Haunting Beauty by Erin Quinn

someone to talk to?” she asked.
    Danni shrugged, but it was, of course, the truth. Alice began to carefully place the cards, pausing to study each one after she set it down. After a moment, she tapped the one in the center with a blue-polished nail. The card showed a person trudging over a terrain of hills and low wetlands. In the sky the moon eclipsed the sun. Cups lined the bottom of the card.
    “You’re at a crossroads,” Alice said. “You don’t see it because you’ve been blind for a long time, bound like a mummy by your inability to recognize what is real. But you must break free and find the deeper purpose. Do you know what I mean?”
    Danni shook her head.
    “I feel that you’ve . . . shut away some important part of yourself. But it’s something you need, and without it, you’re simply stumbling through your life. You’re blind and you don’t know how to free yourself. Even now, you think you want to stay that way.”
    Danni made a small sound of disbelief. “Why would I want to stay blind?”
    “Because you may not like what you are forced to see if you choose to open your eyes and be whole again,” Alice said with monotone certainty. Despite Danni’s skepticism, a chill danced over her spine.
    Alice flipped another card, this one of a tower. Fire spilled from its small windows and people jumped to escape—or jumped to their deaths, hard to say which, though the plunging fall didn’t look like a good option either way.
    Danni blew out an amused breath, but really, what filled her wasn’t humor. “So what is that? The death card?”
    Alice cocked her head, considering the question with more solemnity than Danni wanted. “In a way, perhaps. But not necessarily death of the body. Death and rebirth are part of our everyday world. If you don’t embrace it, you are only living on the surface. Maybe the old you has to die in order for the new you to survive.”
    “That’s a little too out-there for me.” But she was thinking of that grave and her body at the bottom.
    “If you say so,” Alice answered mildly.
    Alice pulled the next card from the deck, and Danni thought this one looked even worse than the last. A tall figure in gray stood with a lone lantern in hand in a dark world. Nervously, she watched Alice’s reaction.
    “There is someone you are looking for. This person is important to you,” she said, pausing to chew on her lip. “It’s a man. I think he is the reason you are blind now. You need to know what he is and to do that, you must ask.”
    “Ask who?”
    Alice shook her head. “I cannot say. But you must seek in order to find, knock if you want to enter. The promise is found in your own heart.”
    “Well, that’s as clear as mud.”
    “There are dangers in what you seek. On the surface, it appears to be everything you think you want. But there’s untruth about the people you will find. I’m seeing . . .” She closed her eyes. “I’m seeing a mask that hides the true person inside. Does that mean anything to you?”
    “I don’t think so.” Danni shifted, not liking the sense of understanding pushing its way up from her subconscious.
    “But you are looking for someone?”
    Danni wet her lips, unwilling to give any hints, any clues to this strange woman. “Isn’t everybody looking for someone?”
    Alice’s smile said she knew what Danni was thinking. She flipped another card—this one of a man hanging upside down on a giant T . “I see a break in trust, this time within yourself. You’ve forgotten who you are.” She fanned the deck in her hands and asked Danni to pull one out. Danni felt hollow as she did.
    Alice studied the card for a long moment before placing it on top of another. “This Five of Wands. It represents strife, a struggle. I sense it’s something even greater though. A battle of some sort.”
    “A battle,” Danni repeated, with a feeling of falling in her stomach as Alice pulled yet another from her deck. “Listen, I don’t know why you