Chapter Nineteen
Rosetta’s backroom was much the same aesthetic of the front room.
It had all the mysticism Kierse would have expected.
A crystal ball in the middle of a black-and-purple-clothed table.
A deck of oracle cards with a gold foil outline on the back was face down.
Kierse had been with Gen enough times as she took on the moniker of Prophet Genesis to understand the trappings of their craft.
Though she was just as accustomed to working with the Covenant witch coven in New York as well.
Rosetta moved with a grace that made Kierse question her age further. Her purple dress was covered in little silver-and-purple beads. The color accented the rich brown of her skin and the hints of purple magic that flared at the edges when she plucked a deck of cards from a tray.
She looked the part of a witch. Her magic said she was a witch.
And yet Kierse couldn’t help feeling like she was putting on a performance for them, letting them see her as she wanted to be seen rather than who and what she really was.
Did it mean she was more powerful than she was letting on… or less?
“Are you a seer?” Kierse asked.
“Sometimes. When what needs to be seen is seen.” Rosetta’s hands were covered with velvet gloves as she splayed the cards out before her lovingly.
Kierse nodded. “Yeah. I have a friend with a touch of sight, and she mostly can see through tarot when the cards want to show her something.”
“She’s a witch?” Rosetta said curiously. Those milky eyes looked up, seeing. Was she wearing contacts?
“High Priestess.”
“Much the same. Different origin.”
“I have a friend who is a witch at the Covenant.”
Rosetta grinned. “I used to work at the Covenant,” Rosetta said. “For a time.”
“Do you know Dr. Emmaline Mafi?”
“Indeed,” Rosetta said. “What a clever doctor she is, mixing her science and the craft together. I thought I would go that direction once, but…” She trailed off as she touched the bun at the top of her head. “Witches. High Priestesses. I’ve worked with them all. Taught most of them.”
“You know Niamh,” Graves said.
She chuckled once. “I’m acquainted.”
“Then you know who I am.”
Rosetta took a seat before the cards. “I do.” Her eyes slid to Kierse. “You I’m less sure about. He has one energy, his own, and a darkness, a missing piece. However, you seem overlaid with many energies. As if you are not your own at all.”
Kierse winced at the assessment. “Is it better to be one or the other?”
“Depends on the person and what they want. Sometimes multiple energies is harmonious, brightening the world with golds and rose and heather. A sparking unity. Yours,” she waved her hand down Kierse’s front, “is less so.”
“We’re not here about ourselves,” Graves interjected.
“No? Because you are mingled in her energy as well. Wouldn’t you like to know how to untangle it?”
Kierse froze. “Can you do that?”
“I can consult the cards. We can find solutions,” she said a touch too eagerly. Kierse wasn’t sure she could even do it. Even if all that information about training everyone up was true.
“I thought you were a healer.”
“Of the soul,” Rosetta said, tapping her chest twice. “I could have put my work to use in one of these new monster hospitals. But that work now bores me. I do not need modern anything to do what I have done for many decades.” She waved her hand. “Plus, I work most effectively by cauldron light.”
“You mean candlelight?”
“That is for amateurs. Cauldron light if you’re doing it right.”
Kierse shot Graves a look, and he, too, looked amused. Well, at least there was that.
“We’re here about Dallas Llewellyn,” Graves said. He slid the note across the table that declared Dallas’s standing meeting with Rosetta.
“I don’t discuss clients with other people.”
“Well, she’s dead.”
Rosetta frowned. Her hands immediately went to the crystal ball before her. She touched it with barely her fingertips and yanked them back. A mask of shock crossed her face and then immediately vanished into grief. “Oh, that poor child.”
“Do you know who did it?”
“No,” she said in a hushed whisper. “No, I hadn’t been treating her long.”
“What were you treating her for?” Graves pushed.
Rosetta’s eyes lifted to his. “What did you want with Dallas?”
“Answers,” he said flatly.
“Mmm,” Rosetta said. “I can see this troubles you, but her death troubles me more. Who could kill someone of your ilk?”
“We’re trying to find that out,” Kierse said. “It didn’t look natural.”
“It’s never natural killing warlocks,” Rosetta said. “There aren’t many things that can do it.”
“No, there aren’t,” Graves said. “Which is why it’s imperative for us to discover who did this.”
“That isn’t why you’re interested.” Rosetta leaned backward in her chair, her hands folded before her. “She was no friend of yours. You aren’t avenging her death.”
“I never said that I was.”
“So tell it to me straight, warlock. What were you doing with Dallas Llewellyn?”
Kierse shot Graves a look, wondering how far they could let this go. Explaining that she was a lead on the Fae Killer was likely out of the question.
“We’re investigating an associate of hers and thought she would be able to direct us to his location,” Graves said.
“How do I know that you didn’t kill her?” Rosetta asked flatly. All her glitter and glamour seemed to melt away as the accusation hung heavily in the room.
Graves shrugged, unconcerned, holding his ungloved hand out. “I can show you if you like.”
She stared down at his hand. “I have a mind of steel.”
“I had no doubt about that.”
Rosetta slowly extended her hand into Graves’s. Her head snapped back, her milky eyes wide as she seemed to see everything all at once. Then she dropped her chin to her chest as she fumbled her hand free.
“What a ride,” she said around a cough. “What a ride.”
“You’re strong,” Graves said with appreciation.
The not strong enough hung between them. Kierse glanced back and forth, wondering if Rosetta was going to toss them out of her place and all answers would be lost.
“I believe what you showed me,” Rosetta said. Her hands went to the oracle cards, and she shuffled them almost absentmindedly, fixed on what she’d just seen. “I do not know who killed her. But I will answer three questions you pose if you let me read for one of you.”
Graves leaned back in his seat. “I can just pay you.”
“I don’t want your money. I find more pleasure in my own practice, and you are here for answers. So you follow my rules. Three questions. One reading. What harm could it do?”
That was a loaded question if she’d ever heard one.
“So who will it be?” Rosetta turned to Graves. “Knowledge at his fingertips or…” She tapped her lacquered nails against the cards. “The tangled web of energy at his side.”
“Me,” Graves said automatically.
“What?” Kierse asked surprised. “You don’t even like tarot.”
“I have a heathy respect for it, but I’ll accept its answers.”
“That’s decided, then,” Rosetta said, shuffling the deck.
The cards flashed before their eyes like a magic trick, flying up and over between her hands.
They shined bright gold and black and seemed to twinkle in the candlelight.
Rosetta’s own milky eyes shined as they flickered across her art.
Kierse leaned into her magical intuition and saw the vibrant purple magic that settled across the cards, the scent of rosemary and damp soil.
Finally, the cards came together, and she set them before Graves.
“Cut.”
Graves took a deep breath and then split the deck in half.
“I’ll start with a three draw for you—your current situation, the action you need to take, and the outcome of the action. It’ll be a guide like an arrow through your life.”
Rosetta restacked the deck and then set out the first card. “The five of cups.”
A man in a black cloak faced away from the viewer. Five cups were on the ground, and three of them were tipped over while two remained standing. Not that the man could see that as he was draped in despair.
Kierse and Graves both leaned forward. She was more familiar with the major arcana, but even just looking at it, she could see that it meant something bad. Gen always told her that there were no bad cards in a tarot deck, but…this was pretty bad.
“You’ve undergone personal loss and a painful challenge.
You’re dwelling in the past with regret and refusing to let go of what you have lost. I won’t sugarcoat it, your situation looks bleak.
As if you are missing something that you once had and now there is an empty space inside of you.
This lost connection has driven you to loneliness and the inability to see even the good things in your life. ”
Graves cleared his throat. “Cheery.”
But Kierse couldn’t stop staring at the card.
The loss. The place of emptiness. The regret.
Was that all about his Druidic magic? The empty place in his life after giving up his magic to the Goblin Market in exchange for the Sword, which he couldn’t use.
All of which resulted in him believing that he needed to be alone in the world.
Rosetta turned over the second card. “Devil reversed.”
Graves managed a laugh. “Typical.”
“You’ve seen this card before?”
“And the Magician.”
“I see,” Rosetta said. “As an action card, it’s a difficult one.”
Difficult was an understatement. On the front of the devil card were two enchained humans before a horned devil. The closer a person moved toward the devil, the more like them they became.
“When the Devil is in the reverse position, it is a card to self-awareness. You have had darkness in your past, and to escape that, you have to go through trials to break free of what’s held you back.
This is a time to rid yourself of what has driven you to inaction and forced you into this situation in the first place.
You have trouble letting go. Now is the time. ”
“We don’t teach that in my culture,” Graves said softly. “There is no amount of time that could allow a person to move on.”
“The cards do not lie.”
Kierse put her hand on Graves. He’d suffered so much for the problems with his Druidic heritage. He needed to see himself as she did.
“Finally,” Rosetta said, setting down the final card, “the World.”
Graves looked even more grim. “Wonderful.”
“The World is a good card,” Kierse argued. “It’s the last one in the deck. Doesn’t it mean completion?”
“It can,” Rosetta acknowledged. “You have to go on this journey to get out of the state that you exist in currently. At the end of it, if you complete the trials to self-awareness and let go of your past, your inner and outer self will become one.”
“And we all live happily ever after,” Graves deadpanned.
“But if you begin and do not complete these trials, you will be worse off than you were when you began. You will continue on the wheel of time and go through these trials over and over again, losing sight of the good that you have in your life until you suffer only misery,” Rosetta said hollowly.
“Fucking tarot,” Graves grumbled under his breath.
“Does that mean you have to get your magic back?” Kierse asked. “And if you don’t, you’ll suffer an even worse fate?”
“Sure sounds like it.”
Rosetta leaned back over the cards, breathing heavily. Whatever sight she’d had drained out of her like a sieve. Or was it all performance?
“Enlightening,” she said softly.
“We have our three questions now,” Graves said.
“Yes. Yes,” Rosetta said, reaching for a glass of water and taking a long drink.
“What were you treating Dallas for?”
“Bouts of memory loss. She would lose whole sections of time. She was speaking with her warlock mentor regularly about this occurrence.”
Graves and Kierse exchanged a look. That had to be Kingston. So he still had been in contact with Dallas all this time.
“Kingston,” Kierse said.
Graves nodded. “Yes. I didn’t know they were still in contact.”
“He was trying to help her, and she found me when his tactics didn’t seem to be helping.”
“Mmm,” Graves mused. “She owed a lot of people money. Do you think that was connected to her memory loss?”
Rosetta laughed. “She owed everyone money. She owed me money. But no, I think she borrowed her way to the bottom of a barrel. She was always losing what happened to her, forgetting large swaths of things. She told me that she kept waking up in strange places, out of town, in hotels, that sort of thing, and had no idea what was happening to her.”
“That had to be terrifying,” Kierse said.
“Yes, she was very frightened. I thought we were making headway. Though I couldn’t read her mind, only her soul and future, which was dark and hazy and covered in spiderwebs.
” Rosetta sighed. “We were trying to free her of it, but each crack we made in the haze of her soul brought us to a darker place. It was delicate work.”
Graves dragged a hand down his face. “Sounds like someone was controlling her mind through persuasion.”
Kierse bit her lip. “Could persuasion make her forget as well?”
“Yes,” Graves said. “One last question—do you know who did any of this to her?”
Rosetta shook her head. “I already answered that one earlier, and I didn’t lie. No. Someone strong. Someone very powerful. Maybe one of the most powerful people I’ve ever felt before.”
Graves pushed his chair back. “I think that’s all we need.”
Kierse jumped to her feet. “That’s it?”
“Our three questions are up.”
“Thank you for your time,” Kierse said, offering Rosetta her hand.
She took it, and her eyes widened. “It was a pleasure meeting you. Be wary of the lies spouted by a trusted mouth and the truths from a betrayer.”
Kierse froze at those words. Did it mean Graves was lying to her and Lorcan told her the truth? Or vice versa? Maybe something else altogether. Or nothing at all.
“Um…thanks.”
“Come on, Wren,” Graves said, offering her his hand.
She put her hand in his and let him pull her out of the shop. Whether he was the trusted mouth or the betrayer depended on the day and changed nothing. She still chose him every time.
And they had a killer to find.