Page 22 of Death Card

Lizzie smacks my arm. “Go, Gramps! This is good! Maybe you can ask her out—”

“I can’t let myself like her,” I rush to say.

Her eyebrows draw together. “Why not?”

I squeeze my eyes shut, but the vision replays anyway. There’s the sharp intake of breath as the blade of the knife pierces my chest, the gurgle of blood, and Joelle’s wide-eyed gaze.

“She’s got baggage,” I blurt out. “I gave her a reading, and it was bad. Like, colossally so. I can’t date this girl; we have no future together.”

Lizzie huffs and pushes out of her seat. She paces across the porch, clenching and unclenching her fists.

“You spend too much time thinking about the future!” she scolds, standing in front of me with her hands on both hips. “I guess it makes sense. I’m sure I would too if I could see visions, but you can’t let them stop you from living your life. You had a bad reading. So what? If you like her, then go for it.”

“It’s not that easy,” I say.

“Yeah, I know you’re not telling me the whole story.” She smirks when my mouth drops open. “Didn’t I just say that I can read you? I know when you’re keeping secrets, and that’s okay!” she rushes to add. “But please don’t count yourself out before you’ve even tried. She could be so good for you.”

Honestly, I think she could be, too—in another version of reality. One where I’m also enrolled at Tulane and I’m able to take her out on a real date. In that version, we’d just be two girls who want to get to know each other better.

But the vision has destroyed any chances of that happening.

“I can’t, Lizzie. End of story.”

She frowns and sinks back into the chair next to me. Her tone is low when she speaks. “If you won’t even pull the trigger on getting to know this girl, then will you go after anything you want in life? Or have you settled?”

Anger washes over me. I know what she’s implying. It’s the same thing Aunt Roberta said at Gran’s remembrance party. They both think I’m not doing enough and that I’m wasting my potential by not going to college right away.

“Lizzie,” I warn.

“It’s so simple,” she says.

“But it’s not! Can’t you see that?” I look away from her, at a car passing by the house. “Nothing in my life is simple.”

I wish more than anything that I could be a normal girl. The power in my blood complicates everything.

The front door swings open, and Orion pokes his head out. “Hey, we’re watchingJohn Wick. Get in here.”

Lizzie and I settle in on the love seat with a bowl of popcorn. As the movie begins, I glance around the room at all these people who love me, and my heart stings with the knowledge that I’m keeping such a huge secret from them.

But there’s no way I can breathe a word of this, even if Gramps allowed me to. Because after I tell people outside of the family, the vision becomes real. At least that’s the twisted logic my stressed brain is operating under.

There’s something else, too: I’m not so sure I’m going to be able to save my own life. And I’m not ready for my friends to look at me like a dead girl walking.

All of a sudden, every phone in the room lights up with an incoming notification. I glance down at my screen to see a message from the coven group chat.

Emergency meeting at the rec center. 9:30 tonight.

“Y’all know anything about this?” Chris asks.

“Not a clue,” I say, just as another text pops up from Gramps. This time, it’s been sent only to Orion and me.

There’s been a death…

10

The drive overto the rec center is silent save for the low hum of the radio. All five of us are stuffed into Malik’s car. Lizzie’s the smallest, so she ended up with the dreaded middle seat. She rests her head on Chris’s shoulder, looking at a video on his phone.

My screen seems too bright in the darkened interior, but I can’t stop staring at Gramps’s text. He didn’t reply to us when we asked for more details. I have this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that this has to do with what happened to little Marian. The same sensation that I felt right before Theresa rang our doorbell sends goose bumps down my arms.