Chapter 29 #2
Dawes scooted a chair closer to Alex. “Hi, Ms. Stern.”
“Mira, please. You’re a student of tarot?”
Dawes’s long-unfinished thesis was, in fact, on tarot, and she probably knew more about its history and theory than every supposed seer Mira had handed her credit card over to.
But all Dawes said was “It’s a hobby.” Outside the frame, she gestured to Darlington. One mirror was set on the table, and he dangled the other above it.
Dawes held up a tarot card, the Three of Cups. “Do you recognize this deck?”
A drop of liquid splashed from the mirror Darlington held. It almost looked like its surface was bending, as if the substance of the mirror was turning molten. It struck the mirror on the table.
Mira peered at the screen. She blinked slowly. “I don’t think so?”
Another drop followed, then another, a broken line connecting the two mirrors.
Dawes flipped the card. Now it was the Queen of Swords. “How about this one?”
“I don’t think so.”
Dawes continued to turn the card, and each time, it changed. Five of Wands. Death. Eight of Pentacles. And then the Wheel. A bell sounded from somewhere in the distance and the stream of connection between the two mirrors seemed to turn solid, a single gleaming thread of silver.
The air around Mira shimmered, a barely detectable halo that distorted the objects on the shelf behind her.
“Okay,” Dawes said. “She won’t remember the rest.”
“Mira,” Darlington began, “what was Chushi’s real name?”
Mira frowned. “Chushi.”
“Do you remember where he worked?”
“He came from the sea.”
“How about what kind of car he drove?” Turner asked through the phone, and Darlington parroted the question back to Mira.
“I … It was … Maybe it was blue?”
“Did he have any tattoos?”
“Yes.”
“What were they?”
Mira frowned again. “What were what?”
Alex muted the chat.
“I think you scrambled her brain,” she said. “She’s going to go back to normal, right?”
“Something’s off,” said Turner. “She’s not lying, but she’s not telling the truth either.”
He would know. Alex trusted Turner’s gut more than her own.
“I think she’s under a prohibition,” said Darlington.
Dawes was nodding. “A strong one. It explains the gaps in her memory, her reluctance to even broach the subject.”
“Wait,” said Alex. “You’re telling me she’s already had magic used on her? I thought she just … I thought it was too painful or something, that she was ashamed.” She caught the look on Darlington’s face. “What?”
“Mira doesn’t seem like the type, does she? She met a guy, she fell in love, he wasn’t what she hoped. Does she dodge other subjects the same way?”
“Not exactly.” Mira wasn’t always entirely honest about the MLMs she’d gotten suckered into or the self-improvement group that had probably been a cult or the various gurus and life coaches who had charmed then disappointed her.
But she loved to talk about them, to gild their memories.
Every moment in her life had been a lesson, a step on the path to greater understanding and enlightenment, and if that path had been a winding, bumpy trail that led through the occasional minefield, then didn’t that make for a bigger adventure? “My father put a prohibition on her?”
“Someone did,” said Dawes.
The societies used prohibitions to keep loose-lipped delegates from telling their roommates and boyfriends what they got up to on Thursday nights and to keep alumni from selling off their secrets.
Manuscript was particularly adept at them, linking compulsions to what was essentially charisma magic, creating binding loyalties that they sold off to keep spies from turning double agent or to prevent employees from leaking vital intellectual property.
When had good old Chushi worked his magic on her mother? Before they’d slept together? After he’d met Estrea? None of that really mattered. “Can you lift it?”
Dawes gave a determined nod. “I think so. Prohibition and compulsion magic are closely related. They’re both forms of persuasion. We just need to strengthen the compulsion so that it’s stronger than the prohibition.”
She held up the tarot card again. This time it was the Empress. “Mira, what card is this?”
Mira shook her head. “I don’t know this spread.”
Dawes turned the card. Three of Wands. Turned it again. Knight of Cups. Turned it again. Nine of Pentacles.
“Reveal yourself,” she demanded.
“There’s a pattern,” Mira said, rubbing furiously at her forehead.
Another turn. Seven of Wands. Another turn. The Devil. Turn again. The Devil. Turn again. The Devil. The card seemed to spin in Dawes’s hand.
It had started to rain at some point, and now that rain was turning to sleet, lashing the parlor windows, the noise like rattling gunfire.
Mira’s eyes filled with tears. “I can’t make it out.”
“Dawes,” Alex warned. She didn’t want to see her mother this way. Mira had always been scattered, vague. She had wept over Alex, begged her to come home, prayed for some way to help, but it had been years since Alex had seen her this distraught.
Dawes hit the mute button. “This isn’t normal. Whoever placed this prohibition rooted it deep.”
A boom shook the room, making the walls shake.
Alex’s head snapped up. She knew that sound. She’d heard it too many times not to know what it meant—big magic, someone pushing through a barrier, trying to get someplace they weren’t meant to be.
“What the hell is going on over there?” Turner demanded through the phone.
“Is it raining where you are?” Darlington asked.
“A little windy. Nothing else.”
Mira looked directly at the camera; her eyes had gone entirely white. “Culebra que no mir morde, que viva mil anos.” It didn’t sound like a single woman speaking but a chorus—and Alex knew those words.
“It’s a refrane,” she said. One of her grandmother’s old sayings. May the snake who doesn’t bite me live a thousand years. But Mira didn’t speak Ladino. She’d rejected everything Estrea had offered. “Help her,” Alex pleaded.
The screen went dark.
Outside the wind howled, a high, hoarse wail against the night.
Alex grabbed her phone and frantically dialed her mother.
“Mom?”
“Alex! I think we lost the connection.”
“You’re okay?”
“I’m fine, baby. Should we do this every week?”
“She doesn’t remember,” said Darlington.
Another boom sounded and Dawes had to grab the back of Alex’s chair to keep from falling. “Let me call you back, Mom.”
“Is there a storm there?”
“I’ll call you back.”
Darlington was at the windows. He pushed the curtains aside. “Something is trying to get past the wards.”
Suddenly, the wind dropped away to nothing. The rain ceased its patter. The silence felt too complete.
“We’re okay,” Dawes said, gripping the chair. “The wards held. We’re okay.”
“Would someone tell me what is going on?” Turner bellowed.
“What was that?” Alex asked. “Who did this to her?”
“I’m not sure,” said Dawes. “But—”
“Look,” said Darlington.
Alex wasn’t sure she wanted to. She made her way to the big picture window that faced Orange Street.
Sitting on the powerline above the rooftops, their bodies tucked close together, were six owls silhouetted against the blue-black of the night sky.
Their eyes glinted with flat green light.
One of them released a rough screech, somewhere between a human cry and the sound of a door creaking open.
“It was the owl that shrieked,” Darlington quoted, “the fatal bellman.”
A knock sounded at the door.
“What do we do?” asked Dawes, clutching her headphones, her knuckles white.
Alex met Darlington’s eyes. “What we always do. We answer.”