Page 24 of A Treacherous Trade
The demon in my nightmares.
“Aunt Nola.” I placed my hand over hers, gently prying away her bruising grip. “I was merely called to a murder scene to clean up after a body.” I omitted my ill-advised attempted confession in Croft’s home. She needn’t worry about what might almost have happened. What had I been thinking?
I hadn’t. Grief had driven me to the brink of madness…I was convinced of that now.
And blood had brought me back.
Most of me, anyhow.
“This time, it had nothing to do with the Ripper,” I was glad to state.
Nola’s eyes shifted this way and that, as if reading a book neither of us could see. The effect was unsettling in the extreme. “But he’s nearby.”
Despite my disbelief, fingers of dread—infinitely icier and sharper than Nola’s—laced in between the knobs of my spine, gripping at my very soul.
“What makes you say that?” I asked, in a voice more unsteady than I’d intended.
“This,” she hissed, shoving the card beneath my nose. I had to take a step back and adjust my spectacles before I could see it clearly.
A man lay on his face in blood-soaked mud with an abundance of swords pinning him down. I counted ten.
The ten of swords.
“Treachery!” Nola crowed, her own Irish accent thicker than mine, as two years in London hadn’t had the same smoothing effect. “Treachery, betrayal, ruin, deceit, by someone you won’t imagine. By someone you trust.”
“I hardly trust anyone,” I said a bit wryly, trying to dispel the eerie mood gathering around us. “So I don’t fancy I’m in danger of that.”
“But what about this?” she whispered, producing the second card.
More swords. This time eight. A woman was tied to a stake, the swords buried into the marshy ground around her, while in the distance, a castle loomed like Olympus on a mountain.
“What about it?” I asked, already dreading the forthcoming explanation.
“She’s you, Fiona! This isyou. Bound by your own fear and pain. Abandoned to it. It is this very lack of trust that will lead you in the wrong direction. Toward danger, rather than away from it. Don’t you see? You could free yourself. So easily! Just like this woman here.” She shook the card in frustration. “See how her feet are not bound, how there are these sharp swords everywhere? She could cut herself free. Run to the castle. To safety. Take off the blindfold so she could see clearly, but she won’t. She awaits her fate like this, rather than fighting. Oh, Fiona, you have to stop this before it’s too late.”
I pressed my hand to Nola’s arm. “All right,” I said. “I’ll do my best, Aunt Nola. I’ll be careful, but I’ll also fight. I’ll cut free of the things that bind me…” I cast about in my memory for whatever else she’d been talking about, as I’d learned when she was this agitated that it was best to simply agree.
“What did you mean about the lovers?” Mary asked in a tremulous voice. “That seemed important, didn’t it?”
Were I in possession of a temper like Croft’s—and had she not been holding an infant—I might have given in to the overwhelming urge to slap her.
“The lovers.” Nola produced the final card. “The lovers. I’m so sorry, Fiona. What terrible news. The lovers will be ripped apart. Betrayed. Oh, that’s so sad. After Aidan and everything that’s happened.”
Living for as long as I had with Aunt Nola, I’d unwittingly—unwillingly—picked up a bit of tarot knowledge, and did my best to apply it here, if only to pacify her.
“Aren’t the lovers a perfectly decent card?” I took it, looking down at the couple depicted there, standing in front of two trees, one the tree of life, the other the tree of knowledge, their union blessed by someone standing in the middle… I forgot who. An angel, perhaps? “You’ve told me previously it’s an auspicious card, meaning commitment or happy choices, romance, or at least a flirtation.” I waggled my brows at her.
“Sure, I did. I said that.” Nola nodded, cocking her ear as if hopefully listening for good news. Her subsequent expression left no doubt they hadn’t told her any. “But these other two cards surrounding it. They affect it, you see. You cannot pull so many swords and not be stabbed by them. I’m just sorry, Fiona. There is so much danger for the lovers, I’m afraid. Too many secrets. Too much betrayal. It’s too, too sad. I can’t…”
Her eyes welled with tears, and I let out a breath, pulling her in for a gentle hug. “There, there.”
The eight of swords and the ten of swords? It seemed to me that someone merely forgot to properly shuffle her deck.
“I’ll be careful, Nola,” I continued, rubbing at her thin back, thinking she needed a large meal and a strong pot of tea. “Perhaps it’s already happened… you think? Perhaps the reading is telling you the swords have already fallen, and now I must pick myself up?”
“No.” She pushed back to look up at me, brandishing the lovers before me. “Theytold me that you are surrounded by men, Fiona. Wicked men and dangerous men. By men who would devour you, if you were easy to catch and tender to bite.”
She wasn’t wrong. No one needed the cards to see that.
