The Empress (The Tarot Club 1)

The need to move - to get blood flowing through my veins was so overwhelming that I found myself flinging my door open, pacing in the hallway. Somehow needing distance from my room and all the Magick and memories it entailed. The thrill of Magick was enthralling, but it could also be a deathtrap, and I wondered if this was the same madness that Charl fought when he dabbled with the darkness. We all struggled with it on some level, Charl was perhaps simply more vocal about it - more vocal about the madness of it all. I was willing warmth into my very veins, but my pacing wasn’t rectifying the situation quickly enough. Without a second thought, I bolted down the stairs, towards the backdoor. I needed the sun on my face and the feel of grass beneath my toes. I knew it sounded cliché, and spoke to love and life and all things associated with Light Magick, but my chattering teeth didn’t care.

As I stepped beneath the sunlight, I began to thaw. The act of being outdoors and gaining some distance from my room - and Solomon, was a much needed reprieve.

Of course, Solomon didn’t simply offer up his services or actually do any of my bidding, instead he left me with his story and on condition that I told his truth, only then would he do my bidding. Fucking spirits and their quid pro quo attitude. Call it a hunch, but I was fairly certain that telling Charl Solomon’s tale wouldn’t cut it. So all I had managed to do was draw two cards for myself and sit through Solomon’s depressing tale of how he died. The asshole probably still thought that it was all on Sara, but I was certain that if he treated his wives better, then maybe Sara wouldn’t have tricked him into summoning a god to meet his own death.

Dimitri found me pacing on the lawn, barefoot, shivers only wracking my body occasionally as I grounded myself, drawing energy from the earth itself. He strode across the lawn with purpose, halting his heavy footsteps upon seeing my appearance. I must have looked terrible for Dimitri to not simply demand what he needed from me.

“Your lips are blue,” he narrowed his gaze upon me, and I refused to shy away from his stare.

“I just had a bad connection,” I shrugged away my explanation.

He held my gaze for a moment longer and I looked away, deciding that I didn’t want to be scrutinized any longer. I was still feeling raw - vulnerable from what Solomon had shown me, and I didn’t want to have to answer questions about him when I was still processing it myself. And honestly, I didn’t know what to say, to even say to Charl at this point, because I was still grappling with the fact that King Solomon had been duped by his concubine. And even though I had felt Solomon’s rage at what she had done and how she had done it, I couldn’t find it in myself to find her actions repulsive - impressive, yes - but after everything I had seen, I wasn’t able to place it in the neat moral box labelled Bad. There was something to be said about supporting the actions of a fellow Witch in the wake of powerful men - even if it was millenia ago. My morals seemed to be shifting daily, and I didn’t want to examine that for a moment more.

Dimitri’s voice was gruff, his green eyes seared into mine as if in search of any lie I may allow to slip between my lips.

“Ravi has arrived with pizza,” he sounded annoyed, “he somehow thinks that the way to woo a witch is through her stomach.”

A grin broke free, and I hadn’t felt this light - this silly - since the last time Zoey and I had snuck into Charl’s uncle’s carnival.

“Pizza is always a good idea,” I pushed past him, turning my palms downwards as I released the extra energy that I now no longer needed.

Dimitri’s puzzled expression told me he had noticed, but I didn’t care, not really. I mean, at this point, he had seen me do far stranger things when it came to the rituals of spellwork, that releasing some excess energy back into the ground seemed insignificant somehow.

The house was cooler than the warmth of the garden and I couldn’t help the shudder that wracked through my body as I walked through the kitchen towards where the voices were coming from in the next room - towards the life that beckoned there.

The sitting room boasted large oxblood leather couches with deep stitching embedded in the sides. It was entirely macsuline with a large mahogany display cabinet pressed against the wall, the smooth screen of a television fitted flush with the sectionioned out bit specifically designed for viewing pleasure. The rest of the cabinet was lined with books - all old looking, most appeared to be in Russian.

Up until this very moment, I had always assumed that the room was one of those areas of the house that was never used - purely decorative, as were some sections in my own home - thanks to Emily Rand.

I just couldn’t imagine Dimitri lounging around flicking through Netflix. He seemed far too serious for that sort of thing.

Ravi’s magnetic smile found mine as he grinned up from the couch, a playstation controller in hand as he weaved a red car through some urban streets on the screen before him. Stepen’s shy face peeked out next to Ravi’s and it took me a minute to acknowledge that there were two people on the couch and not just Ravi.

“We decided to bring some NOLA hospitality to you,” Ravi grinned, gesturing towards the pizza spread on the small coffee table beneath him.

Laughter bubbled out of me and I watched Dimitri glower at Ravi - as if he were somehow offended at the insinuation that he and Arlo hadn’t been hospitable towards me. I wouldn’t call their behaviour hospitable, but at least we had managed to stay out of each others way for the most part of my stay so far.

“Hi, Stepen,” I grinned, stepping towards the couch,.

He smiled shyly, “You’re still cold.”

It took me a moment for my brain to actually catch up with what he was saying - the last time I had seen Stepen, it had been at the grain silo and I had been shivering up on the roof there too.

Dimitri’s expression clouded with anger, causing Ravi to slap Stepen’s knee in an attempt at lessening the tension as he said, “I hear you’ve met my youngest cousin.”

My eyes darted between the two of them, and while at first glance, they looked nothing alike, the similarities lay in the crook of their noses, the dimple on their chins. But those similarities really needed to be looked for, they certainly weren’t obvious.

My manners won out before anything became awkward, “Yes,” I smiled smoothly, “thank you for the other night Stepen.”

He blushed beneath my gaze - and wasn’t that something. I wasn’t used to having someone blush because of me - even if that someone was an eighteen-year-old or nineteen-year-old boy.

Suddenly Dimitri was there, handing out the kind of plates that were far too fancy to be eating pizza off of - and I should know, my mother hammered in all those finishing school details into me as if it were a reflection of her skills as a mother.

“You’re using the wrong plates,” I muttered.

Dimitri’s eyes widened in surprise.

“We’re already discussing the correct plateware and cutlery in Dimitri’s house? Well aren’t you two moving fast,” Ravi quipped.