A/N: EEEEEEE THERE IS A CONSTANTINE NOVEL VERSION! 'Tis based offa the movie! . Some of the Latin is spelled wrong, and there are some minor changes, but so far, I like. Anyone wants a refresher on the movie, get it. 'Tis only 7 bucks, and it's basically the same thing with more added and minor things tweaked. I think some of the dialogue was probably based off of the original script, as there's more than in the movie.

A/N2: Guys, I'm 16 as of yesterday! WOOT! (Throws a party with gift bags of anti-demon relics, holy water, fake ornate, Constantine-type lighters, and other Constantine paraphernalia). For my birthday, make sure to R&R, critiques encouraged. :-P

A/N3: IMPORTANT-PROLOGUE WAS JUST UPDATED, AS IN ACTUALLY PUT UP. THAT'S THE NEW CHAPPIE! So go there and R&R pplz:P As usual, critique encouraged:P

Fred: You're obsessed, you realize…
Me: So?
Fred: It's sad.
Me: Hey, you give me inspiration for the fic.
Fred: I could stop…
Me: You know that threat gets old. -.-"

A Little Card Trick

Angela was running late. From oversleeping to Duck escaping the apartment when she went out on her morning jog to seeing things she was very much not used to during said jog, she was not having a good morning.

Then, at 2:35, just as she was moving out the door, she got a call on her house phone. After a moment's deliberation—if it was really important, couldn't they just call her cell phone—she decided to answer it. She moved over to her computer desk, or, more accurately, laptop desk, right beside the apartment's exit and entrance, pushed into the corner. There, there was not only her silver, Apple™ laptop, but a printer, a fax machine with phone coming off of the side of the desk, a framed photograph of Angela and an old friend, a cup of pencils and pens, papers, a plastic pig, two mini American flags, file folders, a ceramic bowl, a cardboard box put far off to the side, a white lamp in the far left corner, and loads more odds and ends. Behind the desk, there was even a large, beautiful, and vibrant painting in hues of reds and browns of great houses of ancient Japan at sunset. However, on the desk, there was also one more very important thing: a silver portable phone, and it was to this object that she moved.

"Hello?" she said after picking up the phone, using "Dodson" as a greeting only on her cell phone. It was none other than Detective Weiss, checking in on her, making sure she was up for work the following day. There wasn't any shame in taking off some more time if she needed it, he told her.

Angela assured him she was fine and would be at work bright and early the following day. Plus, she said, it would do her good to get back to her normal routine, although that was really the exact opposite of what she was doing. She didn't tell him that last part, though.

Finally, she got off the phone and managed to make it out of her home, although she only narrowly managed to stop Duck's latest attempt at a wild vacation in the streets of L.A. Why this cat had a death wish at the wheels of a car, Angela really didn't know.

With an accident on the main road—why did the place feel so strange, what was she feeling: a recent ascension to heaven, or a descent to hell?—she found herself at the Bowling Alley at about 3:20. Inside, there were already various groups of children, teenagers, and adults, all taking advantage of the weekend to bowl. It was a place to hang out and have fun, after all, and although some viewed it as cheesy, it was cheaper than the rest. And it was still enjoyable.

Word of Beeman's murder had not reached the ears of the public but had been cleaned up in private. Hence, people had no qualms in continuing to come.

Angela paid all of these people no mind but instead moved swiftly up the steps and to Constantine's door. She knocked, as per usual, but this time he was at the door in less time than was typical.

"You're late," were the first words out of his mouth to her.

"Sorry," she said, walking into the apartment as he walked over to the table. He sat down in the chair closest to the oven. She closed the door behind herself and then began to walk over. "There was an accident, traffic." She took off her black jacket, a button-up v-neck meant to be worn in the business world, and placed it on the back of the chair opposite him, revealing the olive green tank top she wore underneath. She sat down herself after she'd done this.

"Could you tell if anyone died?" he asked her, and looked down and reached into his outer coat pocket, taking a small, rectangular blue and white box out, one that had words on it and almost fit into the palm of his hand. She looked at it curiously; it seemed awfully familiar, but she couldn't quite recognize it with his hand covering it up.

Angela's hands were wringing each other absentmindedly in her lap, but when she looked down and her hair fell in her face, one moved to push the strands behind her ear when she looked back up at John.

"Someone did, I think. I couldn't really tell… how many, or where they went, but someone-someone did."

"Most can't tell how many or where they end up," he informed her. "You'd have to go to Hell and see yourself for that."

That topic of conversation was now over, though; it was time to get back to the agenda.

John opened the box, and tipped it so that a stack of playing cards slid out. There didn't seem to be anything special about them; it was just a normal, convenience store bought deck, an intricate, blue pattern placed on the backs of every single one.

Placing the box off to the side, he took the deck and put it in the middle of the table.

"You can sense death; you can even get to Hell if you're submerged long enough. Now, we're going to get back to the basics." Constantine took the first card of the deck, held it in front of his eyes and took a good look at it before angling his dark brown eyes towards her once more. "What card am I holding?" He looked back at the card.

Angela looked at him incredulously. "What card all you holding?" she repeated.

"What card am I holding?" His eyes didn't leave the card.

Angela blinked. Was she supposed to know this? She had no idea. All she could see was the back of a playing card.

Although she hadn't been expecting this, somehow it made sense. This really was rudimentary, and she had been able to do it with her sister and parents, hadn't she? And that was when she was only a little girl. How hard could it be?

Very hard was apparently the answer, because she had absolutely no idea what the card Constantine held in his hand was. "Four of hearts," she said, figuring that guess was as good as any other.

He said nothing, only turned the card for her to see it. A black joker. Not even close.

John placed the joker card upside-down next to the deck and drew another card. He looked at it, but of course didn't let her see. "What card is it?"

And again, she had absolutely no idea.

She took a deep breath, blinked and focused on the card. She willed herself to see it, to see beyond the backing.

Well, I know it's not that joker, she told herself, but then again, what good did that do her? There was still another one in the deck, wasn't there?

"I don't know, a queen of spades," she tried.

He turned the card, a three of clubs.

He put that card down, drew another one.

"What card?"

She guessed, and she guessed wrong. Again and again, she guessed wrong.

She began to get very, very frustrated.

"This is ridiculous," she said after she'd missed about twenty cards in a row. Her right forefinger was meanwhile tapping away at her thigh, the physical extension of her aggravation.

The latest card, a king of hearts, he put in the pile of spent cards, but he did not draw a fresh one. Instead, he kept his hand there.

"Don't try to see through the card, don't try to guess. Don't try to rationalize which cards were drawn and which weren't. Just try to look through my eyes, see the card like I see it. Don't even focus on the card. Just see what I see."

Well that sounded far easier said than done.

Angela nodded. "Okay." She'd try.

John took the two piles, shuffled the cards together. Again, he placed the full deck in the middle of the table and drew the top card.

"What card?" His eyes were fixed solely on it.

Closing her eyes, she tried to do what he'd told her to. See through his eyes, his eyes.

But there was only blackness. Only the backs of her eyelids.

She tried to picture what he'd be seeing right now, tried to picture her profile opposite him, the windows and open wooden shutters behind her. Even the water coolers bottles, off to the side in his peripheral vision. And first and foremost, the card. His hand holding the card.

Damn it, what was the card!

Angela placed her elbow on the table, resting her forehead on the thumb and the inner side of the forefinger on her right hand.

The card, the card, that damn card!

Hearing "Angela," while in such a state of concentration startled her, and the sudden touch on her left hand, at that moment resting on the table, did so even more. It was in this moment that she got a flash of something, a flash of, well, just what she'd been trying so desperately to see. The image was different than what she'd been imagining, the angles different, her position different. And the card, the card was right there, clear as day.

Could it be… could she have seen?

She lifted her face and eyes slowly, hair partially obscuring her face.

"Nine of hearts?" she said, her voice soft and full of wonder.

The corners of his mouth only just upturned, his right hand still resting on her left, John turned the card around. Sure enough, there were nine normally beating organs associated with love on that card, not counting the ones in the very corners.

"Good," he said quietly, and drew another card. His hand stayed atop hers. "What card?"

Angela closed her eyes, instinctively tried to clear her mind. She'd done it once, she could do it again.

Just as she was beginning to give up, she cocked her head, and it came to her.

"Two of spades." And she was right.

After guessing correctly twice more in this way, John withdrew his hand.

"Now try it without the physical contact."

So, was that it? Was a stronger psychic bond the only reason for that handholding? Somehow, she doubted it, although it was no doubt a large part.

Trying to see through his eyes without any sort of physical contact really did prove to be a task more difficult than initially anticipated. She was getting nowhere. Again, all she could see was the very familiar sight of her inner eyelids.

"Come on, Angela. You saw before, you can see again," John urged.

She tried. Damn it, did she try. But she just couldn't seem to get it. Sometimes it seemed as if she was getting close, but then her mind would back away at the very last second.

Focus, focus, focus!she told herself, and for some reason, she did. Her eyes snapped open, and it seemed she could see with two pairs of peepers at once, seeing him from her own perspective and seeing herself from his. Seeing the card from both sides. It was like having 6-dimensinoal vision, able to see from all directions all at once.

Perhaps, in this one instance, her frustration had been good, clouding some of her senses just enough for this "special sight" of hers to kick in. Or perhaps it was just blind luck. But Angela nonetheless got it.

"Good," John said, pleased at her progress despite himself. "Now try it with your eyes open the entire time. Try to cut down the time it takes you. Don't think about it; just do it. Know you can."

Strangely enough, she began to get the hang of it. There was a card or two or five that she couldn't get at first, but it was as if a valve had been opened, the water flooding. It was like when Constantine had held her down beneath the water in the bathtub and sent her to Hell, but more subtle.

After she'd gotten over fifteen in a row, Constantine stopped drawing cards. Instead, he took the two piles and began to reshuffle them, but spoke to her all the while. "All right, we're going to try something a little different. Remember when I told you to ignore the card? Well ignore that. Now, I want you to focus on the card, solely on the card. Nothing else. But don't try to see through it, or picture it. Just take in the card as a whole; what is the card?"

Having completed his shuffling, he placed the deck back onto the table, but off to the side. Beside it, he placed four cards, side-by-side and upside-down. He pointed to the second card from her left. "What card is it?"

Damn, just as she was getting a handle on one thing, he sprung something else on her.

Focus on the card, focus on the card. Angela looked at the thin piece of cardboard, stared at it till her eyes burned and protested by turning on the water main. She blinked and tried again. Nothing. Still, she couldn't figure out which card it was.

See it from all sides, she told herself. It's a whole, all part of the same thing. What's the whole thing?

After trying to figure out the one side she didn't know, Angela tried something different. She tried to take it all in at once, instead of processing bit by bit, like John had said for her to do. Maybe, just maybe, he knew what he was talking about. Maybe, just maybe, she could force her mind to work that way.

This section went with that one, that part went with this part. All part of the same thing, unlike the other cards, unique. It all fit together like a jigsaw puzzle, and she'd seen all the pieces. Which one was missing?

And then, she saw it. This one card had taken her over five minutes to picture, but she saw it.

She looked up at John, away from the card. "Ace of spades." He took the card, flipped it over, and there, plain as day, was an ace of spades.

John pointed to the card furthest to her left. "This one."

Angela tried looking at it the same way as the last one, and after a minute, she got it. "Joker, the red one." He flipped it: the red Joker.

The next two, a two of diamonds and a seven of diamonds, she guessed correctly as well.

Before long, it was taking her barely any time at all to figure out which card was which.

All of a sudden, he switched tactics, after she'd made out another set of four. He picked up a card from the deck, held it before him with its back to her. "What card am I holding?"

Immediately, she tried looking through his eyes. It took her a bit, about a quarter of a minute, but she got a flash of the card. "King of clubs."

He showed her the card, proving her correct, and put it down. He picked up another, and did the same thing, refreshing her memory on how to do it this way. This time, she got it faster. After one more card, he spoke.

"This time, don't look through me. This time, look just at the card."

He picked up another card, kept his eyes on it.

Angela tried, tried to look only at the card, but she couldn't help it. Half of her went one way, to him and what he saw, the other to the card. In her mind, both images merged for an image that seemed to now be in twelve dimensions instead of six. A wave of dizziness hit her, and she wavered in her seat, righting herself by grabbing onto the edge of the table.

"Six-six of clubs," she breathed, rather unnerved. John put the card down, right side up. She'd guessed right.

"That's enough for today," he said, and stood.

Angela nodded and did the same. It was almost seven; they'd been at this for over three hours.

Both made their way over to the door, Constantine talking as they did so.

"Tomorrow, stick to your desk. After work, call me; if I'm not there, leave a message. I'll pick you up."

"Why?" she asked as he opened the door to let her out, turning her head to face him.

"We're going to dinner."

Vagrant: (Fred waves, and I hop up and down in glee) Wooot, I'm getting Angela down! Thank thee for telling me! .

kissed-luck: OO Whoa, I didn't think it was that good! I'm so happy you liked it so much! I think I might hold off on updating that site until this one catches up some more, though, but feel free to tell me what you think about the chapters as I put them up on here!

Daydreamer: Go kisses, it's your birthday, we're gonna party like it's your birthday… :P And I'm STILL putting off hw. O.o

Danielle: Thank you! I shall.