Casandra Videncia's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

The Tower had told Casandra the ghost in her mirror was no stranger. To be sure, she needed a second voice. She always confirmed a reading with the other spirits who lived in her studio. So she cleared her table, held her deck, and called them by name. They came, but wrong. Pale shapes rose along the walls, a cluster of them, faces twisted with anger. Victorian men and women in high collars, mouths open, eyes burning white. They had never looked at her this way. She asked them one question. "Is the one in the mirror bound to me?" The room answered with violence. A cold gust knocked her lamp sideways. The spirits pressed close, their forms shivering like smoke. Her table rocked. The deck flew from her hands. Cards fell everywhere, dark blue and gold, spinning and sliding across the floor. Stars painted on their backs caught the light as they scattered. "Stop this," Casandra said. She gripped the edge of her table. "You have never turned on me. Why now?" The angriest figure drifted forward, a gaunt man in a long coat. He carried an old bag in one hand. His mouth moved but made no sound. Then she understood. They were not attacking her. They were guarding something. Every time she asked about the mirror, they raged. They did not want her to name the ghost inside it. Casandra knew fear. She had felt it for seven years, since her daughter went quiet. But she had never let fear stop a reading. She knelt among the fallen cards. She did not gather them to protect them. She read them where they lay. The cards had landed in a rough line pointing at the mirror. She traced them with her eyes, one by one, ignoring the wind that tore at her sleeves. The Moon. The High Priestess. The Tower again, face up, closest to the glass. The scatter itself was the reading. The spirits had thrown her own cards into an arrow aimed at the truth. "You cannot hide her from me," Casandra said. She rose slowly, her joints aching, clockwork stars loose in her white hair. "I have found the dead my whole life. I will not stop at my own door." The gaunt spirit lunged. Casandra held up one card, the Tower, flat toward him. He froze. The whole cluster froze. Then, all at once, they thinned and were gone. The wind died. The room went still. Casandra stood alone. The mirror glowed soft on the wall. The pale woman inside had not moved through any of it. She waited, calm, while the others screamed. Casandra gathered her cards from the floor with steady hands. The other spirits had failed to frighten her off. But their fury had told her something true. Whoever waited in the glass was hidden on purpose, kept from her by every dead soul she trusted. Only one reason made spirits guard a name that hard. It was a name she loved.