Kiss of Fire by Deborah Cooke

had fallen from the chair.
    Well, that wasn’t implausible. There was so much stuff stacked in this tiny room that anything could fall and not be found again. And she’d even ditched a bunch of it. Sara reached in and grabbed both the thermostat cover and the velvet.
    It proved to be a small drawstring bag, of the softest and reddest velvet Sara had ever seen. It was heavier than she’d expected and Sara opened the drawstring.
    There was a deck of dog-eared tarot cards inside.
    Sara stood up in a hurry. Were these Magda’s cards? She’d been wondering what had happened to them, but had assumed she’d inadvertently pitched them in her cleaning of house and shop.
    Had Magda ensured that Sara got these?
    The air conditioner whirred to life, as if agreeing with that whimsical thought.
    Again.
    â€œDon’t mess with my mind like that,” Sara said crossly and the unit fell silent again.
    Coincidence. Sara was sure of it. There must be faulty wiring at root and the last thing she needed was a fire. She clicked the cover back onto the thermostat, then opened the electrical box. She flicked the circuit breaker for the air conditioner, cutting the power to it until she got it serviced again.
    She returned to the cash desk, only realizing when she got there that she still held the velvet bag of tarot cards. She looked around, checking for witnesses, then surrendered to impulse.
    What was the worst thing that could happen?
    Sara drew a card.
    It was called “The Lovers” and it was faceup in Sara’s hand.
    She had a pretty good idea that she knew what that meant, but she grabbed a book on tarot cards from the appropriate section and looked it up, just to be sure.
    â€œA destined lover appears in your life,” she read. She ate her sandwich without tasting it, maybe because she was thinking more about chocolate than tuna salad. “A romantic relationship comes to physical union.” She closed the book and stared at the cards. “That was a fluke,” she told them and drew another.
    It was the same card, in the same orientation.
    After she drew the card six times, Sara had an idea. Maybe it was a whole deck of the same card. She flipped the deck over and spread it across the counter. She checked it carefully, but there was only one card called “The Lovers.”
    She took a deep breath, shuffled, and drew another card.
    â€œThe Lovers.”
    â€œAll right!” she said to the store. “All right, Magda. I give up! What if I admit that there’s something to all of this weird stuff?”
    The air conditioner whirred to life and ran with quiet efficiency.
    But that was impossible! Sara ran to the back room and confirmed that there was no electricity running to the unit. The circuit breaker was just as she had left it, but the unit was running more smoothly than it ever had.
    So, it was an air-conditioning unit that didn’t actually need electricity. On this particular day, that actually seemed reasonable.
    Plus, it was as green a solution to summer heat as Sara could imagine. If she could somehow distribute ghosts to every household in America, so that appliances ran without requiring electricity or creating emissions, she could save the planet for everyone.
    Now she did sound crazy.
    Sara leaned her forehead against the wall. “If you can fix it so I don’t get an electrical bill for this, that would really convince me,” she whispered.
    The air conditioner kicked up to a higher power.
    Sara remembered that she had turned the thermostat really low. She adjusted it to a moderate temperature and the unit purred happily.
    Just when it seemed that things couldn’t get weirder, the book fell.
    Sara pivoted slowly, the hair rising on the back of her neck. There was no one in the shop but her. She knew it. She’d locked the door.
    But there was a book on the floor in the aisle that led from the cash desk to the back room. It was bound in red