‘I’m not sure about that.’
‘My point exactly.’ Ivy smiled. ‘What’s troubling you?’
Quinn sighed, falling into the armchair behind his desk, his safe place.
He recounted everything. From the meal, to Matty being a thing, to Noah being in front of him and disappearing like a mirage.
Ivy, with every detail, gasped and shook her head. She was a good person to tell a story to.
‘Well, what happened when Matty entered the room?’
‘He told me I had to leave,’ Quinn said, recalling that look on Matty’s face, one of frozen shock. ‘But not in a Peggy Mitchell get out of my pub way – in a passive aggressive way. Something I think he’s rather good at.’
Ivy reached into her handbag, a Louis Vuitton, which looked immaculate. She took out a pack of cards, which Quinn thought were regular playing cards until she shuffled them.
‘We need clarity.’
She drew out three cards, each one looking well used and ever so slightly crumpled. One card was called the two of cups, another ominously called the devil, and a third called, even more dangerously, the lovers.
‘You set this up,’ Quinn said.
‘Not at all!’ Ivy looked shocked. ‘The cards never lie, Quinn, and these makesomuch sense with what you’ve told me.’
‘What do they say, then?’
Ivy paused, looking at the cards, lost in thought. Quinn, with every second of spreading silence, got nervous. He looked at the stack of cards still in Ivy’s hand, wondering what else might come out of them. Destruction? A broken heart? Death itself?
‘We’re looking at a partnership here.’ Ivy pointed at the card with two cups, and the two androgynous people standing close to one another, both holding a goblet. They looked like they had been caught mid-moment, like the one that Noah and Quinn had last night. ‘This card talks of harmony, a developing bond and relationship. It’s one that is meant to happen, unfolding naturally. But then this…’
She pointed at the devil card, one that depicted two people standing before an imposing figure. It filled Quinn with dread looking at it, and the irony wasn’t lost on him that the devil card appeared in the shop that used to be a church.
‘There’s a shadow. Something that is being ignored. A problem.’ Ivy’s brow furrowed. ‘There is something in the way, something that needs working through. You see these two people in front of the devil? They’re being kept apart.’
Matty with his handsome face seemed to float between them like a ghostly apparition. No doubt Ivy saw and felt it, too.
‘And then this.’ Ivy smiled at the lover’s card. Two people, male and female, naked, stood together. The devil was absent, and in his dark place grew trees and flowers. ‘The lovers. Tells us everything we need to know. Remove the obstacle, the block…’ She slid the devil card away and drew the two remaining cards together. ‘And these two people survive together.’
Quinn looked at the cards and was reminded of Adam and Eve, thinking that maybe he would be Adam and Noah could be Eve. Or Steve.
‘Could it also mean the relationship I have with Hermione?’
Ivy shook her head. ‘No. Not at all. I think this is very clear about what it’s about. Don’t you?’
‘They’re just cards,’ Quinn said. ‘They can’t tell me what’s going on.’
Ivy didn’t look offended. Instead, as she packed away her cards, dropping the deck into a silk pouch, she looked amused. ‘I can read you, Quinn. You don’t have to pretend with me.’
Quinn smiled, but he knew Ivy was right. It scared him how accurate the reading was. How could three cards confuse him yet offer him a glimmer of hope? Because as Ivy had read the lovers to him, it had given him an expectation. The flame inside him, stamped out by Matty, began to blaze again. All because Noah sent that X in his email. Now they burned together as two lovers.
The devil, on the other hand? Well, the sooner he was removed, the better.
ChapterThirty
Who knew tarot could shake him up so much? After Ivy left, and closing the shop, Quinn tucked himself into bed, with only a lamp and his laptop for light. His curtains were drawn, though he noticed snow falling again from the shadows cast on the fabric. He was pleased to be in the comfort of his own apartment, in privacy, having time to unwind, something he felt like he hadn’t been able to do for a little while.
Only he couldn’t relax. Such is the way. He tried to sleep, but kept thinking about those three bloody cards. It prompted him to open his laptop and read up on the tarot, and the three cards in particular, trying to think of every situation possible.
His mind, however rational, couldn’t help but go back to what Ivy had said. That he was meant to be with Noah, or that a bond should form between them. Matty, the devil, was in the way. But what could Quinn do about that?
