Chapter 32

Lucretia, Roberto, and Mia arrive with their usual whirlwind of controlled chaos. Lucretia places the black drawstring bag on the floor of the foyer, drops to her knees, and scratches Pluto beneath the chin. Mia drapes her long black coat over the peach settee and asks Saoirse if she can use the bathroom. Roberto kisses her on both cheeks, then holds her by the shoulders and studies her face, concern bunching his thick eyebrows.

“How are you doing?” he asks. “Is everything okay?”

“Of course,” Saoirse lies. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

Mia returns from the bathroom. “Did you tell her yet?” she asks.

Saoirse looks from Roberto to Lucretia. “Tell me what?”

Mia purses her lips at the others, then says to Saoirse, “We’re switching the ritual up. Rather than a séance, Lucretia brought her cards.”

“She’s actually great with them,” Roberto says. “I know it seems like she wouldn’t be. That she’d squeal over every card she flipped and the readings would be all ‘oh-my-gosh, you got the Death card’ drama queen central, but her mom was a professional reader. Lucretia grew up with this shit.”

“Card reading,” Saoirse says. “You mean, tarot?”

“Tarot. Oracle. Runes. Pendulum magic. She does it all.”

Saoirse raises an eyebrow at Lucretia, who smiles shyly and shrugs.

“What do you think, Saoirse?” Mia asks. “Are you down?”

“Let’s do it.” She leads them through the living room, to the hallway, and down the short flight of steps. Before she reaches the trapdoor, something hits her.

“You know, no one ever showed me the secret way into the walkout basement.” Her phone buzzes in her pocket, distracting her. She pulls it out, and a text message parades across the screen. Emmit.

Don’t forget to call.

Then, a second message, this one from her mother.

Just wanted to check in, make sure you’re seeing the sunshine beyond the shadows ... and that there’s still no word from any of Jonathan’s friends.

“You’re right,” Roberto says when Saoirse’s stuffed her phone into her pocket without responding. He walks to wood paneling along the left wall and hooks his thumbs beneath the shallow overhang. “You place your hands here, then yank up while pulling forward simultaneously.” He does so, but nothing happens. Roberto grunts. “You do have to pull up kind of hard to get it to—” He tries again but, again, nothing happens.

“What the hell?” He examines the area beneath the overhang. “That’s weird. There’s something stuck here. Like putty.” Lucretia joins him, bends to see what he’s looking at, then takes off one of her many bracelets and scrapes it beneath the wood. A long strip of beige-colored putty comes loose, and the panel immediately falls forward. Lucretia and Roberto jump to either side as it crashes to the floor. They exchange looks, then turn to Saoirse and Mia.

“What’s going on?” Saoirse asks. “Did you guys—”

“We did not put this putty there,” Lucretia says. “It’s like the panel has gotten looser since we last used it. The putty was keeping it in place.”

“Maybe the putty was always there and you just didn’t realize it?” Saoirse asks.

Lucretia looks worried. “Maybe,” she agrees skeptically.

“I think it’s safe to say that I’ll be calling a contractor come Monday. Someone who can tighten everything up as well as install a lock.” Mia, Lucretia, and Roberto all nod. Roberto raises the panel, takes the putty from Lucretia, and returns it beneath the overhang. The panel stays in place. Saoirse takes a deep breath and pulls up the trapdoor.

Downstairs, the air feels cooler than usual. They each go to the seat they sat in the previous week. Lucretia unpacks a few additional candles and a long wooden box with etchings of the moon phases carved into the top. The silver paint of the moons’ surfaces shimmers in the light from the candles Roberto’s lighting.

“So, we each get a turn and then”—Saoirse looks at Lucretia—“you do a reading for yourself?”

Lucretia chuckles. “I pull cards for myself three times a day. When I’m in Sarah’s house, I only do readings for others.”

“Was Sarah into tarot?” Saoirse asks.

Lucretia smiles. “She held weekly séances, wrote trance-inspired poetry, and published articles on spiritualism in the New York Tribune . What do you think?”

Lucretia shuffles three different decks of cards, and they stare at one another, no one sure who should begin.

“Mia should go first,” Roberto says, turning to face her. “You’ve been trying to figure out whether it’s time to leave PETA.”

Saoirse has numerous follow-up questions. Why does Mia want to leave? What’s been going on with her work? She’s been so self-involved lately she’s made zero effort to reach out to Mia. Between coffee and writing dates, she’s strengthened her relationships with Roberto and Lucretia, but ever since Mia told her not to let down her guard with Emmit, Saoirse’s been cold toward the other woman.

Now, considering how Emmit’s been behaving, Saoirse feels guilty for discounting Mia’s warning, and Mia herself. She sits back, prepared to pay attention to whatever details are revealed through her reading. But Mia glances at Saoirse, then back at Roberto, and shakes her head.

“I don’t need a five of swords to tell me I’m stuck between two undesirable options and headed for conflict. No, Lucretia reads my cards all the time. I think Saoirse should go.” Her dark eyes flick toward Saoirse again. “Go ahead, Saoirse. Clear your mind. Focus your intentions. And ask Lucretia—or, really, Sarah—your most pressing question.”

Despite feeling, mere seconds earlier, that she’s been unfair to Mia, a jolt of annoyance pulses through Saoirse. Her most pressing question could only be one thing. Should she lie? Ask something more benign? Less intimate? A draft of cool air passes through the room and she shivers, resisting the urge to pull the sleeves of her sweater down.

Lucretia is staring at her expectantly. “Once you ask your question,” she says, “I’ll choose whether traditional tarot, oracle, or an animal deck is best for helping you with the answer.”

Saoirse nods. Even colder now, she does yank down the sleeves of her sweater. Avoiding Mia’s penetrating gaze, Saoirse forces a smile at Lucretia and says, “Okay.”

“Okay.”

“Great.”

Lucretia hesitates. “I’m ready when you are. Unless you need more time.” A pause. “Do you need more time?”

Saoirse grips her chair. “No. Sorry, I’m ready. My question is—” She sees Emmit’s charming half smile in her mind. She hopes she isn’t making a mistake. “My question is: Is Emmit Powell in love with me, or is he using me for some unknown—but potentially nefarious—purpose?”

She’s not sure why she added the “potentially nefarious” part, but it’s too late to take it back. To their credit, none of the others so much as raise an eyebrow, let alone gasp or comment on her question. Lucretia nods once and moves a hand to the tarot deck, but she doesn’t lift the cards. Rather, her tattooed, black-polished fingers hover there.

“You know,” she says, “I think I’m going to meet a loaded question such as this with an arsenal of tools rather than just one.” She lifts each deck and moves them by her left elbow. Then, she cuts each deck three times, restacks, and one by one, flips the top card of each deck face up in front of Saoirse. Saoirse stares at the cards, having no idea what to make of them.

“Okay,” Lucretia says a moment later, but stops when a noise comes from behind them. It sounds like a cough, and it repeats several times, but each time the noise comes, it changes location, like whatever’s making the sound is floating around the room. The candles flicker, but Saoirse tells herself it’s because all four of them are shifting in their seats, turning to look at the walls, the ceiling, one another.

“What is that?” Roberto whispers.

“Just the house settling,” Mia says. “Go on, Lucretia.”

“Right.” Lucretia smiles reassuringly and picks up the card on Saoirse’s right. A massive, menacing bird glares from its center. The gray wings extending from its body are so muscular and hulking, they appear concave, like twin, shallow parachutes. A slate-black double crest crowns its head, and its eyes are like two black marbles against the whitish-gray feathers of its face.

“The harpy eagle,” Lucretia says. “Signifying truth. Truth that just might swoop down like a giant bird and pluck you out of the river.” She glances at Saoirse, who nods at her to continue. “Like the harpy—the half-human and half-bird personification of storm winds in Greek and Roman mythology—the truth you’re seeking is frightening and painful, but it can also be glorious and liberating.” Lucretia catches Saoirse’s eyes. “If you let it.”

Before Saoirse can respond, the strange cough comes again. This time, it’s moved behind Mia, and a moment after it’s begun, the cough evolves into a scream. It’s a woman’s scream, but muffled and throaty, as if coming to them from beneath layers of dirt and silt and rock and as if the woman screaming has had her vocal cords cut. It’s eerie and unsettling, and chills shoot up Saoirse’s back and down her arms.

“Seriously,” Roberto says. “What the hell is that ?”

“It sounds like it’s coming from the other side of the walls,” Lucretia whispers.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Mia hisses. “The only thing on the other side of walls in a basement is dirt.”

Saoirse thinks of the way the basement of the Shunned House extended beyond any perimeter that made sense. She thinks, too, of the alcove Emmit plummeted into—caught only by the wooden planks, or box, or whatever it had been—and wonders if there’d been even more traversable passage beyond it, but she doesn’t say anything.

“Maybe something got trapped in the walls,” Roberto says. “That happens with mice all the time.”

Lucretia rolls her eyes. “What kind of mouse makes a noise like that?”

Roberto sits back in his chair. They continue to listen, but the scream has dissipated, or else whatever was making it moved farther away. Lucretia catches Saoirse’s eye again. “Ready to go on?” Saoirse wants to say no, but nods.

Lucretia holds the middle card several inches above the table, then barks out a small laugh. “You’re going to think I’m messing with you, but this particular oracle deck deals with archetypes, and you got ‘The Poet.’ This card is representative of deep emotional creativity and”—she pauses, glances at Mia and then at Roberto, as if wanting them to vouch for her in some way, to assure Saoirse that she knows what she’s doing—“the drive to find our truth.”

“Truth,” Saoirse repeats. “The poet and the eagle, both urging me to find the truth.”

Lucretia holds the card up a few more seconds, and Saoirse studies the silhouetted torso, the two shadowy hands clutching a full moon, the explosion of black birds where the figure’s head should be but what instead looks like a mountain, the birds’ fanned wings pressed against a pink and orange and cerulean sky like buttons into clay.

“Last card,” Lucretia says and holds it up. It seems benign enough: a gray-and-white pencil sketch of a woman, long hair cascading around her upturned face. There are seven pieces of glass falling toward her, but the woman doesn’t appear concerned; rather, there’s something sensual about her expression and posture, as if she’s welcoming the shards to rain down upon her the way she would the touch of a lover. Four plum-colored rivulets run vertically across her body, but upward, as if they were painted at her waist and then the image was turned upside down. They cover one wrist, an exposed breast, one shoulder, and the ends of a few locks of hair. At the bottom of the card are the words: Seven of Cups .

“This is a card of illusion. Of dreams, transitions, and mystery,” Lucretia says. “It indicates that you must bring yourself out of the land of aspiration and into the real world. It warns against indulging in wishful thinking. More specifically, it speaks to the dangers of illusion where temptation is concerned. What you want, what you have, it may not lead to happiness. You are being led from your ideal path—whether that’s health, wellness, or personal fulfillment. Seven cups once held positive feelings, a positive relationship, a wealth of creativity. But those cups are shards of glass now. They are en route to your eyes, and they will blind you.”

Saoirse opens her mouth, but it’s not really to respond; she has no idea what to say. It doesn’t matter, though, because a response comes anyway. From far, far off, somewhere deep in the dirt beyond the walls of the basement, or perhaps from some other plane, a mental impression from another era forged and projected outward in time, recorded onto the rocks beneath the soil, recorded when the rocks were still above the soil, onto stone, a stone tape , only to be replayed for them tonight, lit by these candles at this table, the grating, gravelly, impossible, tortured scream comes again.