Page 2 of Guardian

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Winter Collins handed the tarot deck to her client. The woman had introduced herself as Jessica when she’d breezed into the tiny one-room shop just as Winter had been preparing to close for the day. Since it had been a quiet day and she’d barely made any money, she’d decided to invite the woman in.

“Please shuffle the cards,” she instructed her now.

While Jessica followed her instructions, Winter noticed her glancing around the room. Most clients did the same, as if the décor might help them figure out whether she really could tell the future. She couldn’t. But she was an excellent judge of character and could read people. Not only that, she knew what they wanted to hear. So she’d made it her profession to read fortunes.

The crystals that adorned every surface in her little shop, the incense that burned and infused the air with a mystical scent, as well as the pictures of occult artefacts and supernatural symbols that hung on the walls were mere accessories. Just as her gypsy-inspired outfit was all pretense. Yet Winter didn’t feel bad about what she was doing. In today’s world, people needed hope. So what if she provided it by telling her clients that they would get the job they wanted, meet the love of their lives, and overcome their current troubles, no matter what those might be? She wasn’t hurting anybody. Besides, many of her clients came to her because they’d received a gag gift from a friend—particularly since she’d started offering gift cards online—and others because they had nobody to talk to. The same way people went to their family doctor to talk about their problems, they came to her for a glimmer of hope to brighten their dull lives.

“What now?” Jessica interrupted her thoughts.

“Cut the deck,” Winter demanded, speaking slowly and quietly. She’d learned that speaking in a low voice caused the clients to instinctively draw closer. It created an atmosphere of intimacy, as if big secrets were about to be revealed.

When Jessica placed the deck on the purple velvet cloth that covered the small round table between them, Winter took the deck and closed her eyes for a moment, humming a few notes. Then she laid ten cards out in a Celtic Cross pattern, placing them facedown on the table, while the bangles on her wrists jingled.

Just because she didn’t believe in tarot readings, didn’t mean she hadn’t learned the rudimentary rules of her craft. She was familiar with the meaning of all the cards in the deck, whether they displayed upright or upside down, not wanting to be tripped up by a client who might know enough to call her out as the fraud she was.

“What’s your question, Jessica?” Winter asked her customer.

“My question?” There was a look of confusion on Jessica’s face. This was her first reading.

“Yes, the reason you came here today.”

Because there was always a reason. Maybe the man she was in love with wasn’t making a declaration of love as quickly as she’d hoped, or perhaps she’d applied for a job and had still not heard back for an interview. Though, oddly enough, Winter couldn’t put her finger on what concern Jessica had. Normally she got an inkling of her clients’ desires pretty quickly. A lovelorn look, an anxious twitch; there were so many tells that gave away a person’s internal state.

“Uh, yeah, I, uh, wanted to know if my boyfriend is cheating on me,” she finally said.

“Hmm.” Winter nodded. She wouldn’t have guessed that this was what the woman was concerned about. Jessica didn’t appear to be worried about an unfaithful boyfriend. Winter did a mental shrug. Maybe she was just tired and therefore not attuned to the woman’s emotional state.

“Well, then, let’s see,” she said instead and turned over the first card of the Celtic Cross. It was the moon card, a card that suggested that unusual, supernatural events might occur. Though it was also a sign of lunacy. Not something she wanted to tell her client. So she started with a vague comment. “Unusual events brought you here.”

The woman’s eyes widened in surprise.

Winter suppressed a sigh of relief. Even a broken clock was right twice a day. She turned the second card over and followed her intuition in interpreting the High Priestess card, telling her client that she was strong and could weather any storm. She was on autopilot now. Once a client was hooked with a few correct assumptions, they would gobble up anything Winter offered.

By the time Winter had turned over the last card, she’d told Jessica that her boyfriend was true to her, but that she needed to be in charge of her own happiness and not let it be dependent upon another person. Always good advice, no matter the circumstances.

“Thank you, thank you so much,” Jessica said and reached into her purse.

Winter collected the cards from the table and put them back into the stack, setting them neatly to one side, ready for the next day, while Jessica retrieved some cash.

“Is that the right amount?”

Winter glanced at the banknotes and nodded. “Thank you. Please come again.”

Once the door closed behind Jessica, Winter flipped the deadbolt and turned the sign in the door to the side that read Sorry, we’re closed. Then she pulled down the shade on the glass door and turned around.

She didn’t get any further. Blinding pain shot through her forehead, making her knees buckle. She reached for the closest thing to steady herself, the windowsill, and gripped it for support.

“Shit!” she cursed.

This wasn’t the first time this had happened to her. And somehow she knew it wasn’t going to be the last time either. And the pain wasn’t even the worst part. It was only a precursor of the terrible mental assault that would follow. It was much like a nightmare—a nightmare while awake.

She held onto the windowsill, squeezing her eyes shut, hoping against all odds that by closing her eyes she could block out the awful images that pounded down on her like relentless rain.

Poison-green was the first thing she saw. Two dots of a poison-green color that almost blinded her before the dots retreated and a face became visible. The face of a man. An angry man. A violent man. A man who wasn’t human. She knew that much, because no human had eyes like that. Poison-green eyes that seemed to spew pure evil. And those evil eyes were glaring at her.

As her field of vision widened, she was able to make out more. The terrifying man was tall with broad shoulders and a muscular torso clad in what looked like army fatigues. A guerilla fighter? She looked for an ammunition belt slung across the creature’s upper body, but there was none. No gun or rifle either. Instead, in his hand, he clasped a dagger. A dagger that was now veering toward her.