She picked up the last card and held it for a long time. Then she returned all three cards to the deck and carefully folded the silk scarf around them.
“The bite could be the chains you need to break.”
“But?”
“But it doesn’t resonate. There’s something else, new chains coming. Read very literally, the cards are saying you are afraid, but through a death you will bind yourself to a new devil.”
“Well, now I’m so glad you pulled me aside to tell me this terrific news.”
She grinned. “Your mother had the same kind of sarcasm.”
“No she didn’t.”
“Not with you girls, but with her friends, oh, she very much did. So.” She sat back and peered at me like I was a lake of muddy water and she was trying to track the fish swimming beneath.
“You needed this message. Enough that I let Marty run the game tonight. Marty.” She shook her head, letting me know exactly what she thought of her nephew and his store-running capacity.
“I really did not need to hear that death and chains and darkness are in my future. You know what I needed to hear? How to find Ben. Think you can pull that out of your cards? Because if the answer is hazy, I’ll try again later.”
She barked out a laugh. “I miss my Magic 8 Ball.”
“You have twelve.”
“They all lie. I used to have this one that always told the truth. But someone worked a hex on the toy manufacturer and now the things spit out nonsense. All right, let’s pull a card for Ben.”
“No, I don’t have time. Jean–”
“You have time.” She unwrapped, shuffled, cut, cut again, let me cut, shuffled one more time then pulled a card.
“Huh.”
My sentiments, exactly: Judgment.
“You said I was Judgment, right?”
“I did. You’re going to be the one to find him, Delaney. No one else. Through you, and only through you will he be free.”
Silence exploded between us from that truth bomb. I could feel it, we could probably both feel it: she’d just predicted the future, told the truth that went bone-deep.
I was going to save Ben. And from my reading of death and chains, I knew I was going to pay something for him to be free.
That lined up with what Yancy had told us. I was in the middle of this, or Iwasthe middle of this.
It terrified me, but hey, that’s what I was trained to do: make the hard decisions, do the right thing, keep the people of my town safe.
“You don’t look surprised.” She took a swig out of her flask before packing the cards away again and placing them in her bag.
“That’s pretty much the same thing Yancy told us when we went to talk to him.”
“He knows his stuff. But sometimes what he says can be misconstrued.”
I laughed, one short huff of air. “Yeah, well, since every card you pulled did nothing but strengthen what he said, I’m going to go with the consensus.”
“Free will, baby.”
“I know I have it. I know I can use it. I know it can change the future. But I also know who I am and what I will give to save the people I care about.”
“What will you give, Delaney?”
