Reading the cards had become…uncomfortable.
Unnur could hear the tale that the cards told more easily than the average Joe on the street, but that just meant she had a bit more talent than the rest of them. To her, the messages in the cards were muddy and distorted, or she didn’t have the skill to read them properly, although she had been working diligently for over a decade to become better at that and had become very good at interpreting them. No, the problem was her as the medium. Perhaps it was because her talent had arrived by a freak accident instead of her being born with it. The lightning strike that had scarred her face and turned her right foot into a shrivelled, lifeless lump of meat where the current from the bolt had left her body and been absorbed into the earth…well, it had scrambled her brains, too.
She had trouble remembering things. Her memory was bad enough that she was careful to write down everything. Her notebook went everywhere with her. She was plagued by headaches. Not every day, not even every month, but once she got one, it would settle in for a good long visit, resistant to every headache nostrum known to man. Sometimes the headaches were so bad, she was forced to shut up the store and lie in bed in the dark, her eyes closed, afraid to move lest her movement set off another series of sharp, throbbing waves of pain that made her feel sick and giddy.
Neither the headaches nor the memory problems had been part of her life before the lightning strike. She had been blissfully unaware of what the future held. It had been as much of a mystery to her as it was to everyone else, which had made life very simple.
So while the gods had been scrambling her brain and taking away her memory and leaving behind a reminder of their visit on her face, they had also added something. Compensation. Or perhaps the headaches and the shoddy recall were payment for their gift of foresight. The gods, Tenska had once said in those short three days she had known him, always asked for payment in advance. You knew when you had made full payment, for then you received your reward.
She had paid and was still paying. Hers was not a strong talent and no matter how skilled she grew at reading the cards, their messages would always be muted and garbled.
But what came through was enough. She had been grateful that the cards spoke to her at all, until lately.
The overall message in the cards had grown darker. Forbidding. The King and Queen of Wands had come to visit more and more frequently. Now, they were in almost every single spread, but they were accompanied by warnings of doom and destruction.
The Magician was appearing more frequently. Unnur suspected that he was a person the cards were referring to. Possibly, he was someone known to the King of Wands, for he was nearly always on the King’s side of the lay.
It was possible the more general interpretation could apply: new beginnings, the start of a new phase. Eternity. But the Magician was also a channel between the human world and other worlds. Unnur had always instinctively understood his bridging abilities, for they aligned with what she did as a medium. He stood with his staff raised to the air and his other hand pointing to the earth. In an odd way, he made her think of lightning rods and how they channelled power, too.
The Magician would have been her personal card, except that the Magician always represented a man. At first, Unnur had assumed that the Page of Cups was hers, for the Page rarely appeared in her personal readings—which were never about her—and the Page was either a young man or a maiden woman, whose intuition was gradually emerging.
Over the years of the readings, though, she had come to hope that Strength might be her card. Strength was the combination of intuition and personal power. The intuition was hers thanks to a lightning strike. Her personal power had been gradually building to match the talent she had been gifted. Strength did not appear in the readings very often, either.
Lately, the Magician and the King and Queen of Wands had been surrounded by toil and trouble. The Death card did not particularly worry Unnur, for she understood far better than her customers that Death was a symbol for endings. Closure. Death could be a hopeful card.
The Tower had been appearing frequently, along with many of the Major Arcana. Lots of Major Arcana cards always meant movement, big events. Drama. The pseudo Chinese curse about interesting times always occurred to Unnur when she saw a spread with many trump cards.
Death, the Tower, and the Chariot, over and over again. The Chariot mixed up with the Tower and Death meant that someone was about to face a deeply emotional crisis, and all her lays seemed to focus on the King and Queen of Wands.
It was a relief to have an excuse not to read the cards. Being busy kept her mind off their garbled messages and her own inability to hear them more clearly. It was frustrating. Their messages were frightening and she thought that if she had a greater gift, if she could hear more clearly, then she would understand what they were trying to tell her.
The vague warnings she received lingered and she would find herself puzzling over them when she had a spare moment, nuzzling the mysteries the cards hadn’t revealed.
The cards weren’t telling her what to do anymore. They were warning her and she knew that if her gift from the gods had been greater, then she would have heard their warning as clear as a trumpet call, or a fire siren, and known what to do. Instead, all she could do was wait and watch when she could for more answers. Her ignorance increased her worry, rather than keeping her dumb and unconcerned.
So she found herself avoiding the cards and their constant cries of coming disaster, but her sleep grew more disturbed, troubled by dreams. When she woke in the middle of the night, her thoughts would turn to the unknown King and Queen, and all her worries would gather around her.
Today, just behind her eyes, she could feel the growing pressure that heralded another headache, but she was busy enough with customers that she could ignore it even though she knew that it would not go away now.
Finally, when the shop emptied, she rested her elbows on the counter and palmed her face in both hands, closing her eyes.
Not looking at the cards was worse than listening to them. They would torture her with nightmares and migraines until she agreed to hear them out. With a sigh, she straightened up and went back to the round table (step, drag…step, drag…), sat and picked up the deck. She shuffled it while she gathered her courage.
“Tell me,” she whispered and began to lay the cards.
The King of Wands
The Queen of Wands
The Tower.
Unnur’s hands began to shake and her headache stepped through the door, arriving with a bolt of pain that echoed on and on like thunder rolling in the distance.
She turned the next card, almost dropping the entire pile because of her shuddering fingers.
The Chariot.
Completely unnerved, she put the pack down, face down, and pressed her hands flat against the silk to stop their trembling.
This was …the cards were shouting at her. Could there be any more direct a message than these four cards, one after another?
After a long moment, while Unnur rode out the pain banging and careening around inside her head, she picked up the balance of the pack again. “What do I do?” she whispered, for talking took effort and even the sound of her voice started the throbbing up once more. “I’ve heard. Command me.”
She turned a card. The Lord of Despair. The Nine of Swords. The bringer of nightmares.
Nightmares.
She stared at the card. How many dreams had she had in the last month? How many a night? She had ignored them all, assuming in her foolishness that they were the price she paid for her gift with the cards. Never in a single moment had she considered that the dreams themselves were the bearers of the messages she had been looking for.
Unnur put the pack down once more, this time placing them on the silk softly and with reverence. She rested her fingers on top of the pack while she stared at the King and Queen. “Dreams. My dreams. I understand. Thank you.”
Then, even though her head felt like a vise-grip
was trying to squeeze her temples together, she got up and greeted the next customer through the door with a dazzling smile.
Tomorrow, she would begin her new quest for answers.
In between customers, she sent her thoughts out to the King and Queen, wherever they may be, for they were about to face a very personal challenge. She sent them her warmest wishes, the kind of wishes a best friend might bestow. She did not think it was inappropriate, for she knew them as well as a best friend might. The cards, over the years, had told her much about them. They were friends, even if they never met.
It didn’t occur to her to wonder if they would ever meet. Plain, maiden Unnur Guillory, with her mark and her useless foot, and her little talent, wasn’t the type of person who got to meet such wonderful people.
It just wasn’t in the cards.
* * * * *
Charlee was in her advanced chemistry class, concentrating on getting the glass still working properly, when she was called down to the front office. Principal York, who everyone called Principal Pudding behind his back, took her into his office and shut the door, then told her that her father had died forty minutes ago.
Charlee nodded, feeling the superficial calm surround her and freeze her reactions. The calm part of her observed that this was almost the same kind of thinking/non-feeling sensation she had felt when she had met Asher, or when the gang had taken her.
Shock. It’s shock, she told herself. Nearly seven years of continuous education in the sciences had taught her that much. You’re going to break through the calm in a minute and then it will hurt like hell.
But was it shock? It wasn’t like she hadn’t known this was coming. Her father had been sliding toward death for a few weeks now. He had been moved to the palliative care ward two weeks ago. Renee, the shift nurse who was most often on duty when Charlee got to the hospital each evening, had sat her down in a quiet corridor to explain what the move meant. She had been gentle, but frank, using terms like “the end” and “preparation.” But she hadn’t said weeks. She had said days.
Dad had hung on for at least twice as long as they had thought he would. Every day, Charlee had expected this news, and every day it had failed to arrive. Until today.
She looked up at Principal York (pudding), and noticed clinically that his shirt didn’t quite meet over his belly. The buttons were strained, and his white T-shirt peeped out between them. She said, “Could I…would you mind if I used your phone? I need to make a few calls.”
He had been talking about arranging a cab for her, and someone to collect her things from her locker, but now he broke off, surprised.
“I need to call my brother,” she added. She didn’t mention that it would be an international call.
“Can’t you…can your mother call him from home?” He tried to say it nicely, but he was clearly flummoxed by her request.
“We don’t have a phone at home.” She gave him a stiff smile. “My mom is at the hospital. She won’t be thinking straight,” she lied, injecting as much humble pathos into her expression and tone as she thought she could get away with.
“Oh. Of course. Yes.” He picked up the black mobile phone sitting next to his desk phone, unplugged the lead from the base and closed it up. The rubber antenna caught on the edge of the desk and nearly yanked the long plastic oblong out of his hand. He slapped his other hand around the top of it and gave her an apologetic smile. “I’ll just…” He waved toward the door.
“Thank you.”
She waited until he had shut the door, then picked up the phone and dialed. Asher answered almost immediately. His cellphone was one of the smaller, silver things that folded up and fit into a pocket. “Charlee, what’s wrong?”
Charlee clutched the phone, her tears spilling hot and fast down her cheeks. Oh good, I am normal after all, the calm part of her mind whispered. “Asher…” It was all she could choke out.
“Is it your dad?” His voice was gentle.
She nodded. But that wasn’t going to work; Asher wouldn’t see it. She cleared her throat. “Forty-five minutes ago.” Her voice sounded strange even to her. High and childish, not the usual low, graceful tone she had tried to cultivate so that she would sound like Ylva.
“Where are you?” he asked. “I’ll come and pick you up.”
“No, that’s not—”
“Yes, it is. Damn it, your father is dead, Charlee. The world can go screw itself for two days while you say goodbye to him any way you need to. If that means I’m seen with you, I don’t give a fuck. Where are you?”
Knowing that she had wanted this all along, that she had reached out to him first, even before Lucas, with the unvocalized hope that he would take care of this (her, take care of her), she sniffed and told him where she was.
Twenty minutes later, she slid into the back of the cab, into his arms, and cried her eyes out. It was the only time she let herself cry in front of anyone for the next four days and with Asher, it didn’t count.
His arms were warm, and even though he had never hugged her and only once had held her against him, and even then she had been high on painkillers, his arms were familiar and dear. It was like coming home.
* * * * *
The four of them sat in Darwin’s tiny kitchen around the peach-colored Formica table, which was patterned with the outline of boomerangs, over and over. The Formica was chipped here and there and the steel legs were wobbly, but Charlee had sat at this table so often she didn’t notice it any more.
She crossed her legs and pulled down the hem of her black dress, which Elizabeth had helped her pick out, while Darwin poured four glasses of wine from the bottle he had opened. He handed her a glass first, then one for Lucas and Asher and finally picked up the last one and held it up.
“To Brentwood Montgomery.” He took a breath. “A man who hung in there with sheer relentlessness far longer than any man would have been expected to, and he did it only because of his kids, something I will remember for the rest of my days.”
“Dad,” Charlee murmured, and sipped her wine.
“Fucking A,” Lucas agreed, and knocked back nearly half his glass. He wore his Class A uniform, and even though it had very few ribbons (so far, she added) on the breast, she thought he looked very fine indeed. Her gaze kept going back to his hair, though, which was shorn almost completely, except for a thatch of black sprouts on top. She hadn’t seen it so short before.
Lucas was tanned and leaner than before he had left, but he moved with energy and there was a faraway look in his eyes that she had never seen before, like he was dealing with a whole lot of thoughts he wouldn’t or couldn’t share. Secrets, she realized. Was that faraway look something she wore? It was a startling idea she would have to consider, later.
Lucas grimaced and hissed through his teeth as the wine went down. “Well, it’s not beer, is it?” He put the glass down.
Darwin leaned back on his chair and cracked open the fridge door. He tossed a can of Coors to Lucas. “Philistine,” he added.
“Damn right.” Lucas cracked the seal with relish and slurped up the froth that emerged.
Asher reached over and hooked Lucas’ half-full glass. “Waste not,” he said and poured it into his own glass, topping it off. Then he drained what was left and wiped drops from his jacket. His suit was dark charcoal, the closest to black she had ever seen him wear. The tie was black, the shirt a silvery grey. His shoulders seemed even wider under the padded shoulders of the jacket. Darwin’s tiny kitchen seemed even smaller, almost claustrophobic, with Asher in it.
Darwin had his chair tilted on the back legs still, like a kid in grade school. His long legs rested on the steel chair legs. He looked very comfortable and also looked about twelve years old, despite the grey at his temples. Charlee hadn’t realized that Darwin was the shortest of the three of them until this moment, but he was only missing an inch.
She looked around the table as she drank more of the sweet wine. Her sadness hovered like a grey mist at the bottom of her sou
l, but despite that chronic foundation, soaring over the top of it was an undemonstrative happiness. Three of her favorite people in the whole world were sitting right here, right now. There wasn’t anyone else she would have wanted here, except maybe for Elizabeth, but Elizabeth wasn’t a part of this group. She wouldn’t have fit. No, these three were the core of her life right now, and they were all here. Even Lucas, who had been on the other side of the world forty-eight hours ago. Her happiness didn’t make her feel like smiling, but it warmed her in a quiet way.
Darwin lowered his chair back to the floor with a soft thud. “So. We should probably figure this out, before we get too ripped to think straight.”
“Speak for yourself, old man,” Asher growled and knocked back a large mouthful of the wine.
“I could drink you under the table,” Darwin shot back.
“It’s such a little table, after all,” Asher observed, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
Darwin rolled his eyes.
“Figure what out?” Charlee said.
Lucas had grown very still. He was watching Darwin and suddenly, she knew.
Darwin gave her a smile, one she hadn’t seen for a long while. She remembered the smile from when she had been much younger. It was, why, it was almost patronizing. Except that Darwin had never spoken down to her, not even once.
“We have to figure out what happens to you now,” Darwin said. “How long do you think it will take for someone to figure out your mom isn’t around anymore?”
Even though Lucas’ wariness had warned her, it was still a cold shock to hear the words spoken aloud. “How did you know?” she asked, putting her glass down.
Darwin tapped his temple. “I’m not as smart as you, Miss Einstein, but I’ve still got a few marbles left, rolling around up here. I figure she’s been gone, oh, about six weeks now.”
The Branded Rose Prophecy Page 25