It doesn’t.
Instead, her voice slips through me like a knife. “Who Saint Shade is now is not who he once was.”
I can’t breathe. She doesn’t know. Shecan’tknow. She doesn’t know my name. She doesn’t know what I even look like. She can’t know. But those damn cards! I don’t know how she does it, or how those pieces of artistic paper know, but she’s circling like a hawk. And if she keeps posting shit like this, someone out there will connect the dots.
My hard-earned escape, my freedom? It will all unravel.
Because of her.
Because I couldn’t stop myself from getting obsessed with her in the first place.
I should shut the app. Toss my phone in the dressing room sink and drown it until the screen fizzles.
But instead, my thumb scrolls to her profile like muscle memory.
Willow Vale.
Six hundred thousand followers. Tarot girl with the velvet table and the eyeliner sharp enough to open a vein.
And mine.
No, you idiot,I internally scold myself.Not yours. You’ve never even talked to her.
She doesn’t know it, but I’ve been watching her for months.
At first, it was curiosity. She’d left some thirsty comment on one of my thirst traps, and unlike the millions of others, hers actually made me laugh. Snarky. Sharp. Different. She didn’t just want Saint Shade’s body—she wanted to pick him apart, figure out who he was.
And that should’ve scared me off.
Instead, I leaned in.
I watched every video. Every smirk. Every shuffle of her deck like she was caressing a weapon. And then I dug deeper.
Because that’s what I do. Obsession isn’t a hobby. It’s a reflex. It’s a survival necessity.
Her name wasn’t hard to find. Going by @ValeTarot was on her every profile. She’s posted enough videos from her bedroom that I could see the obvious Las Vegas skyline out her window. What a lucky coincidence we live in the same city. From there, a little bit of online searching turned up the Vale Tarot shop just two blocks off the Strip. Curiosity pulled me there one day, and sure enough, the same woman I’d been stalking online walked into the shop.
A few searches through rental records turned up her first name: Willow. And if that wasn’t damn fitting for the raven-haired beauty reading tarot, I didn’t know what was.
With her full name, Willow Vale, it was easy. Tax records. Utility bills. A few hacked files I’m not proud of. I know where she lives. I know her schedule. I know she closes her shop by ten most nights, and that she always buys the same iced coffee at the café on the corner before she opens at one in the afternoon.
And I know she never dates.
Not once in the three months I’ve been watching her has she gone home with anyone.
I shouldn’t be tickled fucking pink by that, but I sure fucking am.
Which is incredibly stupid and delusional on my part. Because I can’t touch her.
She can’t know who I am. Touching her would mean I can’t wear the mask, and that would mean my whole past caving in like an avalanche.
But if she keeps posting about me, I won’t have a career left.
I stare at the frozen frame of her face on my screen, cards spread in front of her like she’s already dissected me, already peeled back every layer I’ve spent a decade building.
I can’t let her keep doing this.
If she posts again, a single more clue—if the right person watches it—everything I’ve carved out of the ashes dies.
