Witcha Gonna Do? (Witchington #1)(53)
That’s a mistake because now, instead of my usual non-corrected soft, fuzzy vision of a sleeping Gil in the semidarkness of the room, I have a full twenty-twenty view. The sheets are down low around his hips, and my gaze goes from the defined lines of his abs up to his muscular chest and onto his face, so relaxed in sleep that it’s like getting a look at his secret self, the one he doesn’t share with anyone. It’s intimate enough that I can’t stop looking even though I know I should. That’s when I spot them. Three jagged scars curling around the top of his right shoulder. They’re dull and a pale pink as if they’ve been there for a long time, years at least.
The second realization hits me, I slap my hand over my mouth to keep from making a sound and waking him up.
No one talks much about exile. Why invite that kind of trouble into existence in your life, you know? But the one story every witch knows is the mark of the banished. Upon arrival in exile, three lines are drawn on the banished witch by a red-hot burst of magic that pulsates on the witch’s skin for the first year, burning deeper and deeper into their skin until the scar goes all the way down to the bone. It’s painful enough that it drives some witches to madness.
And Gil got it as a teenager for something he had no control over.
The barbarity and nonsensical cruelty of it all has me blinking back tears. I may be an outré, but I am still a Sherwood, and that means a level of privilege not available to most witches.
I grab my jeans off the floor and yank them on, then pick my sweater up off the lampshade it is hanging from and put it on before tiptoeing out of Gil’s room. I hook a left outside of the door and head down to the lounge car. I know what I need to do.
The tarot cards are in an intricately carved wooden case in the middle of the single dining table. I unlatch it and take out the cards, my heart going a million miles an hour as I shuffle them and start to deal without even bothering to sit down first.
I’m still a null; I know I don’t have what it takes to read the cards with one hundred percent accuracy, but anything seems possible tonight. There’s a frisson of something extra in the air, as noticeable as the scent of chlorine when all the pools open up for the first time in the summer. Maybe this time, everything will click into place.
A tingly, scratchy sensation marches up the back of my neck and the hairs on my arms stand up. I flip the first card. The fool. Again. Okay, okay—new beginnings aren’t bad. The next card is the eight of swords, then comes the knight of cups. This isn’t just weird. It’s unbelievable. Even for someone untrained like me, the tarot never turns out the same a second time. Sure, there could be a few of the same cards, but the exact same cards in the exact same order? Yeah. That isn’t possible.
Of course, telling myself that and getting my hands to stop shaking as I hold the fourth card are two separate things.
Just like before, it is the ace of swords.
I don’t mean to sit down at that moment, but my knees just kinda give out, and the next thing I know, I’m butt-to-velvet-chair-pillow, breathing like I just finished a marathon. So again, the cards are telling me about new beginnings, feeling powerless and stuck, being romantic and following one’s heart, as well as a sudden opportunity and clarity.
The deck is as heavy as a cement block in my hand, and I’m as frozen as my family.
“You gonna keep going or are you too scared?”
I let out a yelp of surprise and jump up from my chair, my heart pounding in my chest, whirling around to see Vance standing in the doorway. His tatted-up arms are crossed and he’s scowling per usual. He’s wearing ratty gym shorts, a vintage Dead Kennedys T-shirt that he may have gotten at a concert a million years ago (unicorns and vampires share the whole live-forever thing), and a hot pink scarf decorated with rainbow-farting unicorns is wrapped around his horn.
“Vance!” I whisper-yell, hoping my chicken-butt scream didn’t already wake everyone up. “You scared the crap out of me.”
“Yeah, I picked up on that.” He strolls over to the table and gives the cards another look. “Interesting.”
Yeah. That is one word for it. I’d go with freakishly shitty and possibly literally cursed. “They’re the same as the last time I did this.”
He makes a huh grunt and then heads over to the bar, reaching over it and pulling a large bottle of hard cider out from underneath. He doesn’t grab one of the glasses sitting on the bar but instead pops the top off of the bottle without the help of an opener. It sails across the room and ends up landing right in the middle of the fool card.
“So what do I do?” I ask.
“You flip the card or you don’t,” he says with a shrug.
“That’s it?” I let out a frustrated groan. “That’s all the advice you’ve got for me?”
I’d been hoping for some guidance. My mom would have told me exactly what to do, in detail, perhaps with a written outline. My sisters would have told me to go with my heart and gone on and on about how cool a repeat reading would be. Birdie and Eli would have advised me to put the deck down and walk away before it got any weirder. Griselda probably would have flipped the card over before I even got a chance to ask the question. And Gil? Well, a few weeks ago I would have said he’d make some cutting comment about outrés messing with magical things they had no business being involved in, but now I’m not so sure.