While I splashed water on my face and neck, LuEllen got down the crystal ball and passed it to Dessusdelit, “just to warm it up.” I wandered out of the head a minute later and posed in the galley, rubbing my wet face with a towel, yawning. Dessusdelit was wearing a bright print summer dress and beige low-heeled shoes. Even with the color, she still looked like a venomous sparrow, spooky, nervously glancing this way and that, as though a predator were about to jump out of a bush. She had the crystal ball cupped in her hands, rolling it, staring into it.

“You in a mood for a reading?” LuEllen asked me.

“Sure, I guess,” I said lazily.

Dessusdelit knew something about tarot, so we couldn’t fool her with a fake spread. LuEllen kept her working with the crystal ball while I got my deck from the cupboard. It was a common deck, the Waite-Rider. There are hundreds of tarots in circulation, but you can buy a Waite-Rider anyplace that handles occult stuff. It’s a standard, which is a good thing, because when I needed the second identical deck, I had no trouble finding one. The second deck was in a little cardboard box we’d taped under the edge of the table.

“It’s amazing,” LuEllen said as I sat down across from Dessusdelit. My knee touched the box under the table. “We must have caught Miz Dessusdelit at a critical juncture. When she handles the ball, it lights up like a Christmas tree: money and adventure

“

She paused, artlessly, and let a wrinkle crease her forehead, as if a new thought had just occurred to her. “And romance?” LuEllen looked down at Dessusdelit. “Do you think that peculiar flux and intensity could have something to do with romance?”

Dessusdelit blushed. “Well, I wouldn’t be

there isn’t anything-“

“Could be something wicked this way comes,” LuEllen said. I jumped; LuEllen surprises me sometimes. She’d just quoted a piece of Macbeth, which later became a Ray Bradbury title. Dessusdelit obviously recognized at least the sound of it, and I wondered if it were the Shakespeare or the Bradbury.

While Dessusdelit was mumbling over LuEllen’s suggestion, I thumbed through the deck and put the Queen of Cups on the table, faceup.

“Significator,” I said. I glanced at LuEllen. “Would you pull the blinds just a little and kill the lights? I’d like it a little dimmer to help focus the concentration

“

LuEllen started pulling blinds, and I put the deck, less the single card, in front of the mayor. “I want you to shuffle. At least seven times, and after that, as long as you want,” I told her. She took the deck and began riffling the cards. When she was done, she placed it squarely in front of me.

“Do you want to cut it?” I asked.

“Should I?”

“That’s purely up to you. Look inside yourself, and make a decision.”