“I guess you better do whatever it was I told you to do,” Sher said at last, and began picking up the cards, slowly, all her facility with them disappeared.

“You mean, nothing concrete?”

She shook her head. “If you can’t act the way the cards tell you, then react that way. Make your decisions when it’s time.”

She lifted the last card, Saint Joan. Under it, at the precise center of the white silk scarf, was a spot of fresh, vivid red.

“Do what you were told to do.” Sherrea’s voice was thin. “And don’t come back here until you’re sure you’re doing it.” She lifted her face, hard as a marble goddess’s. “The next move is yours.”

I found my shirt and pants in her kitchen, stiff from the clothesline. On top of them was a thin leather cord with a little pendant made out of dark wood: two V shapes, overlapping point to point. I locked myself in the bathroom again and dressed, and after a moment shrugged and dropped the thong around my neck and under my shirt. The pendant felt just like wood.

When I left, Sherrea was still sitting in the living room, in front of the blood-marred white scarf.

Card 2: Crossing The Sun

Waite: The transit from the light of this world to the light of the world to come. Consciousness of the spirit.

Crowley: Collecting intelligence. The lion, the sparrowhawk. Alcohol is his drug. His magical power is the red tincture, the power of acquiring wealth. Glory, gain, riches, triumph, pleasure; shamelessness, arrogance, vanity. Recovery from sickness.

2.0: A place for everything, and everything wired in place

Happiness, in the land of Deals, is measured on a sliding scale. What makes you happy? A long white silent car with smoked-glass windows, with a chauffeur and a stocked bar and two beautiful objects of desire in the back seat? An apartment in a nice part of town? A kinder lover? A place to stand that’s out of the wind? A brief cessation of pain? It depends on what you have at the moment I ask that question, and what you don’t have. Wait a little, just a little. The scale will slide again.

The beauty of the Night Fair was that no matter how one defined happiness at a given moment, it was usually available there. The price was negotiable, within limits. That’s why the Night Fair endured: because we never stop needing something to make us happy.

The sun had set in a smear of indigo and orange when I reached that chainlink border. I twined my fingers in the fabric of the fence and felt bits of rust grind away under my grip. I was in my own country again. Here there were no gods but the Deal, no spooks but those that could be conjured for money at the buyer’s request. I was safe from Sherrea’s riding spirits, if not my own.

I traveled the fence line to the nearest of the three gates and found it open. The Night Fair was alive from sunset to full dawn. At any other time it was locked and silent, and no one climbed the fence.