by Gwen Hunter
Jane shook her head.
“I see. This card, the Two of Wands, represents the core or central issue of your current situation. When reversed, like this, it is indicative of the erosion of power and influence. Not knowing what to do, being caught off guard, hamstrung because of past decisions. Loss of interest, clarity or faith in a venture.”
“She’ll never give up on Daddy!”
“But do you fear that she will?” Aunt Matilda asked.
Jane’s eyes filled with tears. “Yes.”
“Stop this. Stop it right now,” I said.
As if I hadn’t spoken, Aunt Matilda tapped a third card. “This card represents something you did, or fear you did, to bring the situation about. The Page of Coins, reversed. This is the dark essence of earth, such as a chasm. Unfavorable news from outside. Irrationality, failure to recognize obvious facts, coupled with a decision to do nothing in the face of great need. Wastefulness, lack of focus.”
My hands curled into claws. That she would dare to go through my things, find my mother’s Tarot, my mother’s hated cards, and do a reading with them. That she would dare!
“There was that phone call,” Jane said. “I heard the message. Daddy said it wasn’t important, but I knew he was afraid. And I didn’t do anything about it. I didn’t make him tell me.” Tears gathered in Jane’s eyes.
“Stop this,” I said.
“Could you have forced him to talk?” Aunt Matilda asked. “Even if you had known what was going to happen?”
A red haze grew, closing in from the edges of my vision. Jane sobbed once. Aunt Matilda went on, inexorable. “Stop this.” I spoke so low my words were a hiss of sound.
“The card here represents your beliefs, impressions or expectations.” Aunt Matilda almost smiled. “Ten of Swords. Ruin, crushing defeat. Sadness and desolation in the aftermath of catastrophic and total collapse. A decisive conclusion brought about through the swift and merciless application of overwhelming force working against you. Someone took your father. You believe it was your fault, but it wasn’t. It would have happened no matter what you did.”
“I should have stopped them.”
“You couldn’t.”
“Stop this now!” I shouted, fighting the urge to fling the cards from the table.
Aunt Matilda didn’t even look up, her voice still speaking in the cadence she fell into when she read the cards. “You wanted me to come, Tyler. You wanted me to help her. I am here.”
“Not like this.” I heard the fury in my voice and, beneath it, pleading. And I hated the sound of it.
“Why not like this?”
“It isn’t right. The Tarot is evil.”
“There is nothing evil in the Tarot except that the Holy Roman Church outlawed it centuries ago. Though I love the church, the pope and bishops made an error when they banned the Tarot. They feared it, they feared that God spoke through the gifted and the cards, and not through the church only. They feared loss of worldly power and authority, should God speak through any means but themselves. So, just as the ancient bishops outlawed scripture the common man could read, they banned the cards and crystal balls and silver cups and candle, the tools of the gifted and the charlatan alike. They dictated that scripture would be only in Latin, that men be the only priests, and made our use of our gifts a heresy.”
Aunt Matilda raised soft gray eyes to me. There was kindness there, a kindness so deep and pervasive I felt it enter me and soothe, as if a candle had been lighted in the dark. As if a huge hand had stroked me once and settled my ire. “God does not speak through the cards, Tyler. Nor does the devil, though either could if the heart of the quester was open to them. Only the psychic speaks through the cards. Only the pope’s fear made it heresy. And only your fear, and your mother’s fear before you, makes you tremble.”
She turned back to the Hagall Spread and tapped the next card. “This card at the upper left represents the spiritual history, the things you’ve learned, or in this case, the things in the spiritual world that are affecting this situation. Six of Coins represents success. But when reversed it indicates insolence and conceit with material things. Overconfidence, bad investments and imprudent handing of acquired wealth. Contempt for those less fortunate. Thievery has precipitated the current crisis.”
“I am not afraid,” I said.
Without looking up, she said, “Your mother was. She gifted you with her fear. I know. I often read the cards for you, and have seen you reading your mother’s journal.
“Jane, the card at the upper right represents the metamorphosis of the spiritual situation, and how your knowledge will evolve. The Ace of Coins is fortuitous. The seed of prosperity and material gain, perhaps as yet unseen. A new foundation from which to turn your dreams into reality.”
“I only want my daddy back,” Jane said. “I want to help him.”
“Then you must focus on the practical, understand the dynamics of the natural world. You must search for a gift, or document or inheritance, or an unexpected opportunity for physical achievement. That is what the Ace of Coins is trying to tell you.”
Instantly I thought of the heavy key and the gold.
“The card at the left of the lower line represents the person or qualities that will sustain your spiritual journey. The Two of Cups signifies love, the perfect harmony of union, in romance, friendship—”
“Or my daddy?”
“Or your father. A deep and palpable connection radiating joy and contentment. A great concordance or pledge of fidelity.”
“He’ll come home then.” Jane’s face lit up from within. “He’ll be safe.”
Aunt Matilda didn’t respond to Jane’s plea. “The card in the middle of the lower line represents the qualities that you express in this circumstance. The Ace of Swords, reversed. So many reversed cards.” She sounded pensive, anxious. “The seed of defeat—perhaps as yet unseen.”
Jane’s face plummeted. “I’m going to cause him to die!”
“Hush, child. Study the cards. Let your mind open and focus your gift. The cards are only a tool helping you to understand what you already know. This card may represent how you could be used to prevent disaster. Your Knight of Swords must be prepared to face a challenge, to meet it with the invocation of force. Ace of Swords suggests reason and intelligence misdirected or cast aside, an action that may result in injustice and falsehood. An excessive power abused. It may suggest new ideas or information with dangerous implications.”
Aunt Matilda’s mouth pulled down. “Your aunt is your protection, your Knight. Yet you are the one they want. You are the one they were waiting for. How did they know about you? And who are they?” She shook her head to clear it.
“The card at the right of the lower line represents the person or qualities that will reveal spiritual knowledge. Knight of Coins, when reversed, is your enemy. He is molten magma, slow to action even in the most urgent circumstances. A thinker, a planner, a force of nature that cannot be diverted from the wrong path. The voice of duty and honor utterly divorced from reality. He brings death.”
Aunt Matilda gathered the cards and shuffled them with a whisping sound, three times as she always did. The image overlaid the one from childhood, from the one visit I had paid to the Low Country when I was a child. Aunt Matilda shuffling cards, then turning the deck to face her, paging through the deck one by one as she turned each card upright. The silence in the loft built as I tried to mesh all my feelings, weave my fears into something manageable. It all kept slipping, like silk yarn through my fingers. Jane finally looked up and watched my face.
“My mother thought the cards were evil,” I said. That one thought out of all the others was paramount. Mama had hated the cards. Therefore I should hate them, too.
“Did she write in the journal why she feared them?” Aunt Matilda asked, her voice soft as cat’s feet across my mind.
“No. There are whole years when she didn’t write anything in it.”
She almost smiled. “Your mother
was young when she married. Sixteen. Giselle and your father seemed to be very happy at one time. Seeming to be in tune with each other in mind and heart and purpose. Then your father disappeared. He packed a bag, took the car and left. He went to New York with no warning. No word. No explanation. And your mother lost contact with him, that fine and wondrous mental touch they had shared.
“The police became involved. They found the hotel where he stayed the first night he was in the city. His things were in the room. The bed had not been slept in. He was gone. Vanished.
“Giselle read his cards, over and over. And each time, they said the same thing. He was lost to her. He never came home. We never heard from him again. He never contacted his parents, who died in heartbreak before they turned sixty.” Aunt Matilda put the cards aside and folded her hands, staring at them. “She so feared the truth of the cards that she ran away from them. And because of her fear, you went through your time of gifting alone. I hold myself responsible for that, responsible for the impairment and degradation of your gift. It bloomed deformed because you were alone and afraid. Giselle passed her fear to you, and from you to Jane, had I not come.”
I picked out the one thing I understood from the litany of words. “I would never hurt Jane. Never.”
“Of course not. But you are now her Knight of Swords. Only you can bring her father home. And you are much less than you could have been.”
Jane looked up at me with something odd in her gaze. I recognized it as sympathy. As pity. The look stung me to my core. “I don’t need the damned St. Claire gift to bring Davie home,” I said.
Aunt Matilda finally lifted her head. “Don’t you?” She turned back to Jane. “I am here to help you with your gift. Your father asked me to come when it was your time. And I am here.”
“Davie asked you? Davie asked you to come for Jane?”
When Aunt Matilda didn’t answer, but simply handed Jane the deck of cards again, I turned and strode from the loft. On my way out, I grabbed coat and boots, gloves, scarf. I passed Evan Bartlock at the doorway. I didn’t know how long he had been there. I didn’t ask. I didn’t care.
The red haze of anger was gone, but the specter of jealousy still danced within me.
Evan Bartlock was silent for the first few miles. I didn’t look his way or speak, even after I turned off the tertiary road onto what was little more than a trail, concentrating on the serpentine, two-rut path that wound up the steep side of a hill. Gunning the motor and applying the brake, I ground the four-wheel-drive transmission, maneuvering the deeply grooved snow tires into the melting muck.
Near the midpoint of the hill, we dropped into a deep hole in the pseudoroad and Evan’s head hit the Fiberglas hardtop with a dull thump. He sent a look that accused me of hitting the hole on purpose, so I hit another one. He laughed. “You like doing this to me, don’t you? Showing me what a weak, wuss of a city boy I am and what a tough broad you are?”
“Tough broad? That’s an out-of-date, derogatory term left over from the fifties.” He laughed again and I felt some of the anger melt away like the snow beneath the tires. I couldn’t help it. I stuck my nose in the air. “I’m more like a goddess, Diana perhaps. A huntress, a woman who can outdo any man.” A grin pulled at my lips when he shook his head.
Evan knew I was taking out my temper on the Geo and he didn’t feel the need to try and talk me down from the rage or calm the ruffled feathers of the distraught little female. He even let me drive while I was mad, which was something that even Jubal had never let me do. I relaxed my shoulders and neck and slowed the SUV’s mad rush up the hill. “Yeah. Guess I do like showing you what a city boy you are.” I pulled into a small clearing that was level, more or less, and pulled up the hand brake.
Evan dropped his hold from the support grip over the door. His knuckles were suspiciously white. “So. You want to hear my news while we walk or while we’re still warm and comfy in this matchbox of a vehicle fit only for midgets and grade-schoolers.”
I laughed then and felt the last of the rage slip away, as he had maybe intended. “Midget is not PC. Neither is broad. Tell me now.”
He settled deeper in the worn seat, one knee against the door panel, one against the gear shift. “The cops took some papers when they searched David’s house. Financial papers. A will and life-insurance policy, among other things. They both name Tyler St. Claire as beneficiary.”
I looked at him, startled. “Davie bought a life-insurance policy? Not my brother. He hated those things. Said he had too much money to need life insurance. That was for poor folk like me. How much?”
“You didn’t say anything about the will.”
“I know about the will. I was there when it was drawn up. In the event that something happens to him, I gain custody of Jane and, for a nice fat fee, act as executrix of his estate until she’s old enough. Twenty-one, I think, or maybe it was twenty-four, I don’t remember.” I scrunched up my face, trying to remember, and tapped the steering wheel. A moment later, it all came together. “Spit and decay! The will and the policy are motives for me to do away with my brother. The estate money alone is a small fortune for me.”
“The policy was signed one week prior to David’s disappearance. You have motive. If you hired some thugs, you could buy both means and opportunity. You’re the one who received the two phone calls about David, one likely made by a female, possibly you, calling your machine from Asheville. You have the most to gain by his death. Even if they never find his body, you may be arrested for his murder.”
One fact blazed through the litany of my possible crimes, and it nearly made me founder. I put my head against the steering wheel, against the back of my hands. My voice so hostile it was lost beneath the breeze outside the Tracker, I said, “My brother is not dead.” Quietly I sat back, unhooked my seat belt and slid from the car, emotions I couldn’t even name simmering within me. “I’m Jane’s Knight. I’m going to find my brother and bring him home.” I grabbed my walking stick, slammed the door and started up the hill, GPS unit and Davie’s card in one hand, my walking stick in the other. Evan followed.
It wasn’t spring yet, nowhere near, but some of the trees were in early bud, with rounded, red leaf tips thrusting at the sky. In the day’s warmer air, squirrels chittered and bobbled along branches and capered from tree to tree. A feral cat, black with one white ear, sat behind a root, watching for a mouse. It tilted its head our way and dismissed us as unworthy, tail twitching.
Following a hard, silent climb, we reached the corner stob of the property, the iron almost buried in the loam. It matched the GPS coordinates on the scrap. Breathless, looking firmly to the west for the next marker, I asked, “Do you think I’m responsible for Davie’s disappearance?” The trees thinned out and the rise of the hill became sharper. It was going to be a difficult climb. I could hear Evan’s breathing just over my shoulder, raspy with effort.
“No. I don’t.”
“Why?”
“Gut instinct. Intuition. Insight and perception. All those things.”
I fought a smile, determined to give him nothing. “Sounds suspiciously like St. Claire gifts.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“You trust them, those gifts you said you didn’t have?”
“Yeah. And that really sucks.”
I laughed and looked back at him. His face was rueful, green eyes soft, lips parted for the heavy breathing the hillside required. Something clenched deep inside of me, a trill of heat, like liquid fire over rocks. Ashes and spit…. Shocked at my sudden raw need, I looked beyond him.
Over his shoulder the cat gathered himself and leaped. He landed and leaves flew. The cat settled to its meal, too hungry after the snow to play with its food first. One white ear twitched when it drew blood. Much like Evan Bartlock could devour me if I let him get any closer. If I’d been Aunt Matilda, I would have called it an omen.
I faced west and started along the property line to where the far marker should have been.
We
hiked until after one, checked out two more pieces of property to no avail, then piled into the Tracker and headed back to town. We were hungry, tired, blistered by sun, wind and leather, and were ready for a break. A mile from the shop my cell phone rang. I downshifted and flipped open the phone. “Tyler.”
“What’s the good of being psychic if you can’t tell when trouble’s happening?”
“Jane?”
“You better get back here fast, Aunt Tyler. The cops are here and Aunt Matilda is getting pissed.” The connection clicked off.
I closed the phone, tossed it in Evan’s lap and gunned the little motor. The Tracker clawed its way up a long hill, rounded a corner and slid into a parking slot on the street. I was out and running before the engine stopped, Evan right behind me.
In Bloodstone, Jubal was helping two clients, Noe was ringing up a third, and Isaac was opening a display for a fourth. Aunt Matilda’s imperious tones floated down the stairs, which I took two at a time.
“I have no idea what my nephew did for the government, Mr. Wiccam, and unless you have proof to the contrary, I suggest you cease such baseless innuendo and slanderous speculation.”
I skidded to a halt at the tableau in my loft. Aunt Matilda, arms akimbo, faced down a group of three men in my kitchen. Jane stood behind her, scowling. The Tarot cards were scattered on the table to their side. Evan lifted me like a child, hands beneath my arms, and set me aside so he could see better. I showed great restraint by not cuffing him.
“Your nephew has approximately eighteen-point-two-million dollars stashed in offshore accounts,” Adam Wiccam said. “Far more than he made working as a government employee. And roughly two times what was missing from special government accounts when he disappeared.”
“We’ve had our eyes on David St. Claire and his sister for years,” Harry Boone said to Wiccam, his voice self-important.
“My guess is, you’ve been watching Tyler with the smaller of your two brains,” Aunt Matilda said.
I smothered a laugh and walked into my home. I’d never seen Aunt Matilda do battle, but I was impressed already. She had once been a buxom woman, now withered to a bundle of sticks and sinew and large wags of fatty skin. But there was something of the warrior in her, something fierce as she faced down the men, and something of the courtesan, the actress and the femme fatale in high choler. Though she must have seen me, she didn’t look my way, holding their attention with fierce eyes.
