A Lesson in Vengeance(33)

“Have you heard of tasseography?” Ellis asks. I can see now that the book she pulled out of her bag is titled Reading the Future in Tea. She must have gotten it out of the occult collection in the library.

“Tea leaves?”

A smile curls one corner of Ellis’s mouth; her lipstick isn’t even smudged. For some reason that frustrates me. “I thought you might. It seems very like you, with the whole interest in tarot and so on.”

“You make me sound like—” I can’t finish the sentence, but I’m sure my flushed cheeks communicate most of what I’d intended to say.

“No, I think it’s endearing,” Ellis says, which serves to make me feel even worse. “I’ve been reading about it for my book, of course. I think I’m going to write Tamsyn Penhaligon as a fortune-teller, so I’d better learn how to fortune-tell myself. Do you mind?”

I arch my brows questioningly.

“Can I read your tea leaves?” Ellis clarifies.

“Oh.” I almost don’t want her to. Every time I’ve read my own future in the cards, it’s been dark and incomprehensible. I’m not sure I want Ellis to see me so keenly. But I find myself saying, “All right,” and the grin that splits Ellis’s face is almost worth it.

“Fantastic. Go on, pick up your cup….No, other hand. Left hand. Swirl what’s left of the tea three times from left to right.”

“Now what?”

“Now put the cup upside down on your saucer and leave it there.”

I do. The clink of china is too loud in the quiet room. “I can’t believe you decided to learn how to read tea leaves.”

“Method writer, remember?”

Perhaps it’s not that Ellis learned tasseography that surprises me. It’s that she chose to learn about it from that book she’s now perusing so closely, finger skimming down the text on the page as if to keep her place. It’s easier to imagine her learning from experience instead of from a book: Ellis in some smoky London salon, lounging on a silk chaise and smoking opium while a veiled mystic reads her future from the grounds.

We sit there for about a minute before Ellis gives me permission to rotate my cup three times then lift it upright.

“Which direction is south?” she asks, and when I tell her she makes me point the cup handle that way, then reaches across the table to slide my saucer toward her.

Ellis curves over the cup, her gaze flicking from the little bundle of leaves clustered opposite the handle to the flecks smeared about its belly. Her face is set in a mask of concentration; I wish I had the ability to slip into her mind and page through her thoughts, to read them as easily as she seems to read me.

“Was I supposed to think of a question?” With tarot, usually you ask a question. I don’t know if the same holds true for tea leaves.

“Oh, I have no idea. I suppose I can read your fortune more generally, if that’s all right with you.”

It’s very all right. I’d rather her ask a broad question and be unable to interpret the answer than ask anything specific myself—like whether Alex’s ghost will leave me alone. Like whether I’ll ever be able to piece myself back together again.

“There’s a cross,” Ellis says. She flips through the tea leaf book to the index, trails her finger down the long list of keywords until she finds the right one. “That represents death—not surprising, perhaps, given your history. It’s toward the bottom of the cup, which signifies events that occurred in the past.”

I lean forward a little, trying to peer beyond the fall of Ellis’s errant hair and into the cup. I can’t make sense of any of it, of course.

“A mountain,” she says. “That’s usually powerful friends. Oh, and apparently you’re going to be very successful in your career, that’s nice. Maybe that’s where you meet said powerful friends?” She trades me a quick grin. “We also have something that looks like a hand.” She has to check the book again, flipping back and forth between chapters. “That means relationships, either you helping other people or them helping you. Or it means justice. But that seems like quite the departure from the other interpretation, doesn’t it?”

“I think you’re very bad at this,” I inform her with a wry grin.

She smiles and tilts over the teacup again. “All right, last one. This looks kind of like a bird…that means dangerous situations. But it could also mean you’re being watched by spirits—I’m not sure which. Perhaps the ghosts of the Dalloway Five come to haunt their witchy inheritor?”

Spirits. Or spirit, singular. I’ve tried to ignore the heaviness in this house, but after last night…that handprint on the window, right after I realized the truth…it’s too much of a coincidence. My tongue tastes metallic.

Alex used to say I was too obsessed with the Dalloway Five, with magic in general. She told me I was being irrational. She told me I was crazy.

But I’m not irrational, and I’m not crazy.

Some things are too dark to be seen—or explained.

I must have shivered visibly, because Ellis shuts the book and pushes the cup away, her gaze meeting mine across the table.

“Don’t worry,” I tell her with a false smile, “I’m not frightened by some soggy—”

The crash of ceramic shattering is so loud it feels like a gunshot. I’m on my feet, dizzy, staring across the room, where a potted plant just fell off the fireplace mantel, scattering pottery shards and black soil across the hardwood floor.