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By Root 7247 0

would have been ended, but I couldn’t answer it. So as Micah drove us toward home in the October dark, I still didn’t know what I’d do when the ardeur finally rose for the night. I didn’t even know what the right thing to do was anymore. Wasn’t right supposed to help people and wrong supposed to hurt people? Didn’t you make the right choice because it was the right thing to do? I always felt squeamish about praying to God about sex, in any context, but I prayed as we drove, because I was out of options. I asked for guidance. I asked for a clue as to what was the best for everyone. I didn’t get an answer, and I hadn’t expected one. I have a lot psychic gifts, but talking directly to God is not one of them, thank goodness. Read the Old Testament if you don’t think it’s a scary idea. But worse than no answer, I didn’t feel that peace that I usually get when I pray.

My cell phone rang. It made me jump, and my pulse was so thick in my throat that I couldn’t answer right away. A woman’s voice said, “Anita, Anita are you there?”

It was Marianne. She lived in Tennessee and was the vargamor for the Oak Tree Clan. It was a very old-fashioned title and job, basically she was the witch that helped them deal with their metaphysical problems. Most packs didn’t have one anymore, too old-fashioned. Maybe the New Age stuff would bring it back into vogue.

She was also helping me cope with my abilities. She was the only psychic I knew, and trusted. She knew the shapeshifters almost as well as I did, in some ways better, in some ways not. But she was the closest thing I had to a mentor of late, and I needed one.

“Marianne, it’s great to hear your voice. What’s up?” My voice sounded breathy even to me.

“I just got this overwhelming urge to call you. What’s wrong?”

See, she’s psychic. I wanted to explain everything, but Nathaniel was behind me in the car. What was I supposed to do, make him put his fingers in his ears and hum while I talked? “It’s a little awkward right now.”

“Should I guess?”

“If you want.”

She was quiet for a few moments, and she wasn’t guessing. She was using either her own gifted intuition, or she was drawing a card, a tarot card that is. “I’m looking at the Knight of Cups here, that’s usually Nathaniel’s card.” I’d been skeptical, to say the least, when Marianne first got out a deck of cards to do a “reading,” but they were eerily accurate, at least in her hands. When she’d first started, Nathaniel’s card had been the Page of Cups, a child’s card, or a least a very young person, but of late he’d been promoted. Knight of Cups.

“Yeah, that’s it.”

Silence, and I knew she was laying a spread. She’d actually tried to get me to use the cards, to see if I had any abilities for divination, but they were just pretty pictures to me. My gifts lay elsewhere.

“King of Wands, Micah is with you, too.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.” I could picture her with her long gray hair tied back in a no-nonsense ponytail, probably in one of her loose, flowing gowns, sitting cross-legged on the bed, which is where she’d have been this late. She was slender and strong, and her body didn’t match her hair, or the fact that she was closer to sixty than fifty.

“The devil, temptation. You haven’t fed the ardeur yet, have you?”

It used to creep me out that she could do this, but I’d gotten used to it. It was just something Marianne could do. She didn’t hold it against me that I raised zombies, and I didn’t hold it against her that she could tell what was happening hundreds of miles away. In fact, sometimes, like now, it came in handy.

“Not yet.”

“The Priestess, you have a question for me.”

“Yes.”

“You’re not doing something silly like trying to choose between Micah and Nathaniel, are you?”

“Thanks a lot.”

“You can’t blame me, Anita, you do tend to complicate your life.”

I sighed. “Fine, true, but sort of, and not exactly.”

“Fine, be cryptic.”

“Not in the way you might mean,” I said finally.

“So not dumping one for the other,” she said.

“No.”

“Well, that’s good.” She was quiet for longer this time. “I’ll stop guessing. I’ve laid a