Heartland

'The glasses are mirrored on both sides?'

'Yes. Mirroring the outside protects them. Makes it easier for them to be invisible.'

'This is the second time I've seen him,' I said. 'Earlier, he was downstairs.'

'Why didn't you tell me?'

'I thought he was a hallucination.' I decided not to mention the illusion of having seen Antoine. 'He wasn't dressed like all the others. He had this faux Roman centurion outfit on. With a big plumed headdress and a broken staff.'

'Broken? Are you sure? Was it a spear without a point or a broken staff?'

I tried to remember. 'It was just a stick with the top broken off. But, if it was part of his costume, then it might have been a spear, but it seemed wrong. Why would you go to all the effort with the rest of the costume and then not have a real spear?'

And the oil on the shaft too. What had that been about? I couldn't place the symbolism, even though I should have known. It kept slipping away from me.

'For the same reason you'd go to the trouble of imagining him wearing the costume in the first place,' she said.

'And why would I do that?'

She stared at me. 'You're kidding me, right?'

'No. I don't know what you're talking about.' I should know.

'How can you have my father in your head and not know what you saw?'

'He's not sitting in his favorite chair by the fire, doling out arcane secrets on demand. He's this. . sort of persistent sense of deja vu that comes and goes. Sometimes, I know exactly what he knew, and other times-most of the time-there's only a nagging sense that I'm missing something. It's like when you forget where you put your car keys. You know they exist, and you know you had them, but you can't figure out where you left them. But, abstract it one layer up. I don't even know that it is the car keys that I'm looking for.'

I realized I was still holding the tarot card, but it wasn't Strength anymore. The lines had twisted, changing the image from a woman holding open a lion's mouth to a pair of cherubic children on the back of a draft horse. A pair of apple-cheeked, blonde-haired babies basking in the glow of the sun. I handed Marielle the card while I dug for the bag in my pocket. 'How did you do that magic trick?' I asked.

'With the card?' She glanced at it. 'I was going to ask you. It was an eerie bit of sleight-of-hand.'

'I didn't.' I pulled open the strings of the bag and reached in for a handful of cards. They were slippery- mischievous and intent on getting away from me-but I grabbed them quick and held tight. 'It's your father's deck, and it seems to miss him.' I nodded toward the card in her hand. 'What card is that?'

She held it up. 'Strength.'

I shook my head, and shuffled through the cards until I found the one I was looking for. 'This is Strength.' My fingers tingled when I named the card, and from the way the Chorus churned, I knew that it wasn't, even though my eyes told me otherwise.

'It's the Fool, Michael,' Marielle said. 'You're holding the Fool.'

Of course I was.

'No, I'm holding Strength, and you're holding the Sun. What you see is the Fool and Strength,' I said, pointing to each of the cards.

'I don't understand this game,' she said.

I took the card from her, and as I touched it, the lines started to squirm and change. I shuffled it back into the deck, along with the card I had picked out. 'They keep changing on me. Sometimes into other cards, sometimes into weird amalgamations of multiple cards. I cut the deck in half and showed her. 'See? Strength and the Fool.' I waited until she nodded in agreement and then I put my hands back together, and without changing their position, split the deck in the same place again. 'Now what do you see?'

'The same thing.'

I looked. 'I see the Sun and the High Priestess.'

'How is that possible?' she asked.

'I don't know if it has something to do with your father or if I'm just losing my mind from all the recent activity in my brain, but the lines don't stay in place. The cards keep shifting, as if he's using them to communicate. Not very clearly, mind you. But when he wants to tell me something, he manipulates the cards.'

In spite of the implication of her father being un-dead, Marielle stepped closer and grabbed my arm. 'What are they telling you?' Her grip was tighter than necessary, and her body was uncharacteristically rigid.

'The Sun and the High Priestess,' I said, putting the deck back together and taking advantage of that motion to drag my arm out of her grasp. Shuffling the deck a few more times, I cut it, reversed the halves, and went to flip over the top card.

'Stop.' Marielle covered the deck with her hand. 'No, I believe you.'

'It's just a card,' I said. 'It's all in my head.'

'It isn't,' she said. Her tongue touched her lip nervously. 'Leave it alone. Don't invite anything in. Not with those cards. Let them be.'

'You have a better idea?' I asked as the Chorus slid around my spine and squeezed. What was it about the Sun and the High Priestess that had her so agitated?

She hesitated, caught by some internal argument.

'We've been spotted. We need to go somewhere else.'

Marielle's gravity well fluttered. For a second, she almost seemed to be a little girl again, and then the weight of her Will came down and the image vanished.

'What about Tevvys' phone?' I suggested, trying to jostle her out of her mental peregrinations. 'We could try to crack his passcode.'

'I don't have it.'

'What? Moreau gave it to you.'

'He did, but I don't have it anymore. I left it back at the apartment.'

'Why didn't you say so in the car?'

'I was-' She took a deep breath. 'It doesn't matter.'

'It does. I told Moreau-'

She cut me off. 'It doesn't matter. It was a dumb idea.'

'No, it wasn't.'

'It was. For a number of reasons. Besides, if they wanted to call us, they'd call my phone. I'm sure someone has the number.'

I wanted to argue the point, but before the words got all the way out of my throat, I realized she was right. If they wanted to talk, they'd be able to figure out how to reach us. No one knew my number but Marielle, but I'm sure a lot of the Watchers knew her number. The Chorus chattered, admonishing me too, and I bristled more at their umbrage than Marielle's comments. What was the other choice? I asked them. Killing Moreau?

I blocked their response, as the question had been rhetorical. It was so easy to find that path again, wasn't it? And what had I gained from going that route previously? Walking the dark path in the wood had only brought me and others pain. That wasn't the way. Regardless of what others wanted me to do.

'Don't worry about it,' she said, filling my silence. 'I'm sure Moreau took you seriously when you told him. And he might even have tried to follow your-'

'Don't,' I said. 'I get it. I fucked up.'

She ran her hands through her hair, brushing it back from her face. 'I'm sure the building collapsed on him,' she said finally. 'Squashed him flat.'

'I'm sure he sold us out the first chance he got,' I said, nearly at the same time.

We paused, waiting for the other to speak, and when neither of us leaped into the gap, she smiled. 'What is done is done. Let's move on.'

'Agreed.' I waited for a second before asking. 'The cards.'

Her smile faded, but she nodded.

I turned over the top card of the deck. The Sun. The twins on horseback. Lafoutain moved in the cloud of the Chorus, and one word escaped from the vortex of their noise. Daughters.