I chose the corner table at Starbucks with deliberate care—far enough from the counter to muffle the grinding of beans and hissing of steam, yet not so isolated as to invite trouble. The afternoon light filtered weakly through the windows, casting long shadows across my untouched cappuccino. The foam had already begun to dissolve, tiny bubbles collapsing one by one into the cooling liquid. My tarot deck waited beside it, cards warm against my fingertips, humming with quiet anticipation. They knew, as I did, that the man about to walk through that door was bringing trouble with him.
The café hummed with midday energy—laptops open to spreadsheets, students hunched over textbooks, baristas calling out complicated drink orders. Normal people living normal lives. I watched them and wondered what it might be like to be one of them. To not see the shadows that lingered at the edges of everything. To not hear voices no one else could hear.
Fourteen minutes past two. The door swung open, and there he was, precisely on time—Jason Green. The same Jason Green whose family name adorned buildings and charity galas, now looking like something washed up on a beach after a storm. His navy peacoat must have cost more than my monthly rent, yet it hung from his gaunt frame as though it belonged to someone else entirely. Someone larger, healthier. Someone who hadn’t spent the last few years disappearing into himself.
Dark circles cradled his eyes like bruises. Those eyes couldn’t seem to settle on anything—they darted from person to person, object to object, never resting for more than a heartbeat. Despite the February chill, a thin sheen of sweat glistened on his forehead. At twenty-eight, he looked forty. I raised my hand slightly, a small gesture meant only for him. His gaze finally found mine and stuck there. Recognition, then relief, flickered across his face.
He navigated between tables with the careful, overly precise movements of someone trying very hard to appear sober. When he reached me, he hovered for a moment, as though unsure of the protocol.
“You must be Rahel,” he said, lowering himself into the chair across from me. His voice surprised me—cultured, measured, with the unmistakable cadence of private schools and summer homes. It belonged to someone else, not this hollow-cheeked specter before me.
“And you’re Jason.” I pushed a menu toward him, the laminated paper scraping against the wooden tabletop. “Would you like something?”
His eyes skimmed over it, then away, as if the words were too much effort to process. “Just water. I’m not really—” His hand moved to his nose, rubbing at it with a compulsive motion that spoke volumes. “Not hungry.”
A familiar presence brushed against my consciousness—cool and sharp, like mint. Mister B. never announced himself; he simply was suddenly there, whispering into the back of my mind.
“Xanax. Maybe coke too. Poor kid’s barely holding it together.”
I didn’t acknowledge Mister B.’s observation out loud. Jason couldn’t hear him, after all. Instead, I observed Jason with newfound clarity—the way his eyes kept finding the exit, then the bathroom, then back to me; the slight tremor in his hands as he placed his phone on the table; how he kept checking the time as though counting down to something urgent.
Withdrawal, I thought. He’s calculating how long he can last before needing another dose.
“Your email was very articulate,” I said, keeping my voice neutral, the way one might speak to a frightened animal. “You mentioned watching all of my videos.”
A hollow laugh escaped him, a sound with no joy in it. “Each and every one of them. You’re good. Better than you realize.” His knee bounced beneath the table, creating a subtle rhythm against the floor. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think you could help me.”
I wondered what he saw in those videos that convinced him. Two subscribers, 19 clicks on my best performing video, awkward lighting in my apartment, amateur editing.
My fingers hovered over my deck. The cards felt warm, eager. Sometimes they were like that—hungry to speak, to reveal. Other times they went cold and silent, refusing to give up their secrets no matter how I coaxed them.
“Shall we begin, then?” I asked.
“Please.” Jason leaned forward, and for a moment, the desperate need in his eyes had nothing to do with chemicals. It was rawer, more human. “I don’t have much time.”
The ambiguity of his statement settled between us. Whether he meant for our meeting or in general, I couldn’t tell. Perhaps he didn’t know himself.
I unwrapped my deck from its silk cloth. Not the gilt-edged, ornate decks that most clients expected, but a simple Rider-Waite that could be easily replaced if somebody spilt his coffee over it. Yet I felt a strange energy coming from the cards.
“What is it?” Jason asked, noticing my expression.
I shook my head. “Just getting a sense of the connection.” A standard line, vague enough to mean anything. I set the watch beside my deck. “I’m going to shuffle, and then you’ll cut the cards into three piles. Left to right.”
As I gathered the cards into my hands, their familiar weight was comforting. I began to shuffle, the soft sound filling the space between us. Jason watched my hands with an intensity that was almost uncomfortable. His fingers twitched slightly against the table’s edge, as though they wanted to reach out and grab the cards from me.
“How long have you been…” He gestured vaguely at the deck.
“Reading?” I finished for him. “Since I was a teenager. But professionally, about fifteen years ago.”
“And you can really see things? Know things you shouldn’t?”
I met his gaze evenly. “Sometimes. It depends.”
“On what?”
I continued shuffling. “On whether there’s something to see. On whether the person is open to hearing it. On whether I’m asking the right questions.” I stopped and placed the deck on the table. “Your turn.”
Jason’s hand trembled visibly as he reached for the cards. He hesitated just before touching them, as though afraid of what might happen.
“They don’t bite,” I said.
A flicker of a smile crossed his face, gone so quickly I might have imagined it. “It’s not them I’m worried about.” He cut the deck into three piles, his movements uncertain. “It’s what they’ll say.”
I watched him closely. Despite the addiction fogging his system, there was a sharpness to him, an intelligence that hadn’t been completely dulled. Whatever had brought him to me was important enough that he’d forced himself into some semblance of sobriety for this meeting.
“They only reveal what’s already there,” I said, gathering the piles back together in the order he’d created. “Nothing more, nothing less.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” he murmured.
I began to lay out the cards. The first cardwas the Tower. Upright.
Beside me, Mister B. made a soft sound that only I could hear. A warning.
The Tower was never a welcome sight. Destruction. Sudden change. The violent collapse of established structures. I placed the second card, crossing the first—the Devil. Bondage. Addiction. Materialism.
Jason’s breath caught. Even to someone unfamiliar with tarot, these images spoke clearly enough. Lightning striking a tower, people falling to their deaths. A horned figure with chained humans at its feet.
“That doesn’t look good,” he said, voice barely above a whisper. His right hand twitched against his thigh.
I continued laying out the cards, each one darker than the last. Five of Swords. Seven of Swords. Five of Pentacles. Five of Wands. A spread dominated by conflict, loss, and deception.
In all my years of reading, I’d rarely seen a more ominous combination.
“Well,” I said, meeting Jason’s increasingly troubled gaze, “I think you’d better tell me exactly why you’re here.”
The cards lay between us like collapsed bodies at a crime scene. Bright colors against the dark wood of the table, their imagery suddenly garish under the café’s artificial lighting. I felt the familiar tingle in my fingertips as I studied the pattern—not just the standard meaning of each card, but the way they spoke to each other, the story they wove together. And this story was dark. Darker than most readings I’d given lately. I glanced up at Jason, whose face had gone pale beneath the sheen of withdrawal sweat. He saw it too, even without understanding the specifics. The cards had revealed a truth he already sensed but couldn’t articulate.
“That doesn’t look good,” Jason said, his eyes fixed on the ominous imagery. His right hand twitched subtly against his thigh, a conductor keeping time to music only he could hear.
I studied both the cards and the man before me. The spread was unusually dark, even for someone in obvious distress. Perhaps the darkest I’d seen for a living person. Most readings contained at least one card of hope, one glimmer of light amid the shadows. This one offered none. It almost seemed like he was cursed.
My fingertips tingled as I touched the Tower card—a sensation I’d learned never to ignore. The card seemed to pulse beneath my touch, as though the tiny painted figures were actually falling, the lightning actually striking.
“There’s significant upheaval in your life,” I began, my voice low and measured. Each word felt heavy as it left my mouth. “The Tower represents sudden, destructive change. The kind that leaves nothing standing.”
Jason’s mouth tightened into a thin line. “Tell me something I don’t already know.” The words came out harsher than I think he intended, edged with the irritability of someone fighting their body’s demands.
I didn’t take offense. In eight years of reading cards, I’d developed a thick skin. People came to me wanting the truth until they actually got it. Then they blamed the messenger.
“The Devil speaks to bondage.” I tapped the card showing the horned figure, its human captives chained but with links loose enough to slip free—if only they chose to try. “Something has a powerful hold over you. Your choices feel limited, perhaps even non-existent.”
Jason’s gaze dropped to the table. His fingers drummed against his leg in an erratic rhythm. The air conditioning vent above us sent a cold draft down the back of my neck, raising goosebumps along my skin.
“The Devil might as well point to addiction or greed,” I continued. “Greed is a part of addiction, by the way, so that’s closely related. The constant want, the never-enough sensation.”
I wasn’t being particularly insightful with these observations—Jason’s addiction was written plainly across his body, in the hollows of his cheeks and the tremors in his hands. Anyone with eyes could see it. But the cards were telling me more, something specific that most observers would miss.
Mister B.’s voice filtered through my consciousness like smoke slipping under a door: “The pills are prescription. Began with anxiety and panic attacks. Now it’s just habit.”
I’d learned long ago not to question how Mister B. knew what he knew. He simply did, and his insights had proven reliable enough that I’d staked my livelihood on them. Still, I was careful how I presented the information. Clients rarely understood—or accepted—the reality of my spectral mentor.
“Your addiction,” I said carefully, watching Jason’s face for his reaction, “it started with a prescription, didn’t it?”
Jason’s head snapped up, eyes suddenly sharp with suspicion. The cloudy veil of apathy dropped away, replaced by intense focus. “How would you know that?”
I kept my expression neutral, gesturing toward the spread. “The cards reveal patterns.” A practiced deflection. Not quite a lie, but not the complete truth either. “When the Devil appears alongside the Tower, it often indicates a dependency that began as a solution to a crisis.”
Jason exhaled slowly, the sound catching slightly in his throat. His eyes darted around the café, as though checking to see if anyone was listening in. The nearest patrons were two tables away, absorbed in their laptops.
“Mental health issues that started unexpectedly,” he admitted, voice barely audible over the café’s ambient noise. “Panic attacks. Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t function.” His fingers curled into a loose fist on the table. “The prescriptions helped. Until they didn’t. Then I needed more. Different combinations. Whatever worked.”
I nodded without judgment. His story was painfully common—the slippery slope from legitimate medication to dependency to seeking any relief available.
I returned to the spread, needing to move us beyond this point. The cards had more to say. “These Fives—Pentacles, Wands, Swords—they indicate conflict over resources.” My finger traced the edge of the Five of Pentacles, showing two ragged figures trudging through snow past a stained-glass window. “A battle you’re currently losing. There’s financial hardship coming, if it hasn’t already arrived.”
“My trust fund’s frozen,” Jason said flatly. The words held no emotion, as though he were reporting someone else’s misfortune. “Family intervention. They call it ‘tough love.’”
The phrase hung in the air between us, heavy with unspoken resentment. Family—those who were supposed to support you, who sometimes became your greatest adversaries.
My gaze lingered on the Seven of Swords—a figure stealing away with five swords, leaving two behind. Theft. Deception. Betrayal. Most tellingly, it appeared in the position representing outside influences.
Someone in Jason’s life was not what they appeared to be.
The realization sent a chill through me that had nothing to do with the café’s overzealous air conditioning. The spaces between the cards seemed to darken, as though shadows were pooling on the table’s surface.
“There’s more you haven’t told me,” I said. The words emerged of their own accord, pulled from somewhere deeper than conscious thought. “Something about a loss. Recent. Significant.”
Jason’s expression shifted like a landscape in changing light. The chemical need etched into his features briefly gave way to something more vulnerable, more human. Raw grief flickered across his face, there and gone so quickly I might have missed it if I hadn’t been watching closely.
“My grandfather,” he whispered. The words seemed to cost him something. “That’s why I’m here.”
Mister B. stirred in my mind like water disturbed by a stone. “Now we’re getting somewhere,” he murmured. “Ask about the inheritance.”
I hesitated. Asking directly about money felt crude, too much like the charlatans who preyed on the bereaved. But the cards kept drawing my eyes back to the Fives, to conflict and resources and loss.
“This conflict,” I said, indicating the cluster of cards with a sweep of my hand. “It involves your grandfather’s estate, doesn’t it?”
Jason stared at me with newfound intensity. His pupils contracted slightly, focusing with an effort that seemed to require all his remaining energy. “You really can see things, can’t you?”
I met his gaze steadily. What I saw there wasn’t just addiction and desperation. There was genuine grief, and beneath it all, a terrible certainty that something was deeply wrong. That certainty resonated with me, vibrating on the same frequency as my own instincts.
“I see patterns,” I said carefully. “Connections that others might miss.”
“My grandfather wouldn’t have cut me out of his last will,” Jason said, leaning forward. His voice dropped even lower, forcing me to lean in as well. “Not without telling me first. Not like this.”
The proximity brought with it the sour-sweet smell of his withdrawal—not quite sweat, not quite sickness, but something in between. I didn’t pull back. This close, I could see the golden flecks in his hazel eyes, the intelligence still fighting through the chemical fog.
“Tell me about him,” I said. “About your grandfather.”
Jason’s eyes drifted to the window, focusing on something beyond the glass, beyond the street outside. Into memory. “He was everything to me. After my parents divorced, he was the only one who…” His voice trailed off. “He understood me. Even when I started having problems, he never gave up.”
I waited, giving him space to continue. Sometimes silence was the most effective tool in a reading.
“He wouldn’t have used those words,” Jason finally said, returning his gaze to mine. “‘Drug-addicted grandson.’ That’s not how he spoke to me or about me. Ever.”
A shadow fell across our table as someone passed by, momentarily blocking the light. I felt a prickle at the back of my neck—not Mister B. this time, but my own intuition. The cards suddenly seemed to contain deeper shadows, their colors more vivid against the darkened table.
“You think someone influenced his will,” I said. Not a question.
Jason’s eyes locked with mine. “I think someone killed him and made sure I couldn’t ask questions about it.”
The accusation hung between us, bold and dangerous. I should have felt skeptical—an old man dying was hardly suspicious. But something in Jason’s certainty, combined with the unusually dark spread before us, gave me pause.
“That’s a serious allegation,” I said quietly.
“That’s why I need your help.” Jason’s hand moved toward mine, stopping just short of touching my fingers. “Everyone thinks I’m just a junkie looking for his next fix. No one will listen. But you—you can see what others can’t.”
I looked down at the cards once more. The Tower. The Devil. The Seven of Swords. A story of destruction, bondage, and betrayal. And beneath it all, a question I couldn’t ignore: what if he was right?
“I’ll need more information,” I said, making a decision I hoped I wouldn’t regret. “About your grandfather, his death, his will. Everything you can tell me.”
Relief washed over Jason’s face, momentarily displacing the strain of addiction. For just an instant, I glimpsed the person he might have been before the pills and the pain—young, bright, determined.
“I knew you’d believe me,” he said, the words carrying a weight of gratitude that made me uncomfortable. I hadn’t promised belief, only attention. But for Jason, perhaps they were the same thing.
As he reached for his water glass, his sleeve pulled back slightly, revealing a thin silver bracelet. The sight of it triggered something in my memory—a flash of the same silver, but older, tarnished, wrapped around a wrist gone still.
“Your grandfather,” I said suddenly. “He wore a bracelet like yours.”
Jason froze, the glass halfway to his lips. “How could you possibly know that?”
I didn’t answer. I wasn’t entirely sure myself. Sometimes information came to me this way—fragments without context, knowledge without source. Mister B. remained silent, offering no explanation.
Jason lowered the glass, his eyes never leaving my face. “He had it made when I was little. Got one for himself, one for me. Said as long as we both wore them, we’d be connected.” His voice caught. “I haven’t taken mine off since.”
In that moment, I believed him—not about murder, not yet, but about love. Whatever else was happening here, Jason Green had loved his grandfather, and had been loved in return.
The question was: who hadn’t?
“My grandfather died two months ago.” Jason’s words fell between us like stones into still water, creating ripples that expanded outward, disturbing everything they touched. I watched his face carefully, noting how his expression remained unnaturally still, as though he’d trained himself not to reveal emotion when speaking of this loss. Only his hands betrayed him—restless, agitated movements against the edge of the table, fingertips pressing white then releasing, again and again. “Seamus Green,” he added, and the name hung in the air, weighted with expectation.
Recognition flickered through me. The Green family name appeared occasionally in the society pages—old money, real estate holdings across Manhattan, philanthropic foundations. The kind of wealth that had its own gravitational pull, bending everything around it. I’d passed buildings with the Green name etched into their cornerstones, seen their family foundation credited at museum exhibitions.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I offered, the words inadequate but necessary. Around us, the café continued its mundane symphony—milk steaming, customers chatting, spoons clinking against ceramic. None of them aware of the darkness unfolding at our corner table.
“He was one hundred and two,” Jason said, his voice detached, clinical. He methodically tore the edge of a napkin into tiny pieces, creating a small pile of white confetti on the dark table. “Everyone keeps saying it was ‘his time.’ That it was ‘natural causes.’” His fingers stilled momentarily, and he looked up at me, his eyes suddenly clear. “But they didn’t know him like I did.”
I waited. The cards remained between us, their ominous images now softened by familiarity. I resisted the urge to gather them up, to break the spell they had cast. Something told me we still needed their witness.
“He played chess online every morning. Beat people decades younger.” Jason leaned forward, lowering his voice. The movement sent a waft of expensive cologne my way, layered over the sour notes of his body fighting withdrawal. “He walked two miles daily. Read the Wall Street Journal cover to cover. His mind was sharp—sharper than mine, even before…” He gestured vaguely at himself, a sweep of his hand that acknowledged his current state without naming it.
In my mind, I began to construct an image of Seamus Green—not the frail centenarian one might expect, but a man who had, perhaps, defied time for longer than time was accustomed to being defied.
“You think something happened to him,” I said. Not a question. The cards had already told me as much, had already hinted at deception and loss.
Jason’s eyes locked with mine, bloodshot but intense. “I know something happened.” He glanced around the café, a habitual movement of someone accustomed to being watched, or perhaps watching for something. Satisfied that no one was listening, he continued. “After his death, it turned out I’m completely cut out of the will. He never said anything that led me to think he did this to me. It specifically says he wouldn’t leave a penny to his ‘drug-addicted grandson.’”
The words emerged coated in bitterness, each syllable sharp enough to cut. His fingers resumed their destruction of the napkin, tearing smaller and smaller pieces.
“Those weren’t his words. He never spoke like that about me. Never.” Jason’s certainty had a desperate edge to it, like a man clinging to a ledge. “He knew I was struggling. He was helping me find treatment options. We talked about it openly.”
I studied him, weighing possibilities. Grief often led people to search for meaning, for conspiracies where there might be only coincidence. The simplest explanation was usually correct: an elderly man had died, and before his death, he had grown weary of supporting an addict.
Yet something in Jason’s certainty gave me pause. The cards reinforced it—especially the Seven of Swords with its imagery of theft and deception. And Mister B., usually quick to offer commentary, remained unusually silent, as though listening intently.
“That’s a significant accusation,” I said carefully, my words measured. “Suggesting someone murdered a centenarian and manipulated his will.”
“I know how it sounds.” Jason’s laugh was brittle, a sound that might shatter if handled roughly. “I’m not naive. I understand what people see when they look at me.” He gestured at himself again—the disheveled clothes, the physical signs of addiction.
He reached across the table, his trembling hand stopping just short of touching mine. The silver bracelet on his wrist caught the light—the one that matched his grandfather’s, the one I’d somehow known about without being told. Our eyes met, and I felt that peculiar sensation again, the one that sometimes preceded true insight: a humming just below the threshold of hearing, a pressure behind my eyes.
“Help me figure out what happened. I’ll pay whatever you ask.”
I glanced down at the cards still spread between us. The Tower. The Devil. Deception and conflict. My rational mind counseled caution. My intuition whispered something else entirely.
“I’m a tarot reader, not a detective,” I replied, though my protest sounded hollow even to my own ears. The words were automatic, a defense mechanism against involvement, against caring too much about a case that might lead nowhere.
“You are good enough to be both,” Jason countered, a surprising flash of conviction cutting through his withdrawal haze.
Mister B.’s voice, when it finally came, was clear in my mind: “There’s something here, Rahel. The cards don’t lie.”
I sighed, aware that my rent was due in a week and my savings account had dwindled to triple digits. One wealthy client could make all the difference. And beneath the practical consideration lay another, less admissible truth: I was curious. The cards had revealed something unusual, something that resonated with my own gifts in a way I couldn’t easily dismiss.
“I’ll look into it,” I said finally. The decision felt simultaneously like stepping onto solid ground and stepping off a cliff. “But I can’t promise results.”
Relief washed over Jason’s face, momentarily displacing the strain of addiction. For a fleeting second, I glimpsed the person he might have been—or might still become—without the chemical chains that bound him. Handsome. Intelligent. Determined.
“That’s all I’m asking for.” He pulled out his phone, tapping at the screen with fingers that trembled slightly but managed the task. “I can transfer a retainer right now. Five thousand to start?”
The figure startled me, though I maintained my composure through years of practice at not reacting to clients’ revelations. Five thousand would last for the next two to three months. Five thousand would buy me time to rebuild my business, to get my YouTube channel started. Five thousand for what might amount to nothing more than listening to a wealthy addict’s paranoid theories.
“That would be acceptable,” I said, my voice steady despite the sudden racing of my heart. I gave him my payment details, watching as he entered them into his banking app with the careful concentration of someone performing a complex task while intoxicated.
“Done,” he said after a moment. He stood suddenly, the movement so abrupt that his chair scraped loudly against the floor. Several heads turned our way briefly before returning to their conversations. “I need to… I have to go. Can I call you tomorrow? There’s more I should tell you.”
I nodded, aware that his withdrawal symptoms were becoming more pronounced. A fine sheen of sweat had appeared on his forehead, and his eyes had taken on a slightly glassy quality. He needed his next fix, and soon.
“Tomorrow. Call me when you’re feeling better.”
A flicker of shame crossed his face—he knew that I knew, and the knowledge stung. But the need was stronger than the shame. He collected his coat and phone, movements increasingly jerky and uncoordinated.
“Thank you,” he said, the words rushed now. “Truly. No one else would even listen.”
I watched him hurry out of the café, narrowly avoiding a collision with a woman entering. His expensive coat hung open, flapping behind him like damaged wings as he disappeared into the February chill.
The cards remained on the table, their dark imagery now seeming to watch me accusingly. I gathered them up with practiced movements, wrapping them once more in their silk cloth.
“This is bigger than a family inheritance dispute,” Mister B. said, his presence strengthening now that I was alone.
“How can you be sure?” I murmured, low enough that nearby patrons would assume I was talking to myself. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had given the strange woman with tarot cards a wide berth.
“The cards,” he replied simply. “And the fact that someone’s willing to pay that much money to investigate the death of a 102-year-old man.”
I felt that same jolt of awareness I’d experienced earlier. Something lingered here, some impression or energy that Seamus Green had left behind.
As I gathered my things to leave, a cynical voice in the back of my mind—not Mister B., but my own doubts—whispered insistently. This is nonsense. 102-year-old men die from natural causes.
The thought was uncharitable, unfair to Jason despite his obvious issues. But it contained enough truth that I couldn’t entirely dismiss it. I was taking his money. I was promising to investigate something that most rational people would consider a closed case. I was, perhaps, exploiting his grief and addiction for my own financial benefit.
And yet. And yet the cards had spoken clearly. Mister B. had sensed something amiss. And I had felt… something… from the watch, from Jason’s certainty, from the strange synchronicity of knowing about the matching bracelets without being told.
I left a tip on the table and made my way out of the café, stepping into the afternoon. The cold air bit at my cheeks, a sharp contrast to the stuffy warmth inside. Reality, asserting itself after the liminal space of the reading.
Five thousand dollars had just been deposited into my account. In exchange, I had promised to look into the death of a man who had lived over a century. A man whose grandson was convinced he had been murdered, despite all evidence pointing to the most natural of ends.
I pulled my coat tighter around me as I walked to the subway station. Whatever I had just agreed to, I suspected it would be far more complicated than a simple tarot reading. But I had given my word. And more importantly, I had taken Jason’s money.
Tomorrow, I would begin untangling the mysteries of Seamus Green’s death—starting with whether there was any mystery at all.
72Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNi5X0KNPPr
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