The three cards were the Moon, the Empress, and the Ace of Cups. Ambrose leaned over my shoulder to peer at the cards. "Ooh," he said. "Very interesting."
Rhonda glanced up at him. "Hush. You don't know what you're talking about." She turned back to the cards and tapped the Ace of Cups. "You're on the verge of a new beginning, a rebirth of great power and emotion. Your life will change, but it will be a change that takes you in a direction that, while difficult, will ultimately illuminate the world."
"Whoa," I said.
Rhonda then pointed to the Empress. "Power and leadership lie ahead of you, which you will handle with grace and intelligence. The seeds are already in place, though there's an edge of uncertainty—an enigmatic set of influences that hang around you like mist." Her attention was on the Moon as she said those words. "But my overall impression is that those unknown factors won't deter you from your destiny."
Lissa's eyes were wide. "You can tell that just from the cards?"
Rhonda shrugged. "It's in the cards, yes, but I also have a gift that lets me see forces beyond what ordinary people can perceive."
She shuffled the cards again and then handed them to me to cut. I did, and she flipped three more over. The Nine of Swords, the Sun, and the Ace of Swords. The Sun card was upside down.
Now, I knew nothing about this stuff, but I immediately got the feeling I was about to get a raw deal compared to Lissa. The Empress card had shown a woman in a long dress, with stars on her head. The Moon had shown a full moon with two dogs below it, and the Ace of Cups had shown a bejeweled chalice filled with flowers.
Meanwhile, my Nine of Swords showed a woman sobbing in front of a wall of swords, and the Ace of Swords was a boring hand holding a plain iron sword. The Sun at least looked cheerful. It had what looked like an angel riding a white horse, with a brilliant sun shining above.
"Shouldn't that be flipped right-side up?" I asked.
"No," she said, eyes on the cards. After several moments of heavy silence, she said, "You will destroy that which is undead."
I waited about thirty seconds for her to continue, but she didn't. "Wait, that's it?"
She nodded. "That's what the cards say to me."
I pointed at them. "Seems like they've got a little bit more to say than that. You gave Lissa a whole encyclopedia worth of information! And I already know I'm going to kill the undead. That's my job." Bad enough I'd gotten a minuscule fortune. It was also totally unoriginal.
Rhonda shrugged, as though that were some sort of explanation.
I started to say that she'd better not even think about charging me for that crap reading when there was a soft knock at the door. It opened, and to my surprise, Dimitri stuck his head inside. His eyes fell on Lissa and me. "Ah, they said you were in here." He walked in and noticed Rhonda. To my further surprise, he gave her a low nod of respect and said very politely, "I'm sorry to interrupt, but I need to bring these two to their flight."
Rhonda examined him—but not in a checking-him-out kind of way. It was more like he was mystery she wanted to figure out. "There's nothing to apologize for. But maybe you've got time for a reading of your own?"
With our similar views on religion, I expected Dimitri to tell her he had no time for her scam-artist fortune-telling. Yet the look on his face stayed serious, and he finally nodded, sitting down beside me, letting me smell the sweet scent of leather and aftershave. "Thank you." His words were still perfectly polite.
"I'll be brief." Rhonda was already shuffling up my useless cards. In record time, she had them ready for cutting and had dealt out three cards in front of Dimitri. The Knight of Rods, the Wheel of Fortune, and the Five of Cups. I couldn't get a feel for these. The Knight of Rods was what it sounded like, a man on horseback with a long wooden spear. The Wheel of Fortune was a circle with strange symbols floating in the clouds. The Five of Cups showed five knocked-over cups spilling some kind of liquid out while a man stood with his back to them.
Her eyes flicked over the cards, looked at Dimitri, then looked back at the cards. Her expression was blank. "You will lose what you value most, so treasure it while you can." She pointed to the Wheel of Fortune card. "The wheel is turning, always turning."
The reading wasn't as good as Lissa's, but he'd gotten a hell of a lot more than me. Lissa elbowed me in a silent warning to be quiet, which startled me at first. Without even realizing it, I'd opened my mouth to protest. I shut it and glowered.
Dimitri's face was dark and thoughtful as he stared at the cards. I didn't know if he knew anything about this stuff, but he was staring at the images as though they really held all the secrets of the world. At last, he gave Rhonda another respectful nod. "Thank you."
She nodded back, and then the three of us rose to catch our flight. Ambrose told us the readings were on him and that he'd settle up with Suzanne afterward. "It was worth it," he told me. "Worth it to see you think twice about your fate."
I scoffed. "No offense, but those cards didn't make me think much about anything." Like everything else, this just made him laugh.
We were about to leave Suzanne's little waiting room when Lissa suddenly dashed back to Rhonda's open doorway. I followed after her.
"Um, excuse me," Lissa said.
Rhonda looked up from more shuffling, her face troubled. "Yes?"
"This is going to sound weird, but…um, could you tell me what element you specialized in?"
I could feel Lissa holding her breath. She so, so wanted Rhonda to say she hadn't specialized, which was often the sign of having spirit. There was still so much to learn, and Lissa loved the ideas of finding others who could teach her—and she especially loved the idea of someone teaching her to foretell the future.
"Air," said Rhonda. A soft breezed rustled through our hair to prove the point. "Why?"
Lissa let go of her breath, disappointment washing over me through her link. "No reason. Thank you again."
CHAPTER 17
Out on the runway, Christian stood near the entrance to the plane, along with a few of the other guardians. Lissa ran off to talk to him, leaving me and Dimitri alone. He hadn't said a word the entire way back from the spa. Strong and silent were typical behaviors for him, but something about his mood struck me as unusual this time.
"Are you still thinking about what Rhonda said? That woman's a total scam."
"Why do you say that?" he asked, stopping not far from where the others stood. A sharp wind blasted us all in the face, and I hoped we could board soon.
"Because she didn't tell us anything! You should have heard my future. It was, like, one sentence stating the obvious. Lissa had a better fortune," I admitted, "but it wasn't really anything that profound. Rhonda said she'd be a great leader. I mean, seriously, how hard is that to figure out?"
Dimitri smiled at me. "Would you be a believer if she'd given you a more interesting reading?"
"Maybe if it was good." When he just laughed, I asked, "But you're taking it seriously. Why? You really believe in that kind of stuff?"
"It's not so much that I believe … or that I don't believe." He wore a black knit cap over his head today and tugged it down to better cover his ears. "I just respect people like her. They have access to knowledge other people don't."
"She's not a spirit user, though, so I'm not really sure where she's getting this knowledge. I still think she's a con artist."
"She's a vrăjitoare, actually."