Tarot Academy 4 - Sarah Piper Page 0,76

is a tragedy if you can’t turn it into a song?”

“Sex and breakups aren’t going to help us beat the Dark Arcana.”

“Neither is this shit if we can’t decipher it.”

“We can, though. You can.” He pushes his glasses up his nose, offering an encouraging smile. “Stevie, you’re doing amazing. Even without the original material, you’ve translated so much more in a short time. Under extreme duress, I might add.”

“But the translations don’t make any sense!”

“Not yet, they don’t. But it will come to you. It always does.” He shifts in the chair, motioning for me to sit with him, but I’m too amped up. I pace the room, trying to work off the anxiety running through my veins.

“Goddess, my mother’s mind is like a maze with no way out.” I pick up the scattered papers, stacking them on the coffee table, flipping over the top page so I don’t have to look at it anymore. “That verse… Is it about the fires that happened a couple months back, when they first started rounding up all those witches and accusing them of arson? Is it a clue about future attacks? The whole thing about the flames and rising from the ashes reminds me of Judgment, but beyond that? I don’t know what to make of it. For all I know, it’s completely unrelated to any of this. And that’s the problem, Kirin. It all comes down to my interpretation of my mother’s interpretations of whatever messages she was channeling at the time. There’s a lot of room for error here, and we don’t have the luxury of getting it wrong. People’s lives are at stake.”

“You’re saying you want to give up on the prophecies? After all the work we’ve put in, all the late nights, all the breakthroughs? You want to forget about it and go back to the textbooks?”

“I… No. Of course not.” I blow out a breath, my frustration no match for Kirin’s calm, steady presence. With a soft smile, I join him again, sitting in his lap and drawing my knees up to my chest. His strong embrace is like a reset button, and I rest my head on his shoulder, sinking into his warmth. “I guess I just want all the answers, and no one has them, and Ani’s still trapped in the dream realm, and everyone here is working so hard to master their magick, and we have no idea whether the Arcana objects are safe, or what the Dark Magician is planning, or whether Judgment can still get to us… Goddess, Kirin. For all we know, he’s holding Ani hostage, and that’s why he can’t return to us.”

“Shh.” He pulls me closer, pressing a kiss to the top of my head. “Don’t speculate like that. We may not understand what’s happening in his mind, but Ani is physically stable. I’m taking that as a positive sign.”

“Maybe we should work in Ani’s room today. He might call for me again.”

“It’s been two weeks.” Kirin says gently, his breath stirring my hair. “We can’t keep putting everything else on hold, pacing his bedroom and just hoping it happens again.”

“It will happen again. He just needs more time.”

“Yes, and in the meantime, we need to keep moving forward. That means you can keep working on this research with me, or you can practice your mental magicks with Cass, or potions with Professor Broome, or water magick with the girls, or any of the other magickal skills you still need to learn. But you can’t keep climbing the walls, waiting in limbo for Ani to come back to us. That won’t help anyone.”

“I can’t just leave him like that. He’s…” I trail off, my words lost to the wave of emotion rising inside me.

“We won’t leave him,” he says, stroking my back. “Never. We just need to keep working on the prophecies until… Baz?”

Kirin’s energy shifts so quickly I barely have time to process it, hopeful and encouraging to raw, unchecked fear in a heartbeat.

“What’s going on?” I glance up just as Baz comes barreling into the room, keyed up like a live wire. Totally ignoring us, he digs the remote out from between the couch cushions and clicks on the TV.

“We’re working in here,” I say, but he holds up his hand to shush me, eyes glued to the newscaster who just appeared on screen.

“…reporting live outside Moonlight Bay Beach, California,” she says grimly, “where authorities say an explosion of unknown origin has decimated the entire city.”

She’s standing