“My mom sold our house after my dad died.” She tipped back her teacup, draining it to the dregs. “I’ll never forget how it felt walking through it for the last time. Everything was empty. There was no sign that anyone had lived there, or cried there, or that children had been raised there. There was nothing left of him. There was nothing left of any of us. It was like a collection of cardboard boxes all taped together. It was never going to be home again. I know exactly how the girl in the book feels.”
“I think most of your kind can empathize with that emotion, my sweet one. Coming home after your first taste of adult freedom and being restrained by parents who still seek to treat you as a child. Coming back to the place you once lived after a death or divorce or some other cataclysmic event that has profoundly shaped your life. Coming back to a place after you built your own existence far away from it . . . In this regard, I think you are right. The Six of Cups is universal.”
Harper nodded vehemently, wiping at her eyes.
“But consider—are not all the cards universal in their own way? Each of you will wear the noose of the Hanged Man at some point in your life. Sacrifice, stagnation. Everyone will face the temptation of the Devil card. Materialism, addiction, and lust. You all experience the disharmony of the lightning-struck Tower. But so, too, do you experience the overflowing joy of the Ten of Cups. The Tower reversed, harmony restored. The wisdom and rigidity of the Hierophant and the bliss of the Lovers. Death is the ultimate unifier — a beginning and an end at once. All of these are universal experiences. The cards merely offer guidance and awareness. And if all of these are universal emotions and experiences, it seems to me that you are far too hard on yourself, sweet.”
Harper choked out another laugh, using her sleeve to pat her cheeks dry. “I guess. What about you? Are they universal experiences for you as well?”
Once more, they took their time in answering. “I am a watcher of others. And does that not still count? If I am here to watch you experience sorrow and joy, does not a bit of that sorrow and joy become my own, having experienced it through you?”
“That is entirely too deep for me,” she protested laughingly. “Don’t you know I flunked out of school?”
A ripple of black satin wrapped around her shoulders as they laughed with her.
“This is why I like tea. There is no other beverage in the world that can so thoroughly conjure emotion. Today we brewed a pot of nostalgia, but tomorrow perhaps something to energize, to ignite the senses and provide creative inspiration. The day after that, it might be the same brew you were served as a sick child, reminding you of maternal care. Again, you are too hard on yourself. I’ve scarcely known another human with your aptitude and love for learning.”
“Maybe you’re just a very good teacher. You know,” she hesitated, biting her lip, “I don’t even know your name.”
She had given the topic a fair amount of thought already.
There was nothing quite as powerful as a name. As a lover of books and of languages, she especially knew that to be true — all words had meaning and importance, but names held a particular importance. A name gave the impermanent permanence, the overlooked some sense of remembrance. To have a name was to beseen, even for the briefest of moments, is proof of one’s incontestable existence. Knowing the name of another was a gift, a way to acknowledge them, to call them into account, regardless of how casually people treated introductions. She had read enough stories over the years, after all, of faeries and goblins and demons alike — they jealously guarded their names, for names held power.
It had occurred to her some weeks back that she was unaware of her shadowy crush’s name, and once the thought had taken root in her mind, it was impossible to think of anything else. Harper wondered about their native tongue as she stared out the window on the trolley each day, considered that their name might be in some unknown language, older than the archaic Sumerian texts currently stacked on her coffee table, paged through each evening, looking for a name that fit.
“A name,” they mused slowly, as if the concept was one they had never considered.
“A name? The thing people use to call you? Your personal label?”
“My sort have little use for such things,” they admitted for a moment. “We exist on the cusp of this world and the other, in the shadows. There are very few who even know of our existence. As I said, I am a watcher. I am a bit of an outlier for communing so closely with the topside world, but I find the individuals who come through these doors fascinating. But there is no need for a name when one is unseen. As it is, I am a bit befuddled at how you are able to address my voice with such precise placement. I have never known a human who is able to see one of my kind.”
“Well, there you go. I’m not just a human. I’m a witch.” It felt good saying it. It may have been silly, but Harper was sure that somewhere, Holt would have been proud of her.
“Even still. You have addressed my voice correctly from the beginning. You managed to deduce that I move through the shadows without being told.”
“I wear black every single day. I can see the different shades and tones. It’s really not that hard when you know what you’re looking for.”
“Quite frankly, I don’t ever want to hear about you flunking out of school again.”
She laughed again, mollified by the way the darkness across the table seemed to shiver.
“Do you take a physical form?”
“I can assume whatever form is required. Regrettably, though, I spend so little time topside that I cannot hold it for very long.”
“Whatever is required? What does that mean?”
In response to her question, the darkness coalesced before her, shadows unexpectedly taking form. One arm, then two, shifting like smoke and writhing like snakes, dense and black. A wing pulled from the black mass before dissipating. The arm reached up to the top of one of the spires of books above her head, plucking one from the stack. Harper felt frozen in her seat as the arm receded, dropping the book before dissipating back into the corner of the bookcase. She sat breathing hard, gripping the edge of the table tightly, feeling her pulse throbbing between her thighs.Mark me down as scared AND horny. Like, so SO horny.
The Devotion of the Volantines. It would be the next book she would read, she decided immediately.
“Maybe . . . maybe you just need to practice?” she breathed lightly, hoping her voice sounded calm. “What if I want you to ride the Ferris wheel with me at the Fall Festival? And you just vanish in the wind because you never practice holding your form? I could fall to my death.”
“Presumably, you would be in the car holding on to the railing, so I don’t see why my corporeal or incorporeal form would need to bear the brunt of guilt for you sliding out of your seat like a used napkin.”
Her shoulders shook as she laughed, not expecting the biting humor, but delighted over it just the same. “Still. Ferris wheel. Fall Fest. You need to start preparing yourself.”
“Are you not frightened?”
