Page 19 of Death Card

Gramps studies me. “What happened? Tell me everything.”

I tell him about Joelle and the reading I gave her. When I get to the part when she plunges the knife into my chest, his eyes darken.

“I don’t even know who she is or why she would want to kill me,” I conclude. “And I don’t know what to do at this point. I could have read the cards wrong—”

“The cards are never wrong,” Gramps interjects. “You know that well enough. Give me the details. Where were you? What time of year was it?”

“Um.” It’s easy enough to pull the memory back to the forefront of my mind. “We were in a forest, I think. There were trees all around us, and a full moon above.”

“What did the moon look like?”

I shake my head, slightly aggravated by his intense questioning. “I don’t know.” I shrug. “It was the moon.”

Gramps crosses the room and grips my shoulders. “Think, Mikaela. Be very specific. You shouldn’t leave a stone unturned in a vision this important. Every little detail is essential.”

“Fine, fine.” I close my eyes and let it replay. “I can’t see the blade. No matter how hard I try. It’s almost like it’s cast in a thick fog.”

“Skip it, then,” Gramps says. “What else do you remember?”

“The moon had a slightly reddish hue.” My eyes pop open. “And it seemed bigger than usual. Unreal almost.”

Gramps scratches his chin and inhales quickly as something clicks. He strides over to his bookshelf and snatches a thick book off the shelf. I catch a glimpse of the cover as he flips it open. TheFarmers’ Almanac. He’s so old-school.

He harrumphs when he finds what he’s looking for. “I’ll be damned. Look at this right here.” He plunks the book onto the desk, and we both peer down at the open page.

It’s a list of the moon phases for the year. I follow Gramps’s finger to June 29.

“It’s a strawberry moon,” Gramps says, sounding almost pleased with himself. “The name’s got nothing to do with the color. It’s meant to mark the peak harvesting time for strawberries. But from what I gathered after forty-five years of being married to Adelaide, visions aren’t always what they appear. The moon won’t actually look the way it did in your vision. It’s symbolic.”

My heart lifts. “Does that mean Joelle stabbing me is also symbolic?”

“Oh no. It’s just the smaller details that can contain symbolism. You being stabbed, that’s a major event. That’s as real as can be, baby girl.”

My shoulders slump. So, I’m going to die after all. This entiresituation makes zero sense. I have no idea why a complete stranger would want me dead, but like Gramps said, the cards don’t lie.

I don’t know the first step to prevent this from happening or if I even can. The most important lesson Gran taught me when I learned to read the cards is that the future we see in our visions isn’t mutable. It’s not going to suddenly change. The circumstances leading up to it may, but the vision itself is set.

But there has to be another way. Maybe Gran left something out of her teachings, or maybe she was wrong.

Wait a minute.I scramble to my feet to peer back at the almanac. Holy shit. The full moon is exactly a week after my eighteenth birthday. No, that can’t be.

There has to be a way to change the future. If not for my sake, then for my family’s. We’ve had to deal with too much tragedy already.

Gramps grabs my shoulder and shakes me. “Snap out of it. I can see you spiraling.”

“Can you blame me?” I cry. “I don’t want to die, Gramps.”

In answer, he crushes me to his chest in a tight hug. “This is serious, but it ain’t nothing we can’t get through. We’ll get to the bottom of this.” He kisses the top of my head.

I notice keenly what he doesn’t say:You’re not going to die.Of course he can’t promise that. Even he must know I’ve got one foot in the Afterlife.

“What should I do?” I pull back to stare up into his eyes. “I should avoid her, right? She put in a job application! You have to turn her down!”

“Hush a minute and let me think.” He releases me and sitsdown in front of his computer, opening up the shop’s email account. I stare once more at Joelle’s handwriting, losing myself in a haze of panic and confusion.

“Hmm.” Gramps strokes his chin. “This might be a good thing.”

“What?! Gramps—”