Page 118 of Ex Somnis

At Paul.

She stands with a smile. “You turned around.”

Paul looks uncertain, but she’s already crossing to him, and when she reaches him, she presses a tarot card flat against his chest. He frowns down at her hand, and I look, too, but she’s already up on her toes, her mouth close to his ear, saying something I can’t hear. Paul goes rigid, and when she steps back, he takes the card from his chest and puts it in his back pocket without looking at it.

I have no idea what just happened, but before I can ask, Mom settles back into her chair and gestures at the empty seat across from her. “Sit down.”

I automatically sit and am again tempted to do a reality check, given how easily my body followed her instructions.

My hands don’t know what to do with themselves, so I fold them on the table, then unfold them before I end up gripping the edge of the chair instead, white-knuckled. My nervous system seems to think a tarot reading is somehow as dangerous as the jumping out of a window thing from earlier.

I don’t examine why I’m still in the chair instead of already making an excuse to check on something in the inn. Progress, maybe.

Or I’m just that hellbent on getting answers for Lennon.

“You survived the collapse.” She smiles. “Now comes the climb.”

Yeah, I had that climb already, thank you very much.

“Mom, we actually just wanted to⁠—”

“Listen to your mother,” Mabel says from the stove without turning around.

I close my mouth.

Mom’s hands move over the deck, her rings making soft sounds against the cards.

She draws two and lays them flat. The letters on the names are doing the flickering they always do for me, but I know the pictures. I grew up with them.

The Chariot. The Seven of Wands.

She holds up The Chariot and taps it once. “Momentum. Forward movement, but only if you control the force, not the other way around. There’s a bigger road ahead.” She lays it down. “A bigger test.”

Great. Just what I needed to hear.

Seraphine touches the Seven of Wands. “You gained ground. Now you have to defend it.”

She draws one more card.

The Devil.

She doesn’t even look at it. Instead, she looks at me. Not through me. Not at the air beside my head.

At me, directly.

I can’t remember the last time we had full, clear, and present eye contact like this, and the thing that happens to my throat is so fast and dumb that I’m grateful Paul is behind me, not in front.

Her ringed hand comes across the table and covers mine.

“The luck and love you’re feeling right now, you deserve it. It is meant for you. Don’t be afraid to take it. Don’t be afraid to fight for it. Don’t be afraid to be you. You are worth everything.”

I stare at the cards.

I hate when she does this.

I want to pull my hand away, but I don’t know when the last time she held it was, either.

Goddammit.