Her question sounded innocuous, but it was a topic I avoided at all costs—i.e., feelings. The last time we’d had a serious chat, she’d warned me to open up to Ezra before it was too late.
“Yeah,” I admitted reluctantly. “I told him I love him. Er … well, I texted him.”
“You texted him?”
“What’s with the scandalized tone? He didn’t seem to mind. And we talked on the phone too.”
“So are you two a couple now?”
“Uh … no. Not … um … it’s complicated. There’s this … uh …” As I trailed off, something about her expression sent a new prickle down my spine. “Sabrina, do you know something?”
Her face paled more than the unhealthy pallor she already had going on. “No! I mean, I—the cards are … never specific, but … sometimes I can see … things,” she finished uncertainly.
What “things” had she “seen,” exactly? I didn’t want to fish for information in case I gave her answers she didn’t have.
“I was thinking … maybe …” She twisted her hands together. “I could do a reading for you?”
She’d just given me a way better reason than usual to say no. I couldn’t have her guessing Ezra’s secrets. “Uh, maybe another time, Sabrina.”
“Oh.” She wilted. “Okay. I understand. I’ll … I’ll get back to my team.”
Guilt poked holes in my gut as she turned away, and I was almost too distracted by my own worries to notice her reach up to her face. I rushed after her and caught her wrist, tugging her toward me.
The tear she’d been about to wipe away ran down her cheek.
“Shit, Sabrina.” I searched her face more closely. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” When I didn’t budge, waiting for a real answer, she squirmed. “It’s just the cards … I know you don’t like fortune-telling, so I’ve been trying to ignore it, but I’ve been having these dreams and I just—but it’s fine! You don’t have to do a reading with me.”
She forced a smile, her brave face weakened by her quivering lips.
Damn it.
I tended to think of magic as something mythics could control—mages and their elemental powers, sorcerers and their carefully constructed spells, alchemists and their purpose-built potions—but I’d seen enough to realize that not all magic was like that. Whatever mysterious force powered Sabrina’s divination magic existed outside her, and she was merely the conduit.
I snugged my arm around her narrow shoulders, pulled her to the far corner of the bar, and guided her to a stool.
“Do your cards have another message for me?” I slid onto the seat beside her. “It’s not your fault, but I hate how it’s always bad news.”
“Whatever is coming will happen anyway, though,” she pointed out. “The cards might help you prepare. That’s what they’re for—to bring understanding so when the challenges reach you, you’re ready for them.”
She was right. The cards weren’t the cause of the trouble. They were an early warning, and I’d be a fool to ignore anything that might help me—and everyone else—survive whatever was coming.
“Okay.” I steeled myself. “Let’s do this.”
She assessed me, a shimmer of tears clinging to her eyelashes, then reached into her purse. Withdrawing her deck, she unwrapped it from its black silk cloth. The gold pattern on the backs of the cards flashed as she shuffled at top speed, and after a minute, she stacked the deck neatly and offered it to me.
I began to shuffle. The cards slid across my palms, their edges pressing into my fingertips. The feel of the cards pushed away everything else. The packed pub faded from my awareness. The noisy conversations muted to a distant rumble. My eyes were closed, but I didn’t remember closing them.
“What’s in your heart, Tori?” Sabrina’s whisper floated to my ears, blending with the rustle of the cards that had consumed my attention. “Focus on that. Let it fill you.”
What was in my heart? The answer was simple, easy: Ezra. My mind swirled with thoughts of him, of the cult that had changed his life, of his past and his uncertain future, of Eterran and their blending spirits, of how to save him before it was too late.
Warm, soft hands enclosed mine, the deck between my palms. Sabrina guided the cards down onto the table.
“Cut the deck.”
Eyes still closed, I cut the deck.
“Draw cards. As many as you want.”
I slid the first card off, and it disappeared from under my fingers as she took it. I slid off another, then another. Two more. When I touched the deck again, I felt no need to draw more cards.
“Open your eyes, Tori.”
I opened them—and the light, noise, and bustle of the pub hit me like a slap to the face. I blinked rapidly, disoriented as though waking from a trance. Weird. I’d never spaced out like that during a reading before.
Sabrina had laid the five cards on the table between us, arranged in the shape of a plus sign. “This is a relationship cross spread. Your heart is consumed by someone—by your relationship with him.”
I couldn’t argue with that. We both knew I was obsessed with Ezra.
When I didn’t protest, she nodded. “Then let’s begin. The first card represents you, Tori.”
She lifted the card on the right side of the spread, but as she turned it over, it slipped from her fingers. The card landed on one pointed corner, spun in a faltering circle, and fell face-up, perpendicular to the rest of the spread.
The ink illustration depicted a nude woman, a wreath of flowers in her hair, holding the jaws of a lion. Beneath it was a single word: Strength.
“It’s sideways,” Sabrina observed.
“Well, yeah. Because you dropped it.”
“There are no accidents during a reading.” She studied the lion-wrangling woman. “Upright, this card means courage, compassion, and self-confidence, but reversed, it means weakness, inadequacy, and self-doubt. I think the sideways card means your two sides are at war with each other, Tori.”
My mind immediately jumped to my combat belt in my locker downstairs, its pouches empty of magic.
“Now we look at the person who’s consuming your future.” She flipped the card on the
