Page 14 of The Sisters of Crimson House

Miranda turned around, her dark, haunted eyes meeting Charley’s. Miranda placed her hand up against the glass, and the last image Charley had of her sister was of the Seeker’s Star fading into the distance.

Charley screamed until the car faded from view. She screamed until she thought her throat might bleed. She didn’t care. She screamed some more. They had left her.

Her sister was gone. Her parents were gone. Everyone was gone.

After what seemed like hours of lying crumpled on Elizabeth Street, she gathered herself together and slowly stood. No one would be coming for her.

She turned and looked back up at the house. Not everyone was gone. She could just see Sadie standing sentry from the window in the third-story turret, like a widow scanning the horizon for a ship that would never come.

Charley was alone, left behind to become just another ghost.

Eight

September 30, 2008

“And what is your question?” She didn’t need to ask him. She knew. But it was part of the job.

“You sure you’re old enough to read my cards?”

Sitting on a barstool in the lobby bar of the Peabody Hotel, Charley leveled her client with a stare. The client—from her guess a college student barely old enough to drink, let alone question her eligibility—sat opposite her, his smile suggesting he was used to being found charming. But it was Tarot Tuesday, and he was paying in cash, so they were stuck with each other for the next thirty minutes. She forced a smile back at him.

“What’s your actual question?” she asked, her hands resting next to the deck.

His smile faltered, his gaze landing in his lap. “I want to know if she’ll take me back,” he said plaintively, all the previous posturing gone. “I just need an answer.”

Charley kept her face neutral, shuffling the cards so quickly, it felt like liquid passing through her fingers. Of course that’s what he wanted to know. That’s what everybody wanted to know. She didn’t have to be psychic to know he was going to ask if he/she was coming back or if the illness/prognosis/headache was serious/cancer. That type of reading usually ended with her gently suggesting they stop contacting psychics for medical advice and call a doctor. The will he/she take me back? was her daily bread and butter. The backbone of the psychic-hotline empire.

“Shuffle the deck for me.” She slid the deck over to the client, who picked it up, uncertain.

“What do I…?” he asked, holding the cards as if they might bite him.

“Just move the cards around, however you like.”

He did as instructed, sloppily shuffling the deck so some of the cards fell off the table entirely. Charley took advantage of the brief moment to lock eyes with Travis, the bartender, as he wiped down the counter. Blond hair, a sunshiny smile that turned her insides golden.

Charley reluctantly returned her attention to the frat guy. She picked up the deck. “This adds your energy to the mix.” She didn’t know if this was fundamentally true, but it felt more interactive that way, giving the client some feeling of controlling the outcome. Charley fanned the cards out in front of the client in a neat line, instructing him to select three from the pile. He did, and Charley moved them to the side as she collected the rest of the cards into a stack. Now for the story.

She flipped over the first card. Two of Swords. The image in her deck was of a blindfolded woman crossing two swords in front of her, a classic stalemate. But this might not be the worst news for her poor client, who’d begun shaking his leg so hard, he was vibrating. Fifty-fifty meant there was still a chance. She smiled kindly at the man who peered anxiously at the cards. “So good news first. You’ve got a fifty-fifty shot, but here’s the question: Do you actually want her back?”

The man looked at her, astonished. “Of course I do,” he said, sounding simultaneously so defensive and so uncertain that she pretended to study the card, hiding her smile. She did not need magic to know that her client had zero clue what he actually wanted.

“This card represents you and your question.” Charley turned over the second card. “This represents her.” The Nine of Pentacles. This was one of Charley’s favorite cards in the deck, depicting a woman who stood in a lush garden, a trained falcon on her arm awaiting her command. “Interesting,” mused Charley.

“What’s that?” he asked, breathless. “Does it mean yes?”

“It could mean yes. It means that currently she’s in a really great state of mind. Her gardens are growing—metaphorically or literally. Being confident and relaxed could mean she is in a receptive state of mind to try again. Or it could mean—” Charley flipped over the final card.

The Fool. She hastily looked at her client, who had physically recoiled.

“Oh God,” he said. “Is that what she thinks of me?”

“The Fool?” she echoed, studying the image on the card. A young man on a cliff’s edge prepared to take his first step on a new journey, his faithful canine companion by his side. It was a card that brimmed with beautiful possibility. Thanks to its name, it was also one of the most misunderstood cards in the deck.

“So what you’re saying is that we’re over.” The frat guy fumed, his shoulders nearly up to his ears with stress.

“What I’m saying is that a new chapter is beginning, and you get to decide how that story begins,” coaxed Charley with a forced smile. She tapped the Two of Swords again. If he stayed longer, there was always the chance of a bonus tip.

“What I’m saying,” he said tersely, “is that I paid you for an answer, and I got back a lot of New Agey bullshit.” He pushed back from the bar and stormed out, likely to rejoin his buddies outside on Beale Street.