He took him a second to work out why.
It didn’t reflect anything. Not the flickering light from the candles or the soft, gauzy drapes that hung from the walls. It was clear as water.
A woman was at the other side of the room, her back to Ledger as she hunted through the boxes stacked on a small bookshelf.
“I don’t make promises,” she said without looking around. “And I don’t work for health and safety. For the record.”
Ledger drew a blank at first, and then he remembered the not-exactly-a-promise the woman at the dodgems had made. He cleared his throat.
“Understood.”
Madam Persephone waved her hand over her shoulder. “Sit.”
Ledger did as he was told. He regretted it almost immediately. It felt like every debt he’d incurred for his body since he got here—every bad night’s sleep, every ruthlessly smothered anxiety, every doubt that he’d ignored while it gnawed at him—came due at once. It landed on him like a rock, and he took a soft, ragged breath of surprise.
“I can’t be honest with you unless you’re honest with yourself,” Madam Persephone said as she turned around.
She looked… soft. Comfortable. Someone you’d want to have coffee with. When she reached the table, she leaned down to move a skein of soft, creamy wool wound on a spindle off the chair. Something deep in the back of Ledger’s brain told him not to sniff.
Madame Persephone gave him a small smile as she sat down and placed the box she’d gotten off the shelves in front of her. Her hand, fingers callused and nails short and clean, rested on top of it.
“An awful lot of things were decided for you, Mr. Conroy,” she said. “So I want you to choose. Which deck would you like me to do your reading with?”
She opened the box and pushed it into the middle of the table. The plain wooden box was lined with thick dark-indigo velvet, and three decks of cards were laid out in it. Each of them was wrapped in plain white silk.
Ledger reached for the box and stopped. His fingers didn’t quite touch the wood as he glanced at Madame Persephone to check he had permission. She assigned it with a nod, and Ledger picked up the first deck. Without even trying to be discreet, he lifted it to take a sniff like it was a block of soap.
He never did that. If nothing else, it looked weird. The sort of thing the lunatic son of a serial killer would do. But he did it, and he wasn’t going to think about why.
The first deck of cards smelled of tears. The second of blood. The third of smoke and wood—he didn’t know what that meant.
“Choose,” Madame Persephone said. Her voice was gentle but unyielding.
“Does it make a difference?” Ledger asked.
“Who knows.”
Ledger stared at the decks. He tried to weigh up the benefits versus cost, as if this were an auction and he had to decide which lot would give the most bang for his buck. It was impossible to decide. He grabbed one blindly and handed the silk-wrapped bundle across the table.
Smoke and wood it was.
Madame Persephone set it to one side while she returned the other decks to the box and closed it firmly. Once the box was sealed again, she set it aside, next to the yarn she’d worked, and reached the cards he’d chosen. She picked the silk knot apart with neat, clean nails and let the fabric fall open. It was singed on the inside, curls and stains of smoke worked into the threads, and the cards themselves were charred along the edges with blisters on the painted illustrations.
“That tracks,” Ledger said. “I’m two for two on bad calls lately.”
“Don’t judge a book by its cover,” Madame Persephone said. “Or my cards by what they’ve gone through. Before we start, though, there are the formalities…”
She extended her hand, palm up. The battered silver bands of her rings were bright against her warm-toned skin.
Ledger had the suspicion she didn’t expect paper. He hoped not anyhow. Wren had left with the tickets. He pulled a handful of coins from his pocket and fished out a quarter. It wasn’t silver, but it would have to do symbolically.
He sketched the cross on her palm—middle finger to the joint of her wrist where the blood showed blue, then the start and end of her lifeline. Once he finished, he put the coin in the heart of her hand, and she closed her fingers around it.
“You know the old ways,” Madame Persephone said. It was hard to tell if she approved or not.
“I know old people.”
“Are they?”
