“Ah, Lady Devlin,” said Madame Marie-Claire Blanchette, personally answering Hero’s knock at the door of the cartomancer’s Golden Square rooms. “I’ve been expecting you.”
“Indeed,” said Hero, stepping into a strange, incense-scented space crowded with dark, exotic furniture and an array of crystal spheres, obelisks, and pyramids, some clear, others in a glorious spectrum of colorful hues. The Frenchwoman was as finely made as a child and wore an old-fashioned brocade gown with a stomacher that made her look like a vision from a painting of the court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.
“I never saw King Louis,” said the cartomancer, quietly closing the door. “Although I did catch a glimpse of Marie Antoinette in the cart on her way to the guillotine. Whatever one thinks of the regime of which the Queen was a part, one can’t help but admire the woman’s composure and courage in the face of death.”
Her words so closely echoed Hero’s thoughts as to be uncanny. Hero brought her gaze from a massive chunk of some shiny, faceted metallic ore to the Frenchwoman’s face. “That’s quite a trick.”
Madame Blanchette’s eyes crinkled with amusement. “Party tricks are my stock-in-trade, remember?” She extended a hand toward an adjacent small chamber draped in red cloth and empty except for a collection of stuffed bats hanging from the ceiling, an articulated skeleton, a live owl on its perch in one corner, and a round inlaid table with two low stools. “Won’t you come in and sit down?”
“I’m not here for a card reading.”
The Frenchwoman kept her hand extended. “I know.”
Hero hesitated another moment, then went to sit.
Limping badly, Madame Blanchette took the opposite stool. A deck of thick cards rested on the table before her, and she began to shuffle them, her gaze never leaving Hero’s face.
Hero said, “Why didn’t you tell Devlin that one of Ashworth’s friends came for a reading shortly before Ashworth’s death?”
“Not only Ashworth’s friend, but Ashworth himself came that day. But they were not here for readings.” The Frenchwoman neatened the edges of her cards in her hands. “Ashworth came to threaten me.”
“And did he?”
“Oh, yes. He said that if I didn’t shut up about Giselle, I would die.”
“I suppose that explains why you didn’t tell Devlin about the encounter.”
“You think it gives me an added incentive to have killed him? Kill him before he could kill me?” Her lips thinned into a hard line. “Believe me, I needed no added incentive. No one could have wished for Ashworth’s death more than I. But I wanted him to suffer first. I had only just begun to torment him.”
“Are you saying you didn’t foresee his murder?”
The Frenchwoman set the deck of cards on the table in front of Hero and said, “Coupé.”
Hero hesitated a moment, then cut the deck.
Madame Blanchette turned over the revealed card and laid it faceup between them. In place of the crude image Hero was expecting, this was an exquisite painting of a moon rising over a star-spangled sea.
“Encore.”
Again and again, Hero cut the deck, until a pattern of beautifully painted cards lay spread across the table. Madame Blanchette folded her hands together in her lap and leaned forward to study them. She stared at them so long that Hero grew impatient and said, “Well?”
“Interesting.”
“That’s all you have to say? ‘Interesting’?”
The Frenchwoman waved one hand over the layout. “You don’t believe in this. So why would you want to hear?”
“Curiosity.”
A corner of the woman’s mouth quirked up with a hint of amusement. “D’accord.”
She tapped the third card in the first row, an image of a craggy mountain backed by dark swirling clouds. “This tells me you may have a powerful enemy—an enemy who is near to you. You must be wary of those who envy you.”
In spite of herself, Hero felt a faint chill run up her spine. “Such as?”
“That I cannot say.”
“Of course.”
The Frenchwoman’s hand skimmed over the cards to an image of a scythe in the bony hand of a cloaked skeleton. “The Viscount had this card in a similar position. It is a warning that you are in serious danger. You must be prudent in the places you go, the things you do, and the people you meet.”
“Well, that narrows it down.” Hero waited a moment, but when the cartomancer remained silent, said, “That’s it? Out of all these cards, all you can tell me is that I am in danger and that I should be wary of someone near to me?”
The Frenchwoman gave a very Gallic twitch of one shoulder. “Most of the rest you know already—or it is not for me to tell you.”
Hero leaned back on her stool, her hands resting on her knees. “You never answered my last question about Ashworth. Would you have me think you didn’t foresee his death?”
“I don’t know who killed him.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Again that faint suggestion of amusement crinkled the older woman’s eyes. “All is never revealed, no matter how ‘talented’ the one who asks. Nor should it be.”
“Whoever is responsible for these murders should and must be revealed. Revealed and stopped. One could argue that Ashworth and his valet earned their deaths. But a desperate fifteen-year-old orphan by the name of Sissy Jordan was also a victim of this killer. And she may not be the last innocent to die.”
A strange, pinched look came into the Frenchwoman’s face. “The death of any innocent is always a tragedy.”
Hero found her gaze falling, again, to the beautiful, disturbing images spread across the table before her. “You say Ashworth came here not for a reading but to threaten you. Does that mean you didn’t read his cards?”
“No. I read them.”
“What did you see?”
Madame Blanchette began to pick up the spread cards. “Normally I keep such things private, but under the circumstances, I believe an exception can be made. He also drew the mountain, and in a similar position to yours. I told him he was threatened by someone close to him—in Ashworth’s case by someone who also saw Ashworth as a threat.”
“So are we talking about a man or a woman?”
“Ashworth had many enemies, both male and female.”
“Yet you say he was threatened by someone close to him, not an enemy.”
Madame set the cards aside and folded one hand over the other to rest them flat on the table before her. “Some of our worst enemies are those near to us. But remember, just because someone close to Ashworth was a threat does not mean that person killed him.”
Hero studied the Frenchwoman’s calm, blank face, the features kept deliberately free of any betraying emotion. “You’re not telling me everything you told Ashworth was in his cards.”
“Perhaps. But then, you don’t believe in the cards, do you?”
“I believe you know more than what you have revealed to me—however you came to know it.”
The Frenchwoman reached out to tap the top of the tarot deck with one curled finger. “If you believe that, then believe my warning. The danger to you is real.”
“Is that a threat?”
Madame Blanchette looked vaguely surprised. “From me? No. You asked what the other cards reveal. They show the possibility of a happy life filled with much joy, love, and accomplishment. But what I see is always a potential only, which means the danger is as real as anything else. Heed me and the good the cards foretell will be more likely to come to be. But . . .” Her voice trailed off as a fey, flaxen-haired little girl appeared in the doorway to escort Hero out.
“But?” prompted Hero, rising to her feet.
The Frenchwoman rose with her, the old-fashioned brocade skirts swirling around her. “Vraiment, c’est simple. Ignore me at your peril.”