Dark Tarot (Dark Carpathians)

He put his hand very gently on her flat belly and exerted pressure to back her through the open door. “Are you concerned about the three men and the woman watching you from across the way?” He reached behind him and closed the door firmly.

Adalasia gave a little sigh and moved around him to open the door and turn the sign around that proclaimed she was giving another reading. “You’re a stubborn man.”

“It’s best that you realize I have no intention of leaving you behind. If I leave this place, you will be traveling with me.”

He delivered his statement in his low voice, so he doubted if his words sank in at first because she was settling into a chair in front of a table when her dark lashes suddenly lifted and her cobalt blue eyes narrowed with laser sharp intensity.

“I’m sorry? What did you just say?”

He sat down across from her. “You heard me and don’t act surprised. You already read the cards. At least you said you did. I imagine the reason there were all those hesitations was because you didn’t like the things you were seeing regarding the two of us.”

A soft, very attractive flush spread from her neck to her face. “It’s possible I did see things in your cards that I mistook for involving me. I’ve never connected psychically with anyone like that before, with the exception of my mother, and certainly not with that kind of strength. It was exhilarating. This tremendous rush. Sometimes I feel alone, even surrounded by so many people, and to suddenly have that connection felt like a gift. I lost my mother last year and it’s been really difficult.” She shrugged, striving to look casual. “That’s all it was. I put myself in your reading, which was easy to do since it was a distance reading you weren’t even aware of.”

Sandu was as adept at reading people as Adalasia was at reading cards. She knew better, and she was lying. There was a slight tremor to her hands as she moved them over the deck, but there was also something else, a kind of loving feel to the way she touched the cards.

“Did your mother read cards?”

Adalasia nodded. “Yes. This deck has been handed down mother to daughter for generations, but according to my mother, some see more than others. That can be both a blessing and a curse.”

Sandu immediately had the feeling she saw much more than her mother had when she read the cards. Her fingers were long and slender. A woman’s hands. This was no fake diviner. She had a true psychic gift. She’d been born with it, and her talent was exceptionally strong. He felt it when she touched the cards. They felt almost as if they came alive for her.

Almost reluctantly she pushed the cards across the table to him. “Shuffle.”

He went to pick them up and immediately felt a sting, much like a thousand needles penetrating his hand, as if the cards themselves were trying to get into his skin. He pulled his hands back and looked at her. He hadn’t actually touched the deck, and yet he knew the power there was part of him. Trying to enter him. “You shuffle and lay them out for me.”

She frowned at him. “What’s wrong?”

“The deck is very powerful. So am I. The two forces feel each other, perhaps as a threat.” He watched her face carefully.

Her large eyes went a dark blue. She regarded the deck on the table. “May I?” Without waiting for his consent, she placed her right hand under his left palm and her left palm over the back of his right hand. “Put your hands as close to the deck as possible without me touching it.”

Sandu did as she asked. He felt the same wave of needles biting into his flesh, desperate to get to his bones, to his organs. Inside of him. Evidently, she did as well.

Adalasia removed her hands from his and lifted her gaze to his. “I’ve never had that happen in all the years I’ve done readings for people. Who are you?”

“You know who I am. The cards told you earlier when you consulted them. You asked about my journey and discovered it was our journey together, didn’t you?” He didn’t ask why the cards recognized him. And they did. He would ask. Just not yet.

She made a little face. “Well, yes, but I explained that. I most likely inserted myself into the reading accidentally because I had connected with you psychically. I’ve never done that with anyone else. It would be natural to make a mistake like that.” She shuffled the cards and fanned them out, ran her palm over the top of them and then shook her head and shuffled them again.

“It’s always going to be the same. Our journey is together.”