Struck (25 page)

I felt in my pocket for the tarot card Katrina had stuck in my locker. Before I knew what I was doing, I had crossed the street and stood at the psychic’s front door.
KNOCK
, read a plaque the size of a stick of gum affixed above the doorknob. I did.

Katrina and Mr. Kale said the Tower girl would always draw the Tower card. I had drawn it twice from Katrina’s deck, which was strange, but could still easily be explained by chance. I wanted to prove once and for all that I was not the Tower girl. I would ask this psychic for a tarot reading, and I would see what a deck other than Katrina’s turned up.

The door cracked and an eye peered out at me. “Yes? Who’s there?” The woman’s voice was a deep gurgle.

I put on my warmest smile. “I’d like a tarot reading.”

The door swung open. “Come in,” said a tiny, hunched figure in a layered, velvet skirt with a knitted shawl around her shoulders. Her hair was long and gray and hung past her breasts. Looked like she hadn’t brushed it that month.

Great, I thought. Of all the psychics in L.A., I chose the fortune-teller who looked like an escaped carny. Still, I followed the woman inside.

“What did you say your name was?” the old woman asked as she led me down a dark hallway to a room at the rear of the house. The whole place smelled like onions and made my eyes water. It was decorated in stereotypical fortune-teller motifs, with hunks of crystal displayed in
glass cabinets, beads hanging in doorways, patchy pillows and blankets everywhere.

“I didn’t,” I said. “It’s Mia.”

“I am Madam Lupescu.” Of course she was. “Have a seat.”

She gestured to a small round table laid with a lace tablecloth. All it needed was a crystal ball.

I sat down, and she sat across from me and stared at me. Then the awkwardness set in.

“So,” I said, needing to fill the silence, “how long have you been a psychic?”

“Is that what you came to find out?” Her eyes peered at me through weathered eyelids that sagged like an elephant’s.

“No, I was just—”

“You were being polite. Making small talk. Wasting time when there is so little time left to waste.” She smiled, showing yellow teeth that had been worn down to the nubs. She leaned toward me over the table and I smelled the coffee on her breath, and it made me like coffee quite a bit less. “Let’s begin,” she said.

She produced a velvet pouch from a pocket in her voluminous skirt, loosened the drawstring, and dropped a deck of cards into her hand. Like Katrina’s deck, this one looked old. The woman shuffled, her gnarled fingers surprisingly dexterous as the cards whipped through them. She placed the deck facedown on the table. “Cut to the left,” she said.

I did as I was told. Madam Lupescu took the deck and dealt five cards, laying them out in the shape of an even-sided cross.

I studied the cards intently, and then exhaled a pent-up breath and smiled.

The Tower card was not among those Madam Lupescu had dealt.

I was not the Tower girl.

I was free. I could get up and leave now, drop my last ten dollars on the table and head for the door. It would be rude to simply walk out. I would sit patiently and hear Madam Lupescu’s reading, dismiss it, and then move on with my life.

“Major arcana.” The old woman whistled, then pointed with three fingers to the three cards in the middle. “Past, present, future,” she said, then indicated first the bottom card and then the top. “Reason and potential.”

She pointed to the card that represented my past. It depicted a glowing orb in the sky and two baying hounds. “The Moon. It is fear. Self-deception. Disorientation.”

Okay. Fair enough.

She indicated the reason card. I didn’t like this one. It showed a horned red beast with a forked tail that wrapped around a man and a woman.

“The Devil. He is the reason for your Moon. Your
fear
. He is bondage and ignorance. Slavery and hopelessness. But this …” She pointed to the top card: potential. It showed a man in a red robe that reminded me way too much of the Seekers’ cloaks. He was sitting on a throne, holding a golden scepter and wearing a gaudy golden crown. “The Hierophant.”

My mouth went dry. “The … the Hierophant? That’s my—” I had to swallow. “My potential?”

The old woman nodded. “He represents power and knowledge, and commands respect. He sits on the throne between law and liberty, obedience and disobedience. Between heaven and earth.”

“What about those two?” I said quickly, pointing to present and future. My present card showed a winged monkey perched on a wheel. “This is the Wheel of Fortune, right?”

“Yes,” Madam Lupescu confirmed. “Destiny. It marks a turning point.”

I chewed my lip. “What about my future?” I felt a squirm of nervousness in my stomach, like I had swallowed something that wasn’t quite dead yet.

My future card showed a naked man and woman holding hands.

Madam Lupescu scowled thoughtfully at the card. She picked at one corner of it and revealed—

My breath stopped.

“Odd.” Madam Lupescu peeled the card with the naked man and woman off the card stuck to its back. Then she laid the two side by side.

I still couldn’t breathe.

She tapped her fingernail on the card with the naked people. “The Lovers.”

She tapped her fingernail on the card she had revealed, which showed a tower on the edge of a cliff. A lightning bolt cleaving it in two. People falling from it, on their way toward the jagged rocks below.

“The Tower,” she said.

I shook my head, finding my breath. “It’s a mistake, right? The Lovers … that’s my future.”

“Or the Tower. You must choose one or the other, but you cannot have both.”

“I have a choice?”

“You always have a choice.”

I looked at the Tower card. The falling people with their accusing eyes. “What does it mean?” I asked. “The Tower.”

“For you?” Madam Lupescu studied my face, as though the answer were advertised there. “Letting go,” she said with a sharp nod. “Exposing what is hidden. Seeing the way of things in a sudden flash. And letting go. Letting everything go.”

I nodded. “How much do I owe you?”

“Donation only.”

I took my wallet out of my bag. “That’s a nice crystal,” I said, pointing at the glass case behind Madam Lupescu. When she turned her head, I snatched the Lovers card and stuck it in my wallet, then laid a ten-dollar bill on the table.

“Thanks,” I said, and I meant it. Madam Lupescu didn’t know it, but she’d set me free.

Once outside, I took the Lovers card and stuck it into my back pocket, next to Jeremy’s note.

I had a choice
, Madam Lupescu had said.

I took out Katrina’s Tower card and tossed it onto the sidewalk. Let someone else pick up the Tower.

I had made my choice. I could see him across the street, waiting for me on the porch.

And I realized something … my skin had stopped tingling.

The storm, if it had ever existed, was gone.

31

JEREMY RAN INTO
the street to meet me halfway. His blue eyes searched me as though looking for some sign that I’d been accosted.

“What took you so long?” he demanded. “I told you to meet me after school. That was hours ago. I was worried.”

My hand rested on the tarot card hidden in my pocket. The Lovers.

The tingling storm warning on my skin remained as silent as if it had never been.

I smiled and shook my head. “There’s nothing to worry about anymore.”

There is no storm
.

Jeremy’s eyes narrowed, a divot forming between them. “You’re sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine,” I assured him. “The streets are completely jammed, that’s why I’m late. It’s like everyone left in the city is trying to get out.” Everyone who wasn’t a Follower or a Seeker or a rover.

Jeremy’s shoulders sagged, as though he’d deflated. His hair hung over his eyes.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” I touched his arm, felt the heat
radiating through his shirt. He’d said I could touch him, but he couldn’t trust himself to touch me without dragging me into one of his visions. But even this gesture made heat dance in my stomach and my knees go soft.

Jeremy shook his head, not meeting my eyes. “I screwed up,” he said. “I shouldn’t have waited so long. Now it’s too late.”

My feeling that everything was going to be okay began to dissipate, but I fought to maintain it.

There is no storm
.

“Let’s go inside,” Jeremy said. “We’ll talk there.”

I tried the light switch on the wall inside, but nothing happened. The electricity was off and the sun had set, leaving behind nothing but shadows.

Jeremy navigated his way through the dark house easily, and a moment later I heard the scrape of a match. He ran the flame along a row of candles on the fireplace mantel. Then he placed a few logs on the hearth, crumpled newspaper, and within minutes had a fire going.

I watched him in silence until he was finished. Once there was light, I moved farther into the living room, turning in a circle to take it in. There wasn’t much to see. The only furniture was a lumpy couch with a tattered slipcover facing the fireplace. No TV or bookshelves or pictures on the walls. The only item in the room that stood out was a black leather satchel, the kind that looked like it hung on the side of a motorcycle. I guessed this belonged to Jeremy,
who was still crouched by the fire, staring into the flames. Orange light flickered in his eyes.

“Is this where you live?” I asked, trying not to sound disbelieving. But it was such a sad, empty little house.

“No.” Jeremy blew on the fire, and the flames grew. He shifted the glowing logs with a wrought-iron poker. “The people who lived here left after the quake.”

“So you just took over and made yourself at home?” I would have been pissed if someone did that at my house.

“I lived here once. Long time ago, with my mom.” He raised his eyes to the ceiling, as though he could see something there that I couldn’t. “This was our house before she died. I came back to check on it after the quake, make sure it was still standing. It was empty, so I started coming here. To get away.”

I sat down on the lumpy couch. “What are you trying to get away from?” I asked.

Jeremy’s neck tensed until I could see the cords of muscle flexing under his skin. “My family,” he said. “Especially my father. I hate him. I hate all of them.” He spoke through clenched teeth, and with such bitterness I thought he might punctuate his words by spitting into the flames. He gripped the poker so hard his knuckles turned white, and I worried he might start stabbing the fire with it. But then he glanced at me and must have realized from my expression that his reaction had alarmed me. My mom and Parker had pushed me over the edge more than once lately, but not like this. I had never for a moment
hated
either of them.

“I’m sorry.” Jeremy dropped the poker and came to sit
by me on the couch, close enough that I could feel the heat of him, as though I were sitting next to the fire. My body wanted to melt into his.

“You don’t have to be sorry,” I told him. “Every family has its issues.”

“We definitely have plenty of ‘issues,’ but that’s not what I brought you here to talk about.” He was quiet for a minute. I could almost see his brain working, trying to figure out how to say whatever it was he wanted to say. Whatever he’d waited too long to say.

“There’s something I want to ask you.” He turned toward me. Our faces were close. For a split second I thought he was going to try to kiss me. I stiffened, wanting him to, not wanting him to. As long as he didn’t put his hands on me, I wouldn’t see the Tower, would I? Or maybe I would never see the Tower again, now that I had chosen the Lovers. Madam Lupescu said I had a choice, and I had made mine. I had stolen it.

“Ask me,” I said, leaning in until my lips were a breath away from Jeremy’s. I waited for him to close the gap.

“I want you to …” I felt the air of his words on my lips. A shiver ran through me.

“You want me to …” I repeated, breathing him in.
The Lovers
, I thought.
This is my choice. This is my future
.

“I want you—” I didn’t let him finish. That was all I wanted to hear.
I want you
.

I moved forward a little, and my lips were on his. Warm. So warm. For a moment we stayed like that, unmoving, our lips simply touching. Then his mouth parted, and so did mine, and he moaned softly into me, with something
like relief. I let my tongue do what it wanted, taste his, and then something in me, in both of us, broke, and we were kissing with ravenous desperation.

Jeremy’s hands found the sides of my face, and his fingers disappeared into my hair, pulling my mouth harder against his. His lips were hot enough to burn. I wanted to tell him to take his hands off me, not to drag me into one of his visions, but I was afraid he would stop kissing me. And I wanted to know …

I wanted to know if my future still held the Tower.

I didn’t tell him to stop, even when my vision started to fog, like warm breath on a cold window.

I was filled with an explosion of heat. My vision went white, and then cleared.