Calla was the first to speak. She flipped the three of swords around for the man to look at. On her card, the three swords stabbed into a dark, bleeding heart the color of her lips. "You’ve lost someone close to you."
The man looked at his hands. "I have lost …" he started, then considered before finishing, "… many things."
Maura pursed her lips. One of Calla’s eyebrows edged toward her hair. They darted glances at each other. Blue knew them both well enough to interpret the looks. Maura’s asked, What do you think? Calla’s said, This is off. Persephone’s said nothing.
Maura touched the edge of the five of pentacles. "Money’s a concern," she noted. On her card, a man with a crutch limped through snow under a stained-glass window while a woman held a shawl beneath her chin.
She added, "Because of a woman."
The man’s gaze was unflinching. "My parents had considerable resources. My father was implicated in a business scandal. Now they’re divorced and there is no money. Not for me."
It was a strangely unpleasant way to put it. Relentlessly factual.
Maura wiped her palms on her slacks. She gestured to another card. "And now you’re in a tedious job. It’s something you’re good at but tired of."
His lips were thin with the truth of it.
Persephone touched the first card she had drawn. The knight of pentacles. An armored man with cold eyes surveyed a field from the back of a horse, a coin in his hand. Blue thought if she looked closely at the coin, she could see a shape in it. Three curving lines, a long, beaked triangle. The shape from the churchyard, from Maura’s unmindful drawing, from the journal.
But no, when she looked harder, it was just a faintly drawn, five-pointed star. The pentacle for which the card was named.
Persephone finally spoke. In her small, precise voice, she told the man, "You’re looking for something."
The man’s head jerked toward her.
Calla’s card, beside Persephone’s, was also the knight of pentacles. It was unusual for two decks to agree exactly. Even stranger was to see that Maura’s card was also the knight of pentacles. Three cold-eyed knights surveyed the land before them.
Three again.
Calla said bitterly, "You’re willing to do whatever it takes to find it. You’ve been working at it for years."
"Yes," the man snapped, surprising them all with the ferocity of his response. "But how much longer? Will I find it?"
The three women scanned the cards again, looking for an answer to his question. Blue looked, too. She might not have had the sight, but she knew what the cards were supposed to mean. Her attention moved from the Tower, which meant his life was about to change dramatically, to the last card in the reading, the page of cups. Blue glanced at her frowning mother. It wasn’t that the page of cups was a negative card; in fact, it was the card Maura always said she thought represented Blue when she was doing a reading for herself.
You’re the page of cups, Maura had told her once. Look at all that potential she holds in that cup. Look, she even looks like you.
And there was not just one page of cups in this reading. Like the knight of pentacles, it was tripled. Three young people holding a cup of full of potential, all wearing Blue’s face. Maura’s expression was dark, dark, dark.
Blue’s skin prickled. Suddenly, she felt as if there was no end to the fates she was tied to. Gansey, Adam, that unseeable place in Neeve’s scrying bowl, this strange man sitting beside her. Her pulse was racing.
Maura stood up so quickly that her chair keeled back against the wall.
"The reading’s done," she snapped.
Persephone’s gaze wandered up to Maura’s face, bewildered, and Calla looked confused but delighted at the appearance of conflict. Blue didn’t recognize her mother’s face.
"Excuse me?" the man asked. "The other cards —"
"You heard her," Calla said, all acid. Blue didn’t know if Calla was also uneasy, or if she was merely backing Maura up. "The reading’s over."
"Get out of my house," Maura said. Then, with an obvious attempt at solicitude, "Now. Thank you. Good-bye."
Calla moved aside for Maura to whirl past her to the front door. Maura pointed over the threshold.
Rising to his feet, the man said, "I’m incredibly insulted."
Maura didn’t reply. As soon as he was clear of the doorway, she slammed the door shut behind him. The dishes in the cupboards rattled once again.
Calla had moved to the window. She drew the curtains aside and leaned her forehead against the glass to watch him leave.
Maura paced back and forth beside the table. Blue thought of asking a question, then stopped, then started again. Then stopped. It seemed wrong to ask a question if no one else was.
Persephone said, "What an unpleasant young man."
Calla let the curtains drift shut. She remarked, "I got his license plate number."
"I hope he never finds what he’s looking for," Maura said.
Retrieving her two cards from the table, Persephone said, a little regretfully, "He’s trying awfully hard. I rather think he’ll find something."
Maura whirled toward Blue. "Blue, if you ever see that man again, you just walk the other way."
"No," Calla corrected. "Kick him in the nuts. Then run the other way."
Chapter 14
Helen, Gansey’s older sister, called right as Gansey got to the Parrishes’ dirt road. Accepting phone calls in the Pig was always tricky. The Camaro was a stick shift, to start with, and as loud as a semitruck, to end with, and in between those two things were a host of steering problems, electrical interferences, and grimy gearshift knobs. The upshot was that Helen was barely audible and Gansey nearly drove into the ditch.
"When is Mom’s birthday?" Helen asked. Gansey was simultaneously pleased to hear her voice and annoyed to be bothered by something so trivial. For the most part, he and his sister got along well; Gansey siblings were a rare and complicated species, and they didn’t have to pretend to be something they weren’t around each other.
"You’re the wedding planner," Gansey said as a dog ripped out of nowhere. It barked furiously, trying to bite the Camaro’s tires. "Shouldn’t dates be your realm of expertise?"
"That means you don’t remember," Helen replied. "And I’m not a wedding planner anymore. Well. Part-time. Well. Full-time, but not every day."