Badlands Witch (Cormac and Amelia 2)

“Mutual?”

“Honestly, until today I’d completely forgotten about her.”

Gregory glanced at him. “Scorned lover? You dump her at the altar or something?”

“No. Never date anyone crazier than yourself, I’ve been told.”

Gregory chuckled. It struck Cormac that he couldn’t really tell how old the man was, a weathered thirty or a youthful fifty. He seemed young but his manner was confident.

He finished shuffling, squared the deck in the middle of the table. Cut it into two piles and turned over a single card from the cut. The image showed a woman with long black hair in an Old West get-up: pleated skirt, boots, a tailored jacket, wide-brimmed hat. She held a rifle. The pen-and-ink drawing was based on an old publicity photo of Annie Oakley.

“Queen of Swords,” he said. He turned the deck over and fanned it out so Cormac could see the image in context.

The whole deck was Old West themed. Not Rider-Waite or one of the traditional decks Amelia was familiar with but something you’d expect to find in a tourist shop in Deadwood, and not in the hands of a serious magician. Six-shooters and rifles, horses and stagecoaches, cow skulls and lightning strikes over rocky mesas. The suits were rifles, arrows, gold pan and sheriff’s star. The Major Arcana were famous figures and tropes of the genre. Tombstones and card tables, nooses and cactus. It was cheesy, and it made Cormac nervous.

Gregory turned the cards face down and shuffled the deck again. Spread the whole deck out in a fan, face down. The art on the backs showed a pen-and-ink drawing of intertwined tumbleweeds. “Now you pick.”

Cormac didn’t think. Reached out and put his hand on the first card he came to. Pulled it out and flipped it over.

The Queen of Swords.

That was just a little too pat. For all he knew Gregory was working with Durant. He met Gregory’s gaze across the table. The man swept up the deck, shuffled, fanned the cards again. “Choose.”

Cormac did. The Queen of Swords. Annie Oakley, who’d been alive at the same time as Amelia Parker, who had the same thick black hair cascading over her shoulders.

Gregory’s eyes widened. “I’m not stacking the deck.”

Cormac knew he wasn’t. “Try it again.”

He did so three more times, shuffling and cutting the deck differently each time, drawing from the bottom, the middle, laying a spread face down and turning up one. The Queen of Swords. The Queen of Swords. The Queen of Swords.

“This is a message,” Gregory said finally, squaring the deck and leaning back from it.

“Yeah,” Cormac said, uncertain what to do with the wash of relief. It made him almost light-headed. This was a message. This was Amelia.

“You know what it means,” Gregory said, a statement. “Who is she?”

“What would you say? If this was a reading and not. . .something else, what would you tell me?”

He hesitated. “She’s important to you. She’s powerful. It’s not the woman in the picture you showed me.”

Cormac smiled and glanced away.

Gregory pushed away from the table. “I’m going to make myself some tea, you want anything?”

“Just water,” he said. Cormac flipped the cards over, spread them out, studied the images. Found the Queen of Swords and pulled it front and center. The odds of a flipped coin coming up heads or tails was fifty percent, every time. The odds of drawing one card out of seventy-odd was the same, every time. But the odds of drawing that same card a half a dozen times in a row? This wasn’t about odds. It was, as Gregory had said, a message. A voice reaching out, but unable to speak.

Cormac found the ace of the suit. Ace of Swords. A Winchester rifle, resting in a rack above a fireplace containing a blazing fire, in what looked to be a cozy cabin. He put this and the Queen next to each other. Not a message but intention.

Gregory returned with a tray holding a glass of water, and a small steaming teapot with accompanying china cup, saucer, and sugar bowl.

“Going to read tea leaves next?” Cormac asked.

“No, I’m not sure I can take any more messages.” He looked at the cards Cormac had matched together. “Not the King?”

He shook his head. He didn’t know what he was doing.

Gregory sat and told him the story: Durant came in looking for some arcane ingredients. Way beyond the quartz crystals and sage smudges he sold to low-key kitchen witches. She was looking for powdered puffer fish, poison arrow frog, that kind of thing, which he didn’t have. Or at least wasn’t willing to sell to someone off the street. She’d bought some plain green tea and a couple of chunks of hematite, and left.