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It’s not exactly the most romantic thing I can say, but it’s the truth.
I hit send and the familiar nerves begin to collect in my chest. Gripping my phone, I know I should use my precious remaining minutes to check my other notifications, but my eyes remain fixed on the screen, willing Anwar to answer.
Sometimes I wish I could care a little less, that I could turn down the dial on how intensely I feel most things. Everything always seems so heightened in my world, like my emotional valleys can sometimes be bottomless.
Then again, once I see the three flashing dots by Anwar’s photo, I remember that my peaks can also be sky high. Exhaling, I welcome the flush of warmth that replaces my nerves.
Oh, I remember. But trust me, you’re going to love it here. This is my solemn swear.
I smile at the screen, my mind racing to compose a good response.
Well, I plan to write a yelp review on your tour guide experience, so you better bring your A game.
For you? Always.
I fight the urge to melt into a warm puddle right here in this seat. Instead, I write back:
5 Stars, here we come.
Gotta go, but will text when we settle in for the night.
Click here
Screw the blurry line.
I hit send and immediately feel a swell of nerves. Sometimes I really wish I had more of a filter. Then again, what fun would that be? I just hope Anwar doesn’t mind my bouts of bravado.
I look around the car to distract myself, but Chase and Cleo are equally absorbed by their phones, and Logan seems fully focused on the road. With nowhere else to turn, I glance back down at my phone. Mercifully, the three dots appear, indicating that Anwar is already typing.
Body heat on the beach? Way too much sand for that.
My heart promptly sinks into my stomach. I twirl a strand of hair between my fingers, my thoughts pulsing. How could I have ruined the vibe so quickly? Why do I have to be so damn eager all the time? Now Anwar is going to think I’m a total—
But the heater in my car is broken. That’s a much better place to keep each other warm?
I exhale, letting the rush of anxiety melt away. Maybe being forward has its advantages, after all. I smile as I tap out my response.
Look at you, always thinking ahead.
Gotta go. Will text tonight when we settle in for the night.
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“All right, the phone five is over,” Logan announces. “You all should’ve seen yourselves. You looked like a bunch of zombies getting your next brain fix.”
“In that case, was anyone else’s fix as delicious as mine?” I ask, dropping my phone into the shoebox first.
“My mom told me to say hi to everyone,” Cleo answers. “So, not particularly.”
“I think Amelia meant to say ‘salacious,’” Chase replies. “Judging from the dopey look on her face, I think someone got a love note from her brooding vampire boy.”
“I know you mean that as a negative, but I’d let him nibble my neck any day.”
The walls of Charvan immediately echo with a series of grossed-out groans.
“On that unnerving note,” Logan says, “we’ll be arriving at our first destination in ten minutes.”
I laugh and don’t fight the massive smile that spreads across my face.
There’s just so much to look forward to, I don’t even know where to begin.
It turns out that Mother Earth Occult and Antiques is appropriately labyrinthine, a collection of narrow rooms filled with all kinds of oddities and accursed items. We decided to split up and explore before converging on the tarot reader’s room at the back of the shop, so Cleo and I wander from space to cramped space.
We walk around a pile of dusty books and come face to face with a wall of framed paintings based on the tarot. I see Cleo’s eyes light up. She’s our resident artist, always doodling colorful, one-frame snapshots of events from our days.
“Gran Flo would’ve loved this one, huh?” Cleo says, adjusting the straps of her mini-narwhal backpack, which is always filled with charcoal pencils and flare pens.
The painting is a wheel of the tarot’s most iconic symbols, linking them to their world cultures and religions of origin. My eyes well up because Cleo is right. Grandma should be here to see this herself, but I press my eyes shut before any tears can escape. This trip is supposed to be a celebration and a tribute, a step forward in the journey, not back into the past.
Still, before moving on, I reach into my pocket and run my fingers over the locket I carry with me everywhere. It holds a picture of Grandma when she was in her twenties on one side and a current picture of me on the other, the two of us looking very much like sisters. I trace the grooves of the symbol engraved into its enamel surface: the Hebrew letter Dalet, which represents a door opening to potential. Grandma gave me this locket because Dalet is traditionally associated with The Empress. After all, there are twenty-two characters in the Hebrew alphabet and twenty-two cards in the tarot’s Major Arcana.
Just as this thought settles, I notice a particular symbol on the painting.
“Yep. Especially that symbol for The Fool,” I say.
“Really?” Cleo asks. “Why The Fool?”
“In the tarot, The Fool is the first figure, embarking on a journey to learn an essential lesson,” I begin. “She steps into the unknown blindly, ignoring potential dangers in order to learn from the guides of the Major Arcana. This journey might seem naive or reckless to others, but The Fool knows if she takes the harder path—the one lined with uncertainty and self-reflection—she’ll learn something vital. Grandma always said we should all be lucky to find that brand of foolishness.”
“In that case, Gran Flo was right,” Cleo says, rubbing my shoulder with a soft smile.
I nod and offer a smile in return, because forward we must go, just like The Fool. So I peer around the fronds of a fake purple palm tree beside us, finding a hall that leads to two adjoining rooms.
Earlier, I decided to lean into my Queen side, so I lead us left.
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Earlier, I decided to lean into my Mother Earth side, so I lead us right.
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We head left, pushing through hanging beads into a darkened room.
“What do you think this… Oh, it’s just a storage room.”
I agree with Cleo’s conclusion once I see the walls are lined with shelves of boxes. We turn to leave, until something catches my eye. I turn and see there’s a curtain covering the back wall. At least, I think that’s what it is.
“Can you make out what’s back there?” I ask.
Cleo shakes her head beside me. Now curious, I shuffle through the room in the semidarkness and my hand taps against the dusty curtain. I start to pull it aside, until something brushes against my hand. I can’t see it, but it feels like an enormous spider skitters across the tops of my fingers.
I gasp, pulling away and accidentally moving the curtain along with me. I stagger backward, clutching my hand.
“Are you okay?” Cleo asks, rushing to my side.
“Yeah. I think it was just a spider,” I shudder. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Wait. Amelia…”
Cleo points back up at the wall, at what has now been revealed in the dim light of this room. Hanging there are six framed paintings, all of them recreating images from our tarot deck. From Grandma’s deck.
My eyes widen, seeing the gorgeous renderings. I’ve never seen this tarot artwork anywhere other than our own set of cards. Seeing them expanded in such detail like this is—
I lose the thread of this thought, however, as a hand clamps down on my shoulder.
“You shouldn’t be in here.”
Click here
We head right and enter a large room with a counter and a cash register, which must be the winding shop’s lobby. The register is unoccupied, but my eye is drawn around the room anyway.
Cleo wanders up to a wall full of cryst
als and glass vials, but my focus is pulled by two bookshelves across the room. One houses a veritable library of volumes on the tarot, while the other is filled with dozens of different variations of tarot card decks.
I step up to the bookshelves and examine the colorful spines and deck sides, searching for anything familiar. I dig out our tarot deck from my bag and glance at it, then back to the shelves a few times, but nothing seems to resemble the unique look.
“Oh my god.”
Hearing this new voice, I spin around to find an old man emerging from a doorway on the other side of the room. He doesn’t look at me, though.
Instead, he stares at the deck in my hand—Grandma’s deck.
“Where in all perils below did you get that?”
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CHAPTER TWO
CHASE
MY EYES DON’T know where to settle.
After we split from Amelia and Cleo, Logan and I drifted in separate directions. I was drawn into this dimly lit room, which feels like a pocket where unwanted things collect. The shelves are cluttered with antique and occult things as expected, but somehow everything still seems out of place.
I find myself focusing on one shelf that holds a whole horde of items: a crescent moon tea set, a cloth sack full of jade marbles, a speckled white feather. I run my finger along the objects, leaving a faint trail in their dust. I feel unsettled. It’s like, in this room, I can somehow sense the energy each object has trapped inside.
Amelia always insists it’s just my imagination, but I’ve always felt objects are like people. They can carry their history inside, bottled and brewing just underneath the surface. Standing here, I feel like the history of all these objects is somehow fraught. Like they’ve all been trapped here too long, or that they’re…
Haunted?
I take a step back, and that’s when I hear it: a creaking sound from across the room. I snap my head in that direction, but there’s nothing there.
I tell myself to calm down, even though my pulse flutters in my neck. I don’t know if it’s just being around these storied items, but I can’t fight the feeling that someone is watching me.
“Come here.”
I feel the whisper against my cheek as one long arm wraps around my chest from behind. A scream starts to form in my throat, but then another hand clamps down over my mouth. Panic bursts open inside my veins, sending charges of adrenaline throughout my body.
“You’re way too cute to be wandering this store all alone.”
Next, something wet connects with the skin at the base of my neck. Something that feels like lips.
“Logan, I’m going to kill you,” I sputter, spinning around to find the grinning face of my boyfriend.
“But if you kill me, then who are you going to make out with in this creepy place?” Logan says, pulling me against him. I’m pretty tall, but Logan is taller. And more muscular. And, honestly, way hotter than me. I still can’t understand how I was lucky enough to find him, or lucky enough to have him fall for me.
This thought dissolves, however, once Logan kisses me. There are very few things that can pause the eternal forge of thoughts burning in my brain, but feeling Logan’s hands travel up my back is one of them. Even after two years, he leaves me breathless.
I still can’t believe that in two weeks moments like these are going to be in short supply. The idea of Logan and me leaving to go to college on opposite coasts still causes a sting so deep, I try to avoid thinking about it altogether.
“Chase!”
I step away from Logan because that was definitely Amelia’s voice shouting my name from somewhere deeper in the shop. Suddenly all of Logan’s warmth leaves my body. I’m used to Amelia being somewhat dramatic, but I am not used to her sounding distraught.
I spin and begin sprinting toward her voice, barely sideswiping the packed shelves as I go. I rush into some checkout space, filled with tarot decks and astrology charts and quasi-mystic paraphernalia. Finding Amelia there, I stop in my tracks so quickly that Logan nearly crashes into me.
I exhale, seeing that Amelia isn’t hurt or in danger. Still, something isn’t quite right. She looks stunned and Cleo stands at her side, fists clenched.
“Welcome to Mother Earth Occult and Antiques,” the man standing in front of Amelia and Cleo says, turning to face us. “It appears your friends have stumbled into a rather deep well of discovery.”
“And you are?” I ask, walking to join them.
“Why, I’m the owner,” the man says.
Given the name of this shop, I expected a flowing goddess type, but this man is made of ridges, thin as a twig and dressed in black. I can’t quite explain it, but I immediately sense he is a person of absence, not abundance. My guard flies up.
“Chase, he recognized our deck,” Amelia says, her eyes wide. “He says he knows where the cards come from.”
Disbelief ripples through me. We’ve never found anything about Gran Flo’s deck over the years, not even on our deepest research dives. How could we be lucky enough to find answers on our first stop? I then remind myself that anything trading in truth—spirituality, religion, psychics, the tarot, and all the rest—is always riddled with scam artists.
“‘He’ goes by Maggie,” the man says. “And are you four telling me you really don’t know what that deck is?”
“It was my grandma’s,” Amelia blurts out. “She bought it at a yard sale years ago and we never—”
“We’d love to hear what you know about the deck,” I interrupt, stepping beside Amelia. My first rule of tarot engagement? Never give yourself away.
“It really means the world to us. It’s why we came here on this trip,” Amelia adds. She can’t help herself, because her first tarot rule? Open the floodgates.
“Well, I’d certainly like to meet this grandmother of yours, because there’s no way she bought that deck at a yard sale. May I see it up close?”
“Amelia’s grandma passed away earlier this year,” I say, placing my hand over Amelia’s. Thankfully it doubles as a gesture of affection, while also keeping her from giving over the deck. “But why do you say that?”
Maggie passes his cloudy blue eyes over me with a mix of annoyance and respect. He then walks behind the register counter, trying to gain some authority.
“That right there is a genuine Carson Perilli tarot,” Maggie begins, once settled. “He only made a handful of decks in his lifetime, each one unique. And he only gifted them to people he deemed very special.”
“Who was this Perilli person?” I ask, still grasping Amelia’s hand. I feel an electric hum begin to charge my veins, sparking something new. I can only imagine how Amelia must feel. Maybe we somehow are that lucky, at least today?
Then I remind myself what Logan would say, that luck is only the surface awareness of a person meeting their purpose. Either way, Maggie now has my undivided attention.
“Carson Perilli was a respected artist and an even more respected spiritual leader, at least in certain Californian circles,” Maggie explains. “He never reached mainstream popularity, nor was he interested in doing so. But he did amass a rather… occult following.”
“And he made this deck?” I ask. “How do you know?”
“Well, I must admit, I’m a bit of a Perillian myself. All of his decks have been accounted for since his passing. All except his final work, that is.”
Maggie’s eyes flick down to our deck for just a second, but it’s enough for me to clock the pang of collector’s lust he tries to mask.
“If I’m right, then that deck is missing four cards,” Maggie says. “The Prince of Wands. The Princess of Cups. The King of Pentacles. The Queen of Swords.”
“That’s… that’s absolutely right.”
I don’t stop Amelia from answering this time, because even I’m surprised.
“Perilli always withheld the same four cards from every deck he made,” Maggie continues. “He hid each one in a treasured place and peppered unique clues to find these h
idden cards in his artwork. The only way to uncover the missing cards is to use the signs in the corresponding deck.”
A sense of awe ripples over me. That’s eccentric, at best, but also maybe… deeply cool?
“So, this dude made personalized tarot scavenger hunts?” Cleo jumps in. “Uh, that’s a little much.”
“Genius always looks like foolishness to the uninitiated,” Maggie says, his chin raised. “But you can imagine the kind of enthusiasm this practice garnered among his followers. All of Perilli’s decks have long been accounted for and the missing cards have been found. Again, all except one last, lost set.”
A pulse of realization snaps across the room. As we begin to understand, the energy suddenly shifts.
“The masterpiece you hold in your hands is quite valuable, to the right eye,” Maggie says. “I’d be happy to buy it from you.”
“It’s not for sale,” Amelia says automatically. “To us, it’s invaluable.”
“Yet you knew nothing of its true value moments ago,” Maggie snaps, his cool exterior cracking a moment. He takes a breath to gather himself. “You’ll always have your memories, my dear. But that deck belongs in a museum for all to enjoy.”
“If all of this is true, then why is there no mention of Perilli or his decks anywhere on the internet?” I ask, hoping to keep Maggie engaged. Something tells me that the further our interests diverge, the less forthcoming he’ll be.
“You young ones and your internet,” Maggie sighs. “We Perillians pride ourselves on earning our knowledge. Hunting down any easy public mentions is as time-honored a tradition as finding the missing cards.”
“Then when you say ‘in a museum,’ you really mean in the private hands of some cultish following?” Logan says, taking the words right out of my mouth.
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