Chapter 11
Crane
One year ago
“What are these?” comes Abe’s groggy voice.
I step out of the bathroom, completely naked, to see him standing by my desk, already dressed, and fingering the stack of tarot cards beside the glass of water I left out for him this morning while I was in the bath.
I’d wondered when he’d notice since I made no attempt to hide them, but I guess we’ve been doing nothing but fucking for the last few days, ever since he came home with me from the opium joint.
“Tarot cards,” I tell him.
“That’s what I thought,” he says, about to pick one up and then thinking better of it.
“Does it bother you that I have them?” I ask carefully. I reach out and take the deck, shuffling it between my fingers as I do so.
He seems to puzzle over them before shooting me a furtive glance. “No. I knew someone who used to use these.”
“Another lover?” I ask. “Were they as handsome as me?”
He laughs. He so rarely laughs and I feel a surge of pride every time I make him do it. It’s a beautiful sound, deep and boisterous, the only time he doesn’t seem like he’s haunted.
“It was a woman. A neighbor,” Abe says, grinning at me and looking so damn gorgeous it takes my breath away with his straight white teeth, the way the tip of his nose dips down when he smiles, his dimples hidden by his beard, the deep lines that form at the corners of his eyes, making him look older than he is.
Oh, he is so damn pretty.
He nods at the stack in my hands. “Will you do a reading for me?”
He sounds both shy and hopeful and fuck it if that doesn’t make my cock immediately stiffen. He notices, his gaze going to my half-hard dick. He raises a brow. “Is this turning you on?”
“What doesn’t fucking turn me on?” I ask him gruffly. “Feels unfair that I’m naked and you’re already dressed. Hoping to go somewhere?”
The lightness in his expression fades. “No,” he says, a defensive edge to his voice, like I’d caught him out in something.
I’ve learned that his moods are mercurial and it’s best to roll with them. “Good,” I tell him. “Sit down and I’ll tell you your fortune.”
He sits dutifully on the edge of my bed, staring up at me expectantly while I shuffle. Every now and then he’ll glance at my cock and swallow hard and I can read the hunger in his eyes. It will have to wait.
“What do you know about the arcana?” I ask him.
“Not much,” he admits.
“All right,” I say. Abe doesn’t know of my magic and I intend to keep it that way.
If I tell him too much, he may think of me differently and after what happened in San Francisco, I’m not willing to risk that.
“Tell me, then, what would you like me to focus on? Is there a specific question you want answered? In what area of your life do you need the most insight?”
He worries a lip between his teeth as he thinks.
I keep shuffling, trying to wake up the cards to his plight. The more I shuffle, the more my energy influences the draw, the more I feel tapped into the veil and the future beyond. It’s the same feeling the air gets right before a thunderstorm, when everything is dark and alive and electric.
Finally he says, “I want to know where I should go.”
I freeze, about to repeat his question back to him. The cards seem to buzz at my fingertips, like a hummingbird caught in my hands, and I quickly start shuffling again.
Where should he go? Why does he have to go anywhere? Why can’t he stay here?
“All right,” I say, clearing my throat. I close my eyes and ignore my own feelings on the matter and look in deep, past the dark spaces inside me and out the other side to the beyond, where things are darker still. “Where should Abe go?” I ask the ether.
I stop shuffling and wait. A constricting feeling wraps around my rib cage, something painful, like a snake is inside me, trying to put its fangs in my heart.
“What is it?” Abe whispers.
I open my eyes and notice that my hands are trembling. I quickly lay the cards out on the desk like an accordion and clear my throat. “Pick one,” I say hoarsely, that tight feeling not letting go of me. It feels like heartbreak.
Abe stares at me for a moment, his dark brows furrowed, then he looks to the deck. His black-brown eyes sweep over them, reflecting the faint morning light, until he taps one of them.
“This one,” he says.
I glance at the card, still face down.
Yes, something inside me buzzes. That’s the one.
I reach over and gingerly pick it up, afraid of what I’ll see.
It’s The Tower.
On the card it’s an image of a castle’s tower on fire, being struck by lightning, with two men falling out of it, presumably to their doom.
In my head, I see the same thing come to life.
A dark spired cathedral shrouded by fog, a fire burning it up from the inside, and the two men falling through the air are me and Abe.
We land in the mud, stagger to our feet, and though we try to run away from the burning church, we can’t.
That constricting feeling around my ribs deepens and, in the vision, it pulls me back to the building.
I’m yelling something at Abe, how we can’t leave without… without…
And then the image fades and before I know it I’ve collapsed to my knees in front of Abe. He reaches out and presses my head against his thigh, stroking my head in such a way that my eyes roll back.
“What happened?” he whispers, his voice pitching.
“I don’t know,” I say, trying to calm my heart. I’d get up but I rather like where my head is, like how doting Abe is being. It’s a nice change. “I think perhaps it’s been too long since I’ve eaten anything. I got faint.”
I’m not about to tell him that using divination can literally drain me.
“What did the card say?”
I take in a long breath through my nose as the vision fully fades away. “It’s The Tower,” I eventually say.
“That sounds okay.”
“Yes.” I nod against his leg. “It seems innocuous enough. It indicates a sudden change or release. It could be anything from uncovering a hidden truth to having a revelation that changes the course of your whole life.”
The muscles in his thighs tense up. “So what do you read it as? Where am I going?”
“I don’t know where you are going,” I say carefully, lifting my head to look up at him. “But I know you’re going there because of what has happened to you. An upheaval has already occurred. Where you are going is a direct response to that.”
He stares down at me and scrunches up his nose. “None of this is helpful.”
“Sometimes we don’t want to know our future,” I hedge, not wanting him to know my vision.
“These cards don’t tell you what will happen though,” Abe says. “They tell you what might happen. At least that’s what my, uh, neighbor said.”
I nod. I can’t tell him that what I see almost always does happen.
At that, I get back to my feet and start attending to the deck, shuffling it back neatly.
The session is complete, I chant to myself, putting the deck back where it was and placing a stick of selenite on top to seal it closed.
But while my back is to Abe, I can’t help the faint smile I feel tugging my lips.
Because even though that card was dark, that future was dark, I was there.
I was in his future. I’ve only known this man one week and in that week he’s turned my world upside down, given me something to hold on to when I’ve been grasping at straws.
He’s given me something to wake up to each morning instead of that endless need to smoke and escape and forget.
My cock, which never fully went back down, is hard again and raring to go.
I turn around and his gaze immediately goes to it.
“On your knees, pretty boy,” I tell him.
His eyes go heavy with lust. “Yes, sir.”
He drops to his knees and opens his mouth.
And while I push the head of my cock past his sweet lips, over his flat tongue, and down his tight throat, I feel sated in knowing that we’ll be together, in whatever darkness the future holds.
—
One week later I wake up in my bed to find it empty.
I spend the day with my heart in my hands, waiting for him to return.
He never does.