Southern Secrets: Book 2 in Southern Charms Series

Chapter Thirty-Five: Choices

Rose

Holding my injured arm, I stood and blinked owlishly around the shack. The space remained as it had been during the memory spell. Clean and cozy with no hint of the decay that would claim it years from now. But the boys- our fathers- were gone. And so was Ash.

"Hello," I called out, not bothering to conceal the desperation in my voice. "Anyone here?"

A table and two chairs appeared in the middle of the room. Then candles and a deck of Tarot cards. Finally, a young woman materialized- one I recognized from the first memory the shack showed us and now knew was Ash's grandmother.

"Sit, sit," she said, her accent thicker than before.

Abuela pulled a thick black braid over her shoulder and pointed to the chair across from her. I did as commanded, though I could not stop my eyes from wandering around the room, desperate to find Ash.

"Mi nieto is fine. This part of the spell takes place here," she said, tapping her forehead and shuffling the deck.

She flipped the cards while humming softly to herself, and the same reading as before appeared on the table. She sighed and touched the center card.

"You were going to tell me I was a Siphon last time," I said. Jemina had interrupted us, but I was fairly certain my guess was right.

"Oh, I was?" Abuela said with a grin. She looked so much like Ash, I stopped breathing for a moment.

Once more, she handed me the card in the center. "I still can't read cards, but it's the same as before."

"Is it?"

"I don't know, you tell me," I snapped, growing impatient. This wasn't helping. None of this was helping. What we'd seen in the shack hadn't been new information. All my excitement dwindled, and tears pricked the back of my eyelids.

"There are many magics which deal with Seeing. There are Seers like the one your grandfather uses. They are given an insight into one timeline. There is the power of the Augur. The ability to see throughout time, though at the behest of the gods-"

"Tell me something I don't know," I grumbled. Multiple times I'd tried praying to the deities who'd blessed me- or cursed me- and each time they were silent. It was enough to make me think this power was pointless, but then I remembered it had revealed the truth about Malphas.

She smiled at me even as impatience snapped in her dark eyes. "Then there is the Gift of Foresight. It is my Gift. I get flashes of immediate destinies. Like the poor baby that died when I was seventeen. But, I rarely have enough time to change things. I can use tools like the Tarot cards, but they only tell me what might happen. In some ways, Foresight is a balance between being the Augur and a Seer. The better I know a person, the easier it is to predict the future, but that card in your hand reminds me of how important it is to not put too much faith in my Gift. Because there is something far more powerful than magic."

I looked at the card, trying to decipher anything from it. Wheel of Fortune was painted at the bottom of the card, and in the middle, sitting upon a devil's back, was a wheel with symbols I didn't understand.

"The Wheel of Fortune," Abuela continued, "Reminds us that life is always changing. The good will return. It is also known as the Wheel of Karma. What you put into the world is what you get from the world."

I snorted. "I must have been a terrible person in another life because it's basically been a shit show from day one."

"A few weeks ago, this card was reversed during your reading." She took the card from me and slipped it back inside the deck. "Reversed it can mean your luck and fortune will become worse, and it can also mean you are resisting change. I don't like this card all that much."