Casandra Videncia's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

For seven days the ghost had hung in Casandra Videncia's studio, and for seven days her cards refused to speak of it. She sat at her reading table in dark blue and gold, clockwork stars glinting in her white hair, her deck warm in her hands. She could feel the spirit near the velvet curtains she had hung the day she opened this shop. But feeling was not knowing. To read a spirit, she needed an object from its old life. A ring, a coin, a button. Something to anchor the cards. She had nothing. So she dealt, and the cards fell blank as river stones. Casandra had spent her life finding the dead. Seven years ago her own daughter reached her through the Three of Cups. Last winter her daughter said she was tired of being found and went quiet. Since then, spirits fell silent whenever Casandra asked for her. This new ghost was different. It stayed. It wanted her. But it gave her no thread to pull. "Then show me who you were," Casandra said to the empty room. "I cannot read shadow." The air by the curtains shivered. A cold draft crossed her table. It did not fade. It moved. Casandra rose and followed it across the floor to the wall where an old mirror hung. She had bought the mirror with the shop and never looked hard at it. Its frame was thin dark gold clockwork set with tiny gold stars. Now the glass was not empty. A hazy figure stood inside it under a sky full of stars. A woman, made of pale light, arms at her sides, face turned toward Casandra. The ghost was not tethered to the room at all. It was tethered to the mirror. Casandra's breath caught. Here was her anchor. The mirror was the object of the spirit's old life. She did not need a ring or a coin. She needed only to lay her cards against the glass. She carried the deck to the mirror. She pressed one card flat to the cold surface, below the figure's feet. "I have you now," she whispered. She turned the card. The Tower. Casandra's hand went still. The Tower was her own card. It came up every time she read for herself, never for a stranger. She turned a second card against the glass. The Tower again. A third. The Tower. The spirit in the mirror lifted one pale hand and laid it against the glass, palm out, matching Casandra's own. The cards had spoken at last, and they gave her a truth she did not want. The ghost bound to her mirror was reading back the same card that belonged to her alone. Whatever haunted the studio was not a stranger. It knew her. And now she had to learn how.