Em is the main character in THINGS SHE’S SEEN (Northern Circle Coven #2). Em was exploited as a child psychic medium, but escaped as a teenager to live on the streets. While on the run, she and her lover, Alice, hung out behind the scenes at the Royal Palm Theater in Tampa. Em made spare cash by giving the actors messages from their deceased mentors and grandparents. Alice read cards for a living. Often times, they’d spend the night in the closed theater, drinking and goofing around on the stage.
Late one Halloween night, after the actors and employees had left the theater, Alice got out her tarot cards and did a one card reading for Em. Just a single card, drawn as they sat centerstage with a bottle of cheap wine, a bag of candy corn, and only a candle for light.
The drawn card depicted a woman petting a lion, controlling it with compassion and composure rather than force. An infinity symbol floated in the air above the woman’s head.
“The Strength Card,” Alice said. “It symbolizes courage, confidence, and passion. The triumph of intelligence over brute strength, and morality over evil. Calming inner storms of doubt, leads to becoming the true master of your own mind and abilities, and control over all aspects of your world. Heroic. Just and righteous.”
Em laughed. “The cards sure missed the mark this time. Heroic? Confident? Definitely, not me.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. The card is you—on all levels.” Alice’s eyes brightened, glistening and full of innuendo. “The card also indicates a person who has an adventurous and unconventional romantic life.”
Heat washed Em’s face. She leaned in, pushed back a stray curl of dark hair from Alice’s face, and kissed her cheek gently. “That part is true, for sure.”
As Alice put the tarot cards away and they then finished the bottle of wine, Em didn’t begin to realize just how true the reading would prove to be. But years later she would recall it, when a haunted man returned to her life and she received a very different one card draw from Alice. A card revealed to her in a nightmare.
The Death card.
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