Spells Trouble, Kristin Cast [books to read in a lifetime .TXT] 📗

deck in the middle of the crushed and stained grass. Hunter didn’t follow any specific tarot spreads, and neither did her cards. She did what felt right, what the deck asked her.

Reveal yourself, reveal yourself, reveal yourself. The intention chanted between her ears as she cut the deck with her right hand, rolled her amulet between the fingers of her left, and stacked the halves back together on the grass. A new set of cards was on top. The right set of cards.

Hunter released a measured exhale. One breath per action, one breath per question. It’s what felt right, what the cards demanded. She turned over the first card and set it face-up next to the deck. She couldn’t release the rest of her breath. The deck still called to her. She turned over another card and placed it face-up on the bloodstained grass. Her palm still itched, the tarot calling out for another turn, and Hunter flipped a third card. The feeling ceased and Hunter let loose the breath stored in her chest. The face of each card was milky white, held in blank suspense as they awaited further instruction. The cards would get their questions. And soon.

Another inhale and exhale to place the remaining cards on top of the velvet satchel Hunter had left on the ground outside the circle of blood.

Mercy squatted down next to Hunter. “There’s nothing there,” she whispered as if the cards would be offended by her comment.

Hunter’s cheeks lifted with a grin. Knowing her tarot cards, they just might.

“They’re waiting for questions.” Hunter rubbed her palms together and exhaled as she held her hands over the three blank cards. This moment she took to double-check the readiness of her magic usually felt like warming her hands over a fire, comforting and soothing. But this time was different. This time was more—a fierce, blazing excitement that sent waves of need rippling from her fingertips to her toes and back again.

“We want to know if anything came through.” Mercy continued to whisper. “That’s what you’re going to ask, right? Will all three cards tell you or—”

“Mag!” Hunter curled her hands into fists and rubbed them against her thighs. “I know what I’m doing. Let me do it in my own time.”

Mercy chewed her bottom lip and nodded. “I’m just excited.”

Hunter understood. Excitement dripped from her pores like sweat. She passed the back of her hand along her forehead. She needed to finish this spell and close the channels of power that lit her from the inside out.

Inhale. She pressed the fingertips of her right hand against the first card. Exhale. “Did a creature, a demi-god, come through this gate?”

A sound like splintering wood and the card’s white face dissolved into the ghostly image of a creature hunched over, blurry fists pressed against the ground like a gorilla. Around it, each half of the split olive tree.

Mercy’s brows lifted. “I’m taking that as a yes.”

Inhale. Hunter moved to the next card. Exhale. “This thing that came through, did it hurt anyone?”

Hunter already knew the answer. Whatever it was had killed Earl Thompson. Tyr wouldn’t have led her to his blood if it hadn’t.

Smoke rose from the ground beneath the cards, beneath the blood, beneath the flattened grasses. The earth sizzled and the crushed grass turned black and formed a perfect imprint of where the life had gone out of old Earl Thompson.

Mercy shrieked and hurled herself backward. She landed in the tall grass with a muffled thud. She held out a trembling hand and pointed at the space where she’d squatted only moments before, her jaw bobbing open and closed—the words just out of reach.

A fresh wave of smoke snaked under Hunter’s nose as she followed her sister’s outstretched hand. Hunter blinked once, twice, three times, her brain unwilling to process the image it received. A set of shoe prints were burned into the ground next to Hunter—next to the seared memory of Mr. Thompson’s corpse.

Panic tightened Hunter’s chest and she coughed into the magical smoke that dissipated with each gust of spring air. “Mag—” Hunter stared at the cards. The second face had changed. The image of a gnarled branch bisected the card. Above the limb, a skull nested under the smooth arch of a sickle. Below it, a puddle of skin, its face and arms slack and empty like it’d been stripped from its frame and dropped amidst the grass.

The mortal’s skin becomes a living disguise.

“It wasn’t just Mr. Thompson. Someone else was here.” Hunter motioned to the footprints scorched into the earth. “Someone else was taken.”

Ecru grass dusted Mercy’s cheeks as she crawled around to Hunter’s other side where the grass was unmarred by the tarot and whatever creature had slipped through the crumbling gate. “Will your cards tell you what did this?”

That’s what the last card was for. It had to be. It would tell them exactly who to look for and then they could begin to put this whole mess behind them.

Inhale. Hunter’s fingers found the third card. Exhale. “The creature, who is it?”

Mercy gripped Hunter’s arm as the sisters waited for the truth.

A gurgling sound like a growl through wet paint while images slowly flicked along the card’s surface as if it were scrolling through a digital contacts list: a woman with snakes piled atop her head like hair; a three-headed beast; a female rising from ocean waves, her hands cupped around her mouth; and a drooling beast with a single bulging eye and sparse hairs that stuck up from its lumpy head like question marks. The final image froze upon the face of the card.

“Oh, Freya!” Mercy pulled Hunter against her. “His eyes are gone. That’s what Em said about her dad.”

“And the sheriff said about Mr. Thompson.” Hunter glossed her fingers over the image. “It’s collecting eyes.”

Mercy’s breath left her lips in short quakes. “H-how do we stop him?”

Hunter lifted the card and squinted at the single eye glaring at her from the middle of the creature’s broad