Page 108 of Failure to Match

Minerva blinked over at her. “I’m sorry?”

“The cards,” Imogen answered. I couldn’t tell whether she was unaware of the crippling tension in the room, or simplyunaffected by it. “They want to play. I’m starting to see why your nephew’s presence today was so…encouraged.”

Minerva’s shoulders eased an inch, her interest piqued. “What does that mean? What are they saying?”

Jackson leaned back in his chair with a deep sigh, scrubbing a hand over his face like he couldn’t believe his life had been reduced to such nonsensical bullshit. My fingers itched to reach out and smooth out his frown, so I curled them into fists and shoved them underneath my thighs.

Imogen hummed noncommittally, which only made Minerva more desperate for answers. “What is it? Am I wrong about this?”

“They don’t want to talk about that,” Imogen said, placing one deck down only to pick up another. “They don’t want to talk about you. They don’t want to talk about him.” She paused, she grinned. “They only want to talk abouther.”

All eyes were on me again.

“Me?” Why me? I had the least interesting energy in this room right now.

“You.”

A card jumped out of the deck she was shuffling, landing smack in the middle of the table. This one did have a label on it. In bold white letters etched into a matte-black background, the card screamed: DEATH.

Oh good.

“Would you like to hear what they have to say?”

“Are they going to tell me how little time I have left to live?” Because I’d rather not know.

Her smile widened. “No. It’s about your love life.”

That snagged Jackson’s attention. His body went rigid for a moment before he forced it to relax again.

“I’m not sure if my love life would be an appropriate topic of conversation at a client meeting,” I tried.

Another card slid out of the deck. PAGE OF SWORDS, it read. The page had no swords on it, though. It was as black as the DEATH card, with a few grey lines scribbled in the background.

“You’ll want to hear it,” she said. “There’s nothing here indicating that you’ll feel otherwise once the message has been relayed. I’m not channeling any regret.” Her mouth twitched again. “Not from your end, at least.”

“We don’t mind.” Minerva nudged to the edge of her seat, eyeing the cards. Though her interest in the reading was likely more geared toward an explanation as to why Jackson’s presence had been so “encouraged.”

“You can tell me to stop whenever you wish,” Imogen offered. “Though, again, I really don’t see that happening here.”

I shifted in my chair. My knees were starting to feel weirdly clammy. “All right,” I agreed slowly. The peer pressure and curiosity had won.

Honestly, as long as she didn’t reveal my teeny, tiny, not-at-all-a-big-deal crush on Jackson, we were golden. And if the whole tarot thing wasn’t a hoax, then maybe I’d get some answers as to why I’d had such relentlessly terrible luck in?—

“Your luck has turned, but you’re not seeing it.” She tapped an untitled card with a mauve fingernail. It depicted a woman tying a blindfold around her own eyes. “The universe is trying to give you exactly what you’ve been asking for, but you’re turning it away because, on the surface, it’s not what you expected. Either this has already happened or it’s about to.”

The tension in my shoulders relaxed a touch. That was just vague enough to make my bullshit meterding. I’d always suspected that tarot was more about reading the client than the cards.

So, I nodded politely and listened.

“You’ve met a man recently,” she went on, “certainly within the last month or so, though the cards are indicating that you knew of him for quite a while before that.”

That… was a bit more specific.

“He’s going to come to you with an offer… or maybe he already has. The timeline isn’t being made clear to me.” Her head tilted to one side, amber eyes gliding over the cards spread out in front of her. She hadn’t looked at me once since she started, so either my theory about reading the client was wrong, or her peripheral vision was excellent. “It’s interesting. Almost like they’re being intentionally vague about it. What I am being shown clearly is that this man will come to you with a proposal of sorts, and it’s going to lead you to everything you’ve always wanted. However, the presentation is… it’s almost as though the package is deceiving and will veer you off the path you had your sights set on. It does notlooklike what you want because it’s not… but it will lead you to it. There is no doubt about that here. The doubt all lies within you.”

My heart was pounding against my skull. Jackson’s whole body was slowly starting to twist in Imogen’s direction, and I swear he even leaned forward at one point, trying to sneak a proper glance at the cards.

“If there’s any confusion as to who this might be, or if you’d like some signs to look for when you do meet him, there are a few very…specificthings I’m channeling.” Her impish smirk returned as she met my gaze. It made the hairs on the back of my neck rise. “He’s tall,” she said, and my throat went tight. “I’m hearing an accent…”

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