Shadowbound by Dianne Sylvan Page A

time of their lives when every day was a golden-hued summer and they had run through the sprinklers on chubby legs.
    Behind her, she heard the creak and shudder of the ladies’ room door being shoved open, and a moment later Stella slid back into her chair with a grin.
    “You okay?” the Witch asked, her smile fading.
    “Yeah,” Miranda said. “It’s been a weird week.”
    “No kidding. Where were we?”
    “The Eight of Pentacles.”
    Now, Stella bit her lip as she dug through the tarot deck in her hands and came up with the card in question. Stella held it up: a spider in a web with eight circles of light in its threads.
    “When I pulled this one I got this crazy surge of intuition, and all I could think was, ‘The Spider is here.’ Do any of your people go by the name Spider?”
    Miranda shook her head. “Not that I’ve ever heard of. But given the rest of the cards”—she picked up the Devil card, which Stella had already explained—“can we assume this Spider person, or thing, is responsible for the badness that’s about to go down?”
    “I didn’t really get an enemy vibe—just a gigantic portentous vibe. Even if he is responsible, it’s not because he’s a bad guy. Kind of like how Deven’s always doing really bad things for good reasons.”
    “He?”
    “Yeah. It felt male. Beats the hell out of me.”
    The Queen considered everything Stella had told her for a moment, then shook her head. “Your cards are dicks.”
    Stella laughed. “Most of the time they behave pretty well. You’re just lucky, I guess.”
    Miranda’s eyes fell on the Ten of Swords, that horrible image of bloody death . . . a card of sacrifice, Stella had said. Instantly the memory of the woman she had killed flashed in Miranda’s mind. Was that what the card referred to? Taking a human sacrifice once a month essentially in Persephone’s name?
    She could only hope that was the worst it might mean.
    Stella picked up the cards one by one and returned them to the deck, wrapping the deck in a piece of black velvet and stowing it in a bag before she returned to the last few bites of her own ice cream.
    Miranda, whose hot fudge sundae had been deceased for several minutes, said, “I’ll be right back.” She headed for the restroom; the ride back to the Haven was about forty-five minutes but felt like an eternity if she’d had a thirty-two-ounce Dr Pepper like tonight.
    The Amy’s restroom was painted in bright cartoon images of cows wearing scuba gear and swimming with perplexed-looking tropical fish. She smiled at the artwork—it helped her avoid looking in the mirror while she washed her hands. Perhaps in another decade it would stop being so weird not to have a reflection, but right now it left her deeply uneasy, as if by not appearing in the mirror, she didn’t really exist.
    As she yanked a paper towel out of the dispenser, something—a noise? a smell?—made her pause and train all her senses beyond the restroom door.
    She could feel Stella at the table waiting for her, and the two employees behind the bar attending to the only other customer in the place. Only weeks ago the fact that the customer was human would have let her dismiss him as a threat, but now . . .
    Miranda opened the door silently and leaned her head around.
    She sighed.
    It was a ninety-year-old man. She might still have suspected something amiss, but the clothes he was wearing and his stooped posture made it pretty clear he was unarmed.
    Still, the vague feeling of unease remained, and Miranda knew it was time to leave. She couldn’t tell if Stella noticed her edginess or not, but the Witch followed her outside without comment.
    “We’re about a block down,” Miranda said. “I told Harlan to wait on a side street since there’s not exactly room for a limo here.”
    Stella laughed. “I’ve never really understood the point of limos. There are fancy cars that don’t take up nearly that much space or use that much gas.”
    “It’s