Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
Thirty never-ending seconds pass before the door cracks open and one of Topher’s bug-eyes fills the space. They stare at each other, Mateo waiting for Topher to say anything.
“I think I did it wrong,” Topher whispers.
“Huh?” Mateo articulates, unable to fathom how he could pour liquid on himself wrong.
The google-eye quakes. “I forgot … I forgot to, um. When I did the pitcher … I was thinking. I mean, I wasn’t thinking.
I should have thought. But didn’t. So. Um.
I forgot to, um … I still had on. I mean, I didn’t take off …
my, um …” Topher’s cheek is blotchy neon, and it takes three times before Mateo catches the soft word he keeps ending the ramble with.
Underwear.
Topher got into the tub and undressed but left his underwear on because of course this barely held together bundle of gawky twigs and scared-rabbit reflexes in the guise of a real boy could no sooner strip stark naked in a stranger’s bathroom than in front of a crowded theater.
“Why didn’t you just throw them in the trash and put your pants back on?” Mateo has to ask, dismayed at this level of unnecessary honesty.
The strip of Topher-face he can see retreats from the crack.
Probably to die. Eventually, a small voice says: “The trash can isn’t very big.
And I thought, what if he looks in and sees it there?
Not that you look in the trash. But it’s a small can.
That would be …” A heavy moment loaded with whatever the hell Topher thinks might happen if someone saw his underwear in a trash can passes.
“I mean, it’s a weird thing to do. Leave wet underwear in someone else’s house.
And what if something else you want me to do needs me to take off my pants?
I’d have to explain that I’ve got no underwear on and they’re in the bathroom, wet, in the trash.
I just …” Mateo thinks Topher’s clicked off, but he starts back up, even more quietly.
“I mean, I know probably none of that would happen. It wouldn’t happen. But maybe.”
Plastic smile slips into place and Mateo intones serenely, “It’s a mistake anyone could have made.” No one. No one else could have done this. But with Ophelia’s additional rate it’s so much money. Four. Point. Five. Grand. Eight point five grand if he can stretch it into next week.
As if his hand is disconnected from his body, Mateo lifts it, presents it palm up to Topher through the little crack.
“Give them to me. I’ll toss them in the laundry and give them back later.
No problem.” And then he waits for a very rich man to place a sodden, wadded-up ball of underwear into his hand because he guesses that’s where his life is right now.
Back in the living room, Topher sits on the couch looking exactly like an extremely shy guy who’s been forced to openly free ball it in a stranger’s house.
Mateo can’t let this new awkwardness linger, because Ophelia’s a shark and she might come for this man’s blood. “You getting anything?” he asks so that she won’t say anything else.
“He’s weird,” she says, and again Mateo wishes he’d had a talk about decorum in front of rich people who they want to make them rich.
“There’s a …” she’s looking at Topher in that horrible way of hers, blue jadeite gaze penetrating his body.
Topher looks on the verge of dying from the scrutiny.
“Presence,” she finishes after a lengthy pause.
It’s not what Mateo expected. “Possession?”
She shakes her head, but then tilts it, unsure. “No … not exactly. But not unsimilar either.” A shrug. “Unique. I’ve never seen anything like him.”
Not as helpful as he’d hoped, but also not a huge surprise that she couldn’t glance at Topher and solve all their problems. Like Mateo, Ophelia’s suffering from no one taught her the shit it would be really good to know. Her training terminated with her dead entire family.
“Next up is a tarot card reading,” Mateo says, trying to keep things upbeat. “Ophelia’s going to watch in case she can glean anything else. And the cards might give me more insight into what exactly is afflicting you. Have you ever gotten a reading before?”
Topher shakes his head, expression apologetic for no reason.
“That’s fine. I’ll explain as I go,” Mateo soothes, picking up his deck, purchased online while at the height of his teen goth phase—a less sophisticated version of the twenty-something goth phase he’s currently in.
The deck is solid black on one side, while the face of the cards are various stackings of skulls, roses, ravens, and knives.
The art’s not great, as his tastes were shit as a teen, but it’s the kind of thing he only thinks about when they’re in his hand and it’s too late.
He passes the deck to Topher and talks him through what to do and is relieved when Topher’s trembling hands manage decent shuffles without dumping the deck on the floor.
Past, present, future. Self, situation, challenges ahead. A simple three-card read is what Ophelia and he decided on.
Taking the deck back, Mateo draws and places three cards between them.
Three of swords, the devil, and death. None reversed. Objectively speaking, it’s a pretty shit pull. Mateo studies the cards a moment, not because he needs to but for suspense.
He indicates the three of swords with a flourish, picking the card up as though reading from it and not memory.
“This is the past position. The self up to this moment. Three of swords. You’ve been lonely.
There’s been a separation in your life that you’ve grieved, and these events, the heartbreak and sadness, affect you today. ”
Topher told Mateo that he has no friends, and his mother is MIA. There should be some skepticism or at least an eyeroll. But, like loads of others who sat on this very couch before, all Topher does is suck in a breath, eyes becoming saucers. The world’s easiest mark.
Mateo continues, setting the first card down and showing Topher the middle card.
“Present. The situation you find yourself in now. The devil card.” He pauses for dramatic effect, and Topher stops breathing until he continues.
“There’s a negativity in your life, something you’re doing, or something you’ve allowed to be done to you.
” A pause to squint at Topher, not out of showmanship this time, but because something is wrong in Mateo’s vision.
Trying to dismiss the illusion, he looks down but there’s a miasma over his hands that’s not really there, except in the way that his blood is actually black.
This isn’t the time for his demon bullshit, so he presses on.
“It’s harming you.” He forces a swallow.
“It’s … not the thing causing the death and destruction.
” Breathe even. “An agitation.” Ignore the growing darkness flickering at the edges of everything.
“An aggregation. A culmination of catastrophe soon to be.”
“Teo?” Ophelia says, but her voice is muted, garbled, underwater and very far away.
Mateo wants to ask why she sounds so fragile, but instead sets the second card down and picks up the third.
“Future. A future. A challenge. A change. A chance. A transformation. The death card. Death is the ultimate transformation. Of mind. Of body. Of flesh to something else. It is endings. Because the mortal flesh is only a sweet shell, a house, a cage that chokes and squeezes and rends for something greater than. Something more. Something endless and new that will not rot or fade or …”
A blink, and he’s in a different position, staring at the ceiling. He shifts only to realize he’s on the living room floor with his head cradled in Ophelia’s lap. Topher’s to his right, squatting just a foot away with a roll of paper towels held between two hands.
“What?” Mateo muffles because Ophelia’s holding a wad of towels to his face.
“Your nose started bleeding and you passed out.” She pulls the towels away enough for him to see they’re soaked in black. “After you started rambling about the virtues of death.”
He sits up with her help, and though it must have only been moments, he has the drag of waking in the middle of a dream on him, thoughts distant and head heavy.
“It started at the end of the second card. Do you remember reading the last card?” Ophelia asks, on her feet but with a hand on his shoulder like she’s afraid of breaking contact.
“Yeah, I think so.” He’s never lost time in front of anyone. “Did I stop midsentence?”
Ophelia’s hand squeezes and she hesitates. “No. Not midsentence. You went on for a while, then you stood up and got the three-tone chime off the altar and started playing it. Then you slumped to the side. You were out for a few minutes.”
Mateo gapes, staring at the little handheld bar chime set on the table where it hadn’t been before. Dread settles over the numbness in his head. The chime is for calling something to him.
“I’m sorry,” Topher’s quivering voice says, on his feet with paper towels still clutched to his chest, somehow thinking this is his fault.
He looks extraordinarily worried—not just in that how does this affect me sort of way Mateo expects from a rich guy dealing with the hired help.
It doesn’t get more run-of-the-mill than a tarot reading so Topher trying to take the blame is ludicrous, strangely sweet, and beside the point.
Client. Money. Get it together. Whatever bullshit that was, it’s a Mateo bullshit, not a Topher money bullshit.
Can he still think, talk, and stand? Yes. Back to work.
Mateo offers what he hopes is a normal smile, realizing too late again that his teeth are sharp.
Shit. Topher’s already seen them. Just go with it.
“Nothing to be sorry about. That wasn’t your fault.
I was tapping into the spirit realm.” True, technically.
“Possessed.” Absolute truth. “And getting higher-level insights.” Sure as hell hopes not, but at least it was a good show.
He moves to stand, and Ophelia and Topher both hurry to assist. It’s like two children helping a wayward scarecrow.
“Never mind me,” Mateo says, looking at Ophelia. “You get anything else?”
Her face flips through a series of complexities, invisible to anyone but someone well versed in all the ways she doesn’t show what she’s feeling. “His energy settled after the cleanse.”
“Settled how?”
“Calmed down. It was swirly. Now it’s not.”
“What does that mean?” Topher asks, grip tightening on Mateo’s arm—which he’s totally still holding—staring up at Mateo in the most valid alarm of the morning.
Mateo has no idea what that means, so he smiles again, remembers his teeth, and stops.
“That we’ve made some progress.” He says this with a confidence he doesn’t feel, off-kilter from his episode, and Topher—staring up at him in saucer-eyed worry, diligently clinging to his arm in support—isn’t helping him reestablish his professional cool.
“What the hell …” Ophelia says softly, and he turns to her. She’s sitting where Topher had been, the tarot deck in her hand. The three cards are still on the table, same pull but facing her like she’d rotated them to look. Her pale eyes lift to him. “I just got the same pull.”
“What?” Mateo says, because that’s all his brain can manage right now.
“This isn’t his spread.” She taps each card. “This is mine. Shuffled. Redrawn.”
Mateo gently extracts his arm from Topher, squats in front of the table, and takes the deck back from Ophelia, sweeping her pull into it.
He shuffles, really good, even scatters them on the table for a moment so things have a better chance of reversing and splits the deck six times before doing his pull.
Three cards laid out in front of him.
No.
The same three cards laid out in front of him.
Three of swords, the devil, and death.
This was supposed to be a fun, curse-breaking money grab, not whatever portentous fate-entwined situation this just became.
Mateo casts an uneasy glance at Topher, who doesn’t understand enough about what’s happening to be as disturbed as Mateo now is.
It doesn’t get more definitive than three impossibly identical pulls.
Whatever’s happening, it’s happening to all three of them. Together.