The Tarot Reader, page 6
She sighed. “I know you said you don’t do house cleansings, but I want to ask you to make an exception. My husband and I have been feeling terribly ill. We can hardly breathe, and there’s this thick mental fog over both of us. Would you be willing to stop by and take a look? Maybe you can tell if it’s… spiritual or not.”
This poor woman had come to me in good faith, albeit a naive and desperate faith, and I’d immediately betrayed her. We were all born our own person, but the behaviors instilled in us by our parents were sometimes impossible to break, constantly echoing in our heads at the worst possible moment. And right now that echo was all I could hear. This was a chance to even the scales and improve her life, even if the comfort it would provide was all placebo.
My thoughts were interrupted by the sight of more movement across the street. You rarely saw people in the alleyways between buildings, except for business owners tossing out trash at lightning speed. But this person was standing still, and I could swear they were staring right at me, a trail of cigarette smoke billowing upward. The only problem was that it was too cloudy, making the alleyway unnaturally dark for this time of day, so I couldn’t see their face.
“Jade? What do you think?” Lisa prompted.
I swallowed, my throat dry as I remembered how wrong my parents’ house cleansings had sometimes gone. “I can’t do a full cleansing, I’m sorry.”
Our parents had done a handful of home cleansings when they were at the peak of their popularity, and most of them had gone well. One, however, stuck in my mind.
The Irvines had moved from New Orleans to North Carolina in the early 2000s and had come to my parents for help soon after moving in, claiming their house was haunted by a malevolent spirit. My parents hadn’t had a babysitter that night, or pretty much ever, so we’d tagged along. Because what’s a more appropriate place for children than a home possessed by a poltergeist?
The Irvine house had been riddled with mysterious happenings, from freshly purchased food rotting within a day to waking up to all the mugs, plates, and bowls stacked high to the ceiling. The Irvines had never stopped for a moment to think of the real-world causes to these strange events or the fact that their son was not the little choirboy they thought he was.
After watching The Exorcist one night at a sleepover, little Johnny Irvine had started waking up in the middle of the night to do anything he could to convince his parents their house was haunted. All he wanted to do was to move back to New Orleans, where his grandparents and best friends lived, but rather than express that, he decided to scare the living hell out of his parents and waste hundreds of their dollars on my parents’ so-called spiritual extermination services.
Luckily for my parents, Johnny’s mother and father didn’t figure that out for quite some time. What they did figure out was that my parents had stolen from them. During the cleansing, as they walked room to room to sage the air and murmur their pseudospiritual platitudes, my father pilfered the Irvines’ things and stuffed them in mine and Stevie’s pockets. He thought he’d stolen just enough to make decent money but not enough to be noticed. He took jewelry, but never the nicest piece in the jewelry box. He took prescription pills, but never the entire bottle—just a skim off the top.
He thought that since the Irvines had been stupid enough to ask him and Mom to cleanse their house, they’d be stupid enough not to notice. It was actually their son who noticed first. He had been peeking out in curiosity from behind corners like the creepy little ghost he pretended to be, and only at the end of the cleansing did he tell his parents Dad had stuffed our pockets with their things.
The disappointment on Lisa’s face put a pit in my stomach, so I resigned to meeting her halfway. “How about I stop by and sage the house for you? I can do it in three days, if that works.”
Her shoulders slumped with relief, and she pressed her hands together in prayer. “Oh, thank the Lord.”
Guilt crashed into the spark of joy from her relief, the two swarming around each other like oil and water. Something good could come of this. Even if I knew it was all bullshit, I could make her feel more at peace in her own home.
“And the ring?” she asked anxiously as she rubbed the indent on her finger where it used to rest. “Do you think you’ll be able to… fix it?”
“Yes, of course, but I’ll need some time with it. Since it’s antique, there are multiple people’s energies attached to it. I want to do a thorough job.”
“Of course. Take your time. I trust you.”
Trust. The word rattled around in my head as we said our goodbyes, Lisa whispering a sincere and gentle “Thank you” in my ear before pulling away.
I resisted the urge to get away from the pawnshop as quickly as possible. I should be sprinting back inside and telling the Pulaskis I needed the ring back. Screw the plan, screw the money.
Are you really going to lie to yourself? You enjoyed it just a little. Admit it.
Maybe a small part of me did. But that spark of endorphins was so easily dampened by the guilt that it was hardly worth it. How had Mom and Dad done this so often without the guilt eating them alive?
“You have to do whatever it takes to provide for your family,” Dad had said.
Bullshit. Sure, some of the money had gone toward bills, but most of it had gone toward booze and tools to help him scam more people, whether it was information on clients or props for séances. He’d spent two thousand dollars on the high-tech sound system in the séance room—the one that made clients hear spirits in surround sound—and my parents had only been able to use it once before my dad was arrested. Before he got Mom killed. After we were financially stable, we were done with all this.
I finally made it back to our shop, my heart pounding as I wrenched open the door. “Stevie!” I shouted out as I ran up the stairs to our apartment, tossing my bag haphazardly on the coatrack and flinging my shoes off as I went.
I didn’t hear her typical response of What?! from anywhere in the small apartment. “You’ll never believe what just happened,” I said loudly, trying to tempt her out of hiding. I was desperate to tell her about the pawnshop, and a part of me wanted her to convince me that what I’d done was okay—that it was just a part of survival when we didn’t know anything else.
And tell her about Daniel too—God, I want to sit on her floor and giggle like a little schoolgirl at the thought of our movie night tonight, even though she would convince me it wasn’t just a movie night. It was a date night. A first date. Why did I suddenly feel like I was going to throw up?
A door shut downstairs, followed by a creaking floorboard. There was no chime, so it wasn’t the front door. It had to have been the door to the séance room or our prop room, which we had no need for this week. I skittered back down the stairs, but the shop was empty.
“Stevie?” I called out meekly, opening the door to the séance room and peering in. It was empty and dark, just as expected.
Stevie didn’t have work until much later tonight, and she hadn’t mentioned any errands, but it was clear now she wasn’t home.
A tingle of anxiety crept over me as I checked the locks on the doors and windows. I was suddenly overly aware of the fact that our father could be out of prison at this very moment, walking around in the same world as Stevie without me there to protect her.
Maybe my warning to him when we’d last spoken had been enough. He knew I didn’t want anything to do with him.
I just wasn’t sure if the same was true of Stevie.
* * *
I sat listlessly at the tarot table, shuffling the cards as I observed people on the street strolling by with shopping bags and to-go coffees. A group of students clad in Wake Forest gear walked by, and I immediately tensed as I thought about the looming first tuition payment for Stevie. I chewed on the inside of my cheek, watching another person walk by without even glancing at the shop.
I split the deck in two and bridged them together, watching the cards flip and fold into one another in a satisfying, mesmerizing stack when I stopped, sending the remaining cards in my left hand shooting across the table.
Two men in suits approached from the right, walking past the wide shop window while turning their heads to look inside. Seconds later the bell above the door gave a tinny chime.
“Are you Jade Ravencroft?” the larger of the two men asked me. I stiffened as he flashed his detective badge. His foreboding height drowned out the light coming in from the window, and I suddenly wanted him out.
It wasn’t a great start that they didn’t even greet me with a hello or a how are you, but I took a breath and reassured myself that I didn’t do anything wrong. At least legally.
Not true, a voice chimed in my head as I thought of the ring I’d pawned. My heart quickened in my chest, and my dry tongue felt too big for my mouth.
Don’t think about the ring. Stop thinking about the damn ring. My anxious brain was telling me that yes, magic was real and telepathy was absolutely a skill detectives had and, oh God, I was going to prison. How ironic that as soon as my father got out of prison, I’d take his place, as though the scales of justice demanded the flesh of at least one Crawford.
The shorter detective spoke next in a high-pitched voice, as though he had a glob of peanut butter stuck in his throat from a hasty lunch. “My name is Detective McCade, and this is Detective Woolridge. We’d like to ask you some questions. This will all be confidential, of course.”
“Okay,” I said. I stood and started to drag the chair I was sitting in over to the chairs to join them, but every muscle in my body was tensed and primed to toss it straight at them and flee out the door. Instead, I placed it directly across from them and sat, crossing my legs at my ankles like a good little girl.
“We’d like to talk to you about the…” He fumbled. Oh God, they found Lisa’s ring at the pawnshop. Finally, in disbelief, he said, “The vision you called in regarding Councilman Nichols.”
Relief flooded through me, but a portion of guilt still squeezed tight in my throat. When I spoke, it was audible. “Oh, yes. It’s terrible what happened to him, so I wanted to help.”
“What happened to him? What do you mean by that?” The larger detective, Detective Woolridge, leaned forward, pressing his elbows against his knees, fanning out the muscles in his arms like a damn silverback gorilla. How did these two even get paired up? Did the little one ride around on his back?
“Well, I mean that he’s missing.”
“Did something happen to Mr. Nichols that you’re keeping to yourself?”
“What? No. That’s not what I meant at all. This entire situation is awful. That’s all I meant. I don’t know anything about the missing-person case aside from what I saw in my vision.”
Woolridge grunted but didn’t speak. Detective McCade chimed in his slightly aggravating voice, “That’s what we came to ask you about today—this vision of yours. Can you start by telling us more about it?” His tone had taken a turn—it was a bit more pointed.
I straightened my back and explained how my visions arrived as flashes of images.
McCade was scribbling in his little spiral bound notebook, but Woolridge was still leaning forward with his pectoral muscles flexing menacingly at me. “Flashes of images,” Woolridge said, clearly amused. “Sounds a lot like a memory to me.”
“And what do you see in these images?” McCade asked, not giving me a chance to ask Woolridge what he meant by that. He clearly thought I had far more to do with this than just some vision.
I had to tread carefully with this question. If you were thinking in black and white, I was lying about having a psychic vision. But I wasn’t lying about an image popping into my head of the construction site by the lake, but that was only because I’d been annoyed by the noise the last time Stevie and I had gone on a walk there.
“First, I saw Salem Lake. I thought it was a memory. But then I saw the nearby construction site, and it was like I was a bird, looking down from above. I remember getting dizzy, like I sometimes do, and then I saw Councilman Nichols’ face. I didn’t realize what it was about until I saw the news.”
The buttons across Woolridge’s chest held on for dear life as he flexed harder, his gaze growing even more shrewd. “You said you saw the news segment, had your vision, and called right after. About what time was the news segment?”
Why would that even matter? “I guess it was sometime in the morning of the twenty-fourth, I think.”
“Hmm. That’s odd,” Woolridge said. “McCade, check your notebook. What time did Miss Ravencroft call the station?”
McCade flipped back in his notebook, bending the papers as he went. Looked like Woolridge made him a little nervous too. McCade rubbed his brow like he was disappointed, like I’d failed some secret test. “Nine fifteen PM.”
Shit.
“That’s not right after the morning segment, in my opinion.” Woolridge gave a huff of a laugh, sending the smell of garlic across the room. Why hadn’t I thought to get my story straight, maybe write down everything I’d done and said so far?
My patience was wearing thin. “The story was on throughout the day. It can be hard to keep track of the time.”
“Right.” Woolridge shrugged his dumb giant shoulders. Every action, every word was condescending.
The silence in the room was stifling, and it was becoming clear that at least Woolridge found my tip suspicious. “Have you found any more information about the councilman?” I asked.
“We’re not at liberty to say just yet,” McCade said.
“Well, I hope he’s found safe and sound.”
“But only if he’s found exactly where you said he’d be,” Woolridge said low and fast.
“Excuse me?”
McCade glared at him before he stuck his hand out to me. His palms were dry and rough against my clammy, nervous skin. “Thank you for your time.”
Detective Woolridge didn’t bother shaking my hand and was already walking to the door. He looked up at the shop’s sign above the doorframe. “Nice speaking with you, Madame Ravencroft,” he said with disdain.
“You too, Detective Woodruff,” I said back, a wide, insincere smile on my face. He let out a nearly silent huff, the kind that tilts your chin up and back. I took pleasure in the fact that it doubled his chin, when he clearly cared enough about his appearance to spend hours in the gym.
They glanced at each other and walked out of the shop. My heart raced with pride in myself for jabbing back at him—making him feel he was insignificant enough that not even his name was worth remembering. When they were out of view of the shop window and I sat, my heart rate slowed, regret and embarrassment twisting their fists around my heart.
Why did I say that? What is wrong with me?
The detectives hadn’t actively accused me of anything, but Woolridge had made it more than clear he held no respect for me nor my profession. The last thing I needed was to sharpen that derision into action, his dislike for me driving him to pin something on me.
I lowered my forehead on the tarot table, where my cards lay scattered. As I sat there with my eyes closed, I wished I’d never submitted the tip at all.
CHAPTER
9
Jade
AFTER GETTING READY to see Daniel, I paused in my bedroom doorway before turning around to spritz perfume on the nape of my neck. Even though Stevie was probably at work by now, I could practically feel her laughing at me.
Oh, you’re trying to impress someone, huh?
I wasn’t sure, to be honest. I’d always found him cute, but in the kind of way you’d find a puppy cute. Goofy. Harmless. But there had been a shift in something after he’d comforted me about the bills. He’d been gentle but not patronizing. Helpful but not insistent.
He’s a therapist, I told myself. That’s his job. It doesn’t mean anything.
My heart thumped wildly as I locked up the shop and walked next door. His practice was dim, and a ray of golden light peeked out from Daniel’s half-open office door. Thinking he was inside, I poked the door with one finger and stepped inside, but it was empty.
I paused at the sight of the patient files on top of his desk, the names of patients clearly labeled in thick black Sharpie. Behind the desk were three enormous filing cabinets, each drawer stuffed with patient information. So much information that I could use against my clients.
Against? I barked at myself.
Daniel’s footsteps creaked above me. These buildings were old, and every footstep made the building groan like it was in pain. I bit down on the desire to riffle through the files and stepped back out into the lobby, making sure to leave the office door cracked open as much as it was before.
“I’m here,” I said as I opened his apartment door, and was greeted with the buttery smell of popcorn. Everything was tidy, with hardwood floors and shining appliances. Soft golden lamps dotted the living room that connected to the kitchen, reflecting off the clean, white walls. It was so different from our place, with its heavy crimsons and suffocating velvets. His apartment was like breathing cool night air after being stuck inside a smoky bar.
“I’m glad you could make it,” Daniel said as he ushered me inside. I smiled at him in agreement. “You pick the movie. I’ll pick the drinks.” He opened the fridge and plucked out two bottles of beer.
I scrolled the endless catalog of streamable movies and picked a horror movie at random. He raised his eyebrows at my choice. “Gotta get in the Halloween spirit,” I said.
“Aren’t you always in the Halloween spirit?” He grinned, popping the top off a beer and handing it to me.
I took a small sip. “You got me there.”
My eyes followed Daniel’s hand as he wiped the condensation from the bottle onto his button-up shirt, which was untucked and slightly wrinkled from his workday.
“How was your day?” I asked. “Anything interesting?” Another nervous sip.
“My last two patients of the day were tough, but they’re still pretty new. Some people take time to open up.” He tilted his head and raised an eyebrow, clearly a playful jab.
