Page 110 of Soft Flannel Hank

Jory looked distressed. She cradled a mug of tea between her palms, long fingers wrapping around the porcelain. She sighed. “It was close. I had to shove your boots under the couch and hope he didn’t notice. I don’t mind lying for you. But that man….”

“What?”

Jory’s eyes lost focus, as if she were staring off into a great distance instead of the far wall of her living room. “I’ve never seen a man look so heartbroken before.”

Esther bit her lips to fight back the tears. “How did he look?”

Jory’s focus returned to Esther’s face with a snap. “Like killing him would have been a mercy.”

A sob caught in Esther’s mouth.

“Do you have to leave him, Esther?”

“I can’t let them hurt him. I—“

“I know,” Jory said quietly. “I know.”

And Esther knew she did. Because Jory understood hard things.

Shannon had been texting her all day, still insisting that she was safe in World’s End. Insisting that her visions were clear—that while the vampires had closed in around her, no harm would come to her or Hank. But Esther couldn’t bring herself to trust that vision. Not when her own intuition was screaming at her so loudly that something big was about to happen. She didn’t have a strong sense of what that was, but she knew, deep in her bones, that someone’s life was about to change forever.

She couldn’t take the chance on that someone being Hank.

“I would stay with him forever if I could,” Esther whispered, wrapping her arms tightly around her chest.

“Do you love him, Esther?”

“Oh, Jory, I love him awful,” Esther said, feeling the quote from her favorite movie,Moonstruck, slide out of her mouth on instinct.

Jory smiled and picked up the ball. “Oh, that’s too bad.”

A watery laugh escaped Esther.

“So what’s your plan now?” Jory asked, setting her mug down on a geode coaster.

“It’s the same. I have to leave. I can’t let them hurt him.”

Jory didn’t answer. She reached down into a basket beneath the coffee table and took out some knitting. Esther didn’t have anything to say anyway, and the silence was companionable. She reached into her backpack and pulled out her tarot cards.

The cards immediately felt warm in her hands as she shifted to the floor so that she could shuffle them on top of the coffee table. She shuffled over and over, relishing the comforting friction of the cards’ edges against her palms and fingers.

Her nerves settled, and her body relaxed slightly. She shuffled for a long time before her intuition began to spark gently. A reading, then.

Esther closed her eyes and pictured a spread. She took a deep breath and, with her eyes still closed, slid the cards out of the deck that felt electric under her touch, slipping the into place. One. Two. Three.

She opened her eyes and took another deep, fortifying breath as she flipped over the left card. What has happened. She saw the upside-down image of the Knight of Swords charging into the fray of battle. Impulsiveness. Lack of foresight and direction. Charging in unprepared. A casual lack of regard for consequences.

It made Esther angry.

She had been impulsive. She had been reckless. But shehadcared about consequences. The only consequence that mattered—keeping Hank safe. He was the one recklessly throwing himself in harm’s way without a single thought for what might happen to him.

With her mouth set in a thin line, Esther flipped the center card. What is happening now. The Ten of Cups. Also reversed. Esther felt her stomach drop heavily into the pit of her abdomen. The Ten of Cups was the card of happily-ever-afters. Reversed, it was the card of broken homes. Broken hearts. Distance. Pulling apart and away.

She sucked in a quick breath. It was true. She had pulled away and set herself apart from Hank. She had broken his heart and, in doing so, destroyed any of her own chances for real happiness in this life. But, goddammit, she’d done it for him.

Esther closed her eyes and inhaled deeply as she flipped the third card. What is yet to come. She opened them. The Tower. The card nearly glowed against the warm wood table, and Esther felt that tunneling, tumbling sort of vertigo that accompanied a vision right before she fell headfirst into it. Her sight grew dark around the edges until all she could see was the Tower, the flames licking at the window.

Jory’s living room faded to nothing around her, and Esther felt herself hurtled forward into the darkness. When her vision cleared, she was standing in a dark backyard. Esther looked around, taking in the bright, waxing moon overhead, half full now. It gave enough light for her to see the shed, the neatly piled stacks of wood. Hank’s backyard.