Chapter 4 Fever Dream #2
Luz responded: GOOD. Still up for the podcast?
I groaned. Right. The podcast.
By the time Luz burst through the door later, I’d managed to shower and make myself look almost human.
“You look like death,” she announced cheerfully, dropping groceries on her bed. “But like, fashionable death. I’ll allow it.”
“Thanks.”
“Cory told me everything.” She started unpacking tea, soup, Gatorade, and face masks. “Said you went down like a sack of rocks. Very dramatic.”
I rolled my eyes. “I aim to please.”
“And then—” She spun around, eyes gleaming with mischief. “—a certain tall, dark, and brooding professor carried you home.”
It wasn’t a hallucination. Professor Ward had actually carried me home. The room tilted again, and this time it had nothing to do with fever.
His arms around me, his scent in my lungs, his heartbeat under my cheek—
All real.
“Oh, Gods.” My hands flew to my face. “I’m going to have to face him in class while remembering…”
I couldn’t finish.
Luz cackled. “Nope. You don’t get to crawl out of this one. You got your dark, brooding professor moment. Live it. Own it.”
“I hate you so much right now.”
“You love me,” she corrected, pulling out her laptop. “Which is why we’re going to record this podcast as you promised. Because I shaved, Mel.”
“Your legs won’t even be on camera!”
“It’s the principle of the thing!”
I couldn’t help but laugh.
Twenty minutes later, we sat at the desk, mics positioned, laptop recording. I’d bundled in a blanket, and Luz had made me drink half a bottle of Gatorade. Still weak, but the distraction helped.
“Ready?” Luz asked.
I nodded and clicked record.
“Welcome back to Spiritually Exhausted—the podcast for burnt-out, bliss-seeking babes running on sage and unresolved trauma. I’m Melanie, your holistic health student by day, spiritually exhausted gremlin by night.”
Luz grinned, shuffling her tarot deck. “And I’m Luz, resident bruja and the friend who reminds Mel to drink water and stop doom-scrolling at 2 AM.”
I paused, touching the small quill tattoo behind my ear. “Tonight we’re talking ritual, tarot, and how sometimes the universe screams at us until we finally listen.”
“And yes, I will be reading Mel’s cards live,” Luz added, “because someone needs an intervention, and I’m petty enough to do it on air.”
“The shade,” I said, though I was smiling. “For anyone who’s ever felt disconnected, ritual can be an anchor. It calms the nervous system, lowers cortisol, and helps with grounding.”
“In my culture,” Luz added, “Ritual is life. It’s medicine passed down through generations. My abuela used to make these ba?os—spiritual baths—with herbs, flowers, salt, rum, and prayers. Stuff to cleanse your energy when therapy and green juice aren’t quite cutting it.”
We both laughed, and for a few minutes, everything felt normal.
Luz pulled out her tarot deck, spreading the cards across the desk.
“Okay, Mel,” she said, suddenly serious. “You ready for your spiritual diagnostic?”
“Sure,” I lied.
She moved her hands over the arc of cards, fingers twitching like she was listening for something. Then she pulled three.
The first card showed a blindfolded figure beneath an open sky, holding two swords crossed over her chest.
“Two of Swords,” Luz said. “Classic Mel energy. You’re stuck between choices, refusing to look at something. There’s something you’re actively avoiding.”
I said nothing, anxiety rising in my chest.
She flipped the second card.
The Moon. A pale face surrounded by stars, a path leading between two towers toward distant mountains.
“Oh, this is big,” Luz breathed. “The Moon. Illusions, the subconscious screaming. Hidden truths. You’re in the liminal space. The in-between.”
My skin prickled. “So, business as usual.”
“Whatever you’re avoiding? It’s coming whether you’re ready or not.”
She hesitated over the third card, hand hovering. “This is your outcome card. The path ahead.”
She flipped it. We both stared.
A stone tower struck by lightning, fire pouring from its windows, two figures plummeting through the air.
The Tower.
The room went completely quiet. Even the ambient noise from outside seemed to fade.
“Well,” I said after a beat. “That’s… festive.”
Luz didn’t laugh. She stared hard at the card.
“The Tower,” she said. She looked up at me, and something in her expression made my blood run cold. “It’s the card that shows up right before your entire world changes.”
“Changes how?”
“That’s the thing.” She touched the card with just her fingertip, as it might burn. “The Tower doesn’t give you a choice. It just… happens. Lightning strikes, the tower falls, and when the smoke clears, you’re either broken or reborn.”
She gathered the cards with quick, decisive movements. “Something’s coming, Mel. Something big. And I don’t think either of us is ready for it.”
The weight of that settled around us.
“Mel,” she said, studying me. “Is something going on?”
My stomach twisted uncomfortably.
Dreams that left soil under my nails and petals in my palms. Notes that moved. A vision so real I could still taste pomegranate and copper.
And a name I couldn’t shake: Kore.
But if I said it out loud, it became real. And if it was real, then I was either losing my mind or something impossible was happening.
Everyone already saw me as fragile. The last thing I needed was them deciding I was mad, too.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Just tired.”
Luz gave me a long look, but she didn’t push. Instead, she turned back to the mic.
“Well, folks, when you pull the Tower card live on air, you know it’s time to cleanse the hell out of your life and maybe invest in a good therapist.” Her voice was light again, but I heard the worry. “Don’t say we didn’t warn you.”
I forced a laugh and wrapped up the episode, thanking everyone for listening.
When I shut off the recording, the silence felt too loud.
“Mel.” Luz turned to me, humor gone. “Seriously, something’s going on. The fainting, the fever, and now this…” She gestured at the cards. “Talk to me.”
“I’ve been dreaming a lot,” I admitted. “Weird dreams. Really vivid.”
“About what?”
Rivers and crowns. A voice is calling me. A man made of shadows who feels like coming home and falling apart at the same time.
“I don’t know. I can’t remember most of it when I wake up.” Half a lie.
“Mhmm.”
Before I could respond, there was a knock.
“That’ll be Amy,” Luz said, bouncing up.
She opened the door to reveal Amy, arms full of takeout containers in plastic bags.
“Heard you tried to die today,” Amy said dryly. “Figured you’d need sustenance.”
“I didn’t try to die. I just fainted.”
“Into the arms of our hot professor,” Amy added, grinning. “Luz texted me. Multiple times.”
“I hate you both,” I muttered, my cheeks burning.
“You love us,” they said in unison.
We spent the rest of the night sprawled across our beds, eating takeout and talking about everything except tarot cards and fainting spells. Luz made us do face masks, insisting ‘spiritual intervention requires physical self-care,’ and by the time Amy left around midnight, I felt almost normal.
But when I was lying in bed with the lights off, the normalcy slipped away. All I could think about was the Tower card.
I pulled the blankets tighter and closed my eyes, trying not to think about towers falling or worlds ending or the way Professor Ward’s heartbeat had felt against my cheek.