Shades of Darkness by A. R. Kahler Page B

used to me shuffling in the dead of night. The familiar whir between my fingers was calming, rhythmic, almost more soothing than the guidance I was seeking.
    I’d nearly thrown them out sophomore year. Almost. The idea of being connected to the occult after . . . well, it felt like a dangerous line to walk. But the idea of trashing something my mom had given me caused too much guilt, so the cards stayed.
    â€œWhat’s going on?” I whispered, images floating through my mind to make the question solid: Mandy’s smile, cop cars in the snow, Ethan’s words ringing like omens: Someone died.
    A card flipped out mid-shuffle, landing on the desk.
    â€œTen of Swords,” I muttered, staring at the man stabbed by his own blades. Obvious enough—defeat, destruction, death. “Tell me something I didn’t know.”
    I kept shuffling.
    Minutes seemed to drag by. The cards shuffled quietly, none dislodging. I couldn’t think of anything else—no other question seemed pertinent. Then, after my eyes began to droop and my shuffling faded, a new image flashed through my mind: Jonathan, standing before our folklore class, a raven on his shoulder. It was the gods who took the innocent away.
    I jerked awake as two cards spilled from my hand, landing on the floor, one crossed over the other.
    The bottom was The World, inverted. And above it, The Tower.
    â€œShit,” I muttered. Chills ran down my neck. I reached down and slid the cards back into the deck, passing it off as an accident. I was too tired to be doing this.
    But when I slid into bed and turned off the light, my cards tucked beneath my pillow, all I could see behind my closed eyes were those two cards. The inverted World: a woman twined in fabric, falling upside down. The Tower: a great obelisk destroyed by lightning, figures leaping from its heights. Apart, they were important, almost cosmic—great shifts, catastrophic turns of events. Together, in that combination, they felt like a curse.
    The world on fire. The world crumbling like the tower. Everything falling like feathers in the snow, like blood on the tiles.
    The gods walk, something inside me whispered. And hell if it didn’t sound like Brad.

Elisa was, unsurprisingly, up before me. She plodded silently to the bathroom, but that slight rustle of covers was enough to wake me. I blinked and rolled over, glaring at the alarm clock on her shelf. Six thirty. I closed my eyes. I really, really didn’t want to be awake. I didn’t want to face whatever was going to happen today. Surely, we’d have some sort of assembly. Classes would be canceled, and I hated to admit that that would be one of the worst parts of all this—work always helped me get through things. If we just had a day to sit around and think about what happened, I’d go insane.
    Ethan found me at breakfast. I was sitting at the far end of the cafeteria, by the windows overlooking the woods and the iced-over lake. The mood of the room was as gray and heavy as the world outside. No one seemed to be talking, and if they were, it was in muted tones. He saw me, saw the look on my face, and immediately slipped into a side of himself I saw only in dire circumstances.
    â€œHow are you?” he asked, setting his tray beside mine. There was only a banana and half-filled bowl of oatmeal. Looked like I wasn’t the only one without an appetite.
    â€œI . . .” I was about to lie, to say I was okay. But Ethan’s eyes were on mine and right then, I didn’t want to pretend anymore. Not with him. I’d been pretending with Elisa all morning. “I’m feeling pretty fucked up.”
    He gave me a half grin, the sad, consoling sort, and put a hand on my arm.
    â€œDo you want to talk about it?”
    â€œI don’t know if I can.”
    He nodded like he understood. And maybe he did understand, at least partly. He’d once admitted it took him two years to