Dianna Agbala selected a deck of tarot cards from the scores lined up like books on her kitchen shelf. She waited for that flash of coldness that told her it was the right deck for the moment, and slid it out and set it on the table.
Her tummy was warm with two cups of coffee and for now, at least, the sky was dark with storm clouds visible through her kitchen windows. She was on the evening shift at the store and adjusted her day accordingly. Sia and Dua Lipa had gotten her through dinner, but now she was shifting her energy and asked Echo to play “Aud Guray” by Deva Premal. Soothing, elegant, miles deep.
The cats were already settled down. They were intuitive and knew when she was going quiet, going inward. Toby Oscar was stretched in a patch of sunlight, and Zoey lay on the top of the fridge. She liked to survey the world like an imperious senior lama.
Dianna’s sensitivity varied in its manifestations. Nothing was ever a lock, and even with all of her experience there were surprises and mysteries everywhere she looked. Being confident in her world was not the same as knowing the complete shape and size of it. No one did, and anyone who said otherwise was running a con game on the tourists.
The music was already doing its work, tugging her gently away from concerns of the moment—the need to check Facebook and Instagram, the desire to check emails to see if her mother or—more dangerously—her ex had written. Her mood softened as she sat down at the table and picked up the boxed cards. Her touch had responded to the traditional Rider-Waite deck. It was so familiar that it made her smile. This was the deck she’d learned on, which was not at all uncommon for people like her. Rider-Waite was first published in 1910 and was a classic. Pamela Colman Smith’s paintings were enduring classics that had been painted using instructions by the mystic A. E. Waite. They looked simple, almost primitive, but there was so much subtlety in terms of hidden symbolism that the cards were highly valued more than a century later. Dianna had worn out at least five decks over the years, and one antique set was in a shadow box on her bedroom wall. The store where Dianna worked even sold sets of coasters with the images of the Magus, Empress, Emperor, and Fool on them.
She settled herself in her chair and took some long, cleansing breaths. Not trying for any deep level of tranquility, but instead a soft and receptive state. When the calm gathered around her like a comfortable bathrobe, Dianna opened the box and slid the cards into her hands. They were so old now, so worn from thousands of readings. Because customers often picked trendier or newer-looking decks, these cards slept for long periods of time. Even during this morning ritual they were not the deck that spoke to her very often.
While she shuffled she disconnected as much of her consciousness as possible, letting noninvolvement permit the right cards to find her and match her need. Then she dealt three cards facedown and set the others aside. Those three represented the past, present, and future. She had no specific question in mind on mornings like this, but the town had been on her mind a lot lately. The Fringe neighborhood was growing very fast and it was very much her kind of crowd—artistic, a bit wild, complex, outside of normal definitions. The first Pinelands Fringe Festival was coming up soon and there was a bit of friction with the longtime locals. They didn’t want the festival, despite all the money it would bring with it. There was some validity to their pushback. The Trouble had happened during a Halloween festival, and since then the “events” in Pine Deep tended to be apple festivals that lasted an afternoon, and Santa arriving on a fire truck on Black Friday. Dianna had enough locals as clients to know that they thought having another big festival was asking for trouble. Tempting fate. Invoking the wrong kind of spirits in a town known to have troubling energy going back centuries.
So it was the town that formed the basis of her three-card reading, even if unintentionally. Dianna never swam against the current in her readings.
She turned over the first card. The Ten of Swords.
The image showed a man lying facedown with ten swords stabbed into his back. Dianna stiffened, reading both the traditional meaning of that card but also experiencing a sharp stab of instinctive awareness. And the old line from Shakespeare flickered through her thoughts.
By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.
Clients often thought that the Devil or Death cards were the worst or direst, but for Dianna the Ten of Swords was far worse. But it was also maddeningly nonspecific. The people in town should be on the lookout for betrayal, painful endings, loss, wounds, and crisis. Some unforeseeable pain was on the horizon, something that could not be avoided. A pain that would cut deeply, leaving some of her neighbors feeling like they had been stabbed ten times over, and completely leveled out emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.
Her heart stopped for a frozen moment when she saw that card.
It was an ugly card to get at the start of a new day.
It was an ugly card to have, ever.
She almost stopped to reshuffle. Almost. But Dianna took a breath and plunged ahead.
“What is the outcome of this?” she murmured.
She turned over the second card.
The Magician.
She chewed her lip. The Magician was not inherently a bad card, but its meaning was conditional on the other cards. Sometimes it was an empowered and uplifting card. However, if something bad was coming to Pine Deep, or was already there, then the cause of it was whomever the Magician card referred to. Because the card was part of the Major Arcana, unlike the Ten of Swords, it represented an actual individual person. Minor Arcana cards—those of the swords, cups, wands, and pentacles—represented situations that would happen to someone. Major Arcana cards represented the people or individual that created those situations.
Most often, and in most decks, the Magician was male. The image on the card was a man in white robes with a red sash holding a sword aloft while a snake coiled around his waist. The infinity symbol hovered over his head, showing that he operated outside of time and space. The snake and the symbols in front of him meant he was able to use anything to create anything. The Magician wielded real power. He turned energy into matter and took matter and converted it to energy. He saw the essence in all things and could use it to do what he wanted with it. Good or ill.
When accompanying the Ten of Swords, the Magician card spoke of a pernicious intent that chilled Dianna to her core.
The desire to end the reading was very strong, but her need to know was stronger still. She had to know what the implications were of such a person being present and doing such things.
“What is to come of this?” she asked and heard the tremble in her voice.
Dianna licked her lips and steeled herself before turning the last card. There were plenty of cards in both higher and lower Arcana that could change the meaning of this reading.
The one she turned, though, was not one of those.
The picture was that of a building crumbling as lightning struck it. Flames erupted from its window and two people leapt for safety but were too far from the ground. The fall would kill them.
The Tower. Another of the higher Arcana cards.
The card of total destruction.
She recoiled from it. Depending on when it appeared in a reading, the Tower could represent physical structures being destroyed. Dianna knew of a psychic who’d had that card appear in every reading leading up to when the planes hit the Twin Towers. But it could also represent so much more. It could represent systems. It could represent people. Lives. The Tower represented the greater body of anything—physical or metaphorical. The Tower represented the dismantling of those systems or structures.
She pushed her chair back from the table. A sound made her turn and she saw that both of her cats were now standing together, trembling with fear, their hair raised and stiff along their spines. Toby Oscar made a sick mewling noise. Zoey bared her teeth and hissed.