chapter one
WILLOW
I might looklike I’m on my way to a frat party, but really, I’ll be committing murder in an hour.
The attire for the night is a skin-tight black body suit, cat ears, and eyeliner wings sharp enough to cut glass. Add the cheap tail I picked up at Party City for $9.99, and boom: Halloween kitten.
Everyone else is out for tequila shots and slutty costumes tonight. Me? I’ve got a body to take care of.
But first, I have work to do.
I sit cross-legged at my tarot table, the little one in the corner of my bedroom, the velvet cloth soft beneath my palms. Incense smolders from the holder on my dresser, filling the room with sandalwood smoke that clings to my hair. It feels a little overkill, getting dolled up as a cat and then going and being the divine messenger of fate, but hey, bills don’t pay themselves, and the cards have been screaming at me all day.
I set my phone up on its little tripod and hit record.
“Okay,” I say into the camera. “My cards have been burning in my pocket since this morning. But this isn’t a fun pull, I can already tell. Tonight’s reading is for someone out there who’s about to have their world crash down around them.”
I shuffle through the cards, and the familiar sensation rushes through me. I feel them as they approach, like they’re living things and the rest of them are dead, irrelevant. The cards jump from the deck one by one, sharp and eager, like they already know where this is going. I flip them one at a time.
The Lovers reversed. The Tower. The Three of Swords.
“Oh, honey,” I say as I study the cards. My stomach sinks. “It’s worse than I thought. Your partner isn’t just thinking about cheating. They’re already on their knees for someone else. I hate to even say it out loud, but you’re about to find out in the worst way possible, and it’s gonna break you wide open.” I lean forward, looking into the camera, compassion ripping through me. Damn, this is a rough one. “And you might want to check your bank account. I’m getting money out of this, in a negative way. I think you’re bankrolling this affair.”
Ugh. I hate readings like these. They’re so raw, so harsh. But they don’t lie. Someone out there needs to know this.
“But don’t worry—every heartbreak is just compost for the soul. I’m getting fire after this. I’m feeling power. You’re going to rise from this stronger, bigger, and it’s going to awaken your dark feminine energy. Prepare for the new you, babe.”
I wink, slide the cards back into the deck, and stop the recording. I save it to my drafts. Readings tend to do best during the middle of the day. This one will be easy views, the disaster ones always are.
But it’s the perfect time of day to post myotherkind of content.
I swipe through my drafts until I find the one I’ve been working on for days now: my obsession series on Saint Shade—the internet’s most mysterious magician, Vegas’s most guarded showman, and the bane of my fucking existence.
I’ve been trying to figure out who he really is for three months now. Half the internet has made it their mission tounmask Saint Shade. And so far? No one has figured out his real identity.
I’m half tempted to just march down to his theater on the Strip and pull that mask off mid-performance. But that might come across a little lunatic obsessive.
I hit play on the saved draft and rewatch what I’ve made.
On-screen me smirks into the camera. “So, here’s the thing: when you pull The Magician reversed three times in a row, and you’re asking who Saint Shade really is… well. The cards don’t lie.” On camera, I shuffle through the cards, and immediately one pops out. Two seconds later, the second card practically slaps me in the face, and then the third card falls flat on the tabletop, face up. I spread them out dramatically, making sure they’re visible for the camera.The Fool. The Devil reversed. Death.
“Hmm, very, very interesting,” I muse as I study the cards. I can still remember how this one took me off guard. It was… unexpected, and oddly specific. “The Fool tells me Saint Shade has started over in his life. And in a big, big way. His past… he’s been running from it. He hides more than smoke and mirrors during his shows. He’s hiding himself.”
I cringe at my own dramatic delivery, but damn if it isn’t perfect. The internet eats this shit up.
“The Devil reversed,” I continue on screen. “Saint Shade had to break free. He had to reclaim his power, reclaim himself. And it was hard. Damn, it was really, really hard. He had to walk away from some really dark shit. Who knew the man hiding behind a devil’s mask had even darker stuff in the past?”
Even now, watching this later, I still feel bad. The whole internet thirsts over this masked acrobatic magician. He’s got a body like a god, and he has no qualms putting it on display for everyone to thirst over. But that reading was heavy. The darkness of it wraps around my chest like a vice.
“And Death,” I say on camera, my voice going quieter. “Death represents not only endings, but transformation. There is something distinct about Saint Shade’s life. Before and after. Then and now. Who Saint Shade is now is not who he once was.”
Goosebumps flash over my skin on camera, and you can see every single one.
“Damn, that… that’s not what I expected,” I say on camera. It takes a moment before my eyes rise to meet it. In my head then, I was debating if I should post this or not. It felt revealing. Intimate. Like I was all but ripping his mask off on camera.
But sitting here, alone in my room, I give in to the temptation. I’ve been obsessed with this masked man who lives in the same damn city as me for months now. I post the video before I can second-guess myself.
And, because I’m an addict, I go straight to his profile.
