Page 1 of Death Card

1

Alarm bells echooff the walls of my skull, reverberating throughout my body as I sit up in bed. A sense of utter dread settles itself in my chest as my heart thuds against my rib cage.

The energy in the air is…off. The only way I can explain it is to conjure up an image of a gentle breeze on a warm day and that moment when the wind shifts direction, picking up speed, letting you know that a storm isn’t far.

Slowly, I tuck my bookmark into my library book and strain to listen. Besides the low ocean sounds from my noise machine, the house is silent. Eerily so. There’s no arguing between Gramps and my brother, no music from the radio in the living room. I don’t even hear the usual creak of the floorboards as the old bones of the house settle.

Something’s wrong. I just don’t know what.

Gran was the one who taught me to trust my gut. As leader of our coven and the strongest among us, she could practically see the future. Between her skills in tarot and a sharp intuition, there was nothing my twin brother and I could hide from her.

The difference between Gran and me is that she respected the order of things. According to her, the universe isn’t meant to be changed by human hands, so she viewed herself as powerless tostop the tidal wave of life. Sure, she could sense when something was coming, but she didn’t take any steps to change or prevent it.

That’s never been my way, though, especially now that Gran isn’t here anymore.

Sleep won’t come with a feeling like this, so I slip on a pair of socks and creep to my bedroom door. The hinges whine as I peer into the hallway. Shadows from the night-light splay across the walls, but there’s no movement.

I drift down the hall to Orion’s room. My brother doesn’t have a knack for this sort of thing at all, but I’ll feel less creeped out with him around.

A draft of wind cracks his door before I even have a chance to knock. I push it open farther and peer inside. Empty. Of course it is.

In the year since we lost Gran, Orion’s spent fewer and fewer nights at home. He’s either out drinking at a party, kissing his latest fling, or smoking weed in our cousins’ attic.

It’s frustrating the way he’s shut me out, as if he’s the only one who lost her. You don’t see me sneaking out in the middle of the night. Gramps has enough on his plate. He doesn’t need to deal with the constant fallout of my brother’s self-destruction on top of leading the coven and running for city council. Orion doesn’t seem to care or even notice the extra wrinkles in Gramps’s face, but I do.

I’m halfway back to my room when the doorbell rings, shattering the silence.

Air whooshes from my lungs.There it is.

Nothing good can come of a midnight house call. If it’s one of my brother’s latest hookups, I’m going to strangle him.

With a sigh, I stomp down the stairs and throw open the door to find Theresa LeBlanc standing on our front porch with her young daughter wrapped up in her arms.

Theresa is my third or fourth cousin; honestly, when you’ve got an extended family as large as mine, no one really knows the specifics of how we’re all related to one another. She’s in her midthirties, but the grimace etched into her skin ages her by a decade. She hasn’t been involved much in the coven since she got married; I actually don’t know if I’ve seen her at all in the last two years.

We stare at each other as my mind attempts to calculate what she could be doing here. The silence is broken when her daughter lets out a pained moan.

“Please,” Theresa begs. “You have to help us. She needs healing.”

My mouth drops open and shuts again before I find my words. “I’m sorry,” I apologize. “I don’t know how we can help.”

Gran was the healer of this coven. She tended to the sick until she fell ill herself. Since her death, other members have tried to take her place, but no one else’s magic has proven to be as strong as the former Witch Queen’s.

The little girl writhes in pain, and Theresa winces at every whimper. “Get Ezekiel,” she begs, stomping her foot in frustration. “He’s gotta try. I can’t lose my Marian!”

Guilt sinks in as Gran’s voice echoes in the back of my mind:The coven is family. We never leave a fellow witch out in the cold.

“All right. Come in.”

She sweeps into the house and sets Marian down on the couch. When Theresa pulls the blanket away from her daughter’s face, I get my first full look at the little girl.

Marian’s breathing is labored and heavy. Crystals of sweat glisten on her forehead. Other than the occasional moan and the air wheezing out of her lungs, she’s silent and still. Her eyes remain firmly shut. It’s clear the girl is gravely ill.

More importantly, when I look at her, I can sense the utter wrongness of her situation. Marian’s the shift in the wind I felt.

“What happened to her?” I ask.

“I’m not sure.” Theresa wrings her hands while pacing beside the couch. “She was perfectly fine all day, but then tonight, she didn’t touch her dinner at all. She went to bed right away, but when I checked on her an hour ago, her eyes were…Well, you’ll see.” Theresa rests her hand on Marian’s forehead, and a sob escapes her throat as the girl’s eyes flutter open.