Haven Divided

by Josh de Lioncourt

  Maybe it was the booze, maybe it was the roaring thoughts in her head, maybe it was the guilt weighing on her heart. But of course—of fucking course—the one place that had to catch her eye in this sea of humanity had to be a fucking fortuneteller. It had to be something that reminded her of those last few texts. It had to be something that forced her to think of the House of Horrors, and the crystal ball there, and the mysterious stranger in the photo…

  And Emily.

  Her feet slowed, and then stopped. She stood there, looking at the sign as the crowd flowed around her like a roaring river. Shoulders knocked against hers, strollers were maneuvered past, children scampered at her feet. She noticed none of them.

  She had hours to kill, and now that she’d seen that little tent with its handwritten sign, she wasn’t going to be able to just walk away.

  “I’ve seen stranger things than psychic hockey players,” Jeff had told her.

  Slowly, she made her way toward the tent, ignoring the people who jostled her and the amplified voices of those hocking their wares. The saxophone transitioned from lively jazz to something mournful and full of heartache.

  She pushed back the flap and stepped inside.

  It was dark and stifling. The air was thick with the smell of incense and burning wax. Candles hung in the darkness, looking for all the world like they were hovering, unsupported, in mid-air above a long, low table. The flickering light of their tiny flames reflected of its polished surface and from a few chunks of what Casey thought were quartz crystal scattered across it, but it was hard to be sure in the gloom.

  “Come in…come in,” a jovial voice said from the shadows at the back of the tent, and a dark figure materialized like a specter behind the table, sinking down into a chair she could barely see. He was not a large man, and though his voice was colored by age, it was not frail. He seemed to be wearing a heavy black cloak despite the heat, and his face was lost in the shadows beneath its hood.

  “Sit down,” he invited, gesturing to a small wooden chair on her side of the table.

  Wordlessly, Casey accepted, sinking down onto the hard wood with a sigh. She hadn’t realized how tired her feet were until she’d taken her weight off them. The sounds of music and voices from outside seemed very far away and more muffled than the thin fabric of the tent’s walls could account for. Her thoughts were taking on the sweet, languid quality she associated with a good buzz, and she welcomed the feeling.

  “Now,” the man said. “What answers have you come seeking from the Fabulous Fortuneteller?” He spoke the name as if it was a grand title, and Casey couldn’t quite suppress the snort of mirth that escaped her lips. What? Did he think she was five?

  Her amusement died as quickly as it had come, and she opened her mouth to respond, but no words would come. She had no answer to give. She didn’t know why she was there. Or rather she had no idea how to explain and doubted it would be worth the effort.

  The man lifted one gnarled old hand to forestall her in any case, the sleeve of his cloak pulling back to reveal a thin old arm topped by wiry gray hairs.

  “No,” he said, “wait. The cards will tell us.”

  From the depths of his cloak he produced a small pack of cards. He held them out to her and, a little nonplussed, she took them.

  “Shuffle them as you will,” he told her, leaning back in his chair.

  Casey fanned a few of the cards out in front of her, but her curiosity quickly melted into disappointment. They weren’t tarot cards like those her mother had sometimes messed around with at holiday parties. They were just ordinary playing cards. She looked up at the candles above her with a slight frown. With all the trouble the old man had clearly gone to making the rest of this setting impressive, like however the hell he had rigged those candles to float, you’d have thought he would have at least bought a deck of fucking tarot cards.

  “Go on,” he urged her.

  So Casey shuffled the cards. The snap and swish of the cards as she did seemed very loud in the tent. It reminded her of hours spent playing Go Fish, War, and Gin with Emily, but the memory didn’t sting as much as she expected it to. Dimly, she was aware of her breath slowing, each inhalation filling her lungs and her brain with sweet perfume.

  At last, she set the deck down in the center of the little table.

  “Okay,” she said. “Now what?” Were her words a little slurred?

  “Deal out three cards in front of you in a line. These three will represent your past.”

  Casey did as she was bidden.

  The queen of clubs…

  The two of hearts…

  The ace of spades.

  The man leaned forward, peering at the cards in the dim candlelight and reaching out to lay a finger on the first.

  “The queen of clubs,” he said dramatically. “The dark-haired woman. Confident or strong.”

  He tapped the next card. “The two of hearts. A supportive and loving partnership.” He moved his finger to the last.

  “And the ace of spades. The very worst of all cards. Death…destruction…loss.” He settled back again, lifting his faceless hood to stare up at the candles above them.

  “Tell me,” he said after a moment, “did you recently lose someone? A friend—a woman, perhaps—with whom you shared a special bond?”

  The words drove a knife into Casey’s heart. She wanted to get up and get the hell out of there, get back out into the sunshine and the sounds of a sane world.

  But the incense was making her drowsy, and it seemed too much to lift herself from the chair. It was easier to just keep staring at those cards, even if it did reopen old wounds to see that the queen had green eyes—just like Emily’s.

  “Lay four more cards out now,” the man continued, oblivious to her discomfort. “These will be your present.”

  Automatically, her hand moved toward the deck, and she watched as she flipped over the next four cards in a line as if someone else was doing it. It was strange how her flesh had gone numb, how she couldn’t feel the stiff paper between her fingers.

  King of clubs…

  Ace of hearts…

  Three of hearts…

  Five of diamonds.

  Once again, the fortuneteller leaned forward, tapping each card in turn as he read them.

  “A generous and warmhearted man. A romance blossoms with him. Love…leading to a joyous event.”

  Casey frowned down at the cards. While it was true that she and Jeff seemed to have a connection, she wasn’t yet prepared to say it was as serious as all that. And what was the rest of that bullshit about joyous events? That sure didn’t sound like much of anything in her life right now. All she could see was more pain and guilt and grief on the horizon.

  Sleepily, and with a pang of disappointment she didn’t quite understand, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath of the perfumed air. The first few cards had just been a lucky guess, that’s all. All illusion, slight of hand, and cleverly chosen words. It was all meaningless.

  “Now, let’s see what the future has in store for you. The next card is the most important of them all. With it, in conjunction with your past and present, we may see what lies ahead for you.”

  What the hell—the sooner she got this over with, the sooner she could get back outside. Why had she come in here anyway?

  Casey opened her eyes and flipped over the next card.

  The joker.

  The fortuneteller seemed to freeze for a moment, and Casey got the distinct impression that he had been surprised by the card. Several seconds ticked away as she waited for him to say something.

  Then, almost angrily, he swept all the cards from the table and into the deck, and they disappeared back inside his cloak.

  “But the cards sometimes choose to keep their own counsel,” he said, and some of the good humor and theatrics had left his tone. “Perhaps the crystal will be more forthcoming.”

  He slid one of the large pieces of quartz crystal toward him. Candlelight danced from its smoothl
y polished facets, breaking apart into something that was rather like multicolored fog.

  “It’s so pretty,” she murmured, but now her tongue was numb as well, and she couldn’t seem to get it around the words. The old man seemed to understand her all the same, though.

  “Indeed it is,” he said.

  He stared into the crystal as Casey watched, her eyes flicking back and forth between the dancing colors and the motionless shadows beneath his fathomless hood. She thought she saw the glint of an eye there, the pale flash of wrinkled flesh, but it could have just as easily been her imagination.

  Time slipped away. Dreamily, she considered getting to her feet and walking away, but it seemed too great of an effort to move. It was becoming harder to keep her eyes open, and again she wondered if it was only incense burning.

  All at once, the man spoke again, his voice harsh, drawing Casey back from the brink of sleep.

  "And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats: one lot for HaShem, and the other for Azazel.”

  He looked up from the crystal, and for the briefest moment she did see the glint of light in the depths of his hood.

  “But which will you be,” he asked her. “The goat of HaShem, or the goat of Azazel? Let us cast lots, Miss Casey, and see what they tell us.”

  He reached into his cloak and produced a fistful of coins, dropping them down on the table before her with a jangle.

  “Add a quarter of your own to these,” he said, all trace of drama gone.

  Casey squinted down at the coins on the polished wood before her. It was so hard to focus on them. She saw a few foreign coins…a funny looking quarter…and a couple of large gold ones that looked like something out of Harry Potter.

  “A quarter, Miss Casey,” the fortuneteller repeated. “And then you can pick up and toss down all the coins to see how the lots favor you.”

  Casey was only distantly aware of her hand reaching into her purse. She felt nothing as her fingers rummaged through its depths, but when her hand emerged, still feeling for all the world like it belonged to someone else, there was a quarter in her palm.

  “Very good, then. Pick up the coins and toss them. It’s an old form of cleromancy, but one is as good as another, isn’t it?”

  The good humor was creeping back into the man’s voice again, and a tiny trickle of unease blossomed in Casey’s stomach. Slowly, she reached toward the pile of coins.

  A sudden blinding light drove daggers into Casey’s eyes, and she jerked backward, tipping over the chair she was sitting on and sending herself sprawling onto the floor. The quarter slipped from her fingers and rolled away toward the now open tent flap, where a tall slender figure stood silhouetted against the bright summer sun.

  “There you are,” Jeff said, bending down to scoop up Casey’s quarter and offer her his hand. “Are you okay? I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  Shakily, Casey accepted his help and got to her feet. She swayed unsteadily, and Jeff put an arm around her shoulders to steady her.

  “What are you doing in here?” he asked.

  “Getting my fortune told,” she tried to say, but, even to her own ears, the words came out mushy and garbled.

  Jeff looked at her with concern.

  “Are you all right, Casey?”

  “Fine,” she said—or thought she did.

  “Come on,” he said. “We need to get you back to the motel. You need to rest.”

  He guided her back outside. The air smelled gloriously clean after the strange heady scents in the fortuneteller’s tent—grilling meat…cotton candy…

  “Did you get your hands on something stronger than the weed?” Jeff was asking, but she couldn’t answer. She twisted around, though, wanting one last glimpse of the fortuneteller.

  Sunlight illuminated the inside of the tent through the now open flap. There was nothing in there—just an overturned chair and a dull plyboard workbench, devoid of anything. No cloaked figure sat behind it; no candles floated above.

  Her feet tangled together and she almost fell. Only Jeff’s arm around her kept her upright.

  She looked up at him, blinking in the bright sunshine and trying desperately to bring his dark face into focus.

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” she muttered as gray shadows began closing around the edges of her vision.

  She welcomed the wave of faintness as it washed over her, allowing it to pick her up and carry her away for a little while without a fight. As unconsciousness swallowed her up, she heard three words echoing uneasily in her mind:

  HaShem or Azazel?

  The Others

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Paige moved slowly, pulling on the same tunic she’d worn yesterday and trying to ignore the sick pounding in her head. She felt like she was the one with the hangover, though only Garrett had been drinking from the bottle the night before. Her muscles ached, her face was hot, and her wings felt stiff and brittle. Perhaps she should send for a healer to brew up a potion before her condition worsened.

  Reluctantly, she made her way across the room and stood before the cracked and dirty mirror in the corner over an equally cracked and dirty basin. Her hair hung in lank tangles on either side of her flushed face, and there were dark smudges under her eyes. Even her antennae hung limply from the back of her neck, their tips almost brushing her shoulders.

  Damn.

  It was a most inconvenient time to fall ill. There was far too much to do, and far too much uncertainty about how much time they had before Marianne’s men came to root them out of their hidey-holes. Besides, Samhain was only days away now, and the hustle and bustle of the city’s preparations for the festival would serve as good cover for them to move unnoticed through the streets. No, she couldn’t be sick. There simply wasn’t time.

  Tiredly, she picked up a brush from the edge of the basin and began running it through her hair, watching with some dismay as her antennae barely twitched out of the way. She understood the importance of a commander’s appearance to her troops.

  “I thought, perhaps, I would just have you kill him, you know,” a voice spoke behind her.

  With a gasp, she dropped the brush into the basin, spun around—

  —And faced an empty room.

  A small rumpled bed beneath a window…a fedora perched on one bedpost…a pile of stained chain mail and dirty clothes on the floor…a closed door. Nowhere for anyone to hide.

  “Who’s there?”

  “You know who I am, Miss Paige,” the voice said from behind her again. “Surely you haven’t forgotten me already. We’ve grown so close these last few weeks. Old and intimate friends, you and I.”

  Slowly, Paige turned back to face the mirror, her heart thudding painfully and her eyeballs pulsing in time with it.

  The reflection of the old drunkard, Jack, grinned out of it at her, seeming to lean on the glass’s tarnished frame. He couldn’t be there—he couldn’t—and yet, there he was.

  Dreamily, Paige closed her eyes.

  I’m imagining it, she thought desperately. I’m sick with fever, and I’m hallucinating.

  “You and Mr. Haake,” Jack sighed with theatric exaspiration. “Always so quick to doubt your senses…so ready to blame illness. It grows wearisome, Miss Paige, and that is truly saying something. Why, this is the most fun I’ve had in centuries!”

  Reluctantly, Paige opened her eyes. She said nothing. She watched him, watching her, and found her gaze drawn to the milky cataract that hid his eye. What does that eye see? she wondered.

  “As I was saying,” Jack went on, “I had considered having you kill the big brute, but then I realized there was some fun to be had with him yet. Samhain is coming, and we wouldn’t want him to miss the party.”

  “No, we wouldn’t,” she said, but her voice sounded far away in her own ears, each word sliding slowly over her tongue like molasses.

  “And,” Jack continued as if he’d just remembered something, “you did so want him to stay. He’ll seek you out shortly, I think, and
if he wishes to leave, you will let him leave.”

  Paige’s heart sank. She didn’t want Garrett to leave. Everything she’d done had been so that he’d stay—stay and lead the Dragon’s Brood at her side, the way things used to be.

  Only…what had she done? She couldn’t remember, and she found that fact mildly alarming, like the baying of a wolfhound too far away to pose a threat.

  “Oh, now, Miss Paige,” Jack’s reflection admonished her, “you wound me! I promised you he’d stay, and he will. He’ll come crawling back to you, begging for your help—for your forgiveness—in just a few days. Isn’t that what you want? You’ll have him right where you want him.”

  “Yes,” she whispered, and a small smile played at the corners of her mouth.

  That was what she wanted.

  Wasn’t it?

  “Very good then, Miss Paige.” The Jack in the mirror winked that terrible, grotesque eye at her, then vanished from the glass, leaving only her own face staring back at her.

  A thunderous pounding on her door caused her to turn once again, just in time to see it burst open. Garrett came barreling through it, his fists clenched.

  “Paige!”

  He strode across the room and sank down onto the foot of her bed, bringing his face level with hers. She was unnerved to find the big man was trembling.

  “Good morning to you, too,” Paige drawled. “Usually people wait to be invited before bursting into someone’s bedroom.” She’d hoped the jab would have calmed him, but instead, Garrett just became more agitated.

  “You’ve got to help me,” he said. “Mona and Miraculum are gone. No one’s seen them all morning.”

  Paige raised her eyebrows, waiting. She was relieved to find that she was feeling a bit better. Her headache was receding, as was the stiffness in her body. She thought she might be all right once she ate something.

  “The window was open, though,” Garrett went on, his words tumbling out faster. “And…well…I don’t know what to think.”