“She’s thinkin’ of her handsome gorgio,” teased Grandmother Shuri. “With the pretty blue eyes and deep pockets.”
“He is not my gorgio,” Zora said immediately, yet she knew the truth. She was thinking of him. Whit, his scoundrel friends called him. A suitable name for a man possessing much intellect, yet also ironic, for he squandered his wits on ephemeral pursuits. What drove a man to live from one game of chance to the next? He had wealth, privilege, friends—though those friends were as wicked as demons. Yet he staked his happiness on the brief excitement of the wager.
It troubled her. He troubled her, far more than she would like.
There was passion in him—and no true channel for that passion. Nothing that engaged him fully.
No, that was not true. He seemed very much engaged and passionate when he looked at her.
Zora suppressed the shiver of awareness that danced through her as she remembered him. Grandmother Shuri was right. The gorgio Whit was indeed a most handsome man, and extremely well formed. He might be a scoundrel of the worst order, but it left no toll upon his face and body. Tall, his broad shoulders admirably filling out his costly coat, his long legs encased in close-fitting doeskin hunting breeches and high boots polished to brilliance.
And his face. She recalled it vividly as the firelight painted him a dark angel. Unlike other wealthy gorgios, he wore no wig but pulled his deep brown hair back into a queue. She imagined what his hair might look like loose about his shoulders, and knew he would appear a very incubus, sensually tempting a woman to wickedness. He had a square, strong jaw. A bold, aristocratic nose. Full lips. Dark, slashing brows above eyes the color of the sky at midday. Sharp, those eyes, and hungry.
Hungry for her. He made himself very plain. He wanted her for a night’s pleasure. And, God preserve her, she wanted him, too. That lean body. Those clever hands. But she’d spoken true. She was no whore, and would not take his coin in exchange for her body. Even if he had not offered to pay her for the privilege, Zora knew that such affairs with gorgios were dangerous for young Romani chis.
She might not have taken him to bed, but she had not wanted him to go, either. She enjoyed talking with him, the way in which he truly seemed to listen. He was not afraid or dismissive of her opinions, not like other men—especially Jem, her former husband. Whit’s mind was sharp, and he played the bored rogue, but she saw in him a yearning for meaning, for connection to something real, beyond the gloss and polish of his wealthy, wastrel life. She had that own yearning for herself, for a life away from telling fortunes and speaking in deliberate riddles. There had to be more than that.
There had been a palpable connection between her and Whit, which was indeed strange. Two people could not be more different. He lived trapped within walls, and she had the freedom of the road and the sky. He was a wealthy gorgio man of privilege, whilst she was a Romani chi who wore her wealth around her neck and upon her fingers. The sun and the moon. Yet the connection had been there, just the same.
She could not quite dismiss the disquiet she felt when he and his attractive, scapegrace friends decided to visit the Roman ruin. She might not adhere to the old folk beliefs of her family and the other Rom—it all seemed rather superstitious and silly to her, frankly—but something seemed deeply unsettling and wrong about the fact that the one gorgio who lived nearby had never heard of the ruin before tonight. Almost as if ... it had been hiding, waiting for him and the other men.
“Ach,” she growled to herself. “Enough of this.” She had grown weary of pacing like a cat and would divert her restless thoughts.
Zora threw herself down onto the grass and shuffled her tarot deck. She did not believe the dukkering cards could actually tell the future, just as she did not believe the lines on a person’s hand foretold anything. When she dukkered for the gorgios, she let them focus on the cards or their hands, while she actually read their faces, their postures and silent, subtle, unaware ways that revealed who they were and what they desired. Easy for them to think she had the gift of magic. But all Zora truly had was a knack for seeing people and telling them what they wanted to hear.
Still, dealing the tarot for herself usually soothed her. The proscribed patterns in which the cards were laid. The pictures printed upon their faces, older than history. Calming.
After shuffling the cards several times, Zora began to lay them out in the ten-card cross with which she was most familiar. She did not pay much attention, simply allowing her mind to drift as her hands moved, setting down the cards. When she did finally bring her attention down to the cards, what she saw made her gasp aloud.
Evil. A great evil is coming, unleashed by the five.
Zora shivered. The warning was plain, spelled out in the cards.
She shook herself. Yes, the tarot had its meaning, and she knew what each card was supposed to represent, but they were merely suggestions, not actual truth. Not genuine prophecy of what was to come.
She quickly gathered up the cards she had laid, shuffled them again, then laid them out once more in the cross formation.
Her breath lodged in her throat.
The cards came out the same. Exactly the same. The five of swords. The inverted knight of wands. Culminating in the fifteenth card of the Major Arcana: the Devil. Zora stared at his horned, goatish face contorted in a sinister grin, batlike wings outstretched, as he presided over two figures chained at his feet. A pentacle marked the ground where the chained figures knelt.
Coincidence. That was all it could be. She would prove it.
She scooped up the cards and shuffled them a third time. And for the third time, she set them out. By the time she turned over and placed the final card, her hands shook.
The same. Each and every card. Their meaning clear: A great evil is coming, unleashed by the five.
Her heart pounded, her palms went damp, and her mouth dried. She never believed it possible, and yet ... it was. The tarot predicted the future, a terrible future. Which meant—
Zora jumped to her feet. She ran to her family and the other families who made up their band. At her approach, the men stopped playing their fiddles and took their pipes from their mouths, and the women left off their gossiping. They all stared at her, and she knew that her face must be ashen, her eyes wide. She likely looked like a phantom.
“We have to stop them,” she announced without preamble.
“Who?” asked Litti, her mother.
“The gorgios who went to the ruin.” Her hands curled into fists by her sides as she fought to keep her voice level. “I have seen it. The cards have shown me. If we do not stop them, those five men are going to let loose a terrible evil.”
No one laughed. Everyone knew that Zora put no faith in dukkering or magic. Yet it was for that very reason that they all took her seriously now. In fact, looks of pure terror filled their faces and the firelight shining in their rounded eyes turned them glassy and blank. Zora stared at them, at the men, and they stared back.
Not a single man moved.
Impatience gnawed at her. She took a step closer. “Why are you all sitting there like frightened goats? Get up! You must ride after the gorgios and stop them!”
The men exchanged glances until, finally, Zora’s cousin Oseri stood up. Zora exhaled in relief, but her relief was short-lived. From the terrified expression on his face, it was clear Oseri had plans only to hide in his tent.
“The Wafodu is too great,” he stammered. “The evil will hurt us.”
“So you are going to do nothing?” Zora demanded.
The men all shrugged, palms open. “What can we do against such powerful, bad magic?” someone bleated.