Thayer widened his eyes, clearly enjoying this. Emma remembered he’d said that Celeste had a celestial body. Typical guy. “A message?” she challenged. “Really? Who from?”
“From the universe.” Celeste’s gaze was distant. “I was heading toward the Student Center to meet Garrett when I felt an undeniable urge to come in here. I don’t know why—I wasn’t planning to visit the library. But something guided my steps, straight to you.” She leaned even closer. “I think I should read your cards, if you don’t mind.”
Emma stopped. She’d had her tarot read once before, when she and Alex had snuck into a New Age convention at the Cosmopolitan in Vegas. The psychic had been a slender woman with long dark hair and an accent that seemed to waver between Jamaican and Southern. She’d told Emma that she saw family difficulties on the horizon—secrets and lies exposed, a death—but that in the end Emma would gain financially. She and Alex had laughed about it. At the time it’d seemed like a good joke, since Emma didn’t have a family.
But she did now. And that family had difficulties in spades.
Emma chewed on her lip. She wasn’t sure she believed in fortune-telling. But she was out of ideas. And maybe, just maybe, the cards could tell her something. “All right,” she said. “Go ahead.”
Celeste said nothing, just started shuffling the cards. Emma couldn’t help noticing that, in spite of the faraway expression on her face, her hands moved with the speed and confidence of a seasoned cardsharp.
Celeste laid out the first card, which pictured a woman blindfolded and tied up in front of a row of swords. The drawing was simple and colorful, the woman’s face mostly obscured by the scarf around her eyes—but Emma’s skin crawled just looking at it. The woman was trapped, surrounded by blades.
“The Eight of Swords,” Celeste said carefully. “It indicates that you are incapacitated. That your options are limited and you cannot see a way out.”
Emma’s hands started to tremble, and she hid them under the table. Celeste drew another card. Two dogs stared up at the man in the moon. The face in the moon looked strange and unfriendly.
“The Moon.” Celeste turned her gaze up to meet Emma’s, her face serious and sad. “There’s madness around you, Sutton Mercer.”
The words sent a shaft of ice through Emma’s heart. The way she’d said it made it sound like it was Emma’s fault, like she’d generated insanity. She shook her head almost imperceptibly as Celeste turned over the third card. She didn’t need to have that one explained to her. The dark, skeletal rider carrying a black banner. That one was obvious.
“Death,” Celeste whispered.
Emma realized she’d squeezed her fists tight against her thighs, and she concentrated on releasing them. She willed herself to open her mouth and say something cutting, to sneer at the whole process. But her entire life seemed laid out before her in cardboard. She couldn’t bring herself to move.
The hint of a smile played across Celeste’s lips. “The cards don’t lie,” she whispered. With that, she gathered up her deck and swept away.
Emma kept staring down at the table as if the cards were still there. Had something … supernatural just happened?
Thayer touched her elbow. “Don’t tell me you believe in that crap.”
Emma swallowed. “She was right, Thayer. About my mom.”
He rolled his eyes. “She just saw what you were reading and made some guesses. She’s trying to mess with your head.”
Emma blinked hard. Of course. The books scattered around her were titled things like Clinical Insanity and A Guide to Psychosis. Celeste had played her. She breathed out, relieved. “Now I feel even stupider.”
“You’re not stupid,” he murmured. “You’re scared. But it’s all going to be okay.”
If I crowded as close to my twin as possible, I could almost believe he was speaking to me. That it was my face he looked at like that.
Emma shoved the books away from her and gritted her teeth.
We both knew what she needed to do: find out more about Becky, one way or another, and discover what our mad mother was capable of.
18
MOM, INTERRUPTED
As soon as tennis practice ended, Emma drove straight to the hospital and rode the elevator to the fourth floor. The pungent smell of air freshener stung her nostrils, along with a harsher, antiseptic odor. The hallway was eerily silent, as if the whole ward was bowed under the pressure of its own secrets and delusions. She tightened her jaw and strode to the nurses’ station, her heart beating like a drumroll in her chest.
The young male nurse, bespectacled and prematurely balding, looked up from his computer screen. The reflection from his monitor made twin glowing squares in the lenses of his glasses. “Can I help you?” he asked.
She clenched her fist around the strap of her messenger bag. “I’m here to visit Becky—I mean, Rebecca Mercer.”
He gestured to a sheet of paper attached to a clipboard. “Sign in.”
The page was depressingly blank. Emma printed Sutton’s name neatly. The nurse stepped out from behind the desk and read the inscription with a raised eyebrow. “You’re the daughter, right?”
What was the right answer? Sort of. Used to be. Just genetically. Instead she just nodded.
“She’s been asking for you,” he said, jerking his head to indicate she should follow. Emma trailed behind him. “That’s all any of us can get out of her. ‘I want my daughter.’”