“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 with 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.”