Page 15 of An Amateur Witch's Guide to Murder
Mateo wants to ask why she sounds so fragile, but instead sets the second card down and picks up the third.“Future. A future. A challenge. A change. A chance. A transformation. The death card. Death is the ultimate transformation. Of mind. Of body. Of flesh to something else. It is endings. Because the mortal flesh is only a sweet shell, a house, a cage that chokes and squeezes and rends for something greater than. Something more. Something endless and new that will not rot or fade or …”
A blink, and he’s in a different position, staring at the ceiling. He shifts only to realize he’s on the living room floor with his head cradled in Ophelia’s lap. Topher’s to his right, squatting just a foot away with a roll of paper towels held between two hands.
“What?” Mateo muffles because Ophelia’s holding a wad of towels to his face.
“Your nose started bleeding and you passed out.” She pulls the towels away enough for him to see they’re soaked in black. “After you started rambling about the virtues of death.”
He sits up with her help, and though it must have only been moments, he has the drag of waking in the middle of a dream on him, thoughts distant and head heavy.
“It started at the end of the second card. Do you remember reading the last card?” Ophelia asks, on her feet but with a hand on his shoulder like she’s afraid of breaking contact.
“Yeah, I think so.” He’s never lost time in front of anyone. “Did I stop midsentence?”
Ophelia’s hand squeezes and she hesitates. “No. Not midsentence. You went on for a while, then you stood up and got the three-tone chime off the altar and started playing it. Then you slumped to the side. You were out for a few minutes.”
Mateo gapes, staring at the little handheld bar chime set on the table where it hadn’t been before. Dread settles over the numbness in his head. The chime is for calling something to him.
“I’m sorry,” Topher’s quivering voice says, on his feet with paper towels still clutched to his chest, somehow thinking this is his fault. He looks extraordinarily worried—not just in thathow does this affect mesort of way Mateo expects from a rich guy dealing with the hired help. It doesn’t get more run-of-the-mill than a tarot reading so Topher trying to take the blame is ludicrous, strangely sweet, and beside the point.
Client. Money. Get it together. Whatever bullshit that was, it’s a Mateo bullshit, not a Topher money bullshit.
Can he still think, talk, and stand? Yes. Back to work.
Mateo offers what he hopes is a normal smile, realizing too late again that his teeth are sharp. Shit. Topher’s already seen them. Just go with it. “Nothing to be sorry about. That wasn’t your fault. I was tapping into the spirit realm.” True, technically. “Possessed.” Absolute truth. “And getting higher-level insights.” Sure as hell hopes not, but at least it was a good show.
He moves to stand, and Ophelia and Topher both hurry to assist. It’s like two children helping a wayward scarecrow.
“Never mind me,” Mateo says, looking at Ophelia. “You get anything else?”
Her face flips through a series of complexities, invisible to anyone but someone well versed in all the ways she doesn’t show what she’s feeling. “His energy settled after the cleanse.”
“Settled how?”
“Calmed down. It was swirly. Now it’s not.”
“What does that mean?” Topher asks, grip tightening on Mateo’s arm—which he’s totally still holding—staring up at Mateo in the most valid alarm of the morning.
Mateo has no idea what that means, so he smiles again, remembers his teeth, and stops. “That we’ve made some progress.” He says this with a confidence he doesn’t feel, off-kilter from his episode, and Topher—staring up at him in saucer-eyed worry, diligently clinging to his arm in support—isn’t helping him reestablish his professional cool.
“What the hell …” Ophelia says softly, and he turns to her. She’s sitting where Topher had been, the tarot deck in her hand. The three cards are still on the table, same pull but facing her like she’d rotated them to look. Her pale eyes lift to him. “I just got the same pull.”
“What?” Mateo says, because that’s all his brain can manage right now.
“This isn’t his spread.” She taps each card. “This is mine. Shuffled. Redrawn.”
Mateo gently extracts his arm from Topher, squats in front of the table, and takes the deck back from Ophelia, sweeping her pull into it. He shuffles, really good, even scatters them on the table for a moment so things have a better chance of reversing and splits the deck six times before doing his pull.
Three cards laid out in front of him.
No.
The same three cards laid out in front of him.
Three of swords, the devil, and death.
This was supposed to be a fun, curse-breaking money grab, not whatever portentous fate-entwined situation this just became. Mateo casts an uneasy glance at Topher, who doesn’t understand enough about what’s happening to be as disturbed as Mateo now is. It doesn’t get more definitive than three impossibly identical pulls.
Whatever’s happening, it’s happening to all three of them. Together.
