“What’s that supposed to mean?” I set the cards down with a definite slap.
“You want me to tell you the future, right? I’m telling you the future as I see it, so shut the hell up and let me do my job.” She picks five cards off the top of the deck and lays them out on the table—two on either side of the Sun and one crossing it.
“This is the World spread,” she tells me. “It’s the best place to start when looking for someone that’s alive.”
I nod, but my head is still whirling with what she said—and what she didn’t. What did she mean about there being more for me to tell her? Am I missing something? And if so, what? I don’t know Shelby, don’t even know if it’s possible for me to do this. But if it is, and if there is something I’m not seeing, I better figure out what it is pretty damn quickly.
I want to pepper Lily with questions, but she’s already in reading mode. Her fingers linger over the Sun card for long seconds before moving on to the others. I don’t know tarot very well—I have always relied on Lily for this part of Heka—but the spread doesn’t look too bad to me.
None of the cards that I consider particularly menacing are there, at least none of the ones that normally pop up in my readings. I can only consider that a good thing since mine are usually so awful that I’ve made Lily stop doing them for me.
Still, I’m impatient. I want to know what she sees, but when Lily’s reading tarot, she can’t be rushed. The meaning of the cards mingles with something else inside her, some bit of foresight that allows her to get a really good grasp of the picture at hand.
“She’s alive,” Lily says after a minute. She’s touching the first card in the spread—the Seven of Pentacles. “But everyone involved in the situation is frustrated. Her parents are terrified, the cops baffled because they have no real leads. Even the people who have her—” She closes her eyes for a second, concentrating. “I can’t get a read on them, but they’re also getting frustrated. Little Shelby is more trouble than she’s worth. She cries all the time; nothing makes her happy. What are they supposed to do? If she doesn’t shut up, someone will hear her.”
A chill runs down my spine at the words, and the singsongy way Lily says them. Her body’s right in front of me, but I know that she’s gone far away. I want to scream at her to come back, to tell her that it’s dangerous, but she wouldn’t thank me for it. This is what she does—what I asked her to do. It’s not her fault that I’m suddenly filled with an overwhelming trepidation, a sickness in my stomach that warns me this reading isn’t going to end as well as I had hoped.
She moves on to the second card. It’s the Seven of Wands, the siege card that pictures a man defending himself against six other wands. “Whoever has Shelby is anticipating an attack. They will be the ones to start it, but whether they finish it is still up in the air. But their resolve is strong. They’re determined to make it through, to win, no matter what they have to do or whom they have to kill.”
The chill becomes a full-blown shivering. Dread starts in the pit of my stomach, a small ball that gets colder and more deadly with every second that passes. My palms and the bottom of my feet start to ache, and I know it won’t be long before I have to listen as my hopes for Shelby crash and burn around me.
The third card, the King of Cups, is the contradiction card, the one that warns that things are not what they seem. As Lily talks about it, I try to puzzle out what is being hidden—besides Shelby herself. This is the card of ulterior motives and hidden agendas, and I can’t help but wonder what we’re missing. Is this not a straightforward kidnapping? And if it isn’t, what is the real motive? Murder? Sexual abuse? Or something darker? Something involving black magic?
I know the odds are against the kidnapping being magic related. This is a human child in the human world. And yet . . . something niggles at me. Some detail I’ve failed to pick up on or one I haven’t yet learned. Whatever it is, there’s more going on here than meets the eye.
The more I think about this, about Shelby, the more nauseated I get—until it takes every ounce of self-control I have to stay seated as Lily’s hand brushes over the fourth card, the Three of Swords. This card is secrets—I know because it shows up in my readings a lot. It’s not a bad card, has no harsh meanings associated with it, yet as I stare at it, I start to wonder.
No, please, no. I don’t want to. I don’t want to.
The voice comes out of nowhere, slams into me with the force of an eighteen-wheeler at top speed.
I won’t. I won’t. I—
I hear a high-pitched scream deep inside my mind and then a silence so ominous it scares the hell out of me. It’s Shelby. I don’t know how I know, but I do.
Helpless, hurting, I wait for more, for something else to come out of the unsettling quiet. It takes longer than it should, so long that I start fearing the worst. But then Shelby finds me again. She’s whimpering now. Begging. Crying. Pleading.
Don’t make me. Please don’t make me.
I don’t know what’s going on, what they’re forcing that poor child to do, but her fear is palpable inside me. And for the first time since my powers unlocked, I pray for them to come. Pray for that soul-deep compulsion that takes over my mind, my body, my very will, and drags me out into the world in search of evil.
I’ve spent the last few days terrified that I would feel it again, but now I want it. Now I’d do anything for it. Suffer anything if it means finding the terrified little girl whose fear is ripping at the corners of my mind.
I reach for the card. I know better, but I do it anyway. Maybe if I can touch it, I can see her, find her. But my fingertips sizzle the second they come in contact with the Three of Swords and I yank my hand away. Damn it. Lily always warns me not to touch any of the cards once she lays them out in the spread, but I always thought that was just because she didn’t want me to disrupt the flow of energy during the reading.
But that fire, that sear, was something else entirely. I turn my hand over, stare at the blisters starting to form on the three fingertips that touched the card. They burn, ache, and I know I should run some cool water over them. But the pain in my hands is nothing compared to the pain rising up inside me, slowly consuming me from the inside out.
With it comes fear of the most bitter kind. I’m not going to be able to find Shelby. At least, not until it’s too late.
With this realization, the questions that have haunted me since I found Lina down by Town Lake rear their ugly heads once more. Why do I have this power? Why do I see these things, if I can’t do anything but relive them after they’ve happened? What’s the point of living through the pain, if I can’t do anything to stop what I see?
What’s the point of seeing little Shelby if she’s doomed to suffer anyway?
Lily reaches for the last card, and even she seems hesitant. She’s staring at the burn on my hand, trying to puzzle out what it means. I can tell from the look on her face that in this one moment, she is as lost to the darkness as I am now. It’s a sobering realization, especially considering we’ve always been careful not to tread too close to the shadows.
That care is gone now, and—I’m afraid—so is the light.
How can it not be after what I’ve seen since my gift came to me? After what I’ve seen and done? Even Lily’s been affected by the stain working its way through me. But at least she can still find her way back.
The thought comes out of nowhere and makes me shakier than I already am. Part of me wants to end this now, to run screaming out of the room as if my hair’s on fire. But that won’t solve anything.
Plus, the reading still needs to be finished, the spread closed. And maybe, just maybe, a clue can be found that will help Nate. I hold on to that thought, keep it in the forefront of my mind, going over it again and again like a chant.