The future, the Ten of Swords. One of the most violent cards in the deck. A man sprawled on the ground, ten swords stuck in his back. It could mean that you were literally going to be stabbed in the back, a betrayal. A crisis, a painful but inevitable end. The silver lining that I offered people when this card showed up in readings was that you couldn’t control what other people did to you, but you could choose how you wanted to act in response. It could be a card about accepting your pain and having a chance to move on from it. Some people saw the dead man and thought the card was telling them they were going to die, but that wasn’t it, or at least not usually. It meant that, like death, this was the final challenge—but there was peace waiting on the other side. My final challenge was still waiting for me.

I slipped the tarot cards back into their pouch and rubbed the back of my head. A bump had formed where it had struck the fountain, and it flashed with pain when I pushed my fingers against it. The visions were getting more complex, more violent, more consuming. Was that my final challenge? To overcome them? To figure out what they meant? Maybe it was too late to save Peaches and Julie, but then, what did they want from me? How was I supposed to help?

I was ravenous, but I was too anxious to eat. I headed in the direction of the shop and stopped at the 99-cent store to get myself a ginger ale, and tried to decide what to do next. At the front of the store, a row of pinwheels spun in the breeze, their metallic colors flashing. Every bone in my body was screaming leave leave leave. I thought of the Four of Pentacles, how happy I would be to turn my back on this city, to look back and see the skyline in the distance. I pulled the tab on my soda and wondered what I was supposed to do about the money. I was watching the pinwheels again when someone crashed into me and the soda fizzed all over my fingers, sloshed onto my shirt. It took me a minute to place him: Luis, the one who worked with Lily. Of course. Every time I saw him, something seemed to go wrong.

He held out his hands, the way people do to say sorry or take it easy.