Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 129951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 650(@200wpm)___ 520(@250wpm)___ 433(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 129951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 650(@200wpm)___ 520(@250wpm)___ 433(@300wpm)
Prue seated herself beside her clairvoyant. “Do you have any idea what it might be?”
“No, but it’s a very strong disturbance.”
“We’re having Cook’s homemade gnocchi for dinner tonight,” Tempie leaned into me again to say in an undertone. “I don’t have time to go searching for Obi-Wan Kenobi.”
I elbowed her.
Ravenna eyed her.
Then she reached to the coffee table, picked up a set of cards and offered them to Tempie.
“You first,” she said.
Tempie raised one hand, palm out, and turned her head to the side: the universal aristocrat’s gesture of “no thanks.”
“Anyone who walks through that door gets read,” Ravenna stated inflexibly. “If you’re not going to be read, I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
Hmm.
Seemed Ravenna had some backbone.
With some interest, I watched the staring contest play out.
But I knew how it would end.
And it ended that way, with Tempie lighting the barest glance on Prue before she reached out and took the cards.
“You can shuffle them,” Ravenna educated. “You can move them around. You can simply just hold them. And when you feel you’re ready, give them back to me.”
I pressed my lips together to hide my smile when Tempie instantly handed the cards back.
“Ladies, take seats,” Ravenna invited.
There was a couch with two armchairs opposite, a coffee table in between.
Tempie and I took the chairs.
“Chassie, you can bring one of the kitchen chairs over when you’re done,” Prue called.
“Okay,” Chassie replied from the kitchen.
She did this as I heard the switch go off on the electric kettle.
“Is there anything you want me to look for?” Ravenna asked Tempie.
“Aren’t you supposed to ask that before you give me the cards?” Tempie asked Ravenna.
Ravenna dipped her ear to her shoulder. “Would you like to tell me how to read them as well?”
Tempie fluttered a desultory hand at the coffee table. “Carry on. Let’s do a general reading.”
Immediately, Ravenna flipped three cards on the table.
They were neither major nor minor arcana. Prue told me ages ago that Ravenna didn’t read with a regular deck but used other cards.
Even though I knew there were many decks, this was one of the reasons I thought she might be a fraud. Easier to hide behind those since, at least the major arcana, such as Death (change), The Chariot (triumph), The World (completion), was easy to read.
“Intrigue,” Ravenna said, gazing at the three cards. “Inaction.” A long pause and then, “In love.”
The room went wired on the last two words.
And although we were all feeling that, mostly it was coming from Tempie.
“This,”—Ravenna tapped what I was guessing was the Intrigue card—“is beyond your control, and although in your realm, it’s not in your inner sanctum. You will witness it, but it only peripherally involves you, and you have no control over it.”
She put a finger on that and scooched that card aside.
She then picked up the card that I suspected was Inaction. “This is a problem.”
She picked up the other card.
In Love.
“Because this is at stake.”
She dropped both cards and tossed two more down.
Without lifting her head from studying them, she said, “You must go forth purposefully, and with consideration, not for yourself, but for the one you’ve won, but you may lose if you don’t act promptly.”
She tipped her head back and skewered Tempie with her eyes.
“Your actions have been selfless, but now that you’re hiding behind them, they’ve become nothing but selfish.”
Oh boy.
Prue gave me huge eyes.
I wrinkled my nose at her.
A tea mug showed up in front of my face. I took it.
Chastity passed the rest of them around, then set a kitchen chair between Tempie and me and sat down.
Prue and Chassie studiously avoided looking at Tempie through all this.
But I chanced a glance, and I saw her face was the study of banal, but she wasn’t fooling me.
She was holding her shoulders very tight, and there was a feeling of almost desperate fear emanating from her.
I wasn’t thinking Ravenna was a charlatan anymore.
Yeesh.
The woman could read.
“Would you like me to pull more?” Ravenna offered.
“No, that’ll be fine,” Tempie said like she was about to ask for the bill.
Ravenna gave her a long look, then her expression shifted to genuine affection when she turned to Prue.
“Ready?” she asked.
Prue nodded eagerly.
Ravenna gathered the cards while we all sipped tea (for your information, Chassie could make a lovely spot of tea, then again, she was English, they were born with natural talent at that). She gave the cards to Prue.
Prue shuffled them, her face screwed up, and she did both a long time.
Then she returned the cards to Ravenna.
Ravenna immediately threw down five.
She looked at them.
She looked at them more.
She squinted her eyes at them.
She then turned to Prue with some alarm and shared, “Your cards are everywhere. What’s happening?”
“I asked them to tell me where Charlie’s letters to Harmony were,” she said.
“Letters?” Ravenna asked.