Page 40 of Star-Crossed
“The tower?” her tarot client said. “What does that one mean?”
Refocusing, Lyra mentally searched through the bank of info she’d hastily memorized while cramming for this new side-hustle like she had for the LSAT.
Christ. You publicly predictonevery predictablefireonetime in a place like Townsend Harbor—settled by famously superstitious Celts and Nordens—and suddenly everyone thinks you have a touch of what they called “the shine.” One of those old-timey words for ESP.
Lyra’s chosen place of business helped exactly nothing in this respect. In fact, this last week, people started coming in to beg her for tarot readings, offering her the same kind of money she would have charged hourly for legal work.
At first, she denied any and all requests. But in the weirdly silent, lonely week or so since her mind-flaying orgasm in the greenhouse—nine days, two hours; didn’t matter—she’d taken to reading through a few of the books in her inventory.
Which led her to ask the famous last question: how hard could it be?
Now, looking into the misting eyes of the panicking client in front of her, she would have given her left arm for a courtroom. People took this shit way too seriously.
“It’s probably not a big deal,” she told the thirty-something woman who kept stroking her trembling little purse dog for support. “All this card usually means is that a variable out of your control is about to change drastically. Could it be a crisis? Sure! But it can also mean that something will be destroyed or dismantled, which usually needs to happen to make way for growth.”
“Destruction? Dismantling?” The woman facing her slapped her hands over her gaping mouth, eyes filling with tears that threatened to spill over some truly intense eyeliner. “What do you predict? Will it be a fire or something?”
Lyra lowered her head and pretended to study the card so the lady—Brenda? Barbara?— wouldn’t see her roll her eyes.
Pfft, she wasn’t a one-trick pony. She was never predicting a fire again.
“Who knows?” She shrugged. “This card often is linked to institutions or corporations. The government, maybe? Some large, powerful organization who is likely to fu—er, mess everything up regardless of this card pull. So, if we’re being honest here, if those kinds of soulless institutions are dismantled, will we even notice or care at this point?”
Purse dog squeaked as Brenda—Bonnie? Brooke?—clutched the bag even closer. “My husband is on the board of the second largest airline in the country,” she wailed. “Are you saying his company is going to be dismantled?”
In what world had Lyra been saying that?
“No,” she said, hoping to stave off the woman’s need for a Xanax. “That’s the thing about tarot… It’s not like a predict-the-future sort of endeavor. It’s more to help open your eyes to how the world around you—or the universe inside of you—is being affected by inner or outer forces.”
Yup. She’d just said that with a straight face.
Fuck.
“So what do you think is dismantling?” demanded Brenda (didn’t matter what her name was; it was Brenda to her now). “You pulled the card. I paid you to interpret it. So…?” She slouched back in her chair like a kid being fed brussels sprouts in a nineties commercial.
Lyra stared at the tower, trying to pull a good message out of the storm clouds in the background. “I mean… Maybe it’s a dismantling of the patriarchy?”
“Maybe?” Brenda sneered in a way that made Lyra decline to inform her that she had lipstick on her teeth. “I didn’t give you two hundred bucks for a maybe.”
Lyra reached for the deck, hoping to distract from the tower with a different card.
“What was that face?” Brenda demanded in a pitch that drew a bark from her purse.
“Nothing.” Lyra tried to shove the card back into the deck, but Brenda snatched it from her hand.
“Death?” she shrieked, pulling the notice from the few remaining customers before they silently began to shuffle toward the door. “What the fuck?”
Oh yeah. She’d read about this. “That card’s not so bad.” Lyra shook her hand in front of her face as if warding off the foul scent of unnecessary fear. “It’s just another transition card. So, these work well together. Something is coming to an end, but we pulled this fool card before, so that means a new beginning. Literally could pertain to anything…” She put the death card by the tower card and tried to ignore an ominous feeling.
“It could mean death, though,” Brenda said. “Like my little Trinket here?” She pursed her lips and dropped a kiss on the dog’s head.
Fighting extreme amounts of both irritation and exhaustion, Lyra let out a long breath. “I wouldn’t plan the…departure of a beloved pet around a card pull at a local new-age shop, know what I mean? Want my prediction? Things are going to be just…great.” What other supportive bullshit did people say? And why did this woman care so much about what she thought would happen in the future?
Was this how cults started?
“I can’t believe this.” Brenda gathered her purse, her charmed, bedazzled phone, her dog purse, and a couple of shopping bags, pinning Lyra with a glare. “You’d better pray nothing happens to Trinket. Or my husband’s job.”
“What are you going to do, sue me?” Lyra said. “Look, your dog is going to die, eventually. No one needs cards to tell you that—its face is all gray. But I’m sure your husband’s job will be fine.”
