“I have my sources.” Jester winked at her. “I think Talulah Falls will be under new management soon. Isn’t that the phrase humans use? So you showed me the city deck, which isn’t so interesting, and the nature deck, which I liked. What’s that one?”

Stuck on the image of a sign saying UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT hanging over the road leading to Talulah Falls, it took Meg a moment to catch up to Jester’s change of subject. “This is a deck of fantastic drawings—imaginary creatures.”

Jester’s smile faltered. “Can I see the cards?”

She handed him the deck. “They’re just make-believe. I don’t know how the Intuits would read them, but I don’t think they’ll be useful to the cassandra sangue. Why would we speak prophecy about something that doesn’t exist?”

She thought about the cards of city skylines that she had put aside because she didn’t think they would be needed. And she watched Jester’s ears shift to Coyote, watched fur spring up on his neck and hands as he looked at the drawings. He let most of the cards fall into his lap, but a few he handed to her.

“Jester?”

“Who else knows about these cards?”

“I don’t know. I think Jesse Walker has the same decks that she sent to me.” Jester slanted a look at the cards in her hand. “Don’t tell anyone about those cards. You should keep them. Learn them. But don’t talk about them with anyone else.”

Meg studied the cards that upset Jester. The creatures walked upright, but that was all they had in common with humans. The cards weren’t intended to convey a blended form of terra indigene. Or if they were, she didn’t recognize the animals these creatures had absorbed.

Separated from the rest of the cards, the drawings frightened her—and made the backs of her legs prickle.

“Promise you won’t tell anyone about these,” Jester whispered. “Put them in with the nature cards and hope you never see any of them again.”

“But these are just something someone imagined.”

The prickle became a burn when Jester said, “Or remembered.”

She realized the Coyote was shaking. Her fingers tightened on the cards in her hands. “They’re make-believe.”

“No. They’re not.”

To: Erebus and Vladimir Sanguinati

The remaining terra indigene have left the Toland Courtyard. Some of the Crowgard and Sanguinati will remain near the train station to keep watch and report any suspicious activity or any sign that an unusual number of humans are leaving the city.

I and a few of our kin will watch the ships leaving Toland for a while longer. The Elementals promised to help keep watch—and to warn us when the taste of the storm touches the beaches and fills the air so that we, and other terra indigene along the East Coast of Thaisia, have time to move inland.

—Stavros Sanguinati