“Anyone who walks through that door gets read,” Ravenna stated inflexibly. “If you’re not going to be read, I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
Hmm.
Seemed Ravenna had some backbone.
With some interest, I watched the staring contest play out.
But I knew how it would end.
And it ended that way, with Tempie lighting the barest glance on Prue before she reached out and took the cards.
“You can shuffle them,” Ravenna educated. “You can move them around. You can simply just hold them. And when you feel you’re ready, give them back to me.”
I pressed my lips together to hide my smile when Tempie instantly handed the cards back.
“Ladies, take seats,” Ravenna invited.
There was a couch with two armchairs opposite, a coffee table in between.
Tempie and I took the chairs.
“Chassie, you can bring one of the kitchen chairs over when you’re done,” Prue called.
“Okay,” Chassie replied from the kitchen.
She did this as I heard the switch go off on the electric kettle.
“Is there anything you want me to look for?” Ravenna asked Tempie.
“Aren’t you supposed to ask that before you give me the cards?” Tempie asked Ravenna.
Ravenna dipped her ear to her shoulder. “Would you like to tell me how to read them as well?”
Tempie fluttered a desultory hand at the coffee table. “Carry on. Let’s do a general reading.”
Immediately, Ravenna flipped three cards on the table.
They were neither major nor minor arcana. Prue told me ages ago that Ravenna didn’t read with a regular deck but used other cards.
Even though I knew there were many decks, this was one of the reasons I thought she might be a fraud. Easier to hide behind those since, at least the major arcana, such as Death (change), The Chariot (triumph), The World (completion), was easy to read.
“Intrigue,” Ravenna said, gazing at the three cards. “Inaction.” A long pause and then, “In love.”
The room went wired on the last two words.
And although we were all feeling that, mostly it was coming from Tempie.
“This,”—Ravenna tapped what I was guessing was the Intrigue card—“is beyond your control, and although in your realm, it’s not in your inner sanctum. You will witness it, but it only peripherally involves you, and you have no control over it.”
She put a finger on that and scooched that card aside.
She then picked up the card that I suspected was Inaction. “This is a problem.”
She picked up the other card.
In Love.
“Because this is at stake.”
