knees. Their eyes met and Darcy’s lips turned up at the corners, making Elle’s pulse leap.

  Pressing that lever had ejected a secret compartment from the side of the table. Nestled inside was a ring of skeleton keys and beside them, an old deck of cards, weathered with fraying edges. Not just any deck of cards. A deck of tarot cards.

  Brendon pumped a fist in the air. “Hell yes. We’re rocking this.”

  Ever the realist, Darcy’s gaze locked on the timer. “What now?”

  “We could try the keys?” Cherry suggested.

  Brendon shook his head, grimacing softly. “We don’t know which door is right.”

  And there were half a dozen keys, each marked with a different number. Eight, twenty-six, thirty-four, forty-two, fifty-five, ninety.

  Elle flipped through the deck. There was nothing special about it. All the Major and Minor Arcana were present.

  “Um, I think I found something.”

  Across the room, Cherry had lifted a corner of the rug with the toe of her pump, revealing a series of symbols written on the stone floor in ominous red paint.

  Brendon cocked his head. “Are those hieroglyphs?”

  Elle bounced on her toes. It was like she was in Indiana Jones, or better yet, The Mummy. This was too cool.

  “Okay, so we’ve got a code to crack.” Darcy set her hands on her hips, a furrow forming between her brows as her gaze darted between the hieroglyphs and the timer.

  Cherry stuck her hand in her purse and pulled out her phone. “Can’t we google it?”

  “No!” Darcy and Brendon shouted in tandem.

  Darcy glared. “That’s cheating. We’re going to win this and we’re going to do it fair and square.”

  Brendon nodded. “There’s got to be a codex somewhere. Do you see any of these symbols on those cards?”

  A codex. Elle covered her mouth, concealing her smile. Brendon and Darcy took this shit seriously and Elle loved that they did. An image of Darcy with a wide-brimmed, high-crowned fedora, a leather jacket, and a whip flitted through Elle’s head.

  “Elle?” Brendon stared at her expectantly.

  What? Oh. Right. Elle shuffled through the deck. No dice. “Nope.”

  Darcy cracked her knuckles. “Check every surface. We’re down to forty-five minutes.”

  Twenty minutes later, every chair had been overturned, the tablecloth examined, and the rug lifted and flipped. Darcy ran her fingers through her hair, tugging at the roots. “God. This is bullshit.”

  Claiming her feet hurt, Cherry had taken a seat on the floor, checking out of the game and engrossing herself in her phone.

  Brendon shot his date a look full of exasperation and scraped a palm over his jaw. “There’s got to be something we’re missing. Something obvious.”

  He was right. The clue had to be staring them dead in the face. Mocking them for missing it. Twenty-four minutes remained. Elle refused to lose hope.

  “Come on, guys, we can do this. Let’s take a closer look at these glyphs.” Elle dropped to her knees, wincing as the stone floor bit into her bare skin. Sighing, Darcy stood beside her, the soft, lived-in denim of her jeans brushing against Elle’s arm, making Elle shiver. Elle swallowed hard and stared down at the floor.

  The first symbol was a five-pointed star. Then there was a pharaoh? Lying on its side. Dead? A mummy? Elle bit back a sigh. Next was a crescent. The moon? And after that was—

  “Oh. Oh!” Scrambling to stand, Elle rushed over to the table and swiped the tarot cards, quickly flipping through the deck.

  Hot on her heels, Darcy asked, “What is it? Did you find something?”

  It was so obvious it hurt. “The cards are the codex, after all. The symbols themselves aren’t on the cards, but they represent some of the Major Arcana.”

  Darcy blinked. “What does that mean?”

  Elle splayed the cards out on the table so that Darcy, and Brendon who’d joined them, could look over her shoulder. “That first symbol on the floor is a star.” Elle pushed the cards around until she found the Star card, separating it from the rest. “Next is a mummy.” She rifled around until she found Death. “There’s a moon. And a set of scales.” Scales . . . scales . . . “Temperance!” She frowned at the last symbol. “I have no freaking idea what that wheelie thing’s supposed to be.”

  Brendon’s eyes narrowed before he shuffled the cards out, clearly looking for something. “A cart of some sort?”

  Brendon was brilliant. Elle crowed and slapped a card down on the table. “The Chariot.”

  Darcy’s face lit up. “This is . . . great job, Elle.”

  Elle bit the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling stupidly.

  Across the room, Cherry coughed. “Hey, guys? There’s something happening.”

  Something was right. Smoky fog, the kind from dry ice, drifted into the room from beneath the doors. Uh-oh.

  “Heads in the game, guys.” Darcy snapped her fingers. “What are we supposed to do with the cards?”

  She was right. There had to be something about the cards, something Elle was— Wait. “These numbers are wrong.”

  “What do you mean?” Darcy crowded closer to Elle, so close the delicate scent of her shampoo tickled Elle’s nose. Rosemary and lavender, earthy and sweet. Elle wanted to bury her face in Darcy’s hair and breathe deep.

  Elle bit down on the inside of her cheek. The air down here was getting to her. “The Major Arcana all have a numerological association. The Star is seventeen.” She flicked the top of the card. “This has a five written on it.”

  Brendon read off the other numbers in the sequence
corresponding to the glyphs on the ground. “Eight, thirteen . . . hey, Darce, you’re good with numbers maybe you should—”

  “Gimme.” Darcy snagged the cards from Brendon. Several seconds later, Darcy laughed. “Twenty-one, thirty-four.” She tossed the cards back on the table and crossed her arms over her chest. “It’s the Fibonacci sequence. Next comes fifty-five.”

  Elle could’ve totally kissed her, aside from the obvious reasons why that was a bad idea. Though they were supposed to be selling it . . . no. Bad, Elle. “You’re brilliant.”

  Darcy smirked and shit. Elle changed her mind. Being bad sounded like the best idea she’d ever had.

  Brendon held up the brass skeleton key etched with the number fifty-five. “Can I just pause and say teamwork makes the dream work?”

  Darcy hiked a thumb over her shoulder at the door marked fifty-five. “You want to get this show on the road and win this thing?”

  “Please,” Cherry groaned. “I’m dying for a drink.”

  The whole group, save Elle, migrated toward the door. Something didn’t feel right. It was too easy.

  “Wait.” Three sets of eyes landed on her, expressions expectant. Elle tugged on the lobe of her ear. “I don’t think that’s the right door.”

  Darcy set her hands on her hips. “It’s got the number fifty-five on it and it matches the key. I’m not wrong about the Fibonacci sequence.”

  Elle wasn’t suggesting she was wrong. Not about that. “I think that’s the right key, but we never solved a clue for the door.”

  “We don’t need to.” Darcy shook her head, eyes narrowing. “It matches the key.”

  Elle chewed on the inside of her cheek. Her gut niggled. “I don’t know. It makes too much sense.”

  Darcy looked at Elle like she’d lost her mind. “How can something make too much sense?”

  Brendon lowered his arm, holding the key at his side.

  Elle didn’t know how to put into words her intuition, this sense of something being off. “It doesn’t feel right.”

  Darcy’s brow pinched, her jaw setting.

  Elle stared, willing Darcy to understand with every fiber of her being. “Trust me.”

  She was asking a lot, she knew, asking Darcy not only to trust her, but her nebulous, indescribable intuition. Nothing solid, nothing real, not in the seeing is believing sense.

  Darcy glanced at the clock. “All right. Go with your gut, Elle. Just hurry.”

  Four minutes was how long she had to figure out what about that door didn’t feel right. Heart racing, Elle rushed back to the table, double-checking for something, anything, a sign that her gut wasn’t leading her—and the rest of the group—astray.

  Nothing. There was nothing she hadn’t touched, turned over. The fog thickened around their feet, rising to their knees. Elle turned, facing the mirror, catching a glimpse of Darcy’s tight-lipped reflection. Elle’s stomach twisted.

  Above her head, the clock counted down from two minutes.

  Fuck. She couldn’t see anything on the floor, her vision tunneling. Not to mention, the smoke was too thick, practically opaque, and the—

  Smoke.

  What had Jim said? Elle tugged on her earring. She’d been so excited to get started that she’d stopped paying attention. “Jim said something. Before he locked the door. Something about smoke and mirrors.”

  Face slackening, Darcy’s lips parted. “The mirror. Go to the mirror.”

  They both made it there at the same time, right as the clock hit seconds.

  “What do we do?” Darcy ran her fingers along the mirror’s edge.

  “Do something,” Brendon urged.

  Elle swallowed down her nerves and gripped the edge of the mirror. This couldn’t just be a prop, it couldn’t. Wait. Prop. Propped against the wall, angled against the wall . . .

  It was a long shot. “Let’s try tilting it.”

  Forty-five seconds.

  Together, she and Darcy hauled the mirror forward to where a barely perceptible chalk line was drawn far enough away from the wall for them to angle it back, careful not to drop it. At sixty degrees, the reflection of the overhead light bounced off the stationary crystal ball and pinged across the room, a beam of light landing on the second door, the one not marked with the number fifty-five.

  “Holy shit.” Brendon laughed and jogged over to the lit door, key held out in front of him like a baton. He slipped it inside the lock, turned the knob, and threw the door open. Confetti and a dozen brightly colored balloons rained down over their heads as the buzzer squawked.

  They did it.

  They won.

  Mirth bubbled up inside Elle like an overflowing champagne fountain, laughter spilling from her lips.

  Darcy plucked a blue balloon out of the air and spiked it at Brendon, shrieking when he caught it and rubbed it across her head, static making her strands stick up wildly, confetti catching in her curls.

  Through the rising fog and falling confetti, Darcy caught Elle’s eye and beamed.

  * * *

  “To Elle!” Brendon hoisted his beer in the air. “For going with her gut.”

  Darcy clinked her glass of wine against her brother’s bottle and nodded, smile small and conciliatory. But that was fine. There were still bright gold flecks of confetti stuck in her mussed hair. It was the closest Elle had ever seen Darcy to being a mess, and she liked it. A little too much. “To Elle.”

  Elle laughed and lifted her candy cane cocktail, complete with peppermint stick garnish, acquiescing to the praise. She sipped through the straw, face scrunching at the shock of rum. Surprisingly strong for being half-priced on trivia night.

  That same gut feeling that had driven her to search harder urged her to lift her head. Across the table, Darcy was staring, bottom lip trapped between her front teeth.

  Elle chewed on her swizzle stick straw, failing epically when she tried not to smile.

  Feedback from the bar’s audio system filled the room, rowdy gripes following. At the front of the room near the bar, a man with a full ginger beard and a shiny bald head gave a rueful wince before tapping the mic. “Sorry ’bout that folks. Who’s ready for some trivia?”

  “Cherry’s been outside for a while,” Darcy pointed out. “Doesn’t take that long to smoke a cigarette. Vape. Whatever.” Darcy waved her hand.

  Brendon grimaced, one hand reaching back to grip his neck. “Yeah. She texted me. Apparently, she ran into a friend and . . . she’s not feeling it, I guess.”

  Darcy’s eyes flashed, jaw dropping. “She left. Without saying good-bye?”

  Blink and miss it, Darcy glanced across the table, the nostrils of her pert nose flaring.

  Elle stiffened. Was that meant to be a comparison, a dig at how Elle had dipped during their date while Darcy was in the bathroom? Because if so, it was apples and oranges. Unfair because the situations couldn’t have been more different. Brendon was sweet and thoughtful and fun. Darcy had been rigid and skeptical and downright rude.

  And it hadn’t been a matter of not feeling it when Elle had left, bladder screaming, ego battered, and hopes crushed. She’d felt it, that spark, but Darcy had done everything in her power to douse it. Sparks hadn’t mattered, not when Darcy’s beliefs, or lack thereof, made them incompatible. You could bring a horse to water, but you couldn’t make it drink.

  Oblivious to the thread of tension connecting her and Darcy, Brendon shrugged affably, lips quirking. “Wasn’t meant to be.”

  He was a better sport about it than she’d been, that was for sure.

  “Onward and upward.” Elle gave him a nod. “If she couldn’t see how awesome you are, she didn’t deserve to revel in your awesomeness.”

  Brendon laughed and Darcy shot Elle a curious glance, one Elle couldn’t quite parse. Darcy patted her brother on the arm. “You’ll, um, you’ll find her. Your . . . person.”

  Lips pinched together, Brendon met Elle’s eyes. They burst out laughing.

  Darcy shifted on her barstool, arms
crossing over her chest.

  Brendon threw an arm around Darcy’s shoulders. “Thanks, Darce.” He pressed a quick kiss to the crown of her head. “Got to say, I’m starting to think my person is something of a unicorn.”

  “Ooh, now that could be a problem,” Elle joked. “Unicorns are only attracted to virgins.” She waggled her brows and reached for her drink.

  Darcy did a poor job of muffling her laughter with a cough. “Now that would be ironic.”

  “Darcy,” he warned, face flushing. “Don’t you dare.”

  She waved him off. “It’s not embarrassing.”

  “It’s humiliating,” Brendon grumbled over the lip of his bottle. “And I told you that in confidence. Drunken confidence.”

  Darcy turned, focusing on Elle. “Brendon didn’t lose his virginity until he was twenty because he was saving himself for my best friend, Annie, who he had the biggest crush on for practically his entire childhood. For years, he was convinced that they were destined to be together.” When Brendon’s head thudded against the table, Darcy snickered. “That’s what you get for telling her I was smitten.”

  Brendon lifted his head and glared. “You’re making me sound pathetic. Besmirching my good name.”

  “Good name?” Elle teased.

  Brendon gasped. “Elle. I thought we were friends.” He shook his head. “I see how it is. You’ve picked a side. My own sister turning my friends against me.”

  “Oh please. Besides, Annie thought you were cute.” Darcy pinched his cheek before smacking him lightly.

  “You’re cruel, Darce. After everything I’ve done for you”—he gestured to Elle—“and this is how to repay me? By mocking me?”

  Another burst of feedback filtered over the speakers followed by the first question.

  Between Elle’s knowledge of the physical sciences, Brendon’s knowledge of the tech industry, their shared knowledge of pop culture, and Darcy’s knowledge of everything from seventeenth-century painters to fashion designers to baseball, they answered nearly every question correctly, tying them for the lead with two other teams.

  Elle had reached the fun stage of tipsiness where the lights in the bar were bright and the tip of her nose was numb, when the emcee cleared his throat to ask the final question.