Chapter 27 The Lovers #2
“I made some tea,” Sequoia said, splayed on her bed, her hair pooling around her nightgown like spun sugar. The floral scent of the tea caressed my nostrils like soft ribbons before tying a knot in my throat.
“I’m fine,” I said, recalling my first night at Foresyth, nursing a headache from ingesting a graciously offered potion of herbs. Aspen had said he wasn’t the one who poisoned me—could it have been Sequoia? Or was he just deflecting blame away from himself?
“Oh, come on, Dahlia, there’s nothing in here.” She turned, reaching for something next to her dresser. “Unless you want there to be.” She smiled, twirling a dark vial between her fingers.
I raised my hand, rejecting the offer. “Really, no thanks.”
Her features fell for a moment, but then she perked up, reaching her arm out again. I took her hand without another thought and followed her to the bed.
Magick is an intimate affair. I recalled my first day at Foresyth, offering a reading at the dinner table. My cheeks burned at the memory. And yet, I now found myself in Sequoia’s bed for the second time, for more magick.
“You’re going to have to guide me . . .” I said. I considered if I should ask for Leone’s pen first before getting into the cards, but based on her excitement, I didn’t want to risk her turning me away.
“You brought your deck?”
“Of course,” I said, pulling out the Skorn deck from my satchel. I went through too much stress with the Council not to always have it on my person.
“Good, you should do your normal preparations.” She poured herself a cup of tea, the bright red liquid swirling into her cup. She started humming a tune as she mixed milk with the tea, turning it into a pink pool.
I obliged her request and shimmied the cards under my seat, as if preparing to do a reading. Sequoia sipped on her tea and let out a sigh of enjoyment into her cup. “You really should try this tea.”
“No, you really should,” another voice rumbled behind us. I didn’t have to turn to know who it was. Aspen entered from the doorway, creaking the door closed behind him. “It’ll relieve the tension in your shoulders, make the magick more permeable.”
I stood abruptly, shaking the bed such that Sequoia’s teacup spilled a drop of the rose liquid onto her white sheets. “I’m sorry—”
“No, I am. I startled you,” Aspen said, rounding the bed across from us.
He eyed me up and down, his gaze pausing on the new blouse I had donned, and at the seam where it met my waist. I felt foolish suddenly, embarrassed by the clothes, by finding myself so vulnerable with Sequoia, and for wanting to kiss him last night.
I felt like he read it all on my face at that moment. I was so mortified I wanted to bolt out of the room, but his stare kept me nailed in place.
“I know you only asked for Sequoia’s help, but I’m here to offer mine as well,” he said.
“I don’t want any more of your help.” I was almost turning before I felt Sequoia’s grasp on the sleeve of my shirt.
“Stay,” she said, her brown eyes wide with something startlingly sincere. She meant it. I saw it then—the unguarded truth flickering behind her gaze.
She actually wanted to help me.
And that was the part I couldn’t reconcile.
Why were both of them—Sequoia and Aspen—so willing to help me, when I was unraveling the very threads that bound this place together?
Threads that included them. If the truth about Julian lay buried, I was digging straight through their secrets to reach it. And still . . . they wanted me close.
“There are two paths for you here, Alice. One leads you across the threshold out of this room and back into your bed. The other one is taking a sip of that tea, letting yourself relax, and us teaching you how to access magick,” Aspen purred, his voice soft as velvet.
I closed my eyes, centering myself. It was true that I could likely figure out how to deliver whatever magical artifact Leone desired another way, perhaps even recruit Nina’s help. But I needed that pen. Even if I couldn’t trust them, I needed them to trust me.
“Free will?” I teased, taking my seat back on top of my cards. I sighed, faintly wondering if I was going to regret this. I reached out to the other cup Sequoia had set out and poured myself a cup of tea.
A smile broke out on Aspen’s lips, illuminating his other features and the dimple in his right cheek.
He was so handsome it almost hurt. It was part of his allure, the way he disarmed, like Sequoia.
Being cognizant of it didn’t make me immune to it.
But a wave of calm settled over me as soon as I took a sip of the comforting warm liquid, and I sank deeper into the mattress and into the cards.
“Now what?”
“Now, it’s up to you,” Sequoia said. “What would you like to offer to the Shattered Mother to access her magick?”
Offer? I had nothing. A paperweight and a broken compass. A mismatch of clues that I didn’t know where they led. I started shuffling around in my bag to see what else I had.
“It has to be an emotional offering,” Aspen continued, reaching his hand over mine, still rummaging through my bag. His touch sent a jolt of electricity through me. “It can’t just be something material. It has to come from you. It has to . . . elicit a feeling. Breaking out of your material form.”
“I don’t know if I have anything like that.”
Aspen and Sequoia exchanged a glance that made me feel like I was speaking a different language.
“What’s your medium?” Sequoia asked.
I thought back to my conversations with the Meister—my cover story. “I . . . I’m studying Tarotology with an arts concentration in theater.”
“Then that’s it . . . you have to channel the magick through story. That’s your medium,” Sequoia said, her excitement bubbling over. She inched closer to me, while Aspen sat still, watching us intently.
“Story . . .” I echoed. Maybe it wasn’t so far from the truth. I did tell people stories through the cards—mostly reflections of the ones they told me with their eyes, their lips, the way they brushed their hair back. But those stories weren’t my own.
“I tell stories when I read for people,” I said. “But they’re theirs, not mine.”
“Then tell yours. Do a reading for yourself. Tell us the story of your life,” Aspen suggested softly. “Instead of constructing someone else’s narrative, construct your own.”
“Yes. Dahlia should read for herself. Oh, the Mother will love that,” Sequoia said with a bounce.
Panic set in, though I tried to hide it. I wasn’t exactly the sentimental type. “I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
“At the beginning, of course,” Sequoia said, smiling as I instinctively rolled my eyes. Beginnings were arbitrary. With clients, I often liked to start in medias res—right where the action was.
“Depending on how much magick you’re trying to channel, the emotional weight of the story should match it,” Aspen added. “You can’t cheat magick; it has a way of coming back to collect unpaid debt.”
“Fine, an epic drama. Got it,” I said, wondering if I really did. “How will I know it’s working? Let me guess, you just know?”
Sequoia smiled and nodded, cupping her chin in her hands.
I took a deep breath, pulling the cards from under me and letting their warmth seep into my palm. I had never read for myself before. I’d never wanted to confront myself in that way. Maybe there was a truth embedded into the stories I told. The same truth I was afraid to see in myself right now.
“I guess I’ll do a life spread,” I said. “A full pull of twenty-five cards, each set of five representing five years.” I’d done it plenty for clients—mostly those looking to understand past traumas and find solace in naming them.
Aspen and Sequoia nodded encouragingly, their presence strangely comforting.
I never thought I could do something like this alone.
Sitting with myself, without a gadget to fiddle with or book to chew on, was maddening.
My hands fiddled with the cards, shuffling them, my fingers shaking.
I placed the deck in front of me and focused on my breath, as I would tell my patrons.
I counted to ten before opening my eyes, pressing my fingers to the top of the deck.
At the touch, a spark jolted me upright.
I brushed it off as static, but then something deeper took hold. I felt a steady pulse radiating from my fingers, down my arm, through my chest, my core, my legs. I pushed the sensation aside and concentrated on pulling out the top five cards.
“Years one through five. The Eight of Wands and the Emperor. I was born under a blood moon; my grandmother used to say it meant I’d lead to the downfall of a king,” I said, almost rolling my eyes, recalling my Bunica’s habit of casting my fortunes based on the stars.
“I don’t personally know any kings, do you? ” I joked.
“What else?” Aspen prodded.
“Let’s see.” I pulled out three more cards and laid them down on top of the two.
“Five of Wands, King of Wands, the High Priestess,” I said, frowning slightly.
I had to pretend I was reading for someone else instead of myself.
I needed to embrace the same process. I cleared my mind, listening to what rose to the surface.
The Jungian way of reading cards involved listening to one’s subconscious. It was a quiet, delicate task.
“I had a lot of interests as a kid. I’d follow my dad, represented as the king here, around his lab.
It mesmerized me how he could look into a microscope or interpret jagged lines from his light analyzer to find the composition of matter.
One day, he brought in a sample from a crime scene—a woman who’d died in a fire, supposedly started by a cigarette.
But he didn’t find any traces of tobacco or phosphorus, a common chemical in cigarettes.
What he found was benzene. That was the evidence they needed to implicate her former lover.
The way he could see things through those tools . . . well, that was magick to me.”