Last Rites (Darkling Mage 6)

With her deep, wrinkled skin, and the silks that festooned her body, the woman could have blended in with the stall, but her small, twinkling black eyes and generous, tumbling waves of white hair gave her away. That, and her endless mumbling.

“Death,” she murmured, shuffling a pack of tarot cards, reshuffling it, then selecting one at random. “Death,” she said again, indicating the card she’d only just picked. She shook her head in frustration, her mane trembling as she shuffled again, then slapped a single card onto her table. She bared her teeth, stabbing at the card with one crooked finger, her eyes lifting slowly to meet mine.

My heart in my throat, I bent over, already knowing with cold dread which card had stubbornly decided to play itself into her hand so many, many times. It was the thirteenth card of the Major Arcana, with an image of an armored skeleton riding a pale horse. I swallowed hard as I muttered under my breath.

“Death.”

Chapter 6

“Death,” I muttered. “Really? Is that what the cards have for me?”

The old woman looked up at me, one eyebrow raised. Something about her spelled immense magical power. I couldn’t tell if she was a goddess, a supernatural entity – maybe even a demon? But I finally realized why I’d recognized her.

“You’

re Madam Babbage,” I said. “From the signboards. And the website. I thought you were just some made-up character.”

I realized too late how rude that must have sounded, but it was true. Madam Babbage looked more like a caricature of a person than an actual human being. Her features were exaggerated, her eyes like tiny onyx spheres, her wide mouth set in a perpetual frown.

If Madam Babbage was offended, she did an excellent job of hiding it.

“Madam Babbage is my alter ego, stupid boy,” she said, the words rolling thick on her tongue. Her accent sounded so close to something from Eastern Europe. Russian, maybe? “You may have heard of me by my true name: Baba Yaga.”

My spine stiffened. The powerful witch from Slavic legend, an entity who bested even the greatest heroes of Russian myth. Baba Yaga was one of those rare beings who sat on the knife’s edge between good and evil, order and chaos. She did what she wanted for her own purposes, and the rest of reality simply had to bend itself around her whims and wishes.

“I’m so – I’m very sorry if I didn’t recognize you. Miss. Ma’am. Madam Yaga.” Shut up, I told myself. Just stop talking.

Baba Yaga raised an eyebrow at the other entities, who I’d only just noticed had gathered behind me in a semicircle, peering over at the witch’s stall.

“This is your hero, yes?” she asked glumly. “This stupid boy?”

“He’s cleverer than he looks,” one of the Sisters said.

“And very charming,” Arachne said reproachfully. “Our sweetling is very sweet indeed.”

The chalkboard creaked, but said nothing, because it was a chalkboard.

Baba Yaga appraised me with narrowed eyes, her wrinkles deepening. I stood there and clenched my teeth, taking my criticism like a big boy. Again: I’ve seen the consequences of pissing off just one entity. Just the one. Amaterasu, Dionysus, Arachne – I didn’t want that list growing longer. I most certainly didn’t want the entire Bazaar of Wonders tearing me a new asshole, or failing that, warping the threads of my destiny. Like I needed more bad luck. I mean, come on.

“Charm means nothing if this is all that lies in his future,” Baba Yaga said, holding up the Death card. She tutted, slipping the card back into the deck, shuffling it expertly. It was then that I stopped paying attention to the tarot cards. What was the point? I already knew she was going to draw it again.

Baba Yaga held out another card. I refused to look. A man in a top hat and tails stretched his neck over my shoulder, the set of dice he was fiddling with in the palm of his hand clicking as he clucked his own tongue.

“Lucky number thirteen, yet again,” he murmured. Like I needed to know.

“So.” I threw my hands up, rubbing the back of my neck in frustration. “What does this actually mean for me? Surely it doesn’t translate exactly to me dying. That’s not how the tarot works.”

Carver said so. Otherwise, pulling the Lovers would always mean something about finding your ideal mate. Drawing the Tower would mean actually falling out of a skyscraper as it’s being struck by lightning. The signs aren’t that literal. A niggling voice tittered in the back of my mind. It whispered.

But aren’t they?

“At least the boy knows that much,” Baba Yaga said, returning the card to the deck, then separating her hands, turning her palms upwards. The deck of cards lifted into the air, hovering under the command of her power, tilting and turning slowly in place, as if held there by so many invisible strings. I caught glimpses of the cards as they spun and swirled. In the midst of them all floated the grisly visage of the skeletal knight.

“The cards are never that simple,” Baba Yaga continued. “Death means change. Significant change, to be sure, enough to impact someone’s life in enormous ways.” She dropped her hands to the table, her palms slamming into its surface with a harsh crash. The cards fell in unison. “But what are the odds of Baba Yaga drawing the same card thirteen times in a row?”

The animated piece of chalk flew into action, scritching and scratching against the blackboard as it attempted to calculate and solve Baba Yaga’s problem.

One of the Sisters groaned and pinched the bridge of her nose. “It was a rhetorical question. Honestly. Truly.”