Zora was staring at her.
“I don’t need to be a psychic to tell that you are lying,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Kate said.
“Not to me, it doesn’t, but it matters to you,” Zora said. “This is not your average relationship, that’s for sure. If you move forward with this person-if you have sex with him-the world will never be the same.”
Kate tried to smile, tried to laugh it off, but none of it felt funny. The more she thought about Quinn, the more she realized she was attracted to him. She was breathing faster, her pulse rate up. She licked her lips. It dawned on her that she was very attracted to him and that scared the hell out of her.
“Next card,” she said.
Zora hesitated.
“I don’t know that it’s a good idea.”
“Look, we’ve come this far,” Kate responded.
Zora reached into the deck and pulled out the card. Kate noticed her hands were shaking. She already knew what the next card would be. She had known it all along.
The card showed a knight on a dirty, matted horse. The knight held a sword aloft and below him were the trampled bodies of kings, merchants and peasants. Women and children lay sprawled at his feet. The knight himself was a grinning skeleton.
“Death,” Kate said. “Well, at least I know what this one means. Is it my death?”
Zora looked back at her. She suddenly seemed worn and very, very tired. Kate knew she wanted to lie, was almost sure she was going to.
“Maybe,” she said. “Usually, the answer would be a straight no. I would tell you this is a symbol and nothing more.”
“But not this time?”
“Honey, I’ve never seen these three cards together. The Hanged Man, The Devil and Death? That’s a bad combination.”
“I’m really missing why you get any return business.”
“Do you think I would fake something like this?” Zora said, and her voice was back to having a southern accent. “How stupid do I look?”
“You could just be trying to frighten me,” Kate said.
“There are two frightened people in this room at the moment,” she said. “Believe me when I tell you that whatever you are into, it’s some serious mojo. Truth, Sex and Death.”
“Great, I realize the truth, have sex and die,” Kate said. “Sounds like a slasher film to me.”
“The death card may not mean your death,” Zora said. “Typically it stands for the end of one cycle and the beginning of another. It’s about transformation. Taken together, these cards show a major event in your future, one that could have massive ramifications.”
“Including my death.”
“Yes, that’s a possibility,” Zora said. “But there are others.”
Kate sat in stunned silence. She looked at the three cards. The man hanging upside down, the couple staring at each other, and the skeleton on top of the horse.
Something gnawed at her about the death card, so she picked it up off the table. The message in the card was clear enough: death takes everyone-men, women and children, from nobility to serfs. The skeleton knight held a sword out in front of him and it was unclear if he had trampled his victims to death, or used his weapon.
There’s something familiar in this, Kate thought. But she couldn’t quite place it. An image that was similar, but not quite right. It was on the tip of her tongue when she noticed a word written on the sword. The letters were hard to see and Kate had trouble making it out.
“What’s this?” she said and pointed to the sword.
Zora took the card from her and stared at it. She reached behind her desk and pulled out a pair of glasses. If you ignored the outfit, she looked like a librarian. Zora examined the word carefully.
“Sanheim,” she said finally.
Kate nearly grabbed the card out of Zora’s hands.
“I know that word,” she said, and felt like the room was starting to spin. She had seen it written in the bathroom mirror just the other day. Then it had disappeared. And hadn’t she seen it before that? A memory flashed in her mind. Her mother was dead on the bed beside her and she was holding the phone. Lord Halloween’s note was below her. But instead of saying, “Happy Halloween,” or anything else, it just had one word: “Sanheim.” She must have seen it in her dreams.
“What does it mean?” she asked. “What’s Sanheim?”
Zora stared at her.
“Sanheim was the Celtic God of the Dead. It’s also a festival celebrated by thousands every year.”
“I’ve never heard of it,” Kate responded.
“Not under that name. But believe me, you know it. It’s the festival the early Christians renamed when they came to convert the Irish. They started calling it All Hallow’s Eve.”
“Halloween,” Kate said under her breath. “Sanheim means Halloween.”
Zora disappeared into the back for a moment and left Kate staring at the card.
“This is about him, isn’t it?”
Zora shook her head.
“I don’t think so,” she said.
“Come on. I get a death card with the word ‘Halloween’ on it and it isn’t about Lord Halloween? What are the odds of that?”
Why does everything come back to him? Kate fought down an urge to run. She didn’t believe in divination-not really-but this was her worst nightmare in card form. She had always feared she would die at his hand and this appeared to bear that out.
“Only in Loudoun do they connect Halloween automatically with that guy,” Zora said. “It’s a celebration that goes back centuries, far beyond the written history we have of it.”
“You can’t deny it’s a strong coincidence.”
“But it may just be that, Trina,” Zora said, and Kate winced again at the nickname. “I told you before, everything about being a psychic is instinct. When I first called you Trina, I knew from your reaction that there was something about Lord Halloween in your reaction. I still don’t know what, but I just felt it. It’s the same here-this card isn’t about him. His fate may be tied up with yours-I have a hunch it has to be-but nothing here says he’s going to kill you.”
Kate pushed back from the desk.
“I think I’ve seen enough in any case,” she said.
She flipped off the recorder and stood up.
“Don’t leave like this,” Zora said. “I’m sorry.”
Kate didn’t say anything. She was shaken, and badly. Suddenly, nothing seemed too far-fetched. Could Zora be working with Lord Halloween? Is this all a trick to make her more panicked, more afraid?
“I’m not working with him,” Zora said, as if she had read her mind. Maybe she had, but Kate didn’t care.
“You had better not be,” Kate said, and there was venom in her voice. “If I find out you are, God help you.”
Zora held up her hands. “I’m not your enemy,” she said. “I have a feeling that would be a very bad position to be in.”
Kate nodded and turned to walk out.
“There’s one more thing you should know,” Zora said.
“I’m done listening to this,” Kate said.
“The spelling-it’s wrong.”
Kate paused as she began to head for the door. She almost turned around.
“What spelling?”
“The name on the sword here is Sanheim,” Zora said. “The Celtic God of the Dead is spelled Samhaim, similar sounding, but different.”
“What does that mean? Maybe somebody forgot to spell check.”
