To business it was, then. It made me like her even more to see her put herself back together with such speed.
Only the strong of heart could pull that off.
“Do you not want to discuss payment?” I asked.
She lifted an eyebrow. “You saved my soul. That is payment enough.”
I moved to the rug and sat across from her. She reached out and took my left hand first. Her fingers trailed lightly over my skin, pressing here and there, turning my hand from side to side while she squinted at things only she could see.
“Is she going to marry soon?” Cactus blurted out behind me. I startled with the sound of his voice, and then glared at him over my shoulder.
“No. I don’t see a marriage for a long time, if at all,” Giselle said, her voice a bit dreamy. “Love. Lust. Sex. She sees marriage as a yoke that will bind her wings and break her.”
“That is not my question.” I bit the words out, silently cursing Cactus for butting in.
“I can handle those three,” he said as he crouched behind me. I whipped my head around and stared hard at Giselle.
“Are you ready for me to ask my question?”
She shook her head. “Not yet. I’m following your life line.” She trailed a finger across my palm. “It’s too interesting not to Read.”
I closed my hand over hers. “I am not here for my own life, Reader. I am here to save another.”
“Your father, I know. I see that. But you need help to find him because he is in the shadows of his own madness. I cannot see him clearly; he is cloaked from me.”
I didn’t like how she put that. It made me think of Blackbird. If my father had been caught by Cassava and her lover, they could in theory put that cloaking spell on him. Giselle went on. “Someone doesn’t want you to find him.” Her eyes flickered ever so slightly. “Am I right?”
I was relieved. Another step in the journey, one that would take time. A quick nod was all I gave her.
“You need a Tracker then,” she said. “That is a bit harder than doing a Reading of your palm, or answering a question like ‘will she marry?’”
She stood and went to the kitchen. The sound of a drawer opening and closing and then she was back with me. In her hand was a deck of cards. She held them out to me. “Think of your question, then choose a card.”
“Why don’t I say it out loud?”
“That’s not how this works.” Giselle looked at me, her face serious. I on the other hand struggled not to laugh. Niah had sent me to a child who had no idea of her own abilities. Sighing, I pulled a card and handed it to her. She flipped it over and laid it in front of me.
The picture was of a large black tower with flames curling out of the windows. A smell of burning flesh tickled my nose and I clenched my teeth to keep from gasping. The picture on the deck moved as figures ran to put the flames out.
“The Tower,” Giselle said, her voice aging as she spoke, leaving behind the girlish tones. “Violent and destructive change comes your way, Larkspur of the Rim.”
Her words echoed my own vision that Spirit had shown me. “I know. But that does not answer the question I asked.”
Giselle put her finger on the Tower. “This is a picture of the Tower of London. I think that is a clue as to where you will find the Tracker.”
The air tensed around us and for a moment I thought the dark spirit was back, but it was not that one. Giselle’s guides whispered around us.
The lion and the unicorn
Were fighting not to drown
The lion saved the unicorn
When they hid in Shire town.
Some struck them on the rump,
And some just frowned;
Some gave them magic
While drumming out of town
Cactus let out a low whistle. “Damn, my skin is trying to crawl right off my body.”
I didn’t take my eyes from Giselle. The song was twisted from the version most people knew, but it had originated in England, giving credence to her suggestion of the Tracker being there.
“I want to ask another question.” What I wanted to know was if there was anything else she could tell us about the journey. Anything helpful.
“Pick a card.” She held the deck out to me again. I paused, letting my hand hover over the cards before picking the one on the far edge. I gave it to her and she flipped it over. A gruesome creature looked back at us, blinking up at me with tiny pig eyes. Ram horns curled off his head, and his bottom half was that of a goat. A curling forked tail wrapped around his waist, flicking here and there. He opened his mouth in a silent roar.
Peta peered over the edge. “That can’t be good.”
Giselle turned the card over. “Someone else is searching for the Tracker. They,” she frowned and her eyes went distant, “they don’t have anything to do with you on this journey, but on another journey they will interfere with something important to you. Right now they want to kill her. That doesn’t make sense.” She closed her eyes, a frown tight on her lips.