Read Online Blood in Her Veins (Nineteen Stories From the World of Jane Yellowrock) by Faith Hunter - Free Book Online

the first at the bottom, the next to the left, then the top card, placing the last card to the right, in a cross pattern. She laid down four more cards in a line to the far right. The last card she set down showed two naked people. The Lovers. She studied the cards silently. Then gathered them all up again.
    â€œWhat?” he asked.
    She shuffled and held out the deck. “Again.” Rick complied. He figured anything that kept her from sticking a needle into him was a good thing. This time she laid out three rows of seven cards. The far left column came up as three knights, the knights of Swords, Wands, and Cups. “Interesting,” she said, surprised. She looked at him quickly, something new in her eyes, and then glanced away. Down the middle column were Death, the Queen of Swords, and the Lovers. Loriann studied the cards up and down, left to right, as the night flowed on. It was now ten twenty-five. Closing in on the witching hour.
    Loriann arranged the cards, putting them into an order that must have made sense to her, and shoved them into a box, then into a small tin at her side. It was brightly painted in little dots of color, like a print of stained glass in miniature. On the top, the Virgin Mary stood in a pointed, arched window.
    The witch took out another box from the tin, this one larger, the box older. On the front was a painted picture of a shadowy woman standing in front of a cauldron, a cat with a bobbed tail at her feet and cave walls at her back. Stalactites dripped from overhead. A witch. “My grandmother’s cards,” Loriann said softly. Her cheeks took on a hint of color and she leaned forward, as if hiding behind the fall of her ink black hair. She went through the deck, rearranging the placement of the cards. “No one has used them in . . . in a long time.” Loriann separated the cards into three stacks of differing depths.
    Two stacks were composed of cards that had titles on them and one stack contained cards with only numbers. She shuffled each stack until each was well mixed, and lifted a small stack toward him. She said, “Major Arcana. Cut.”
    Rick forced out a nail and directed it into the partial deck. He had lost feeling in his hand. He figured that wasn’t a good thing.
    â€œPersonages of the Minor Arcana,” she said, lifting the second partial deck. “The Court Cards. Cut.” He cut the second partial deck and the third, which was larger, containing what looked like nearly half of the total number of cards. Loriann shuffled each stack, made him cut the decks again, then laid the cards out in the same three-row pattern as before. This time some cards were taken from the top of one pile, some from another. “Gramma liked gypsy readings, but she did them the way her mother taught her, with the three rows of seven, each column from a specific stack, and to the side, a cross of the Major Arcana. Her cards were specially painted just for her,” Loriann said, “and her deck is different. It has different . . .” Her voice trailed away, as if she had just realized she was speaking aloud. She pressed her lips together and bent her head, her hair sliding forward so that he couldn’t see her face.
    When Loriann finished laying out the cards, at the four corners and down the center column were the Court Cards. To the left top was the Queen of Pentacles, upside down, a wolf asleep at her feet. At the top right was the King of Swords, an African lion at his feet and his sword made of gold. The left bottom corner was the Page of Pentacles. He was a vampire with a scroll under his arm. The right bottom corner was the King of Wands, and he was a witch with red hair, and with fire exploding fromhis wand, which was clearly a weapon. A huge owl flew overhead. “No cup cards,” she murmured. But she didn’t explain.
    The center column was also composed of Loriann’s Court of the Minor Arcana. The top card