The Tarot Reader, page 14
“What are you looking at?” I asked as I unlaced my own corset.
“Creeper, six o’clock,” she said, a combination of annoyance and fear in her voice.
I turned to look, my stomach dropping at the sight of the plague doctor from earlier. The only people left on the fairgrounds were vendors and employees who were packing up and long out of character. Masks had been removed, face paint was smeared, and sneakers were being put on in the place of wedged boots. Except for one person. The man from earlier still wore his all-black outfit, a hat sitting atop a long leather beak mask that didn’t move an inch as he stood there, not speaking to anyone.
“Am I crazy or is he watching us?” Stevie asked.
“You’re not crazy. He was being a creep earlier too.” I scowled at him, letting him know I wasn’t bothered by his gaze, although that was a lie. My hands shook as I raised my arms to slam the trunk closed, only to notice we’d forgotten our sign at the booth.
“Shit, can you go grab the sign?” I asked. Stevie hesitated as she glanced at the statue-still man then back at me, opening her mouth to protest. “Go all the way around the left where the jewelry booth was and you won’t have to walk near him. I’ll watch him.”
She hurried off, and I leaned back against the car. I folded my arms across my chest and stared right at him. He was so still that I wondered if he was a mannequin for a costume display.
A group of men walked by, visibly drunk. My stomach dropped as the masked man’s head turned and steadily followed them as they neared me. Two of them were still dressed in their haunted house costumes, with fake blood dripping down various parts of their body.
“Psychic lady!” one of them yelled, pulling my eyes away from the plague doctor.
I gave them an unenthusiastic smile, hoping they’d get the point and keep moving. Within seconds, I was surrounded by a group of five men, all about mine or Stevie’s age. The smell of stale beer breath wafted into my face.
I could no longer see the man in the plague doctor mask over their heads and I shifted on my feet, desperate to keep an eye on him to quell my anxiety. I needed to know he wasn’t following Stevie.
“You looking for someone?” the man in the front asked with a crooked smile.
“Nope,” I lied. “I’m on my way out.” I fiddled in my skirt pockets, looking for my keys.
“You know, I’m psychic too,” a tall man said from the back of the group.
“Yeah? That’s nice. You should apply for a booth next year.” I was smiling to keep this from escalating any further, but I wanted to tell them to fuck off.
“Oh yeah, I see you in my future. All over it,” he said with a low, slurred voice.
“You sure you’re not just hallucinating?”
“What, you can’t see me in your future? The things I’m doin’ to you?”
“Not interested in seeing that now or ever.”
“Can’t change fate, psychic lady.” His friends laughed, and although they stood still, the space between us seemed to close. “Chris and Adam say hi. Ya know, Chris told us you were a good time. I wanna see if he’s right.”
“I bet Adam wants to find out too,” another one said, and they all howled with laughter.
“You guys can go ahead and fuck off now,” Stevie said, pushing her way through the group.
I matched my tone with hers. “You heard her. Fuck off.”
As if on cue, a loud pop sounded in the emptying parking lot, causing everyone nearby to stoop down. With one eye squinted, one of the men said, “Dude, is that your car?”
The leader of their feral little pack shot up, his eyes locking on his car, whose alarm was now blaring in a panicked staccato beep. A lazy stream of smoke billowed out from under the hood, and when the owner ran to it, the others followed.
“What the fuck, man!” the owner howled as he lifted the hood. Thick smoke blasted him in the face. “Did you leave it running this entire time?”
Stevie and I burst into a fit of laughter, but there was a nervous edge to it—the kind that two people share when they realize they’ve barely avoided danger.
The men hopped in a nearby truck, their bickering fading as they sped through the lot. Stevie and I were now among the few left here. The carousel had been entirely disassembled at this point, and booth tents lay collapsed on the ground. The few remaining employees were loading equipment onto the backs of trailers.
The row of light posts began to turn off, a heavy click starting at the end of the row far away from us. The approaching dark unsettled me, and the few remaining employees picked up their pace. It was funny that the older you got, the less willing you were to admit that darkness was still unnerving—the unknown of it allowing your mind to conjure up what you feared the most.
“Come on,” I said, slamming the trunk shut and opening the driver door. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Gladly.” Stevie slid into the passenger seat, shutting the door just to reopen it and yank her long skirt into her lap.
There was a blur of movement to my left, a shadow barely visible in the now-darkened fairgrounds. It was getting closer, and I desperately tried to convince myself it was just a worker passing by as I twisted the keys in the ignition.
My fingers dug into the steering wheel as the engine sputtered. I turned the key and the engine faltered again. I glanced out the window in panic. The shadow wasn’t an employee. It was the masked plague doctor, and he was coming straight to my rolled-down window. I pressed the button to roll it up, but it was useless without the engine running.
“Piece-of-shit car,” I growled, twisting the keys again.
Stevie let out a fearful groan as the man approached. “Twist it harder!” she shouted as I gave it another try.
“What the fuck do you think I’m doing?” I snapped back through gritted teeth.
Adrenaline coursed through me as one gloved hand gripped the lip of the window. I leaned away from it as a low voice asked, “Do you need any help?” The mask distorted his voice, sending a chill up my spine.
“No!” I shouted as I turned the keys with every ounce of hope I had. Panic surged as he reached his hand inside.
Tears stung my eyes as the engine roared to life. I struggled with the gearshift—I hadn’t driven a manual car since I got my permit at fifteen. The man’s hand reached in, grabbing the puffed white sleeve of my blouse. “You’re going to need help if you keep digging around.”
I panicked, my hand meeting his to try to rip it off. My fingernails dug uselessly into the leather gloves. “Get off me!”
Stevie put her hand on top of mine on the gearshift, yanked it back, and yelled, “Go!”
My blouse tore as the man held on for as long as possible, the car pulling away into the lot.
I sped out of the fairgrounds, holding my breath until we reached the highway. Only then did I let it out, my breath escalating so severely that I pulled onto the side of the road. Stevie and I sat silently in the idling car as we tried to collect ourselves. Wordlessly, I started the car moving again and drove us home, my knuckles clenched around the steering wheel.
* * *
Our street was packed with cars and late-night revelers strolling the streets. Many of them were still in their costumes from the fair, and I scanned the road nervously looking for the plague doctor. The halo of gold from the streetlights was suffocated by a heavy fog and it was clear a storm was building, the clouds overhead straining to hold in rain.
There wasn’t a single parking spot on our street, so we circled around multiple times in complete silence. Stevie wiped away the dried tears under her eyes and reassembled her facade of courage, despite her breath still stuttering with each inhale like a child after a heavy bout of tears.
“Thank you for defending me against those guys,” I said quietly.
“No problem. Never trust a group of drunk men,” she said in a low voice.
I reached out to squeeze her arm before pulling into a spot, and we dragged ourselves out of the car with our skirts balled in our hands. “Let’s just leave the stuff in the car for tonight,” I grumbled. I locked the car, and we began walking the block to our shop.
The lights in our shop were off, but the space in front of Daniel’s building was illuminated. A part of me wanted to bang on the door, begging for Daniel to house us just for the night.
The conversation I’d overheard earlier about the hot West End therapist popped into my mind. The other two doctors in Daniel’s practice were approaching their seventies, so I doubted the women had been talking about them. I’d have to ask him about it later, but in a joking way to cover up the hint of jealousy that was stirring inside me.
“You remember when you said Daniel gave you the creeps yesterday when I was talking to Chris?” I asked Stevie, who nodded. “Were you joking?”
She hesitated. A group of drinkers at the bar across from our shop squealed as a new group arrived, causing Stevie and me to flinch. “Well, yes and no. I don’t think he’s creepy at all—I like him. It was just weird, the way he was looking at you.”
“Looking at me how?”
“Well, he was standing across the street just… staring. He looked pissed, and he hardly moved the entire time you were talking to Chris. Like, barely even blinked.”
It was an unsettling thought—being watched by someone without knowing—and this would make the second occurrence of Daniel doing just that. I thought of the plague doctor at the fair who’d watched us with such intent stillness. Paranoia stirred, wanting to make connections, but I pushed them away. For both Daniel and me, our jobs were about listening and observing. We couldn’t necessarily help it when that drifted over into our personal lives.
“Thanks for explaining,” I mumbled as we approached our shop. I got my keys out of my skirt pocket, struggling with them in the dark. I wrestled the door open and flipped a light on inside the shop. Stevie trailed behind me, then her footsteps stopped.
“Um, Jade…” she said in a high, tight voice.
“Yeah?” I drew back the curtain to the stairwell, flipping another light on.
“Come here.” Her voice was even higher now, and it cracked. Tears were brewing.
I rushed over, my entire body clenching with fear as I followed her pointed finger. It was a tarot card, stabbed into the door with a small pocketknife. The tarot card was frayed at the edges, a clear sign of heavy use.
“A Ten of Swords,” Stevie whispered.
On the card, a figure lay dead on the ground, ten long swords protruding from their back. It meant only one thing.
A disaster was on the horizon—the lowest point in our lives. As much as we tried, tragedy was unavoidable, and it was coming for us.
CHAPTER
22
Jade
THE NEXT MORNING was Monday, which thankfully meant the repairmen had returned to finish their work. Nervousness had built over the thought of having to be around Adam again.
“Excuse me,” I said, interrupting one of the new workers. “Will Adam be working today?”
The man looked at me, confused. “Who?”
I explained who Adam was and what he looked like, but the man gave a disinterested shrug. I couldn’t blame anyone for not remembering him, since he barely spoke at all. The crew worked tirelessly in our shop as Stevie and I tried to go about our normal business, but with every thump of a hammer or chime of the door, we flinched, waiting for another bad omen.
Ignorant to our restlessness, there had been a steady increase in the amount of customers and clients stopping by the shop, all of them shamelessly nosy and eager to meet the woman who was psychically talented enough to find the body of a dead man but not quite talented enough to save him.
“Good God.” Stevie’s voice was muffled behind one hand clasped over her face as she stared at one of the repairmen, who was bent over, digging through his toolbox. The farther he bent over, the more his pants slipped down his backside. I was greeting a small group of college students when both the students and I followed her glance.
“Damn, dude,” one of the male students said under his breath to another.
“I’ve never seen a butt crack go up that high,” one of the young women said in what sounded like appreciative awe.
The sight of it briefly broke me out of a vicious internal cycle I was in, debating what I should do about Lisa and her ring. We’d earned a decent amount of money at the fair, but it had immediately disappeared when I’d paid our water and heating bills. We desperately needed Lisa’s ring to sell, but still, the guilt of the act was eating away at me. Each night my sleep grew worse as I lay in bed wondering how I’d let myself take it this far. If the ring sold and the Nichols family finally gave us the reward money for my tip, maybe, just maybe, we could make it work.
Now, as the plumber’s exposed butt crack stared back at me—oh, it just winked at me when he shifted his weight—I had an idea. The scales of justice were too far outweighed right now, and even though I was on a high, the scales would have to tip in the opposite direction sometime soon. And they wouldn’t just tip, they were going to crash, according to the tarot card stabbed into our door last night.
The students debated for over five minutes on who would get a tarot reading, only for them to all chicken out and dash out of the shop in a fit of nervous giggles.
“Stevie,” I whispered. “Psssst.” I waved her over.
“How about that strip tease? He really knows how to put on a show.”
“I don’t feel right about how far we’ve gone with Lisa. She’s given us way too much money.”
“Isn’t that the goal?”
“Yes, but I always need to help the person too. Even if it’s a placebo. If I don’t give them something in return, it’s just stealing.”
“Okay, Saint Jade. Where are you going with this?”
“Lisa and her husband are staying with family for the next few nights. We’re going to break in and finish the work on their ceiling.”
“We?” She waved her finger between the two of us. “We don’t think this is such a good idea. Break in? You do remember how Dad ended up in jail, right?”
I winced at the blatant omission of the real question: Don’t you remember why Mom’s dead?
“That was different. Can you call it breaking in if it’s to do something nice? To leave the house in a better state than it was before?”
The wheels in Stevie’s brain were beginning to spin. I could tell I was getting her on board.
“Okay,” she said, “but even so, neither of us know how to fix a moldy ceiling, and we can’t exactly afford the chemicals and whatever else they use.”
“We just need a temporary fix. They won’t notice if we borrow some of their paint,” I said, eyeing the enormous bucket of paint for the ceiling.
“You’re insane.”
“Stevie, please. I have to help her.” I have to help myself feel better, I added internally.
“Fine.” The ferocity of her glare surprised me, but before I could tell her this would all be worth it, she stormed out of the room, leaving me staring up at the gaping hole in the shop ceiling.
* * *
Stevie
* * *
Jade and I sat parked in the street across from Lisa’s house. All the windows were dark, just like most of the other houses on the street. The only difference was that all of Lisa’s neighbors hadn’t fled their house due to some supposed haunting. They were just enjoying the type of deep sleep that only came with the guaranteed comfort and safety this neighborhood could offer.
We climbed out of the car and gathered the tools we’d borrowed from the repairmen, who had left all their materials in the shop overnight.
“Follow me,” Jade said, and I trailed behind her. Instead of going to the front door, she went to the side of the house and approached the kitchen window.
“What are you doing?” I whispered.
“Getting us inside.” She fumbled around for a place to grip the window and began, but failed, to push the window up. “I saw the lock on this one was broken when we were here,” Jade said proudly. She was struggling in the dark to find a place to grip. Even with the moon shining brightly, the line of enormous magnolia trees behind us towered overhead, blocking out any light.
I got out my phone and aimed my flashlight at the window, panicking all the while that a neighbor would see it and call the cops. Jade slid the window up and I shivered, eager to be inside. Jade climbed in first and I followed, closing the window behind me. The silence in the house was so loud and unsettling that we stood rigid for a moment before moving farther.
I reached out for the light switch, but Jade grabbed my wrist. “Don’t turn any lights on. Just one flashlight.”
I nodded. Even in the dark, the moldy blotch on the ceiling was visible, and it was clear to see that it had grown since we’d last been here, the black dots bloating like a body left in the water.
Jade set her paint down and surveyed the room. “Help me move some of this furniture.” We shifted the couch and side tables out of the way, and Jade said excitedly, “Time for a little makeup.” I could tell she was eager to do this, more to clear her own conscience than to better Lisa’s life. Eventually, the mold would come back and Lisa would likely realize what had been done.
“Oh crap, I forgot the drop cloth. Be right back,” I said. Once I’d crawled out of the kitchen window into the cool night air, I sucked in a deep breath. It was stuffy and humid in the house from the air being turned off, and the idea that we’d been inhaling tiny mold spores for the past ten minutes had convinced me I couldn’t breathe.
And in my stupid little mind, the cure for that would be a joint. I pulled an Altoids tin out of my back pocket, enjoying the comforting sound of my lighter rattling around inside. I was standing in the pitch-black shadows of the magnolia trees as I lit the joint, and I stood there for a moment admiring the blooms, wondering how long the trees had taken to grow.
