“Like the first time you see a striped pretty and don’t learn what it is until you poke it with a paw and it sprays you,” Simon said.

She wasn’t smiling now. “Did you just compare me to a skunk?”

Now they smiled.

“To be fair, you don’t smell like one anymore,” Simon said.

“What?”

“Why did you want to see us, Meg?” Vlad asked.

Having witnessed a scene with Twyla Montgomery and some of the children earlier this morning, it was clear to Meg that throwing what Merri Lee called a hissy fit didn’t get you what you wanted. And if doing that didn’t work with Twyla, it certainly wouldn’t work with Simon and Vlad—especially if they didn’t understand what she was doing and she had to explain it. Which would be embarrassing. And not mature.

Amused at herself, which made her feel steadier, Meg laid some cards on the table.

“Meg?” Sharpness in Simon’s voice. Sharpness in Vlad’s eyes.

“I’m not drawing cards for a vision,” she explained. “I’d like a favor. Two favors, actually.”

“That must be why you asked for two of us to come here,” Vlad said.

She pointed to the cards she had taken out of a deck on the sorting room table. One card was a smiley face. Another was a sad face. The third was the question mark she’d drawn once before when she asked about Lakeside’s future. “These cards are from a game. Some of them got mixed up with the prophecy cards.”

“How did that happen?” Simon asked.

She shook her head. She wasn’t going to be a tattletale. She knew that Merri Lee and Ruth had already talked to Eve Denby and Twyla and Sierra Montgomery about the importance of the children not going into the Liaison’s Office unsupervised and, especially, not playing with the cards.

“That’s not important. The important thing is that I think these actually are useful for revealing prophecies without me making a cut.”

She had their complete attention now.

“But these particular cards...” She went to the drawer and randomly pulled five cards that had different backs, which meant they were from different decks. She turned them over and lined them up above the first three cards. “Do you see? These are from different decks of cards—some reveal the natural world and some are illustrations of human or urban things. Even though they’re different, they complement each other. Do you see?”

Vlad came around to her side of the table. He picked up the deck of game cards and fanned them to see more of the images. “So you want a deck of cards with these images but done in a style that would fit in with the rest of the decks you’re currently using?”