I shudder involuntarily as his crosswise face and silver-topped cane flood my memory, the feeling of a thousand useless golden coins pelting me from above. I might have thought I’d imagined it all but for the very real bruises dotting my collarbones the next morning. When I looked at the Magician card in my deck all those years, I never imagined he’d be such a dick.

Daniel steps next to me, and I take in a deep, delicious breath of his evergreen-and-lemongrass-scented cologne. “Any luck?” he asks.

I shake my head. “Nope. Apparently, this is some kind of rare edition.”

“Let me see,” he says, sliding the box from my hand. He holds it up next to a couple of similarly colored boxes, but mine is obviously different. The dark navy background and red and yellow details are accented with white and black and purple. The art has more depth and shading than most, even if the colors are relatively basic. The style is like a dream of a carnival in Wonderland. Something in the corners and the angles gives it a sinister touch, unlike the frank expressions of the decks before me. And some of the cards have symbols I’ve never seen before.

“You got me,” he says, passing it back. “It’s sort of like all of these, but not.”

“Right?” I sigh.

“Can I help you?”

We both turn to see a dark-haired woman standing behind us. She is not an inch over five feet, with razor-straight bangs and huge eyes that dominate her severe face. She wears a long chain with a pentacle the size of a pie plate at the end, and her purple top has a lace neckline. She blinks as if we have startled her and not the other way around, but her smile is warm.

“I’m looking for a deck like this one,” I tell her, holding up my own. “But I don’t see any here.”

She holds a hand out and slips on a pair of reading glasses. I pass her my deck and she studies the box, delicately turning it over in her pale hands. She slides out a few cards and flips through them, then slides them back in. “Where did you get this?” she asks.

“My mom. It was hers when she was young.”

She looks at me, studying my face like she did the cards, and hands the deck back over. “I’ve been reading professionally for many years, and I’ve never seen the like.”

“Oh.” I’m not sure what to do with that. I tuck it away to analyze later. “Maybe we should check online?”

She shrugs. “You could. Decks go out of print all the time. Some dealers continue to collect and sell them over the internet. There are also a lot of independent deck creators these days, but you said this was older?”

“Yes.” Though I’m not sure how old.