by Rose, Rhea
I really hoped she was alright.
A shiny black Mercedes came slinking down the back lane. Emi and Maisie arrived in style. The window on the driver side slid down. Maisie’s eyes glistened as she stared at me.
“She's gone. I don't know how she got out,” I said without looking at them. Maisie wanted to see the handcuffs, so I gave them to her. She examined them. I went around to Emi’s side and handed her the sword through the window.
“Thanks, Jane,” she said. She didn’t look any worse for wear.
“Hmm, you sure you had them locked?” Maisie asked, referring to the cuffs.
“Oh, yeah.”
Maisie considered this. “Devon probably got here first. For a demon, he seems to have a big attraction for the lighter side of things.”
“Lighter side?” I didn’t know what Maisie was getting at. After seeing Devon dressed in his Voodoo mask I didn’t think that demon was anything but dark.
“Well, this has been a big bust. We didn't capture anyone,” Emilia said, sounding truly disappointed.
“Nope. Well, we caught you, but that doesn't count,” I said. Emilia gave me one of her signature shrugs.
“That's the way it goes sometimes. These characters have been alive a lot longer than you two,” Maisie said.
“But no one’s older than you, right, Maisie,” Emilia said, laughing.
I snickered. ”
“I've got a long memory, death dealer,” Maisie retorted.
Emilia and I exchanged looks. I couldn’t tell if there was a veiled threat in Maisie’s response.
“These tarot characters are smart and powerful,” Maisie said.
“And they don't get out much, do they?” I said.
Maisie gave me a look. “I’ve got a little present for you, something to make up for all your trouble tonight and for having the good sense to save Emi’s sword.
There she goes again, working my weak spot. A present! For me? I seriously could hardly wait.
“Getting the majors to the shop will never be easy, but there's no other way, if you want your freedom back,” Maisie said. They know who you are now, but you don't know them. Be wary. They may have shared some of their powers with others in town. If that's the case then those they help won't want to give up their new found powers very easily.
But I knew something she didn’t, or maybe she did know. There was another way for me to return all the majors to the deck, but Maisie wasn’t talking about that. And if that was true then I had to wonder whose side Maisie was really on. Well, I thought about that for half a second.
Maisie was on Maisie’s side; the deck was stacked in her favour, so to speak. And I always had to keep that in mind. Until now I always believed that Maisie wanted me to find the majors and return them to the deck, so she could get on with her business, whatever that might be, but this night I felt a shift. Maybe that wasn’t Maisie’s game after all, and if that was true then I needed to figure out what she was up to and quickly, before I became anymore entangled in her scheme.
It might already be too late.
I nearly found the courage to ask Maisie about the death of her Cheshire, Anastasia, but I didn’t. Instead, I said, “I want my freedom back and my kitten.” Sia weighed heavily on my mind, and the big secret she and William had revealed to me -- that Maisie was part of the Cheshire Society.
But it had been Barkman who’d given me the best news of all. I had Whitman’s key and with it I could bargain for all of the others. I had to be careful.
From Maisie’s side of the car, I looked over at Emi to see how’d she weigh in on this conversation, but Emilia wouldn’t meet my eyes. She tapped her sword lightly against her shoes. Then she said, “When you do capture a major you gain power, so don't give up,” she said quickly, like she might forget what she was saying if she didn’t say it fast enough.
“Is that true?” I looked at Maisie.
Now Maisie glowered at Emi.
“It is true! Emi, you rock,” I said, gleefully.
Emi did a little bow in her seat. Emi confirmed something I’d already begun to suspect. That as I captured the majors and returned them to the deck, not only could I retain their magic item and use it, if I could get it, but I gained personal power. I became stronger magically.
Yes, Emi. Thanks!
Chapter 12
Which Witch is Wicked ?
Glendie it turned out walked from the fence where I’d locked her up back to my place. Apparently, when a wonky street lamp clicked on at some point and the light empowered her and she was able to pull the cuffs open!
Later, I asked her about that and she explained that she was a more powerful card character than Justine’s because she’d been inside the deck a lot longer. A more powerful major can overpower a weaker major’s magical object like the handcuffs I’d used. It was that simple. With the light from the street lamp, Glendie was stronger than Justine’s handcuffs.
She’d seen me ride off with Barkman and decided to head back to my place, have a beer and feed Sia, who, of course, wasn’t there. What a great friend. She asked for her sunburst pin back, and I made up some lame reason as to why I didn’t have it on me. I wasn’t ready to give that magic object back to her just yet.
When I told her about Emi and the sword, Glendie whistled. She said I should have kept the sword. I could have done some serious bargaining for my freedom with that sword. Emilia Darkiness is one of the top three strongest magical majors in the deck. That had me Curious and I wanted to know who the other two were. I assumed it was Devon, the devil and Maisie, the star, but Glendie wasn’t giving anymore away. She did tell me that I had one of those guesses right and one wrong. Well, that wasn’t hard to figure out. Maisie was more powerful than Devon. Thank goodness! But who was the strongest and most powerful of the majors, besides those two? I wasn’t sure that Glendie even knew that. I looked at her askance. Who was she really? She’d changed. Little by little my friend Glendie was becoming someone I didn’t recognize. She seemed to know an awful lot about the cursed tarot deck and its laws of magic.
*
The next day both Glendie and I had to work a shift together at Koldwell. Brutal. I was exhausted from the night before, but Glendie seemed to be her natural sunny, cheery self. She was chirping me for her sunburst pin. So, I made her a deal. I told her I knew it was powerful and that I really didn’t want to release it to her. She understood, all though, I think for the very first time I detected the merest shadow of unhappiness. I made the bargain and she accepted.
*
Neither of us would keep the sunburst brooch. It would stay in the safety deposit box. She’d have one key and I’d have the other.
We were in the vault, dropping the brooch into a deposit box when Emi came by to do some banking for Maisie. She wanted to know how the gift Maisie gave me had worked out. I told her it was fantastic and she asked to see it. Then we were interrupted. “Jane, I need to speak with you.” Boss Ross’ angry voice made the three of us look in his direction. With the brooch safely locked away, Emi and I stepped out of the vault. We left Glendie in there to sign off.
“Yes?” I said to Ross. He walked over with one of the bank phones in his hand.
“Have you seen the key to Mr. Moore's box? He's on the phone. Seems his bike was stolen and crashed and his key is gone. He thinks you might know something about it.”
Emilia and I exchanged Curious looks.
“No. No key for Barkman Moore.” I lied, but I knew for a fact that it couldn’t be Barkman on the phone.
Ross McCarthy gave me one of his long hard stares, as if he was going to eyeball the truth out of me. Then he looked Emi up and down.
Emi did a cutie-pie pose, which made Ross turn away and made me laugh. Emi stuck out her tongue.
“No problem. Mr. Moore, we can drill the box,” Ross said into the phone.
“How can you be so sure that’s not Barkman on the phone?” Glendie asked me. She’d come out of the vault and over heard me tel
l Emilia that I knew Ross couldn’t be speaking to Barkman. I waved them both away from Ross and over to my work station where I sat down. I showed Emi and Glendie Barkman’s key to the deposit box and the hierophant key. “Two keys and their mine, now.”
“Is that the one I took from Vince?” Emi asked.
“Oh. Yeah, it is.” Glendie’s eyes bugged out at the sight of the keys, but they were going to pop when I showed her my coup de gras.
“Do you have any idea about that hierophant key?” Glendie asked.
“Yes I do have an idea about the hierophant key. That's not Barkman on the phone. It’s one of his cronies, or maybe even Devon! Look at this.”
I pulled up my skirt where a new tattoo of a biker on a Harley was red and raw on my thigh.
“You got a tattoo!” Glendie shouted sounding horrified and pleased at the same time.
“Watch,” I said and made sure I had Glendie’s undivided attention.
I pinched the Barkman tattoo and it screamed. “When I get back to the shop, I’ll card him back into the deck,” I said.
Emilia grinned.
For the moment Barkman was taken care of, and I had Maisie to thank for that.
Chapter 13
An Empress, An Emperor and A Hermit
Mrs. Gottschalk was a real snake in the grass. She always appeared to me as dysfunctional and old fashioned, even old-country, and too out of shape for me to be worried about her as any kind of significant threat. Boy was I wrong.
She made Maisie look like a kindergartener.
I never had Gottschalk pegged for an empress. I remind myself that she’s not real royalty, only the empress in the cursed deck of tarot cards. I’ve learned that the longer a major’s been in the deck, the more powerful he or she is, which means they are more difficult to recapture. The emperor and empress are pretty powerful. They’ve resided in Maisie’s deck a long time, maybe longer than Maisie herself. I’m not sure.
It all began when I got called to work at the academy and waited for an opportunity to do a little snooping. I wanted Whitman out of his office. I couldn’t fathom why he didn’t fire me for my little performance at the Wild Swan. I can only imagine that he wanted back the key I’d dangled at the window two nights earlier.
He’s a very cagey guy; he hadn’t mentioned the key, or the pole dancing, in fact he acted as if none of that ever happened, which is even more disconcerting than if he’d reamed me out for my actions, or demanded to know what was going on with me and the Wild Swan. He doesn’t need to ask me all those questions, or reprimand me because he knows that I know that he is from the emperor card, and I’ve got his ke.y What he doesn’t understand is that I don’t know how to use the key!
My little error was to think he was the hierophant, and it wasn’t until I’d tapped him with the hierophant card back in the Curio shop that I became aware of my booboo.
*
Whitman left his office at lunch time, as usual and that’s when I took my opportunity to enter to see if I might find anything to help me recapture the rest of the majors in a timelier manner. Namely, I was looking for that ring of keys he kept close to his chest. I’d forged a note from Mrs. Gottschalk to meet Whitman at Maisie’s store, stating it was an emergency, and I’d asked Devon and Maisie to call me if she showed.
I moved through Whitman’s private office like a cat in search of a fly. He had a picture of his wife and daughter in a hinged frame sitting on his desk. I’m not sure I even believed he had a real wife and daughter. The daughter didn’t look much like the girl he tangled with that day I followed him to the Wild Swan, but I know hair and makeup can make a person look like someone else.
His disorderly desk fascinated me. My desire to straighten it took hold, and I began by lining his pens up by order of size and then placing them in color rank. He had blue pens, black and red. There were highlighters caught in the wells that framed his blotter. The calendar was on the wrong month. He had a bowl of green mints, spilled. I gasped at the messiness of it all and felt my powers surge as I began to organize, arrange and rearrange the clutter.
In fifteen minutes I’d altered the desktop. I had things in an order that probably made no sense to anyone but me. It looked terrific. By dividing the desk into six sections and creating a set of six frames from the bits and pieces of desk detritus, I created a diorama of sorts. Whitman’s ‘things’ created a narrative of the surface of his professional and personal life. When I got everything exactly the way it needed to be, I began with the chew on my bottom lip, then I felt the familiar body stutter and the nasal raspberry blow out of me and across the desk sending many paper clips flying like small insects. By now I knew that was my magic and something was going to come of this spell, I never knew what. I had a strong urge to go once again through all his desk drawers. This time I found something; taped to the back side of a drawer, a key! I added it to the chain around my neck. My necklace now held mini needle nose pliers, Sia’s collar and now another key.
I left the school. It was still lunch time and I hurried back to Maisie’s. As usual the shop appeared empty. I checked front and back -- no sign of Gottschalk, or Maisie or Devon. On my second look around I noticed the tarot deck box on the front counter with the lid off and the cards spilled!
I went there and picked up the cards and made sure they were all there -- a card was missing!
Gottschalk took me by surprise! I guess she was hiding somewhere in the shop. She came out of nowhere and charged at me, like a rabid hippo in a wig with a tarot card held high. She screamed and slapped me with the star card.
There I was, back inside my card again.
It wasn’t so bad being back. I‘d used a lot of magic to find this special key in Whitman’s desk and for all I know just being in his office zapped me of a lot of my magical energy. He probably had it spell protected, but I was getting stronger. Sitting here on the stool listening to the ruckus over head and studying the key made me realize I was exhausted and needed to restore my ebullience.
But that wasn’t the end of it. The screaming from Gottschalk didn’t stop. I didn’t know what was going on up there, but it sounded bad. I sat on my stool and pushed my fingers into my ears. I held the key I found in Whitman’s desk and let it dangle before my eyes. It looked a little different from the ones on his key ring. It was bigger and dented and scratched. It looked old. Really old. Then it dawned on me. I’d seen this key before. It wasn’t a major character key. It was the key to the underground crypts in the graveyard across the street from the academy.
Later on I learned from theknowitall journals and Maisie’s 24/7 video recordings, that Devon was also in the store that day that Gottschalk caught me. He was in the bathroom of course. Gottschalk, came out of a magic portal in which she hid, until she could attack me with my card. Hiding in a portal meant she possessed her major character key. That much I knew. I was pretty sure Whitman had given it to her. And that meant she was even more difficult to catch.
What I’d missed, and was sorry I hadn’t been witness to, was the battle royal that took place between Devon and Gottschalk in Maisie’s shop. As I sat down here contemplating my situation, I got to hear Devon and Gottschalk battle it out above me and it wasn’t until later tht I watched most of it when Maisie played back the surviving surveillance video. Gottschalk and Devon made the world wrestling federation look like toddlers’ school.
In the video I watched as Gottschalk slapped me with my card. The moment I disappeared, Devon flew out of the backroom and jumped on Gottschalk’s ample back. She was incredibly flexible and reached over her shoulders and grabbed him by the hair and flipped him over her. He landed with a terrible thud behind the front counter. I heard a few groans rise up from down there, but Gottschalk wasted no time finding the demon’s card and flicking it down on Devon.
She missed.
He avoided the card because he flew up from behind the counter -- this time in full demon mode. I’d seen Devon’s eyes change from blue to red, but I’d never
seen the full ensemble before. I have to admit he was scary. He was a quintessential, cliché, devil demon, red with horns and a tail, like he was related to Hell boy. Gottschalk appeared unfazed. He came at her like a nest of hornets, but she was ready for him. She’d ducked behind the counter and quickly came up again. She held his card and the moment Devon made contact with it, he disappeared. That’s when I learned that to put Devon back into the deck he had to be in his demon persona which meant he had to be pretty worked up to let down his Devon disguise and appear in his true nature. With Devon back in the deck and Mrs. Gottschalk a shambles…
…long story short, Maisie walked in.
*
Once I felt my power restored, I knew my way out of the star card by flushing the toilet in the bathroom down there in my limbo space. I’d learned by now that only the Star card had an escape bathroom and of course it had to because it was Maisie’s card, too, and she was boss lady. I ran out of the bathroom, out the back door, into the lane and met Emi back at Little Blossoms Academy.
*
Emilia and I waited for dark before we ran across the street from the school to the graveyard. We walked down the stairs of the crypt following the beam from the flashlight I remembered to bring. The stairs took us underground to the tunnels that ran beneath the graveyard. Emilia refused to walk down the marble steps to the crypt’s door! “Are you kidding me!” I said. “This is your realm. You’re in charge down here. Pull yourself together!” I was terrified, but she was a death dealer! I expected her to handle it better than me. “The school girls come down and smoke cigarettes, so it can’t be that bad!” I said, trying to make us feel better.
“Will you hold my hand?” she asked.
Omg.
“Seriously? I will walk in front. And you tuck in behind.” That seemed to give her courage.
It was dark down here and much bigger than I’d even imagined. I clicked on my flashlight and right away saw the cigarette remnants from the school girls. The trail of butts went quite a ways in. I was surprised that the girls were brave enough to go so deeply into this cavern, but it’s amazing the places addiction will drive a person to. “William said to me that one time we dated that we had to watch for a cairn with a camouflaged stone door in it that led to a large tomb. Inside we’ll find the hierophant and the hermit.” We crept along like two blind turtles.
