“Where did the Courtyard’s bison come from?”

“I already know the answer to that.”

“Yes, but if you had to give us the answer using cards, which ones would you choose?”

Meg looked over the cards and chose the card she’d said meant West, then a card that showed tall grass and little else. Then she frowned and rubbed her right hand. “It’s not here. The yellow pebble isn’t here.”

“Wait a moment.” Ruth opened another deck of cards and quickly went through them. Then she held up a picture of several bars of gold stacked in a vault.

“Yes,” Meg said, taking the card and setting it beneath the other two.

“West as a direction or region, a picture of what I’m guessing is prairie—Mr. Wolfgard could confirm that when he returns—and bars of gold.” Merri Lee sounded pleased. “The answer to the question is Prairie Gold, which is west of us.”

The tingling faded.

Meg stared at the cards. Could this work? Could she really answer questions this way?

“We would need cards that have pictures of bad things,” she said.

“Yes,” Merri Lee agreed. “But a picture of a bad thing doesn’t have to be graphic.”

“Okay,” Ruth said. “Is there anything in this landscape deck that doesn’t feel right to you, Meg?”

After looking at all the cards, Meg shook her head. “None of them feel wrong.”

Ruth reclaimed the card with the bars of gold before they collected the rest of the cards and put them back in their box. “That was the landscape deck. This deck is called cityscapes.”

Meg hugged herself while Merri Lee and Ruth sorted the cards into categories.

“Meg?” Merri Lee said.

The calves and thighs of both legs burned, burned, burned—the prelude to prophecy. Meg clenched her teeth and held one hand above the cards, moving slowly from one category to the next. Her hand buzzed painfully when it brushed against the last category. She pushed those cards to one side, then backed away from the table until her hand stopped buzzing and her legs stopped burning.

Merri Lee and Ruth looked at the cards and then at her.

“Meg?” Ruth said softly. “Why did you set these aside? They’re all cards that show skylines of different cities.”

Burned, burned, burned. She’d had the same sensation above her ankle when she’d seen the prophecy of Nadine’s shop burning. If she made a cut, if she saw... No. She didn’t want to see what was going to happen in those places. And she didn’t want her friends to carry that much of a burden of knowing.

“Meg?” Merri Lee said. “Why did you set these cards aside?”

She shuddered and swallowed hard. “I don’t think we’ll need them.” Her stomach rolled. “I can’t look at anymore today.”