The Devil You Know (11 page)

“Oh, I'm sure she'll tell us tonight at the Devil's Chair,” Matt says. “I mean, imagine it. The stroke of midnight, when the veil between worlds is thin enough for the devil to send a message. It's dark and silent in the cemetery until a disembodied voice from the deepest pits of hell shrieks, ‘That car was in mint condition!' ”

Noah laughs so hard that tears trickle from the corners of his eyes, and every time he tries to speak, his words get lost in a new fit of laughter. In the end we agree to grab lunch, pitch the tents at a local park, and then come back for a psychic reading—and maybe even a ghost tour—before we try out the Devil's Chair. But the first thing on my personal to-do list is call home, and it's no exaggeration when I say I'd rather speak to the devil himself than tell Dad I'm not coming home yet. I borrow Noah's phone.

“Where the hell are you?” My dad is so mad his words surely must have rattled the satellites on their way to my ear. The last time he was this upset with me was when I stole Mom's favorite perfume to wear on a date with Justin. She always let me borrow it when she was alive, but afterward Dad hoarded the bottle in his magpie nest of memories, hidden away behind his bedroom door.

He caught me red-handed and shouted at me, telling
me I had no business going in his room. That I had no right to touch Mom's belongings, as if she'd been only his. I tried to explain that if she were still alive she would give me permission to use her perfume, but he just wouldn't listen. Finally, I hurled the bottle at the living room wall and it shattered, raining glass onto the carpet and releasing Mom's scent in the house, where it hung like a ghost for days. We didn't speak to each other until it was gone, and even then neither of us apologized.

“Cassadaga,” I tell him now. “I'll be home soo—”

“Now. You come home right now.”

“No.” The word lashes out of my mouth like a slap. Hard. Fast. And other words—terrible words—bubble up behind that word, but I swallow them in front of Noah and Matt. “Not yet.”

“This is not something you get to decide, Arcadia,” Dad says.

“Yeah, actually it is.”

“What?”

“I'm eighteen years old.” I cringe as I say it, because playing the legal-adult card doesn't make me feel like an adult at all. It makes me feel like a brat, but I say it anyway. “So I
do
get to decide.”

“My house, my rules.”

“Dad—”

“Cadie, you are still my daughter and—”

“Exactly,” I say. “I'm your daughter. Danny is your son. You're supposed to take care of us, but all I've done for the last three years is take care of you. I just want this one thing. Just—”

“Be back in time for dinner,” he says, softer now, but still firm. Disappointment washes through me. I thought—I hoped—he'd relent. “And bring Lindsey Buck with you.”

“Wait, what? Dad?”

He hangs up before I can tell him Lindsey already went home, and I'm left with nothing but an earful of dial tone. Why would he say that? Why doesn't he know that she didn't come with us? And if she's not at home … where is she?

“That's weird.” I hand Noah his phone. “He seems to think Lindsey is with us.”

“Where else would she go?” he asks.

“I don't know.”

“Do you want to call her?” He extends the phone to me again and I take it, except Lindsey assured me she was okay. And her business hasn't been my business in a long time. Still, I told her mom I'd look out for her. I open the keypad, and, after all that wrangling with my conscience, it hits me that I don't even know Lindsey's cell number by heart. I try their old landline, which I think the Bucks abandoned in favor of a cellular family
plan, and get recorded confirmation that I have no way of contacting Lindsey. I could call Dad again, but … no thanks.

Matt jingles the keys to the Cougar. “Do you want us to take you back?”

“No.” The more my dad wants me to come home, the less I am inclined. He doesn't want his daughter, he wants the cook, the housekeeper, and the babysitter.

“You sure?” Noah asks.

Molly nuzzles her nose under my hand so I'll pet her and I do. “Trying to get rid of me?”

He shakes his head and makes an I-can't-believe-you're-really-asking-me-that-question face. “Nope.”

“Well—” I miss my little brother something fierce. I don't think we've been apart this many days before, but isn't that part of the problem? Even though I can justify what I'm doing, it doesn't keep me from feeling guilty. I'm just getting better at tamping it down. When I smile at Noah I mean it. I don't want to leave. “I guess I'm staying.”

The lady across the table from me doesn't look psychic. Granted, my only frame of reference is Esmeralda, the grandma fortune-teller inside the machine at the antique shop next door to our grocery store. The machine doesn't work anymore, but my dad gave me the printed card that
dropped out for him back when he was a kid. It has a four-leaf clover printed on it, a kind of get-out-of-jail-free card for when you need a little extra luck. I keep it in my wallet, but I'm not completely convinced good luck is transferrable like that.

Anyway, the lady across the table from me looks like someone's mom and the school photos of moon-faced kids hanging on the living room wall behind her suggest she may well be. So incongruous with the purple neon hand in her living room window offering palm, tarot, aura, and astrological readings for twenty dollars.

She tells me her name is Joan, which seems pretty unexotic, but see: Esmeralda. Beggars can't be choosers, and the good-luck card in my wallet doesn't have much company—only the fifty-dollar bill Uncle Eddie gave me for graduation, ten dollars Justin's mom slipped me at the football stadium after the ceremony, and a fifteen-dollar Target gift card from Rhea Chung. I should probably save the money for something important, but when in Cassa-daga, I guess. So here we are.

Joan distributes her tarot cards on the table in a row of six—a universal spread, she calls it—and flips over the first one. On it is a woman wearing a white dress, with an apple in one hand and some sort of branch in the other. It's very beautifully illustrated, and I remind myself to ask her the name of the deck.

“This card represents how you feel about yourself right
now.” Joan touches it with a manicured hand. So pretty compared to my ragged nails. “The High Priestess means you are seeking guidance and answers. Your life is out of balance, and you're looking for guidance but need to look within yourself. You need to trust your intuition.”

Generic, but nice, and the part about my life being out of balance is pretty accurate.

The second card is the Fool.

“This doesn't mean you're a fool,” Joan assures me. “It usually means you just want to be happy and that you're trying to find the thing that will bring that happiness. You feel unsure of what you want in life, and you're ready for new experiences, personal growth, and maybe even adventure. That's why it's important to remember the High Priestess, who tells you to trust your instincts.”

My brain pricks up like dog ears at the word “adventure,” but I don't say anything. Again, she is not wrong, but the card meaning is vague enough that it could be applied to anyone.

I nod.

“I get a sense with you that you have great musical ability,” she says. “Do you sing?”

“In the shower,” I say. “And not very well.”

“Maybe the piano or—no, guitar.” Gathering dust in the corner of my closet is an old guitar that used to belong to my dad. He gave it to me because at thirteen—after my
MythBusters
phase—I was going to be a rock star. Turns out I was hopelessly bad at playing guitar. I shake my head. “Well, it's a little hazy, and I could be seeing artistic, rather than music. But cultivate it. Nurture it. Because it will pay off in a big way.”

Right.

“The Fool also might mean you're having mixed feelings about someone and whether or not you want to begin a relationship with him,” she says.

I don't respond to that, either, because Matt and Noah are sitting on a bench on her front porch. She can see the backs of their heads through the window, so I'm not convinced this card isn't a gimme, too.

“Here the future is a little more clear,” she says. “His name starts with an N. Maybe Nathan. Noah. Nicholas. I'm not sure, but either you know him or you've known him in a past life.”

Did I say Noah's name while I was waiting for my turn? Could she have heard me speaking to him as I paged through a photo album filled with testimonials from happy customers? I don't think I did, but I still don't fully believe. Especially because throwing in the part about my past life kind of covers Joan's ass. I wonder if this is why her readings are so cheap.

She doesn't say any more about my love life. Instead she turns over the next card, which bears an emperor
holding the world in his hand and what looks like a sheaf of arrows. A golden bird—a hawk, maybe, or a falcon—rests on his shoulder.

“The Emperor,” she says. “This card means you're feeling as if success is just out of your grasp and that you don't have the support that you need—I think from your father. Perhaps a boy—no, definitely your father.”

There's no way she could know that I'm torn between the desire to leave High Springs and the fear of leaving my dad and Danny behind. That I'm afraid to tell Dad that trying to fill my mom's shoes is too much for me to bear.

But Joan knows.

I stare at the Emperor, not wanting to meet her eyes as she taps his golden crown. “Trust your dad, Cadie,” she says. “There's something blocking the two of you. Something to do with your mother, I think, so you'll have to make the first move. Ask him. Talk to him.”

And suddenly, what started out as woolly has taken a turn toward the believable, and I'm not sure what to think. I watch as she turns over the fourth card—a castle turret on a small rocky island with Neptune (or maybe Poseidon) in the foreground, zapping the turret with his trident. A piece of turret has broken away, poised to fall into the raging ocean.

“The Tower suggests that a big change is coming,” Joan says. “It will be difficult and painful, but when you
come out on the other side, you will be stronger and better for it.”

“What does that mean?”

“I'm not sure,” she says. “The air around you feels heavy, like just before a big storm, and I can't pinpoint if the change is emotional or physical, but I do get a very strong sense that your foundation will be shaken. You must go through it. You can't go backward. You can't go home.”

I'm barely breathing and my eyes are fixed on her fingers, on the cards, and we both know I've stepped across the border into the realm of belief. There are only two cards left, and I want to know what this universal spread has in store for me.

The next card depicts a man in a white tunic with a red toga. At his feet are a cup and a sword and some other things I can't identify, but right now I'm more interested in what it means.

“Typically,” Joan says, “the Magician is a good sign. It means that you have all the tools to get what you want—provided you know what you want—but I'm troubled by this position in the spread.”

“Why?”

“Here, the Magician represents the forces working against you,” Joan says. “And I get the sense that someone—a man, a boy, definitely male—isn't quite what
he seems. He is deception and trickery disguised as charm and friendliness, and he may not have your best interests at heart.” She returns her hand to the High Priestess. “Trust your instincts where he is concerned.”

Noah comes to mind, and I suffer a private bout of shame for even thinking of him like that. He told me about the fight that got him sent to Maine, even when he didn't want to talk about it. I've met his dog. I've seen his library cards. He's not deception and trickery, he's just an ordinary guy with a bumpy history, so I file those doubts away in the same skeptical place I did her predictions about my musical abilities. I trust my inner High Priestess. “What's next?”

She reveals the final card—a man wrestling a lion.

“Strength,” Joan says. “This is the outcome card. You need to have courage, to believe in yourself, in order to get what you want. Believe in yourself and look inside when you feel your courage failing and you will succeed.”

It feels as if we've doubled back to generic, and now I find myself unsure of whether what I've just experienced is real or ridiculous. I stand. She stands. I'm about to thank her for her time when Joan takes my hand as if to shake it.

“I know you're skeptical, but—” A sharp breath steals her words away and her eyes go closed behind her glasses for a beat. Then two. When they open, they're wide blue and startled. She blinks at me. “Oh.” She blinks again. “Oh
my.” Joan pulls her hand back, rubbing her thumb against her first two fingers as if she's been shocked.