A Scrying Shame (13 page)

“I’m sorry,” she said breathlessly. “I have a headache.”

She shooed the girls over to the door.

“Walynda?” Chandra spoke for the first time in twenty minutes. “What just happ–”

“Nothing to worry about, nothing to worry about,” Walynda sang. “I’m just not feeling very well tonight. I’ve had a lot of readings this week, and my energy has been drained dry.”

As the girls cleared the threshold, Walynda called to Chandra. “Call me for an appointment, dear!”

In the next instant, the door swung shut, and they heard the click of a lock. And then another.

Chandra and Arie stood on the sidewalk and stared at each other.

“Well, that went well,” Arie said.

While Chandra ordered their coffees at the counter, Arie made her way to their favorite spot in Whelan’s: a small, round table near the white fireplace. She briefly considered ordering a Turtle Sundae. After the unsettling episode with Walynda, she deserved something sweet and gooey.

She sighed. Eighteen pounds since her visit to the Other Side. No ice cream.

When Chandra joined her with a couple of steaming mugs, Arie asked to see the notes.

Chandra scrunched her face. “I’m not sure we should do that. I mean, I know some things about reading tarot, but only enough to know that I don’t know enough. We should really—”

Arie waggled her fingers. “Gimme.”

With a theatrical sigh, Chandra pulled the notebook from her tote-size purse. Arie spread the notes on the table between them so Chandra could see.

“Okay,” Arie said. “There’s ten cards, right?”

“In this layout, yeah. She used the Celtic Cross spread. I think it’s the most common one. What question were you thinking of while she shuffled?”

“At first, I couldn’t think of just one. But then I figured out what to ask: Should I use my gift? Maybe I should’ve been more specific.”

“I don’t think the question was the problem. The whole thing is so weird. I can’t believe with a layout of ten cards, you picked the same ones over and over again.”

“Apparently, Walynda’s never seen that, either,” Arie said. “She looked at me like she’d seen a toad jump out of my mouth.”

“I don’t think freaking out your psychic is a good sign.”

“D’ya think?”

Arie leaned over Chandra’s notes, trying to decipher her friend’s scrawl. “So which one of these cards triggered the freaking?”

“You mean, as if pulling the same cards three times in a row wasn’t enough?”

“Yeah.”

Chandra sipped her chai tea and studied the page. Her finger trailed down the list. “Honestly, there’s enough here to freak me out, and I don’t even know exactly what I’m looking at. I can tell you what I know about a couple of them, but that’s not the point. It’s not just what cards are; it’s where they’re placed. Each spot tells you about a different time or circumstance in your life, so each card’s meaning can vary depending on your circumstances and where it was placed in the spread.”

“Look, I don’t know anything about this stuff, but even I saw the Death card. It was written right on there: Death. Some black knight dude riding on a white horse. Is that the one that freaked her out?”

“See, that’s what I mean,” Chandra said. “It’s not that easy. The Death card is really powerful, but it’s not about, you know,
death
. It’s about transformation. And, um, in your reading, it was placed in your distant past, not your recent. So it was talking about progressing from your old life to a new one. It means you had an attitude that was holding you back or a challenge that you faced in your past, and you grew from it. It’s probably not even about your NDE.”

“My mom would agree with the attitude-needing-changing part. So, which one would be about my recent past?”

Chandra tapped the number four card located at the bottom of the cross. She smiled.

Arie leaned over and looked. “Well, of course. I’m a Fool.”

Chandra giggled. “Nobody is going to argue with that. But when it’s placed here”—she tapped the notebook—“it’s a pretty cool thing. The Fool is the first step in a journey. He’s like, I don’t know,
possibilities
.”

“Possibilities?”

“You really need to talk to a medium about this. Pulling the same cards three times in a row—that’s majorly significant. But there are aspects of this layout that I couldn’t even begin to explain.”

The tightness forming behind Arie’s eyes told her another headache was brewing. She worked at massaging it away with her fingers.

“Look,” Chandra said, “do you want me to find another medium? I’ve heard about this one lady—”

Arie flung her hands up like a traffic cop. “No. Let’s just put it away for now.”

Chandra reached for the notebook, but Arie stopped her.

“I’ll keep it.”

Several days went by without another BioClean job. One top of everything else, Arie’s financial troubles were crushing. At the rate she was going, she wouldn’t be able to keep herself in coffee money, much less groceries or rent, if she ever wanted to live on her own again. She needed another job.

Even though she knew it would irritate him, she started scanning Grumpa’s newspapers as soon as he set them down. He accused her of putting the sections back in the wrong order on purpose to aggravate him.

There weren’t that many jobs she was qualified for. And the ones she was, like waitressing or second-shift factory work, would have meant coming home after dark, which after being knifed in a parking lot and left to die, she wasn’t ready for. And maybe never would be.

And that wasn’t the only thing preying on Arie’s mind.

Finally, one night, after tossing and turning for three hours, she gave in. Flicking on the lamp, she sat up in bed and grabbed her laptop from the nightstand. While she waited for it to boot up, she padded over to her dresser and retrieved Chandra’s notebook from her sock drawer, where she’d felt compelled to hide it. It wasn’t that she thought Grumpa would prowl through her room; she just hadn’t wanted to be reminded of it.

But ignoring it wasn’t working either.

Arie entered “tarot” into the search engine and got approximately thirty bazillion hits. She clicked the top one.

Ten cards in the Celtic Cross. Chandra had been right. This particular spread seemed pretty common, and interpreting it depended on a lot of variables, including the question Arie’d chosen. She should probably have been more specific than “Should I use my gift?” but it was what it was. Also, according to the website, there were no bad cards. Just misunderstood ones, Arie supposed.

She took a deep breath and read on.

The first card Walynda, and then Arie, had placed stood for the present. The High Priestess.
Cool.
But what did it mean?

A Major Arcana card, whatever that was. Arie read the description and realized it wasn’t going to be as easy as plugging in the card and getting a readout of its meaning. According to the website, this card was “veiled in mystery.”

No shit.

The High Priestess seemed to be about the unconscious, the “Inner Voice”—which, for Arie, usually sounded like her mother nagging. Somehow, Arie couldn’t picture her mother as “a gateway to realms beyond human comprehension.”

One thing did ring true, however. The High Priestess was supposedly a sign that a decision had to be made, that Arie’s intuition was sending her a message.

Well, yeah.

She sighed and moved on to the second card: the Tower. It was in the spot indicating an “immediate challenge.” As far as symbolism went, this card looked scary as hell. Lightning smashing into a phallic tower, and people jumping headfirst to the cliff below. 

No bad cards? Right. Arie’s immediate challenge looked like Armageddon.

It was supposed to signify a dramatic change. Okay. That made sense. Being attacked, dying, taking a spin around heaven, and then returning with the ability to read memories in blood would seem to qualify for that. But was that the immediate challenge the cards meant? Because that had already happened.

Uh, boy
. Arie read on.

Third card: Death. Distant past. Why would death be in the distant past? Arie would have thought it would be more recent or, given the nature of her job, future circumstances.

Fourth card: the Fool. And
that
was the card representing the recent past. Reading about the Fool made her feel a smidge better. The card didn’t mean she was as dumb as a box of hammers. It meant innocence or untapped potential. Arie could picture herself as untapped potential. Her teachers had always talked about her potential. Of course, that was because they were trying to find the silver lining in her failing grades, but still.

Fifth: the Four of Swords indicated the best outcome. Of the reading? Of her life?

Arie’s stomach rumbled. Prophesy made her hungry.

The Sword card meant something about rest and recovery. Okay, that could be good. So far, Arie liked this card best.

Sixth.
More than halfway done.
Page of Sword—lots of swords. Arie didn’t know what that meant. It had been laid in the immediate future slot. It stood for confusion, learning about her powers, and battling evil.

Shitshitshitshitshit.

Arie forced herself to finish up the last three by promising her Inner Voice and whoever else dwelled inside that she would find something good to eat as soon as she was done.

Seven, eight, and nine were the Seven of Swords, Two of Cups, and Ten of Wands, respectively. The dude on the Seven of Swords was stealing a bunch of swords and running away. Running away . . . Arie’s usual approach to problems. It was supposed to stand for factors affecting the situation, but Arie couldn’t figure out how stealing swords would be helpful.

Two of Cups: a relationship. That could be cool. The memory of a certain pair of delft-blue eyes made her shiver. But she soon discovered it might not mean a new love. It might mean learning to love herself.

She gritted her teeth and turned to the Ten of Wands. Hopes and fears. The card had some guy in a skirt gathering up a bunch of staves and was supposed to show the weight of burdens. Something about character building and responsibility and blah blah blah . . .

And finally, the last card. Arie stared at the image—a woman in a flowing red robe and crown on a throne. In her right hand, she held up a sword; in her left, a balanced scale. Justice.

Well, goody.

And speaking of goodies . . .

Arie tiptoed past Grumpa’s bedroom. The last thing she wanted was to have to deal with him. Keeping the kitchen light off for the same reason, Arie dug busily in the pantry cupboard, searching for a package of chocolate chip cookies she’d hidden there. The side door creaked open. Before she could reach the light switch, a dark shadowy figure slipped into the house.

Death, maybe?

Arie screamed and threw the cookie package at the intruder’s head. The intruder bellowed and flung himself sideways, tripping over the garbage can and landing with a thump. Still screaming, Arie lunged for the light switch, then grabbed a meat tenderizer from the drainer and prepared to defend herself.

“I knew it! You’re trying to kill me.”

Grumpa lay sprawled in the middle of a bilious pile of smelly food wrappers, discarded coffee grounds, egg shells, and a half a head of lettuce that had lain forgotten in the vegetable bin of the refrigerator until it reached a state of near-liquefaction.

“Grumpa?” Arie gasped. She lowered the meat tenderizer. “Why aren’t you in bed?”

“What? Are you my mother?” Grumpa struggled to his feet. When Arie rushed to help him, he shook her off.

“I thought you were in bed. Where on earth have you been?”

“None of your business, missy. You’re not the boss of me. This is still my house. I can do what I want, when I want.”

Grumpa stomped away. Bits of eggshell and slimy wilted lettuce clung to his bottom. They plopped on the kitchen floor in his wake. Staring at his scrawny butt made Arie realize he was wearing stiff new jeans and a red-checked Western shirt.
What the . . .?

Before he made it through the door, Arie said, “What on earth are you wearing? And what do you think Mother is going to say when she finds out you’ve been running around town in the middle of the night?”

Grumpa stiffened and slid to a halt. He turned slowly. His eyes narrowed, and he eyed Arie speculatively.

“Now, why would you want to go and worry your mother like that?”

Arie folded her arms across her chest. As always, her boobs kept her crossed arms floating aloft like a Russian Cossack dancer and drained the gesture of impact. She slitted her eyes to make up for it. “Oh, I don’t think she’ll be worried. She’ll be
frantic
. Of course, she’ll want to know why her eighty-three-year-old father is out roaming the streets instead of asleep in his bed, like everyone thought he was.”

“Then don’t tell her. It’s none of her business, either.”

“Are you going to tell her that?” Arie chuckled at the thought.

Grumpa glared at his granddaughter for several moments, then nodded thoughtfully. “No. I’m not. Of course, if
you
do, she might have a few questions for you. In fact, I guarantee she’ll want to know how you let your poor old grandpa wander outside all alone in the cold, dark night.”

Arie scowled. He was good. Better than Brant, even, who had been known to tattle on himself as long as there was any hope of getting Arie in trouble, too.

“It’s July. It’s not like you’re going to freeze to death.”

Grumpa wrapped his arms around himself and shivered. “Old people get cold really easy. Thin skin, you know? I could probably even work up some goose bumps if I wanted to. Wanna see?”

Laughing merrily, Grumpa turned and left the room. Arie was pleased to see that he still had an eggshell dangling from his butt.

But what had that old coot been up to?

“Got you a present!” Chandra practically vibrated with excitement. Arie stood aside to let her in, and she danced through the front door.

“Who’s making that racket?” Grumpa yelled from the kitchen.