“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he said, deftly shuffling the cards. I’d seen him scam clients plenty of times, telling them what they wanted to hear. Seeing as I didn’t know what I wanted, I supposed that excluded me from that category. After the cards were thoroughly randomized, he had me cut them, and then he neatly restacked them. “Draw.”

I took the first card off the top and flipped it over. “Fuck.”

The Five of Cups. Spilled chalices. Lost hopes and dreams. Dante affirmed as much.

“Disappointment’s ahead, the loss of something you had. It can be a failure or inability to resolve a recurring problem. Pretty typical reading for you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Doom and gloom always surround you. I didn’t make up that palm reading for you.” That had been even worse than this. “It’s probably just verifying that Jerome’s gone for good—if you even want to believe in this. And, hey, look.” He tapped the card. “One cup stayed upright. Not all hope is lost.”

I wondered about that as I thought about losing Seth and the man in the dream. I wondered also if Roman was right, if it was true that I wouldn’t know what to do if I ever was actually happy.

As I suspected, Dante did make sexual moves on me, but I demurred as I had all week. I knew it didn’t matter at this point. My cups had emptied, and the ride with Seth was over. Yet, our time on the balcony had been so sweet and so powerful that once again, I couldn’t be with someone else after an encounter like that. Soon enough my sex life with Dante would return to normal—but not tonight. He didn’t seem angry at being turned down, so much as hurt. I felt a little bad about that but realized I’d rather feel guilty about betraying him than Seth.

Dante was up and gone before me the next morning, but Roman was sitting in my living room eating cereal and generally making himself at home. He had to know I was standing there, but he kept his eyes on the morning news. When he finished the cereal, he clicked for Aubrey and set the bowl down for her.

“Hey,” I said, scooping it up. “Milk’s bad for cats.”

“You need to let her live a little,” he protested, still watching the news. “So what’s the plan today?”

“I don’t know. I’m still in stasis, so I guess that gives us time. Want to throw a dart at the map and go somewhere?” I gestured to the atlas of the Pacific Northwest lying on my coffee table.

“Might be the most productive method we’ve tried,” he mused.