Avery should have been happy for her sister. She watched Raven cradle her child in her arms with Gabriel behind her and thought that, despite the oddity of it, they seemed like the perfect little family. Still, all she felt was jealousy. Not of her sister’s happiness though. No. She was happy about that. She wouldn’t want anything less for Raven.
No. It was Li’l Puff. Up until Raven had returned, Avery had a purpose. She was the only one who could handle the egg. Now no one needed her. What would happen next? Would she go home to New Orleans, go back to waiting tables and try to forget that dragons, witches, and vampires were real? That her sister was one? Would she ever know the feeling of raising a circle again?
“We have to name him or her, Gabriel,” Raven said. “We can’t keep calling it Li’l Puff. It sounds like a rapper.” She looked over her shoulder at him. “What about Michael?”
“It could be a girl,” Gabriel said hopefully. “Why not Phoebe?”
“Then what if it’s a boy?” Raven giggled.
“Charlie,” Avery said softly toward the fire.
“What?” Raven and Gabriel both looked at her.
She spread her hands and shrugged. “Charlie. Charles if it’s a boy. Charlotte if it’s a girl. Charlie for short. Works now. Works for both genders.”
Raven glanced between her and Gabriel. “Charlie.” She tried out the name, and the egg pulsed brighter in response. The silhouette inside pressed a hand close to hers. “I think he or she approves.”
Gabriel grinned. “Charlie it is.” He pressed a kiss to the side of Raven’s head.
Avery stood and headed for the door. “My work here is done. Just in time too. I’m exhausted. I’d better go to bed.”
“Night,” Raven said. “Talk more over breakfast? There’s so much—”
She held up a hand and nodded. “Yes. In the morning.” She slipped out of the room and into the hall.
Nathaniel woke to the soft rhythm of Clarissa’s breathing and extracted himself from her side. His stomach was growling. Between the magic he’d expelled coming back from Paragon and what it had taken to vanquish Aborella, not to mention the hours of lovemaking with Clarissa, he’d built up an appetite. He could mentally call for Laurel or Tempest to fix him something, but he wasn’t sure what he wanted, and a thorough dig in the refrigerator was what was called for in this situation.
He donned pajama pants and a gray T-shirt and jogged barefoot down to the kitchen. His wings unfurled in alarm when a face appeared in the dim glow of the appliances. The person’s hands shot up. He’d scared her as much as she’d surprised him.
“By the Mountain, Avery! What are you doing up at this hour?” He flipped on the light.
“Couldn’t sleep.” She looked down into her teacup. “I thought some chamomile would settle my nerves. You?”
“Starving. I was about to make myself a sandwich. Care to join me?”
She nodded. “Please.”
He crossed to the fridge, pulled out some leftover curried chicken salad, and found some bread in the pantry. Some lettuce and he was on the road to proper sandwiches. He nabbed two plates and started assembling.
Avery watched him from the table. “I’d offer to help, but you seem to have things under control.”
He nodded. “Relax. I’ve got it.” Her face fell again when she thought he wasn’t looking. “Something on your mind?”
“I’m wondering if I should go home now. Charlie is back in Raven’s arms.”
“Charlie?”
“Li’l Puff. Raven and Gabriel settled on a real name.”
“Ah. Yes. Charlie. Could either be a girl or a boy. Brilliant.”
“Thank you. It was my idea.” Her eyes drifted down to her cup again.
“You don’t want to stick around and be there when the little omelet hatches?”
She chuckled. He brought the sandwiches to the table and set one in front of her.
“I really don’t have an excuse to stay. I’ve already been away from home a long time. My mother can hardly keep up with things at the Three Sisters on her own.”
Nathaniel stopped. “Wait… That’s the name of your mum’s pub? The Three Sisters?”
She snorted. “Yeah. Weird coincidence, huh?”
“Very.” He took a bite and chewed. He didn’t believe in coincidences.
“The day Warwick raised the circle and we re-bound Raven, Clarissa, and me together, I felt it. Magic. I floated off the floor… three inches. How do you go from flying to mopping up vomit from the last patron who didn’t know when to quit? Or having your ass pinched and getting flogged with beads the next Mardi Gras? I’m just so over it, Nathaniel.”
“So don’t go back.” He bit into his sandwich and chewed.
Avery laughed. “I… I have to go back. I don’t have the money to stay.”
“Clarissa told me she thinks of you as family. I do too. I need help at Relics and Runes if you want to work. If you don’t, we have plenty of room and resources here to keep you quite comfortable until you figure out what your power is.”
She snorted. “I don’t have any power.”
He lowered his sandwich. “Of course you do. I thought we settled this, that afternoon when you showed us all you were the only one who could hold the egg?”
“Yes. We figured out that Charlie tolerated me for some reason. So what?”
He shook his head. “I think it’s something more.”
She took a bite and spoke around her sandwich. “Like what?”
He raised a finger. “Wait here.” He flashed up to his study, grabbed his pipe and his cards, and returned to the table.
“I will never stop being freaked out by how fast you all are.”
He shrugged. “All part of being a dragon.” He shuffled the cards in his hand. “Let’s consult the tarot about your future, shall we?”
She gave him a skeptical look and took another bite. “This sandwich is sinfully delicious. What is that… sweetness?”
“Mango chutney and cinnamon. It’s Laurel’s specialty.”
“Mmmmm.” She glanced at the cards. “I come from New Orleans. As a rule, I don’t believe in tarot or other forms of divination. There’s a psychic on every corner, and most couldn’t tell you when their next meal is coming.”
“Well, not everyone finds what they’re looking for in the cards, but tarot can be a way of tapping into your deepest intuition. The cards, after all, are just cardboard. The magic, if there is any, comes from you.”
She set the stub of her sandwich down and licked her fingers. “All right. What do I have to lose? Deal a spread or whatever it is you do.” She waved at the table.
He stopped shuffling and laid three cards in front of her. “Past, present, future.”
“What do I do, turn them over?”
“Unless you want me to do it for you. I think it’s better if you do it.”
She nodded and wiped her hands on the napkin next to her plate. “Here goes nothing.” She flipped the first card. “The Hanged Man.”
“Reversed,” he said. “The position of the card to you makes a difference.”
“Okay. So what does it mean?”
“It means imprisonment. Forced sacrifice. Martyrdom.”
She scoffed. “In my past?”
“Yes.”
Her face turned from disbelief to wonder. “Maybe I underestimated tarot cards.”
“You see some truth in it?”
“You may have heard that Raven had brain cancer. She had the front seat in our family for most of my life, which was fine with me. She needed my parents’ attention more than I did. But it wasn’t exactly what I would have chosen for myself. I wouldn’t say I was a martyr. I just did what I had to do. I mean, she was dying.”
“But she’s not dying anymore.”
“No.” She scowled. “And now I find that all that energy I poured into loving her has nowhere to go.”
“Which brings us to the present.” He gestured toward the center card.
She flipped it and gasped. A skeletal figure on a horse. She placed a hand on her chest. “Death?”
Nathaniel shook his head. “The death card does not mean physical death. It means change, rebirth, transformation. You, Avery, are the caterpillar in the cocoon.”
“Cocoon, huh? No wonder my life feels so suffocating.”
“Change could mean opportunity.”
“Or tragedy.”
He nodded toward the third card. “Why not check what the cards see in your future?”
She shrugged and rubbed her palms together. “No whammies. This butterfly would like to spread her wings.”
“Whammies?”
“Old American game show. It means I only want good luck.” She bobbed her dark eyebrows and reached for the third card. “Let’s see what the future has in store.” She flipped the card.
Nathaniel stared at the exposed face of the moon and rubbed his chin. Difficult. Very difficult.
“What? What does the moon mean?”
“This one has many different meanings. You can see how it depicts a crab crawling out of the primordial sea? That represents evolution in action, which makes sense given the card before it, Death. You are becoming, Avery. That is for certain. But what you are becoming is shrouded. This card almost always denotes some dark mystery.”
Avery covered her face with her hands. “Excellent. So my future is a shadowy uncertainty. Thanks for clearing that up. The cards were a great idea.” She gave him two very sarcastic thumbs-ups.
“There is one more-pleasant meaning associated with this card.”
“What’s that?”
“It usually portends romance.”
“Now I know these cards are liars. There is no one in my life that leaves the slightest whiff of roses in their wake. No one.” She rolled her eyes.
He leaned back in his chair and took her in. As a mated dragon, he wasn’t attracted to Avery, but in a strictly objective way, he could say with some certainty she was an attractive person. And her kindness and courage were undeniable after what she’d been through. Plus he was sure there was more to her. Although he didn’t understand its nature, it was clear that magic lived just under the surface of her person. It just needed the right circumstances to wake it.
He folded his arms and studied her. “You’re a grown woman, Avery. You can make your own decisions. I’ve invited you to stay. I’ve shown you what the cards say. Now you have to decide. Just realize, if you go home…” He pointed to the Hanged Man. “You’ll be an almost-butterfly trying to crawl out of its cocoon a caterpillar again. You’ve already been changed. You can’t be the same as before. Not without cutting off your wings.”
Her jaw dropped open. He cleared the plates and left her to her thoughts.