Witcha Gonna Do? (Witchington #1)(7)
“There’s more to it than just book learning,” she says. “It’s an art, a craft, a—”
“Magical gift, I know. I’m aware. Just let me try.” I blink back the tears that are becoming a little too common today. Stupid PMS—now that someone needs to come up with a spell to fix. “Please.”
Griselda lets out a little huff of a sigh and grumbles something under her breath, but she takes out the jewel-colored tarot deck from the carved olive-wood box on top of her kitchen table. “All right then, go ahead.”
The oversized cards buzz in my hands the second I touch them, almost like a little hello from a realm that is beyond me. It has always been like this with magical things for me. It’s like looking through the Galdr Magical Shop window and seeing all of the wands, jewelry, and staffs, knowing they are more than just wood, metal, and beads, but I can’t ever access any of that. If I press my hands to the window, they’d say hello with a soft vibration that starts at my fingertips and goes through my body in a slow wave, but that’s it, the rest is beyond my outré abilities. It is like having sex but not having an orgasm—it feels good, but it isn’t the same whoosh of pleasure that blows your back out.
“Thank you,” I say as I sit down at the table and start shuffling.
I don’t have to think of my question, it’s right there at the front of my mind as I deal the cards, laying them out in the order Griselda taught me. A sharp sizzle travels up my arm as I turn over the first card. The fool. Thanks universe, I appreciate the reminder. Of course, in this case that means new beginnings. With Gil? Yeah, I don’t think so.
That is followed by the eight of swords, the knight of cups, and the ace of swords. Okay, I understand so far. The cards tell me a story about feeling limited (hello, a little on the nose there), being romantic and following one’s heart to the extent of even having an actual knight in shining armor (a woman has to have a dream), as well as a sudden opportunity and clarity (please, yes, I’d really like to know the whole point of nonmagical me in a magical world).
Hesitating before touching the final card in the spread, I glance up at Griselda. She’s stirring her “soaking socks,” which are probably a potion to cure a bunion, if my memory of her favorite spell book and knowledge of her many foot complaints aren’t off. She’s not looking at me, but her shoulders are tense and she’s gripping the wooden spoon white-knuckle tight. Whatever the last card shows is the key to all of this. It has to be. Why else would the town’s second most badass witch (yeah, Mom is very much number one, not that I would ever say so to Griselda) be so nervous?
I flip the last card and my stomach drops at the sight of a highly decorative globe. The world card doesn’t just mean completion and the celebration of life with the Sherwoods. It also represents the family’s most powerful member. It’s my sister Leona’s signature card. Mine? Well, since the universe has such a shit sense of humor, it is the magician (action and the power to manifest, my ass). That’s neither here nor there, though, because seeing the world card, my sister’s card, while asking about why Gil keeps showing up in my life means only one thing.
“He’s going to marry Leona?”
“Is that what the cards say?” Griselda asks, her tone neutral. “That’s not what they’ve ever told me.”
I hold up the world card, silently asking for an explanation.
Griselda doesn’t say anything, she just goes back to stirring her socks, leaving me to process her words, which she’s obviously not going to explain further, while putting the deck back in order.
Leona and Gil?
Gil and Leona?
That is not a pairing I’d ever expect even if he wasn’t a total ass. Fine, he is amazingly hot with that broad-shouldered-brooding-intellectual thing he has going, but he isn’t Leona’s type. She goes for the extroverted wild guys with a roster almost as long as hers. Smarmy know-it-alls with sinewy forearms and an ass that looks good even in khakis? Yeah, not her kind of guy.
Or do I have it all wrong? I look at the card with the gilded globe on it one last time before adding it to the deck. What have I missed?
“The cards see more than our eyes can,” Griselda says before lifting the spoon and tasting the broth.
Please, universe, don’t let her actually be soaking socks in that cauldron.
Whether the pot has tube socks or tube steak, gross as one option may be, doesn’t matter as much as the cards though. Griselda has to be right. The cards have to be seeing something that my outré self can’t when they look at a total prick like Gil Connolly—otherwise my poor sister is screwed, or I screwed up the reading like I do everything else.
All I know is that, per usual, I have more questions than answers.
Chapter Four
Gil . . .
It’s not easy to make a covert call from this deep in Sherwood territory, but the Council isn’t the type of organization to accept “it’s damn near impossible” as an answer, which is why I am fiddling with a cell phone SIM card like an outré who can’t summon a simple telepathy spell.
Ancient, secretive, and beholden to no witch, the Council was established at the same time as the Declaration of Independence. By the time the Bill of Rights had been added to the Constitution, the Council was well established as the secret, fourth branch of government. Congress makes the laws, the executive branch enforces them, the judicial branch interprets them, and the Council are the secret and silent enforcers when things fall through the cracks.