“What do you mean, ‘Oh?’” Kate asked.
“This is about him, isn’t it?” Zora asked. “I’m sorry I didn’t see it earlier.”
“About who?” Kate asked.
“Honey, I know you think I’m a nutball, but you have to believe I really do have some talents. So, yeah, I see stuff others can’t. For real. And the minute I called you that nickname, I could see it in my head.”
“See what?”
“A press clipping. Of those murders 12 years ago. You are practically throwing it off in waves. I don’t know why you care so much about it. I can’t see that far, but I can see that.”
Kate pushed back her chair.
“I ought to get going.”
Zora reached across and grabbed her hand.
“Honey, you don’t need to worry,” Zora said. “If you don’t want to talk about it…”
“I don’t.”
“Then we won’t. There is no need to run away. I have the feeling there has been a lot of that already.”
“Look,” Kate said. “I like you, but don’t think you know me, okay? I’m not some customer you can just snow over.”
Zora leaned back again.
“I never thought you were,” Zora said. “Well, not since I saw you at any rate.”
The two sat in silence for a minute. Kate was unnerved and she felt like she had enough for a story anyway.
Zora took a large breath.
“You want to see the Tarot card bit?” she asked.
Kate nodded. As long as they weren’t going to talk about her mother, she would be okay.
“Tarot cards are great little devices,” Zora said. “I used to think they were crap. But I made the mistake everybody makes when they see these used. They think the cards somehow have power. And that is, of course, absurd.”
“What then?”
“The cards are inanimate objects,” she replied. “They have no power at all. But the people-the two of us, for example-have the power. My abilities and my read of the person affect how I shuffle the cards and subconsciously affect what I pull out. It’s really quite simple.”
“And the cards then tell the future?”
“Well, that’s the other part,” Zora said and smiled. “The cards don’t tell you anything. It’s all in the interpretation. And that is done by me. Someone with no talent will just randomly interpret. Maybe they will get lucky. Someone with a little talent even can start discovering fascinating things. If they trust their instincts, the cards can tell them many things.”
“The future?” Kate asked and started writing again.
“Maybe,” Zora said. “Do you want to see?”
Kate nodded with a slight hesitation
She watched Zora as she shuffled her way through the deck and laid them out on the table. She laid three in the center face down.
“This is just a test run, honey,” Zora said. “You can do this with all different kinds of cards in all sorts of ways. I’m just going to do three from the Major Aracana.”
With that, her voice changed.
“Now we shall see your destiny,” Zora said in her British accent.
She flipped the first card.
Kate was a little surprised to see it was the Hanged Man. A man was suspended upside down from a tree, his feet tied up with rope. Kate had seen this card before-she remembered seeing a friend get her fortune told at the beach some years ago-but then the man had looked peaceful, as if in suspended animation. On this card, the Hanged Man looked in pain, as if he was struggling to get free but failing. His arms were tied behind his back and Kate could see a figure in the distance coming towards him. Whoever it was, the Hanged Man looked panicked about it.
“Strange,” Zora said. She flipped the cards over and stared at it. “I use these cards a lot, but I don’t remember seeing this version before.”
“What does it mean?”
“Probably Lou Ann bought me the wrong pack,” Zora said, but her voice sounded unsteady, as if she wasn’t sure that was the case.
“All right, though, what does the card mean?”
Zora kept staring at it.
“Well, it can mean many things. Sacrifice, giving up, surrender, even passivity,” she said. “But I don’t think that’s what this one means.”
“I don’t follow,” Kate said.
“Everything is instinct. My gut says you are not the surrendering type and this card-this version of it-is about anything but surrender. I’ve never seen one like it. But the Hanging Man is also a doorway of sorts. He sees what others do not, from an angle they do not. In this case, he could be an opening to the Truth. To the mystical.”
Kate wanted to look away and couldn’t. The image bothered her more than she wanted to admit, particularly the look on the Hanged Man’s face.
“Isn’t he supposed to be peaceful?” she said.
“In every other card I’ve seen, he is,” Zora said, looking up at Kate. She couldn’t be sure, but Kate thought Zora looked a little bit frightened. “This card isn’t like the others. It’s about a journey, one that may be quite painful for you. But it clearly denotes the start of something, something that will look like one thing but be another.”
“Like a friend who isn’t a friend?” Kate asked.
Zora nodded. “Or something that seems good, but isn’t. Or the reverse. The Hanged Man sees things in a different way-he sees what’s real.”
“He looks like whatever he sees is terrifying him.”
“Let’s just move on to the next card.”
Zora drew carefully from the deck this time, as if she wasn’t quite sure she wanted to. With some hesitation, she put the card on the table.
Kate didn’t need an interpretation. At a glance, she knew the card: The Devil. A horned, giant beast stood in the middle of the card, holding a trident in one hand and extending his arm to two human figures below him. There were a man and a woman on the card, both naked with horns of their own.
Kate looked up. “If this is a joke, it isn’t funny,” she said.
But Zora seemed more unnerved than she did.
“The Devil can also mean many things: ignorance, stupidity, prejudice and pessimism,” Zora said. “But I think this one is about something else too. It’s about sex.”
Kate took a look at the card. The human figures weren’t looking at the Devil-not even a little bit. Instead, they seemed to be staring at each other with a look of raw desire. Kate wasn’t sure how the artist could show it in such detail, but now that she looked at it, it was obvious the two wanted to have sex. And not the kind you see in the movies, or at least not the films she watched. These two people wanted to get it on right there and then and if the Devil was watching them, she doubted they cared.
“Again, this version of the card is unique,” Zora said, her voice still unsteady. “The Devil often indicates sexuality, but this is more obvious than on some. There is another thread here as well: obsession and temptation. One thing I know: sex will change everything.”
“I’m not exactly a virgin,” Kate replied.
“Doesn’t matter,” Zora responded. “This-whatever this is-is different. Is there anyone you are attracted to? A boyfriend?”
Quinn came unbidden into her thoughts. She had been about to say no, when an image of him popped into her mind. But she hadn’t looked at him that way, had she? No, he was just a friend. Then why had she kissed him? Why was she thinking of him now?
“No,” she said.
