Tarot Academy 4 - Sarah Piper Page 0,85

probably involves lots of booze and cackling. But then, just after sunset, I find her alone in her bedroom, sitting on the bed, staring down at a Tarot card.

“Messages from Mom?” I ask gently, sitting down beside her.

“No, I pulled this one myself. I was hoping to get some advice.”

“I’m no Dr. Phil, but something tells me your needs aren’t being met in that department.” I smile, but Stevie’s clearly in no mood for jokes tonight. “What’s going on, Little Bird?”

A long, heavy sigh floats from her lips, and when she looks up at me again, her eyes are shiny with tears. “Ani. That’s what’s going on.”

“Stevie, the other night…” I shove a hand through my hair, not sure how to word this. I know what I want the answer to be, but if it’s anything other than a firm hell no, we’re going to have a serious problem on our hands. “Did Ani hurt you? Physically?”

“What? No, it wasn’t anything like that. He just… He wasn’t himself, Baz. And I’m not talking about him being tired or messed up after his ordeal. This is… something else.”

“What do you mean?”

She tells me about their reunion, about some of the things he said to her, the changes in his demeanor. “At first I was into it, you know? But then I had that vision, and he just… He reacted badly. I tried to tell him about it, and… Well, you guys heard what happened.”

I nod, brushing a lock of her hair over her shoulder, my hand lingering on her back.

“And ever since then, he’s just been super weird around me. Like, hot and cold. One minute, I think he’s back. And then it’s like he doesn’t even know me, and has to remind himself who I am.”

“Yeah, I know. He’s definitely out of it. But he was in the realm a long time, Stevie. I’m sure it’s just that.”

“Has he talked to you guys about what happened there? What he saw, or whether he ran into Judgment?”

“Kirin and I tried to ask him about it the day after he woke up, but he didn’t want to get into it. Just kept saying there wasn’t much to tell. Doc got the same response that night we barged in on you guys.”

“All Ani said to me when he woke up was that it was absolute hell. But beyond that, nothing.”

“What did the cards say?” I ask, but there’s only one. The Sun, reversed.

“This is actually the eighth attempt. The first three spreads I did? All our old friends showed up. One, Five, Seven, Twenty—Magician, Hierophant, Chariot, Judgment.”

“Statistically impossible.”

“Yep. So I pulled them out of the deck, set them aside, and tried to do a new spread without them.”

“Isn’t that cheating?”

“Their energy was completely overpowering my readings. I felt like I needed a clean slate. But every time I turned another card, it was this one—Sun Reversed. I shuffled it back in, mixed up all the cards, tried again. Four more times. And each time, this card either dropped out on its own, or I pulled it on the first try.”

“Any idea what it means?”

Her shoulders sink, her eyes filling with sadness and worry. “Do you remember the night I brought the black dahlias out of my nightmares?”

“Not something I’m going to forget anytime soon, believe me.”

“Well, in that nightmare, Judgment called Ani the Black Sun.”

I shudder, remembering when she told me about it. Judgment said something about how Ani would rule over the Dark armies that would usher in the new magickal order.

I can’t lie. Seeing this card, hearing her interpretation, remembering the nightmare she told me about… Goddess, the very idea of Ani going dark is supremely fucked up, and supremely terrifying.

But I can’t say it’s impossible. Not after all the other shit we’ve seen.

“No way,” I say anyway, shaking my head. “Ani came back to us. If he were dark, he’d be stuck in the realm with the rest of those assholes.”

“Phaines wasn’t stuck in the realm.”

“But Ani came back,” I say again, my voice weak and pathetic.

“But the Ani who came back… It isn’t him, Baz. Not totally. He was in the dream realm longer than any of us. He won’t talk about what happened there, or why he took the dream potion in the first place instead of just waiting for us. He hasn’t even mentioned anything about the news from his hometown, or whether he’s worried about his sister, or anything else going on outside. It’s like he