Gifts and Curses
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters from The Covenant, nor do I own any of the song lyrics featured before each chapter. If anything else comes up that needs to be cited, it will be so at the bottom of each chapter.
Prologue:
11:00 P.M.
Only two minutes had passed since Marny's last desperate glance at her watch and they had only been the longest two minutes of her life. The room was stuffy and hot from the fireplace, and the incense Madelyn had burning was making her nose twitch.
She had promised Madelyn she would read tarot cards at the Ipswich Halloween party, everyone attended it every year school night or not, and she had been reading for three hours.
The office was decorated like a harem more than a gypsy caravan, the rest of the house was decorated to be scary. It made her think of a Buffy episode, the frat-boy Halloween party one in fourth season…Fear itself? She couldn't remember now, but it was more polished and had less magic induced screaming.
11:01 P.M.
Damn. Damn damn damn. She wasn't doing anyone anymore favors for the rest of the year. She had only agreed to do this so she had a good reason to come to the party, she did have something else that needed to be done but if she didn't get to it in the next fifteen minutes she would likely be too late.
She moved her wrists on the desk so her bangles were not digging into her skin, the shoulder-free blouse was two chilly for New England Halloween, but it was to hot for the closed in office. Others at the party had dressed in less; Kira had come as a Play Boy Bunny, her red hair standing out against the white of the suite. Madelyn had dressed as a maid to fit her position as the hostess. There were vampires, other gypsies, multiple pirates and wizards and witches with warts on their noses and pointed hats.
She had spotted three of Sons of Ipswich as she had been dragged by Madelyn to the office; Caleb Danver was dressed as Harry Potter laughing with his girlfriend, transfer student Sarah Wenham, who was dressed at Ginny Wesley in a red wig.
Pouge Parry hadn't really dressed up, he was dressed as a Biker, as was Kate Tunney, but as everyone knew he drove a motorcycle this wasn't a real effort…He looked the same in black clothes and a leather jacket, his long hair the final effect.
Tyler Sims was one of the pirates; his blue eyes were outlined in kohl and could have made any girl faint. His curly black hair was just visible under a tri-corn hat; he hadn't drawn on facial hair which made the costume even hotter in Marny's mind. He looked like a navy officer that had jumped ship, just slightly dangerous and yet kind and unsure at the same time.
By 9:30 she had taken off the wig of long curling black hair and had pulled the pins holding her two braids of wavy dark brown hair back. The heat and the wig had caused her hair to frizz in its braids but she was past caring. She only had to go to school with these people, she scoffed.
11:03 P.M.
She was getting out of here, forget her mission, and forget her promise. She was bored, hot, and annoyed and she was leaving-
"Hello?"
She looked up from collecting her cards, a blonde boy had walked in…Or, she thought he might be blonde; the room was only lit with candles so it was dark and smoky, and he was wearing a dark toboggan.
She sighed.
"Welcome to Miranda's Fortune Caravan." She said the title Madelyn had given her in a bored voice, "Allow me to read your cards and know your future." Picking at one of her darkly painted fingernails she secretly wished he would leave so she could sneak away.
"Thought it was the bathroom." He smirked.
It wasn't the first time of the night she had heard this, she pointed her index finger to the left and smiled politely, "down one more door."
To her surprise he didn't walk out and close the door behind him, but came farther into the room.
He only had the vaguest idea as to why. The girl was pretty, but she wasn't his idea of gorgeous. She looked younger, freshmen or sophomore, her nose was too straight, her teeth just a little crooked. Her skin was too pale for her dark hair. Perhaps if she had light colored eyes. Her hair was frizzing out of her braids.
The room wasn't even comfortable, the combined heat from the ducts and from the fireplace made the room stifling, someone had burned two different types of incense making the room smile like dying flowers and something too fruity. It made him think of a cheep whorehouse.
But he did find people amusing when they thought they had some kind of power, some kind of control over the supernatural, when he and his three friends could do almost anything they wanted.
"So are you gothic or something?" he questioned, sprawling into the soft seat opposite hers at the desk, he nodded toward her dark nails.
She wrinkled her nose in disgust, "I'm not gothic! This is dark brown polish." She stopped at the laugh that came from him and rolled her eyes, "You want your cards read or not?"
"Be my guest."
"I'll use the Major Arcana, and the Jungian spread…" she blew out a breath, getting a few strands of her bangs out of her eyes, and sat up to shuffle the cards. "Cut them into five piles." She leaned forward to pass the cards to him over the desk.
She glanced up startled when his fingers accidentally grazed hers as he took the deck.
He could have sworn that for just a minute her eyes had changed, but he blew it off to the darkness in the room and the smoke from the still burning incense. He sat the cards down into five uneven piles upon the desk and looked back up at the 'gypsy' in braided pig-tails.
She looked at the piles and pulled them towards her, flipping the top one over from each pile, turning some around, moving them into a pattern on the desk.
"The card of current influences is The Magician, the card of now." She smirked at the irony of the card and the rumors of Ipswich family's past. "You're excited and eager for a coming change, possibly as soon as an hour from now, and it's building in you.
"The Empress has taken the position of the effects others are having upon you, or mayhap will have upon you soon. She is the mother, and predicts birth or renewal in a relationship.
"The Tower," she stopped and ran her fingers across the card surface gently, mildly unnerved, her head bowed and bangs lose from their pins hiding her eyes. "Is a problem card. It is the end, it is death, and it is destruction- a job or relationship, a part of oneself." She paused again, fingers resting on the darkest card of the deck, its picture twisted, a tower without windows, storms brewing behind, intruding. A warning.
"The shadow side position is filled with Justice, it warns of a battle. You will be fighting for a principal that is central to your happiness- this fight will come after the destruction the Tower speaks of, and the Tower will come after the Empress time is over.
She looked back up at him for the first time since she began reading. Her eyes, this time he was sure, had changed. They were no longer a dark brown but the whole eye was white- no iris, no pupil, just white.
"And this card, is you, Reid Garwin." She flipped over the card in the last pile, the only card she hadn't flipped over and arranged at the beginning, but had just brushed her fingers over, and pushed The Devil, and his grinning leer towards him.
"You're angry, and it's reaching a boiling point inside. At someone close to you-"she paused, "someone trying to control your decisions, your life…"
TBC