Chapter Forty
The first time Augustine realized something might be wrong with her mother, she was twenty-one.
It was an ordinary Thursday evening. Augustine was at the kitchen table, half-buried in notes for a psychology lecture the next day, highlighter in hand, the steady scratch of pen on paper the only real sound around her.
Clem was outside in the garden, as always.
Rain or shine, her little sister was drawn to the wildness of the great outdoors.
By now, she was probably covered in mud or grass, probably a mix of both.
Maddy was in the sitting room, the low murmur of the television drifting through the walls in uneven bursts of laughter and canned applause.
“Augustine?” Her mother’s voice carried from down the hall, and there was something in it. Not urgency or fear. But still, something.
Augustine looked up, frowning slightly. “Yeah?”
“Come here a moment, love.”
She set her pen down, pushing back her chair, and followed the sound of Eglantine’s voice into the dining room. Her mother was standing by the table, hands resting lightly against its edge. She looked composed. Perfectly composed, in fact. Maybe too composed.
“Can you do me a favour?” her mother asked.
Augustine nodded immediately. “Of course.”
There was a small pause.
“Can you read the cards for me, please?”
Augustine had stilled, because despite such a simple request, she’d never heard her mother say those words before. Not once. Not to her.
“What?” Augustine asked, before she could stop herself.
Eglantine smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “The cards,” she repeated lightly. “Can you read them for me? It won’t take long. I know you’re studying.”
Augustine hesitated. “But it’s not a full moon,” she said slowly.
Eglantine let out a soft laugh. “Well,” she replied, “then the werewolves won’t be out, will they?”
Augustine frowned. It wasn’t that readings outside of rituals were unusual — they weren’t. Coven members read for one another all the time. Guidance, reassurance, curiosity. It was part of the rhythm of their world.
But her mother wasn’t part of her coven, and more than that, her mother had never asked her to read for her before. Not ever.
Something shifted, faint but undeniable, at the base of Augustine’s spine. It was nerves, she realized. Nerves, mixed with a small helping of unease. All the same, she nodded slowly. “Okay.”
This was her mother, after all, who she loved and trusted.
She crossed the room slowly, pulling out a chair and sitting opposite Eglantine. “What sort of reading?” she asked, already reaching for the worn deck kept in her bag.
Eglantine watched her for just a second too long. “Guidance,” she eventually said. “I have a question,” she added. “I just need a yes or no answer.”
Augustine paused, the cards halfway to her hands.
“A yes or no?” she repeated, frowning slightly.
“Mum, you know it doesn’t really work like that.
Tarot’s—” she gestured vaguely with the deck, searching for the right word — “it’s nuanced.
It’s interpretation, context, layers. You can’t just .
. .” She trailed off, because Eglantine had leaned back in her chair, watching her with a soft, almost amused fondness, and Augustine shifted in her seat. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” her mother replied softly. “I’m just wondering who taught you to be so clever with the cards.”
Augustine didn’t even blink. “Grandma.”
There was a sharp inhale, and Eglantine went very still. “My mother?”
Augustine nodded, slower this time. “Yeah. Of course. Who else would it be?”
The memory sat easily with her — late nights, whispered guidance, cool hands guiding hers over the cards — but something in her mother’s reaction made it feel . . . different. Stranger, somehow.
Abruptly, Eglantine leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Augustine’s forehead.
Augustine froze, startled. “Mum?”
Eglantine pulled back, studying her face with an intensity that made Augustine nervous. “You have no idea how powerful you are, do you?” she said softly.
Augustine let out a small, awkward scoff, looking away. “I mean . . . not really. Not like the others.” She shrugged. “Celeste has her stars. Clem’s got her green magic. Maddy’s got her spells. I just . . .” She shrugged. “I just read cards.”
Eglantine’s expression didn’t soften. “If that’s what you think,” she said quietly. “But you and your sisters — you’re all on your own path. Don’t measure yourself against them.”
Augustine frowned at her, something in that phrasing catching uncomfortably. “What does that mean?”
Eglantine only shook her head though, the movement slight, in a manner which dismissed the question before it could settle. “My mother really taught you all this?” she asked.
“Well, yeah. I mean, this was her deck first, right?”
Eglantine smiled. “Right.” She paused, a brief hesitation crossing her eyes. “Does she still teach you? Ever?”
“No.” Augustine replied. “She taught me how to read the world and then stopped. Makes sense though. That’s the final card in the deck.”
Eglantine nodded. “Right. Go on then,” she said gently. “Start my reading.”
Augustine hesitated. Something felt off here, not quite right. “Mum . . .”
Eglantine reached over, gripping Augustine’s hand. “It’s okay,” she reassured her. “Just a quick reading, yes?”
Augustine nodded, pushing her uncertainty to one side. This was her mum, who always knew best.
She picked up the deck, her fingers moving automatically now — shuffling, grounding, falling into the familiar rhythm of cards under her fingers.
“A yes or no,” she mused. “So, what’s your question? What do you need to know?”
Eglantine didn’t answer straight away, but when she did, her voice was much more careful. “The question is this — should I trust him?”
“Him?” Augustine paused, because by default, Eglantine trusted no man, and she’d raised them all to feel the same.
“Yes. Him.” There was no elaboration. No name.
Augustine hesitated, because something about this didn’t sit right.
The question felt too small for the weight behind it.
Too neat, almost like it was trying to contain something much larger.
But her mother was watching her, waiting for her answer with expectant eyes, so Augustine exhaled softly and began.
She shuffled the deck, slower this time, more deliberately, grounding herself in the familiar motion. The cards slid against each other with a soft, papery whisper, steadying her. Still, there was a flicker of doubt, a hesitation she couldn’t quite name.
“Okay,” she murmured, more to herself than to Eglantine, and laid the cards out between them. “Choose a card. One you’re drawn to.”
Eglantine didn’t reach for one immediately, but when she did, it was with quiet certainty. She drew a single card from the spread and turned it over, placing it gently in front of Augustine.
The High Priestess.
“Oh.” Augustine’s breath caught for just a fraction of a second, before she laughed. “Well, that’s obvious. It’s a yes,” she told her mother easily.
Eglantine blinked, looking faintly surprised. “Yes?”
“You can trust him,” Augustine confirmed, already leaning forward slightly, slipping into explanation without thinking.
“The High Priestess — upright — it’s intuition, sacred knowledge, the subconscious.
It’s about inner truth, trusting what you feel, what you know beneath the surface.
” She tapped the card lightly. “It’s a yes. A strong one.”
Eglantine looked down at the card again, then back at Augustine. Slowly, she nodded.
“All right,” she said, and then, abruptly, she stood. The movement was so sudden it made Augustine blink. “I need to go out,” her mother continued, already reaching for her coat. “There’s something I need to take care of.”
Augustine frowned. “Now? It’s nearly dinner time.”
“Yes.” Her mother’s tone was light, but there was something rushed beneath it. “Will you stay in? Watch your sisters until I get back?”
“Of course,” Augustine said immediately.
Eglantine paused at the door, a serious air about her. “Are you sure?” she asked, nodding to the cards. “It’s a definite yes?”
Augustine glanced down at the card, still lying between them, calm and certain. “Yes,” she said, nodding towards it. “That’s what the cards say.”
Eglantine held her gaze for a beat longer, before she smiled.
Then, without another word, she turned to the door and left.
* * *
The evening passed normally enough.
Augustine made dinner. Something simple.
Something her sisters wouldn’t complain about.
Eventually, Clem came in from the garden, tracking mud and leaves in from the outside world on her hands and in her hair.
Maddy drifted in and out of the sitting room, half-watching television, half-asking questions Augustine barely even registered.
It was all so normal. So painfully normal.
However, as the hours began to stretch on, something began to settle in Augustine’s chest. A slow, creeping unease that rattled her, and made her watch the clock nervously.
Eight o’clock passed, then nine, then ten. Still, Eglantine didn’t come home. By half ten, Augustine was pacing, and by eleven, she was trying not to.
She put Maddy to bed first, tucking her into her sheets, her teddy unashamedly in her twelve-year-old hands. Clem took a little longer, the teenager lingering in doorways, asking uncertain things Augustine didn’t quite know how to answer.
“She’ll be back,” Augustine told her, over and over again, unsure if she was reassuring Clem or herself.
Finally, the house went still, and Augustine stood alone in the kitchen, her phone in her hand.
She called Celestine once and then again. Both calls went straight to voicemail.
“Come on,” she muttered on a third attempt, pacing now. “Come on, pick up—”
Still, there was nothing, and the silence pressed in around her.
Abruptly, Augustine’s gaze snagged on the table.
On her tarot cards, which were still exactly where she’d left them.
The Priestess peered up at her, and Augustine frowned slightly, stepping closer, because something about it .
. . Something wasn’t right. She reached out, her fingers brushing the edge of the card, looking at it from all angles.
Angles, she realized with a dull thud, and the world seemed to tilt around her.
The card wasn’t upright. It wasn’t upright at all. No. It was reversed.
Augustine stood frozen to the spot, her mind scrambling, racing backwards. The draw. The placement. Her explanation.
Her answer.
“Yes,” she had said. “You can trust him.”
She’d been so certain. Upright always meant yes. But reversed . . . Reversed, and the meaning shifted. It warped, in fact. Turned inward and wrong.
Blocked intuition. Secrets. Hidden truths. A warning not to trust what appears.
A no. A cold, absolute no.
Augustine’s breath hitched. “Oh my God,” she whispered, and her stomach dropped, because she hadn’t read the card from her mother’s side of the table.
Not really. She’d read it from her side of the table.
And so her reading was wrong.
Desperately, terribly wrong.