back again. Anyway, don’t let an old man’s rambling keep you. Enjoy yourself! Have a look around.”
Victoria seized onto my arm the moment her father’s attention dwindled, and with me on one side and Inaya on the other, we wound between the tables to explore. She popped out little pink bottles of Rosé, poured them into three empty water bottles and passed them around so we could enjoy the sparkling alcohol as we walked.
“Should we wait for Jeremiah?” I said, noticing he hadn’t followed. Victoria just shook her head with a little roll of her eyes.
“He’s playing Daddy’s Favorite today,” she said, and stuck out her tongue in a mock gag. “He always gets all high and mighty about drinking every time a new semester starts, and he’s under the soccer coach’s eye all the time. Suddenly, he’s devoted to health and wellness.”
We wandered and sipped, until I got distracted with a table of hand-painted tarot decks and couldn’t resist stopping. The pretty girl sitting behind the table had long blonde hair, and wore a lacey black dress that reached over her boots. Her pointy, green-colored acrylics were spread over the cover of the book she was reading, a worn-out paperback with a lady swooning in the arms of a shirtless man on the cover.
“Did you paint all these yourself?” I said, looking in awe at the attention to detail on each card in the sample deck. She nodded with a small smile, but before she could respond, Victoria interjected.
“She paints every single one. It’s why she’s locked in her room all the time.” Victoria sighed heavily, half-sitting on the table. The blonde girl’s mouth shut, her smile fading slowly as she put down her book. Victoria went on, “Everly, this Raelynn. Raelynn Lawson.”
Everly’s bright blue eyes widened slightly. For a moment, she looked at me as if she knew me, as if she was excited, as if — then it was gone. Nothing but a calm, gentle smile remained. “Nice to meet you, Raelynn.”
“It’s nice to meet you t —”
“You should pull some cards for her, Ev,” Victoria said, tossing the sample deck toward her. I glanced over at Inaya, to see if she was getting as peeved about Victoria’s suddenly bitchy attitude as I was, but she just shook her head and mouthed, I’ll tell you later.
Everly didn’t look thrilled, but she began to slowly shuffle through the deck. I chewed at my lip, torn between wanting to move on and break whatever tension lay between Everly and Victoria, and staying so as not to be rude. But as I wavered, Everly smiled again and said in her soft voice, “Come a little closer, Raelynn.”
I stepped up in front of her. She looked at me as she shuffled the cards, but her eyes were distant. She suddenly didn’t look so young anymore. “It’s Rae,” I said, then quickly clarified, “I mean, my friends call me Rae. You can call me Rae.”
“Rae,” her lips curled around my name, like it was something sweet she wanted to eat. “I like that. Somewhere between masculine and feminine.” She set her cards face down on the table, took a deep breath, and pulled the first card.
It depicted a stone tower standing tall among a forest, flames licking from its upper window as storm clouds gathered around it. Everly set the card down carefully and paused.
“Change,” she said softly. “The life you knew, your strong tower, has been dramatically changed. It is no more.” Her lips parted again, only to close without a sound. Whatever she was going to say next, she’d changed her mind.
Well, that felt far more ominous than it should have. I smiled, glancing with a little uncertainty at Victoria, who just shrugged her shoulders and took a long gulp from her “water” bottle.
Everly lay down the next card. It depicted a man lying face down in the snow, his arm outstretched as if he’d been reaching for something. Numerous swords were pierced through his back, pinning him to the ground, blood staining the snow.
Everly said nothing. She wasn’t looking at me anymore, but her eyes kept flickering to the side as if she was looking for someone. She pulled the last card, turned it to set it down —
“Excuse me.” A woman had sidled up behind me, and I jumped at the sound of her voice. “How much do these cost?”
Everly snatched up the cards, smiling brightly as she answered the woman. Victoria hopped down from the table with