“The chur—” I stopped. The polygamist church where I was raised believed tarot cards were evil. And while I didn’t subscribe to a lot of the superstitions I’d been brought up believing, I knew this deck was different.
It had been created with spells and blood and death. The Blood Tarot decks were shrouded in mystery, with origins far older than the commonly accepted history. They were blood magic.
But I wasn’t a churchwoman.
I looked into Ming’s eyes and quickly away. Every cell in my body screamed for me to get away from her and from the deck of cards. I had no idea why the cards brought out such a strong reaction in me, but fear reactions, while triggered by the body’s survival system, were seldom logical. I forced my breathing to slow, but my hands were sweating, the churchwoman welling up in me.
“It…It may be dangerous,” I said.
“Itisdangerous,” Ming agreed. Her words lashed out:“Cut the deck.”It wasn’t a request. The command was filled with compulsion.
I squeezed my fists together in my lap, fighting her demand.I had no backup. If I ran, I was likely to be killed, despite the reminder of the boons Ming owed me. If I refused, I would likely be dismissed and I’d never know what was going on.
Churchwoman.
I wasn’t. Not anymore. I was more. So much more. I was a special agent with PsyLED. I was an investigator, which meant I had to look at things of the world in ways different from the church’s fear and loathing. And I was a plant-woman with power of my own.
And Ming still had a wound on her chest.
The energies of Soulwood, the pure magic of the Earth herself, pushed into me.
“Maaaggoooty…” There was threat in Ming’s voice.
Reaching out, I touched the deck with a fingertip, exactly the way I would read unfamiliar or dangerous land. Nothing happened. I traced my finger across the card, analyzing. It was room temperature, the paper slightly fuzzy, and each of the deep pigments of the inks ingrained in the paper had a slightly different feel. The gold felt metallic—real gold, then. As I stroked the top card, I felt the magic in it. A tingle of power, a sensation of energy. It was vaguely the way one of T. Laine’s amulets felt, as if the power was restrained within, created for one use, one intent. But this felt like even more. Perhaps…purposeful? Biding its time?
I drew in a breath.Sentient? Possessed?
I wanted to pull the small portable psy-meter out of my pocket and read the cards, but I figured that would be considered rude and I didn’t want to get eviscerated.
I lifted a third of the deck and placed it on the table. The back of the card I revealed was different from the first, the inks different, as if it was even more aged. I covered the top third with the bottom portion.
“And ask a question,” Ming said.
“What’s going on?”
Yummy removed the top card and placed it face down in the center of the table, her hand hovering over it a moment, as if in indecision. Quickly she placed twelve other cards around it in a circle, making a pattern, like a clock face.
She turned the center card over. It was a skeleton with a sickle standing in a pile of bones, some partially wrapped likemummies. Three white pyramids were in the background, a gold triangle on top of the largest. A sphinx was visible, though faded.
Yummy said, “No matter how we shuffle, no matter if we use only the Major Arcana or mix in the Minor Arcana, Death is revealed in the prime position.”
“That’s Death?”
“Yes.” She gathered the cards and inserted them randomly into the deck, then shuffled seven times. She placed the deck on the tabletop. I asked the same question as I cut the deck, and she placed the cards into a cross shape, with three cards in the center in a fan, all face down. She touched the top card and said, “Celtic Cross spread. The third card is the one on top, and is the best course of action; the second card is the problem; and the card on the bottom is the person asking the question. You.”
She flipped the top card. Death was revealed, upside down. “As always,” she said, sounding grim, “but this time as potential rebirth.”
Yummy flipped the middle card over. “The second card is eight of wands, suggesting that death and rebirth are moving fast.”
She flipped the bottom card. “The Empress. In this case that’s you.”
The Empress card was of a woman sitting in a gold chair, wearing Egyptian clothing, a gold scepter in one hand, a spotted big-cat to one side. Behind her was flat land with grain crops and winding streams and the same pyramid in the distance. Like Death, it was an older card, older than the card in the middle.
Yummy flipped the other cards over, glancing at each one, but appeared uninterested. She gathered the cards and repeated the shuffling process, shuffling six times before saying, “Ask a different question.”
“But first we will have tea,” Ming said.
Even as she spoke, Cai pushed through the swinging doors from the kitchen, this time carrying a tray over his head. The fragrance was familiar, delicate and aromatic—a very expensive loose-leaf oolong called Tieguanyin tea. The best varieties sold on the market for three thousand dollars per kilo and it was named in honor of Guan Yin. Guan Yin was the Buddhist goddess known as the goddess of mercy. I knew this because Minghad sent me a small tin and I had tried it a time or two. I’d never tell her, but I liked my own decoctions better than the fancy tea.
