I looked around for something to keep me here. I wasn’t ready to leave. My eyes settled on a stack of blue cards on his desk. I pointed to them. “You play cards?”
That could be the link he had to my boyfriend. Arsenio loved gambling. He was rather good at it. Desi leaned forward in his chair, snatching up the cards. He flashed the back of them at me, and I tilted my head curiously.
“Tarot.” He explained. He moved his laptop to the side and scooted closer to his desk. “You familiar at all?”
“No,” I replied flatly. “I mean, I know what they are. Never took any interest in them. You read cards?”
“Yes.” His voice was firm as he rested the cards on his desk to shuffle them. “I’ve had this deck since I turned.”
“When was that?”
“Nineteen-ninety-four.”
I blinked in surprise. He paused, shuffling, and looked up at me. “What?”
“That was my year,” I said softly. How odd. It wasn’t often you met a new vampire that turned the same year as you. He didn’t react to what I said. Instead, he continued shuffling.
“When I meet someone new, I like to draw a card. I consider it almost an introduction. The cards tell me what to expect.”
“Have they ever been wrong?” I asked as he stopped shuffling and sat the deck down directly in front of him.
He looked up at me with eyes so intense that my body reacted as if electrified. I could feel his words as he spoke them. “No. Care to see what your card is?”
I lost my breath for a moment. In fact, all the air in the room had seemingly disappeared. We stared at each other for an eternity before finally, I forced myself to look away.
“Sure. We can give it a shot.”
He pulled the first card off the top and showed it to me. I examined it, but the words and the art meant nothing to me.
The Hanged Man.
Once I looked away, he turned it, raised his eyebrows, and frowned. “Hm.”
“What does it mean?” I asked.
“It can mean a lot of things.”
“Good things?”
“Things.” He smirked. He loved that I was squirming from the unknown.
Fuck this guy. I flipped him off and turned toward the door.
“Good talk.” I left his office, and as I stepped out, he called my name.
“Scout?” he started, and I turned. “Shut the door on your way out.”
I slammed it shut. As I stormed away, I could hear him cackling from the other side.
4
“What did you do to piss the new boss off?” Adam asked a few days later.
“He’s not my boss,” I replied without looking up from my sketchpad. Loud slurping came from beside him. I glanced up with disgust at his partner annoying me. “Why do you do that?”
“What?” Dylan pulled his lips away from his straw. The inside of his mouth was stained red.
“The straw, the slurping. It’s gross. Go get some more blood from the fridge.”
