A breeze stirred, and behind us on the pedestal, the pages of the book rustled.
“The Bay witches aren’t the only ones to turn up dead this fall,” Sophie said. “Three east coast witches were murdered in their beds last month. Then more in Chicago, Denver, San Francisco—and those are the ones Haley and I found out about. I’m sure there are others.”
Turn up dead…
My heart squeezed in my chest. Sitting here in the grass, looking into my best friend’s eyes, I’d almost forgotten this version of Sophie wasn't real. All of her words were coming from my own thoughts and projections, or from her book—from the things she’d written about before her death. Things she’d wanted me to know all along.
Her comment about dead witches only reminded me how blind I’d been.
I reached out and squeezed her knee, searching for the words to make things right, but Sophie had already returned her attention to the cards.
She drew the Six of Wands next—a beautiful, moon-faced creature with iridescent wings emerging from a flower bud. Appearing before the creature, five strong hands raised wooden staffs in her honor, clearly willing to follow her to the ends of the earth.
Sophie covered the Six of Wands crosswise with another card—Four of Swords. This one featured another moon-faced creature, but unlike the winged one in Six of Wands, this one was buried in the earth, surrounded by dirt and roses. Three swords pierced the ground above her. A fourth she kept by her side, the blade pointed at her belly.
The Six of Wands usually spoke to me of leadership and victory. The Four of Swords was a little murkier. Sometimes that card was just a message about the importance of rest and reflection, but this time it spoke only of death.
I knew immediately that both cards represented Sophie.
“You were a lot more involved with the witches then you let on,” I said.
“I wanted to help them,” Sophie said. “I thought if Haley and I could win them over to the side of reason, then start training them in secret, we would eventually be powerful enough to deal with Norah. Then we could join up with the other covens and help figure out what kind of threat we’re all under.”
I picked up the Four of Swords, my gaze lingering on the red rose in the creature’s hand. “Did you know you were going to die? I mean, did you sense it? Did your cards indicate… anything?”
Sophie watched me for a long time, her face pinched in concentration. The breeze blew her rainbow hair into her mouth, and when she brushed it away, she said, “These cards aren't about me, Gray. They’re about you.”
Goose bumps prickled my arms.
“But…” I dropped the card. It slid across the others and onto the grass.
“There are four of you.” Sophie plucked the card out of the grass and held it up in front of me, forcing me to look at it again. “Four witches. Three standing their ground, waiting for the fourth to rise, to find them and give them purpose.”
“Where? What four? Who are they? From Bay Coven?”
“You have to find the others,” she said, shaking her head. “The four of you must unite the covens. You—”
“Four ofwho? Sophie, this is your reading. Your cards. I don't know what you're talking about.”
And because I trulydidn'tknow, Sophie—this projection of her that existed only in my mind—didn't know either. The real Sophie had done this tarot reading before her death, recording her predictions in the book of shadows, but she hadn’t been certain about it then, either. Otherwise, it would be in the book, and she'd be able to tell me about it now.
“I don’t know who or where,” Sophie said again. “Only that there are four.”
I wanted to scream in frustration. Maybe if she had told me about this when she was still alive, we might've been able to puzzle it out together. To figure out what the cards were trying to tell us about the four, about uniting the covens, about Norah. But I’d been too stubborn to listen, and now Sophie was dead, and all I had left of her was a book of useless spells and guesses.
I hopped up from the grass, suddenly desperate to get away from her. She wasn't my Sophie, not really. Just a cheap imitation that lived in my mind, a two-dimensional caricature rehashing the words from her book.
This entire place existed in my mind, and the longer I spent here, the more time I wasted. I had to get out into the real world—to look for clues. Figure out what happened. This whole thing—the covens, Norah, the Hunters, the new threat—none of that was real. Not to me.
The only real thing was that Sophie was dead and her killer was still out there.
“Are you leaving?” Sophie asked, her mouth pulling into a frown.
“Do you want me to stay?”
“If you can, just for a few more minutes?” The fragile hope in her eyes brought me to my knees. It was the exact same look she’d given me the last time I’d seen her alive, right after I promised her I’d think about going to the coven meeting.
I settled down in the grass again and reached for her hands, pulling them into my lap. I didn't care that we were messing up the Tarot spread, or that it was getting dark, or that the forest seemed to be encroaching on us, inch by inch.
