The voice comes from a young white woman in a lawn chair, perched beneath a blue-and-pink umbrella. At first I assume she’s talking to someone else, but she looks right at me, and hooks her finger.

“Come here,” she says.

I’ve heard my fair share of fairy tales; I know you’re not supposed to go with strangers—especially when you’re being hunted by a supernatural force. But she’s just sitting there, in the open. And as far as I can tell, she’s perfectly human.

I glance over at my parents, deep in conversation with the crew, and then I drift toward her, Jacob on my heels.

The woman’s hair is cut in a violet bob and she has freckled skin. There’s a fold-up table at her knees, with a large deck of cards facedown on top.

“Name’s Sandra,” she says. “Want to have your fortune told?”

I consider the question, and the person asking it.

Sandra doesn’t look like a fortune-teller.

In my mind, fortune-tellers are old, draped in velvet and lace, their skin weathered and their eyes deep. They don’t have purple hair and chipped nail polish. They don’t sit in lawn chairs under blue-and-pink umbrellas. They don’t wear flip-flops. But if I’ve learned anything this summer, it’s that things aren’t always as they seem.

“The first one’s free,” she says, fanning out a deck of cards. They’re beautiful, the backs decorated with swirling lines, suns and stars and moons. They were silver once—I can tell by the shine—but they’ve been worn away to gray.

Sandra turns the cards over, and I realize there are no hearts, no spades, no diamonds or clubs. Instead there are swords and cups, wands and rings. And scattered in among those, strange paintings of towers, and jesters, and queens.

They’re tarot cards.

I see a heart driven through with knives. Three wands crossed like a star. A single glowing ring. I shiver at the sight of a skeleton astride a white horse.

Sandra doesn’t put on an act. She doesn’t change her voice, lace it with mystery or theater. She just turns the deck facedown again, fans the cards between her fingers, and says, “Choose.”

I look down at the deck and ask, “How?”

The backs of the cards are all the same. Nothing but suns and stars and moons. No way to tell what I’m picking.

“The cards will tell you,” she says, and I don’t really understand, until I do. My hand drifts over the deck, the paper edges worn soft, like silk, under my fingers. And then my hand stops. There’s a pull, right under my palm, a steady draw, like the Veil rising to meet my fingers.

I draw the card from the deck, holding my breath.