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Kalina opened her eyes and met Sadie’s gaze while slowly turning over the first card, then the second and third. The woman’s eyes widened as she looked down at the cards.
Sadie couldn’t find anything horrifying on them—a beautiful stag, an owl, and a bear, their colors vibrant, their skeletal faces somehow majestic. “What do they mean?” she asked.
Kalina laughed then, shaking her head as if clearing images that only she could see away. “It’s nothing. Just a practice round.” She smiled sweetly, but the smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Please. Shuffle the cards once more and choose again.”
All right... Sadie wasn’t sure what the point of that was, but she told herself it was all part of the act, to get customers wondering. She shuffled the cards once again, cutting the deck four times, gathering and fanning the cards out across the table like she’d seen dealers do in the movies. There weren’t any specific cards calling to her, so she took out three random ones from the line.
As Kalina turned over the three cards she’d chosen, Sadie blinked, her lips parting. The exact same ones. A chill swept through her, seeping down to her bones. Coincidence or not, Kalina’s face had paled, her fingers fidgeting with the cloth of the table.
“Past. Present. And future. Darkness is all I can see.” Kalina lifted a shaky hand and reached toward Sadie. “May I see your palm? I won’t charge for this.”
Only darkness… There had to be something hidden in its dark depths. Biting the inside of her cheek, Sadie rested her arm on the table, and Kalina traced the lines along her palm with the tip of her finger.
“The darkness is clearer now. Your aura,” Kalina whispered, her gaze latching onto Sadie’s. “The black spot resides on your aura, as if it’s marked.”
Sadie forced down the lump in her throat when she swallowed, thinking about River’s words once more. If you keep coming back, things will only become more wicked, my sweet nightmare. “Marked for what?”
Kalina gently lay Sadie’s hand on the table. “I don’t know. It looks like it’s branded there with a symbol of an eye.”
Below ground, after midnight, there were symbols etched across the walls. The eyes, so many of them... It had to be connected. Had River somehow marked her? Or was it something else…
“Before I told you we all have a bit of darkness inside us,” Kalina continued. “But within you, deep down, there is a desire to relish it.”
Relish it? That couldn’t be right. It had to mean something else. “Do you think it has to do with my love of horror things, the macabre? I would never hurt anyone, have never hurt anyone, only in the things I write.”
“Possibly. Did you use the items you bought already?” Kalina asked, quickly setting the tarot cards back into a pile as if she was in a hurry to leave the room.
“Mostly. Should I use something else?”
“No,” Kalina rushed the words out. “Don’t use them anymore.” She stood from the chair and opened one of the dresser drawers. When she returned to Sadie’s side, she pressed a bundle of sage into her palm, different from the ones she’d purchased. “In fact, you might want to ward things off instead of trying to bring them to you.”
“Even if it’s someone I love?” Sadie whispered.
Kalina’s eyes softened, folding Sadie’s fingers around the sage. “Especially if it’s someone you love.”
Before Sadie left Crow Moon, she’d asked Kalina not to mention any of this to Coral. Kalina had said what occurred between her and her clients was never discussed outside of the room. She’d also given Sadie a large bag of salt to ward off spirits and a few white candles, but she wouldn’t use them.
To take up time, she spent a few hours at the coffee shop, finishing a mess of a short story and sending it in. She then wrote down more of the recent events in her notebook, the way she’d chosen the same tarot cards twice. Her theory about what was going on was blossoming into something dark after Kalina’s words continued to echo in her head, that she was marked.
The images she’d seen in the mirror could be the spirits of one of the couples who’d died in the woods, or even before that based on the clothing. River might be possessed… But could a spirit even be possessed by another spirit? There were so many missing pieces, and a lot of it wasn’t making sense. It wasn’t a standard dead spirit haunting her… It was something much bigger.
She’d been too late to save River before, but she wouldn’t be too late this time.
Sadie gathered her things, rushing out of the coffee shop and back to the woods. As she pulled to a stop in front of the cabin, her stomach sank when she looked out the window. At the trees…
She stepped out of the truck and surveyed the area around her, taking in each trunk, their location. They weren’t where they were supposed to be—it was as if they’d been taken from the ground and buried somewhere else. Yet huge trees couldn’t just be plucked from the dirt so easily. The trees had breaths within the veil at night, whispered, but this was strange, just as strange as the sleeping animals.
Along the ground, the shadows approached her, surging toward her, then away as if wanting her to follow them.
Casting another glance at the pine tree that should’ve been on the other side of the cabin, she trekked behind the shadows toward the woods. The silhouettes stopped in front of a small furry animal, and Sadie halted as her gaze fell to it. It wasn’t a sleeping rabbit any longer, but something else... Its chest was ripped open with a beating heart beside the body, blood pooling around the organ. Even though the rabbit should be still, its chest rose and fell, somehow continuing to breathe. The quiet became louder, and she looked around her, finding more animals just like the rabbit. Horror churned within her at the sight. Horror, and something familiar. Something like satisfaction…
“No,” Sadie whispered and ran back toward the cabin. She stopped just outside her home, where she couldn’t see any animals.
That morning, River had written to her in the dirt, not needing a planchette or any other supernatural device to answer her. He might not be beside her, but she knew without a doubt he lingered nearby.
“River!” Sadie shouted. “What’s happening?” Her hands trembled as she waited for him to respond, wondering if maybe the words he’d written that morning were the last she would ever get from him. “I am good at being calm, but I’m not now. Please answer me.”
And then a single silhouette crept out from one of the trees, inching across the ground toward her, River’s scent permeating the air. The other shadows stayed near her, resting still, as if they were paying attention to him too.
