Talya nodded, her lip in her teeth. The momentary confidence in her chin and shoulders disappeared as both slumped, folding in towards her chest. “I don’t know if ‘unstable’ really applies, but… yes.”
"There is an ongoing crisis..." My eyes flicked from card to card. The King of Pentacles reversed was present in the line showing the circumstances, the only court card in the second row. "... caused by a tyrannical, narcissistic man. Dark-complexioned, rooted in materialism, corruption. He has the outward bearing of wisdom, but the inside is rotten. He’s trying to topple an established order of some kind. A man with a cause."
"There's no more death, though?" She sounded hopeful, the kind of hope which stemmed more from need than rational estimation. “I don’t see Death there.”
So she had some experience receiving readings, but not any actual study of the cards. I tapped my nail on The Tower, looming out of the center of the reading like a tombstone. "The Death card rarely indicates literal death. The Tower, on the other hand, often does. The Empress – the card of generation, life, motherhood – is reversed. In a question about mortality, that is not a good card to have."
"Oh no." Her voice had dropped low and breathy.
Unmoved, I looked down once more. To either side of the King of Pentacles, we had three difficult cards: The Six of Pentacles, The Sun reversed and The Moon. I looked to the result, and frowned slightly. The Lovers reversed, card of choices, and the Fool. In tarot, the minor arcana cards are mundane, the infantry, so to speak. They represent human actors and the actions they make. Major Arcana were the battlefield: immutable, often commanding the threads of fate from on high. There was a fork in the road at the end of this question.
"This man, this adversary... he is subtle and clever. He is driven by longing for something he doesn’t really have." I tapped the cards. "The King of Pentacles likes certainty. He is fond of absolute control. They tend to be religious people, or embedded in some other ideology. As for what he wants… he wants power. Material power, specifically. The appearance of generosity."
Talya chewed her lip, her body language beginning to express signs of real panic. “Okay. We… there were some children that went missing in this situation. Can you see what happened to them?”
"The Sun reversed can mean a loss of innocence,” I replied. “The Moon represents things that are hidden, things that take place in the shadows. This is not a reading that presages a good outcome for children, especially with the dark mother card in the form of The Empress."
"Does it say how it ends?" She was looking at the spread with sorrowful recognition.
I let my eyes flick from point to point, finding patterns. Much divination relies on patterns. Time and circumstance is hardly unique, operating on archetypal cycles even as each moment rises fresh along the spiral of time.
"There are two possible outcomes, depending on the choices of the people in question. They make the difficult decision to change their tactics, resist the deceptions and lures which their adversary is apt to employ, and come out mostly whole. Alternatively, they stubbornly adhere to their old ways, and they fail like the others before them. They are tempted to stay their current path, and The Lovers is a strange card. Reversed, it often signifies a kind of fall." I looked up at her. "Is that-"
The question faded as I spoke it. Talya was crying. Tears tracked though her foundation, streaking it like powder.
"Tell me more about the reversed King," she whispered.
Dutifully, I lay out the next three cards. Every single one was upside down: The Magician and The Devil framed the Hanged Man. Three major arcana cards, a total of eight in a spread of thirteen, and most of them were upside down. My stomach fluttered. Whatever force had influenced this reading, they were telling us that there was more at stake than Talya's feelings. This many cards of power meant the issue was serious, perhaps even beyond the scope of the woman asking the question.
"He may be a mage." Looking up, I fixed my gaze and stared at her. "A Phitometrist."
The last word caught her off-guard. Her head snapped up, throwing back her hair from her face. For a moment, I saw something wild in her eyes.
"We... we don't know," she said. "It's possible."
"They are. Malicious, thieving, cunning, deluded and powerful. The opposite of what these cards normally represent. Someone who is manipulative, silver-tongued. Spiritually corrupt and incapable of self-reflection. Blind."
I gathered the cards in, and decided to sate my own curiosity while Talya digested the news. Decisions in tarot were rarely stand-alone, and she seemed to understand that, resting quietly and facing the window as she thought. I shuffled while I asked another question. Who else was involved?
The King of Swords came up again, flanked by the Nine of Swords and Five of Staves. The second triangle consisted of the Page of Cups, the Three of Cups, and Seven of Swords.
"What are you doing?" She glanced across, then down.
"Just making my own query. Is one of the people involved in the military?"
Talya nodded, reaching up to dab at her cheeks with a tissue. “The woman. Former military.”
"She has nightmares and lingering pain. Troubles from war or conflict. The other is less mature than she is, maybe someone religious. A priest, perhaps?"
"He's..." Suddenly, her face closed off and shut down. "No. I can't say any more. I'm sorry."
“I understand the importance of secrets.” I sighed, and sat back. "That was quite a question, Talya Karzan. In summary, I think these people you are alluding to are in serious danger from a power-hungry madman. I hope that was a sufficient answer?"
"It's... you're very good." Talya was visibly nervous, fumbling her napkin, her bag, her wallet. "Look, um, I don't know how to ask it any other way, but... you're more than just a tarot reader, aren't you?"
"You could say that." The words were ashen, flat, as they were every time the world reminded me of what I had lost. I couldn't get the Phitonic push to break past the wards laid into my flesh. “It has been a while since I had any work like this.”
When I refocused on Talya's face, it was imbued with a strange purpose. Her fluffy gray hair hung around her face. "You… look. I know someone who might be able to help. But I… have to talk to him first." She took out a laminated card, scribbled something on the back, and slid it across. It had a brightly painted, stylized cat with a flaming guitar on the front, like a Chinese tattoo design. "This place is called Strange Kitty, it’s in Williamsburg… go there later tonight. Two a.m. or so, like, really late. Show it to the guy at the bar. He knows my handwriting. Tell him you need to speak with Zane, that I sent you to join the meeting. If they forget I called this in, just tell him to call me, okay?"
The Lovers reversed loomed large in my mind's eye, but I reached out, and took it from the table. My life had been spent fixing messy problems; there was good money in it, if the game was good. “Alright.”
With shaking fingers, Talya took a fifty from her purse and slapped it on the table as she stood, bumping the edge of the table hard enough to send her empty cup skittering to the floor. She paused for a moment at the bang of breaking crockery, as if surprised by her own clumsiness. "Oh god, sorry. Here, and... thanks, Rex."
"Do you need anything else?" I watched her, perplexed. “Any help?”
"Yes," she said. She stepped away, eyes wide, and glanced around the deli. If the other occupants had noticed her fumble, none of them cared. It was New York. "Yes. If you’re right, I think we need all the help we can get."
Chapter 8
Strange Kitty was an hour ride on the Pelham and J lines from my Mott Haven squat, a narrow dirty building crammed between a dodgy barbershop and a dirt parking lot. It was marked by a six-by-five-foot steel plate bolted over a pair of metal blast doors. The sign featured a grinning Cheshire cat: silver raised detailing, black burned outline, anodized rainbow fill. It had a mouthful of pointed teeth crafted from old bullet casings. The sign, the building, and my bones thrummed w
ith sound, filling my mouth with clashing colors and textures. It pulsed behind my eyes like migraine aura.
Six motorbikes were parked out on the sidewalk. Harleys, Triumphs, Indians… custom bikes that gleamed with chrome and slick color under the lights on the bar and the street. A crowd of neon signs on the blacked-out windows advertised American beer, German beer, some other kind of beer, and bourbon.
Bikers. Prim little Talya had sent me to a biker bar.
A couple of skinheads lingered outside, smoking and laughing in drunk delirium with a man in white coveralls and a rubber Regan mask. They stared at me in my military surplus sweater and jeans and boots as I dug around in a pocket and came up with some Altoids in a tin. They were clearly expecting something other than candy when I took out three, put them in my mouth, and then very deliberately cracked them under my teeth. The chilly mouthfeel took the edge off the impending sensory assault. Barely.
The unseen bouncer rose up from his crouch by the door to greet me on the way inside. His legs just kept on going until he quite literally towered over me and everyone else on the street. This guy was close to seven feet of sleek muscle. Even under a puffy black SECURITY jacket, he looked like he was cut from red-brown marble.
“How’s it hanging, buddy?” He asked the question with the kind of slow accent and sincere warmth that told me he was from out of state. His shaven scalp was tattooed with leaping fish and a large tribal hook design. It looked Polynesian, maybe Maori.
"It hangs in the breeze, chilly, as usual." I pulled up at a respectful distance, turning the peppermint tin around and around in my hand. I took a moment to gather details and then looked up to be able to meet his eyes. “Nice hair."
“You too.” The quip earned me a guarded twitch at the corners of his mouth. His eyes were green-gray and intelligent, startlingly pale in his dark face. “This place is invite-only after ten, Cuz. You got a card or something?”
I took out the business card Talya had given me and held it up. “I’m here to see someone.”
“No offense, but I don’t recognize you,” he said. His voice was smooth and beveled, a pleasant green rumble under the jagged mess of sound leaking from the club. “Mind telling me who gave you the ticket?”
“Talya,” I said. “She told me to come late. I’m here to help her with a problem.”
His mouth quirked. He sucked on one of his canine teeth, then nodded. “No worries. You have a good night, man.”
“And you.” He opened the door for me, every inch the gentleman. I caught a trace of his cologne on the wind as I walked on through the door and was promptly ejected into filthy chaos.
Strange Kitty was hot, excruciatingly loud, tightly packed, and dirtier than any bar had any right to be. Every inch of wall was covered in sloppy paint or ragged posters, signs, and fliers. A punk band was in full swing on a tiny stage in one corner of the building. Everything smelled of alcohol. If someone dropped a lighter, the place would go up like a barrel bomb.
Most nightclubs at least had the decency to play bass-heavy music, but not Strange Kitty. No… this was the worst of the worst. High slashing treble, screeching, sharp mechanical noise, voices barking out of nowhere like needles to the tongue. My vision whited out as I ran face-first into the wall of sound. I pressed back against something, gasping as my hands cramped and twisted, and rocked in place until my body simply gave up under the assault and began to throb in time with the ‘music’. When my fingers began to work again, I crammed three more mints into my mouth and pushed off through the raucous crowd. I could only hope that 'Zane' had the good grace and common sense to be sitting down somewhere quiet.
I shouldered, elbowed, and slid through to the bar, only to be pushed up against it by a girl on rollerskates who collided with my hip and then bounced off, shrieking with laughter. The bar and bartender were exactly what I expected out of a place like this. The bar itself was old, scratched up and stained by the ghosts of beer long past. A sea of old bras hung from the ceiling above. The bartender was paunchy and balding, with stringy sideburns and a heavily patched leather vest that identified him as ‘Big Ron’. Vietnam vet, ex-Marine, proudly from Tennessee, and blooded. I didn’t recognize his Club patch: a roaring tiger’s head with the letters ‘T.T.C’ staggered around the frayed border, or his rank patch, which read ‘B.C.C’.
"Wassut be, buddy?" He had to shout to be in any way audible.
"Business." I yelled back, and extended him the card. "Talya sent me to speak with Zane."
Big Ron frowned, brow creasing with deep lines. He took the card between stubby fingers. When he read the back, he made the 'oh, right' face, nodding. "Hold up fiddeen minutes, okay?"
"Okay," I took it back, feeling less comfortable by the moment. "Is there a place I can wait?"
"Yeah, out back. Go outside, past the shitters. I’ll tell Zane I sent you there."
The shitters. I forced a brief smile, and stepped back into the crowd before the effort broke my face.
I wound my way through the dancers and drunkards to the back of the club, and burst out into a comparatively quiet, narrow hallway. The walls crawled in my vision, green tracers pounding with the noise that followed me through the door. The music trailed off to a dull roar near the end of the corridor, quiet enough that heavy breathing, moans, and rhythmic thumping became clearly audible from behind one of the bathroom stalls. I scurried by, pulling my gloves up along my wrists while my stomach roiled and lurched with nausea.
The door burst out into blessed fresh air, an open space of relative quiet. I inhaled deeply as I stepped out and looked around, rolling the peppermint across my tongue. The dirt lot I’d seen out front wound around back here, separating Strange Kitty from another free-standing house on the same plot of land – a ramshackle two-story clapboard with boards nailed up over the windows. Ten more motorcycles were parked right outside of it. Two men were counseling a female friend through some kind of drug high, cupping her shoulders and crooning slurred reassurances as she rocked back and forth. Bored young people lounged on plastic chairs: a girl with heated black-rimmed eyes looked me up and down before toasting me with her beer. With nothing to return the gesture, I stared at her for a moment before stumping off to find a place to rest.
There were empty chairs undercover just outside the exit. I found a place to wait where I could sit down and huddle, arms wrapped around my chest against the cold. I never used to feel the cold, but I’d had access to good clothes back then… suits, overcoats, scarves. Camping in an overturned dumpster under a pair of coveralls and two sweaters, cut off from my savings and my dignity, had given me a yardstick by which to measure my former privilege. The sigil-seal had something to do with it as well, no question about it. When it got chilly, the skin around and over it buckled and stiffened.
Over the next fifteen minutes or so, people filtered in and out of Strange Kitty in dribs and drabs, but few were willing to stay out under the drizzle that peppered the dirt separating the club from the house behind it. Eventually, the door opened and the huge bouncer from the front entry ducked through, straightening to search the yard with narrowed eyes. Then he turned and looked down at me, a puzzled frown on his face.
I picked myself up from the chair, knees creaking. “You’re Zane, aren’t you?”
He was about as surprised as I was. “Yeah, that’s me. You’re Rex?”
“The ugliest dog you’ve ever met on two legs,” I said.
For a moment, a real smile lit his face. It passed quickly, even bashfully, before the stony resting biker face returned.
“Zane Salter.” Awkwardly, he offered a hand. With equal awkwardness, I accepted. His grip wasn't as firm as mine, until he felt the power in my arm and cranked it accordingly. A good Russian shake. “I thought you were here to see Talya?”
"I am,” I replied. “But she told me to speak to you. I presume you’re the security screen.”
"Yeah. Tally’s not really the streetwise type." He smiled a Mona Lisa smile, reserved and al
oof and far more perceptive than muscle had any right to be. There was a threat there, but as threats went, it was fairly benign. “And speaking of that, give me your real name. You’re too Continental to be going by the name ‘Rex’.”
“How would you know?” I let go of his hand, but didn’t back away. “I might be an Ancient Roman king.”
He gave me another thin-lipped smile. “You got an accent. Call it a hunch.”
“Fine,” I said. “Alexi.”
“Alexi what?”
I paused for a moment. “Sokolsky.”
“Sokolsky?” Zane echoed. He thought for a moment. Abruptly, his eyes widened. “You’re shitting me. Alexi Sokolsky, as in, the Brighton Beach Mob spook?”
I tensed. The trap had been set by Talya, the honey-pot, and now I was stuck. There was a good chance I could beat Zane to the fence line. From there, it was iffy. “My reputation precedes me in only a few very select circles.”
“Yeah. It does.” He regarded me with an air of deep suspicion. “Circles I don’t want Talya having anything to do with.”
“Spare me from self-righteousness. If you know me by name, then you’ve had dealings with the Red Hook Bratva.” I crossed my arms, frowning up at him. “My name and profession isn’t common knowledge outside of the Organizatsiya.”
“The Club doesn’t run in that scene.” Zane shook his head. “But I know people who get talking sometimes.”
“Who?”
“You expect me to tell you that?” He narrowed his eyes.
“I was invited here to help with a problem, and I can walk straight back out,” I said. “Talya seems to think I can do something for you. If I decide to take the job, I have a right to know what your connection to my ex-Organization is.”
Zane could have exploded. Instead, he mulled my words for several moments, then shrugged. “I fight in the underground scene. Cage fights, pit fights. There’re four or five Russian guys who show up regularly. You know Petro Kravets?”
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