March. The long and unexpected story behind Dick's school records p.1

Dick, Victor and Gar sat patiently in Blood's office, avoiding the principal's piercing gaze. They still hadn't been told what sort of trouble they were in, and they couldn't think of anything themselves.

The door opened, and the Secretary admitted Kori, who looked mildly alarmed to be here.

"Ah, Miss Androkinova, nice of you to join us," said Blood, as Kori sat next to the boys. "You must be wondering why I called you here. Well, I've heard you've become quite dedicated to… solving the school's problems."

The four perked up.

Blood didn't wait for them to respond. "I'm sure you've seen the dreadful graffiti plaguing our halls. I was… wondering if your attention had fallen on it."

Dick's eyes narrowed. The other three exchanged looks. They had all seen the red and black graffiti that invaded hallways, bathrooms, and even classrooms.

"You want us to find out who is tagging the halls?" asked Victor. Normally Dick would have taken the lead, but he was being uncharacteristically quiet, so Vic took over.

"I wouldn't dream of tasking you with such a reprehensible and unlawful extra-curricular," intoned Blood. "But if you were to solve it, and if you were to solve it quickly, well, I'd want you to know you'd have the school's unending gratitude. The school, surely," he stared straight at them, so they were all sure what he really meant, "would never forget it."

"The janitor must have told him about the thing with Thunder and Lightning," said Vic once they left the office. "It's the only link I can think of."

"But hey, this a good thing, right?" asked Gar. "We're being recognized. In a way. Finally."

"Yeah. Yeah, I think so," smiled Vic, letting himself get excited. "It's what we wanted."

"It is an official mission," cheered Kori. "Is it not, Dick?"

"I guess," Dick said through gritted teeth.

"What is bothering you?" she prompted.

Dick looked up to see his friends looking at him. He seemed to just then realize they had eyes that could see he was acting odd. "Nothing," he said. "I mean, you know. We're being used by Blood here, is all."

"But I thought you wanted something like this," said Vic. "To be openly a club that does these tasks. We were gonna get a mission from faculty sometime."

Dick turned away from them. "Like I said. Guess so."

"Oo-kay," went Vic. "Anyway, here's another problem. Raven left right after her last class. She has no idea we have an urgent mission. Do we start tomorrow, or start without her?"

"Maybe we can go to her house now and let her know about the mish," proposed Gar, grinning.

"Not a chance," said Vic, immediately stern.

"Why not?" protested Gar. "We got a mission from the principal, we should hurry!"

"You know she wouldn't want us to drop in unannounced," replied Vic. "Every time I offer to drop her off or something, she doesn't want to."

"Exactly!" cried Gar. "This could be our only chance to see her house!"

"Gar makes a point," said Kori. "The principal did specify the need for speediness."

Vic, who had been about to shut Gar down hard, paused seeing Kori also thought the mission warranted this exception.

(In reality, Kori didn't care about how quickly they had to solve the mission, she just wanted to see Raven's house—she was as curious as Gar was, she just did a better job of hiding it.)

Vic finally turned to Dick for a tiebreaker. "Dick? What do you say?"

Dick been staring at the wall, at a specimen of the graffiti that was now their mission: a big red X over a white skull. He stopped glaring at it to shrug at his friends. "Sure. Let's go to Raven's house."

"Wait, really?" Gar asked, who hadn't really believed he was going to pull this off. He pounced on Dick's back. "We're really going to Raven's house?"

"Yes. Don't be weird about it," Dick said, and pried Gar's hands off his collar.

Gar exploded anyway, leaping off Dick to pump his fists at the ceiling. "Oh, man. This is gonna be awesome!"

Dick unearthed the crumpled paper with everyone's contact information from the bottom of his backpack. Only the home address part was filled in Raven's section. They followed the directions downtown.

"Look, I'm just saying it's odd we've never seen her house," said Gar as they walked down the street. "We've been friends for months, and every time we suggest going to check it out-"

"You suggest," interjected Vic.

"Every time, she deflects," Gar finished. "Wonder what she's hiding."

Vic, who had grown increasingly irritated at Gar, and was now deathly afraid he was going to say the wrong thing to Raven when they got there, stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to yell at him. "Nothing! It will be a normal house. I know this is a novel concept to someone like you, but some people value privacy. She's just a private person."

From the front of the line, Dick called out, "Look, we're going to her house, we're telling her about the mission, and that's it. It doesn't have to be a huge thing." He had begun to comprehend he'd made mistake by avowing this. Because he'd been distracted, he hadn't thought this through, and now he would have to deal with the consequences.

Kori walked happily, secretly glad events had conspired in a way that they would get to see Raven's house.

The address they had led them to a medium-sized apartment building. It was five floors high and stately-looking.

"See?" said Vic. "Normal."

Gar had his arms crossed. "I'll be convinced when I see the inside."

Dick rang the doorbell and told them all to shut up.

They had to wait for it, but eventually the door was answered by Raven's mom.

They instantly knew it was her mom—she was an older, taller version of Raven. She shared her daughter's pin-straight black hair. She had the same blue eyes and olive-toned light brown skin. She wore white: a long-sleeved shirt that fell to her knees, and loose pants underneath.

"Yes?" she said. If possible, she sounded like she had reached an even higher state of serene detachment than her daughter.

Dick smiled. "Hi, is Raven home?"

Immediately Raven's mom looked like all inner peace had left her. She posed a hand on the doorway, as if for grounding. As if this was the only question she never would have expected. When she spoke again, she sounded like she was afraid of her own voice. "And you would be?"

"Dick. Richard… Grayson." Dick's tone got lower as he saw no spark of recognition in the woman's face, nor any inclination to let him inside.

"Just a moment," she said, and promptly closed the door.

Dick stared at the closed door, then back at his friends, who stared back in askance.

Time passed. After a while, Vic spoke. "Should we leave?"

Dick said, "Let's wait a little while."

After yet a while longer, the door opened again, and it was thankfully Raven herself. They never thought they'd be so glad to see her little face scowling at them.

"What the hell are you guys doing here?" she asked.

Dick stammered an explanation. "Uh, we got a mission. Principal Blood wants us to take care of the graffiti that's been showing up in school." He rubbed his neck sheepishly. "We just wanted to get started right away. Sorry, I… we could have waited till school tomorrow."

"Yeah, you could have," said Raven, arms crossed.

She lingered in the doorway. The four stood there. They'd had to take a bus and walk ten blocks to the house, and they were wondering if they would have to make all that way back. Raven seemed to come to the same realization as to how far away her house was, and her eyes softened. She opened the door all the way and moved aside, sighing. "Come in. You already freaked out my mom anyway."

They entered.

They came into a hallway, which opened to a living room on the left, where some people were fluttering around. They reached the end of the hallway, went through another door, and the scene changed completely. Now they were in a massive circular room, bathed in light from a central skylight. Dozens of people walked two and fro. On the center of the area were raised garden beds with vegetables, and people tending to them. Beyond the furthest wall they could see a big greenhouse. Three stories rose around them, with open hallways that led to hundreds of doors.

The four struggled to grasp their surroundings as they followed Raven, who hadn't slowed down her pace.

The people around them were either peaceful-looking people dressed in white, or more regular-looking in normal street clothes, but none paid any mind to them, which made the four feel even more like they'd been dropped in on an alternate dimension. The length they had walked didn't correlate with the size or shape the building seemed to have from the outside.

Raven took a left and took them through a door. As they came out into another grand hallway and just kept going,Vic suddenly realized they should be in the next two houses over by now.

Raven's four friends were all thinking something along the same lines. Ever since they met Raven, they had disregarded the numerous rumors around her as just that—rumors. For the first time ever, they were starting to give the one about her being in a cult some consideration.

They followed Raven to a set of stairs. The higher they went, the more the striking elegance of the grand salon faded into a regular apartment building. They went up three floors before Raven led them onto a hallway, and up to a door with a small whiteboard marked with a hand-written, half faded 'Roch'. They went through it.

"Take your shoes off," Raven instructed them, as she removed her own and left them by the door.

The inside was a regular apartment. In the kitchen area, Raven's mom was sitting to the table. She got up when they entered.

"Mom, these are the guys from the club I told you about," Raven told her.

"It's very nice to meet you all," Raven's mom said, tremulously but sincerely.

"And guys, this is my mom, Arella."

There were murmurs of courtesies. Raven's friends guessed they were pretending like their first interaction hadn't happened.

"Right… We'll be in my room, mom," Raven said, and led them further inside. The four didn't think they had ever heard her speak so softly to someone before.

Raven's room was normal, but perhaps only by comparison to what they had just seen. It was dark and full of creepy-looking trinkets. But it was very Raven, and therefore familiar, and they could breathe easily in there. Gar's eyes weren't big enough to take in the sheer density of small trinkets and decorations. He went for one of the bookcases, and was pulled to a statue of a dancing Shiva like a moth to the flame; he promptly got his hand slapped by Raven, who told him not to touch her stuff.

"Now, what was that urgent thing you had to tell me?" she asked them as she sat on her bed.

"Like Dick said, we got our first mission from the principal," said Vic, smiling. "Finding out who's behind the graffiti and stopping it."

"That's what couldn't wait until tomorrow?" Raven returned.

Dick frowned. "What do you want us to do? We can't call you."

"Okay, do you wanna buy me a cell phone?" Raven retorted.

"No. A landline would be fine."

"I told you, I can't give out the house number."

It was the same thing she'd told them months ago. But the words seemed to have a deeper meaning, given what they'd just seen. The four fell into an awkward silence.

Gar was the one to break it. "What is this place, Raven?"

Raven leaned back against the wall and regarded her friends. Kori had taken a seat on Raven's bed; the boys were still standing around. All were watching her intently.

"It's the church of Azarath," she said. The title felt heavy, like the words alone donned some unearthly dignity. "It's a kind of… sanctuary. People come here for protection and to get away from society. It's like a secret hideout from the world hidden in plain sight."

Vic dared to ask it. "Is it like a cult?"

"It's not a cult," said Raven, not offended. Really she was grateful someone had asked, so she could clarify it. "This place takes all religions. I mean, my mom and I are still Hindu. It's more of a collection of like-minded people who all believe in pacifism and wanna live in a self-sufficient community. And people are free to come and go. Many people use it as a shelter and stay for a few months at most."

"And how long have you guys lived here?" asked Dick.

Raven looked away. "Longer than that."

Dick was quick to change the subject. "You're self-sufficient," he said. "That's why there were all those gardens? You grow all your own food?"

Raven nodded. "Exactly. Priests and priestesses also make their own clothes."

"That's cool," said Dick, giving her a grin.

"The priests and priestesses were the people in white walking around?" Kori asked.

"Yeah."

"Is your mom a priestess?" Vic asked, remembering her mom had been dressed in white.

"Not exactly." Raven shifted on her feet, clearly uncomfortable being the center of attention for this long. "She's kind of a half priestess. She is close to Azar—um, that's our leader. That's not her name, it's just a title. The first Azar lived a thousand years ago."

"Whoa," went Gar.

Victor said, "Wait, so this thing is really old. But I'd never heard of it."

Raven pushed some hair behind her ear. "It's managed to stay hidden for a long time. I don't really know how. It really seems like the kind of thing someone would have talked about by now."

There was a meaningfulness to her words, and Dick caught it. "Well, our lips are sealed."

"Indeed," agreed Kori.

Raven actually gave them a small smile.

Then Gar said, "So… what's wrong with your mom?"

"She's just delicate," Raven spat, her eyes spitting fire.

For once in his life, Gar wisely dropped it.

"So then Blood called us after class and dropped that on us," recounted Vic, sitting on the floor next to Raven's bed.

"So we're catching another delinquent," said Raven, sitting cross-legged on her bed opposite to Kori. "Are we gonna do the whole stay-after-school, record-everything thing again? And hope there's no bomb this time?"

"But I remember that when the graffiti near the cafeteria appeared, it happened in the middle of the day," said Kori.

"In that case it's not gonna be so easy," replied Vic.

Gar listened to the conversation while wandering through Raven's room. He stopped by the window, and looked down to determine where they were. After the long walk and endless flights of stairs they took to get here, they seemed to be at a house they had passed on the way here, two doors down from the one they had rung. It would be so much easier to drop from this window than do it all back again.

"What are you looking for?" Raven asked him, just noticing him.

Gar shrugged at her and moved away from the window.

"But if we're doing this by Blood's request, surely we'll have permission to be out of class to do this, right?" asked Raven.

"Not quite," said Vic. "He didn't so much request as hint that if we did this he'd owe us one. We're really on our own-"

"Aha! Jackpot!" said Gar suddenly, and they looked up to see him going through Raven's bookcases.

"I told you to quit going through my stuff!" she called out.

"I'm sorry, Rae, but this is too good." He turned around and she saw what he was holding—he'd found her bag of Tarot cards, and taken the cards out. "I can't believe you're into this…" he was going to say 'crap', but he took one look at Raven's face, recognized she was about to lose it on him, considered he'd probably already pushed her enough today, and backtracked. "I mean, who knew, right?" he said, turning his tone from teasing to innocent. "That rumor about you turned out to be true. You're really into magic or whatever."

"Bring me those cards over here," she commanded.

Gar complied, but plopped down on the bed next to her. "Ooh, ooh! Ask the cards who's behind the graffiti!"

Raven took the cards and put them back in their bag, ignoring him.

Vic laughed. "That would be a good idea, though."

Kori clasped her hands together. "Oh, Raven, please, demonstrate! I always wanted to go to one of those fairs with, the women with cards and those, glass balls!"

"Crystal balls," droned Raven, hating her friends.

"Come on, Raven! Please?" insisted Gar, and they all looked at her imploringly.

Is this what peer pressure looks like? she wondered. She was considering acquiescing, because if she said what she really wanted to say –that those cards weren't toys, and that she wasn't really into magic or whatever, thank you very much, as much as magic was into her- she'd look even crazier than she already did with the whole Azarath thing.

So instead she sighed, took the cards back out and started mixing them, to the glee of three of her friends—Dick was still plopped down on the chair next to Raven's bed, uncharacteristically not taking part in the mission discussion. Raven tried to ignore all of their presence and concentrated on the relevant question—the identity of their vandal. She'd never done this in front of people before.

"So how does this work?" asked Gar, moving to sit on the ground so Raven would have space.

"It works with silence," she chided him. But she wasn't hating this. She was thinking maybe things didn't have to be grave and secretive all the time; maybe she could welcome her friends into her house, trust them with her secret, and do a tarot reading in front of them, and the world wouldn't in fact explode around her.

She arranged five cards in a cross pattern and turned them slowly.

"Wow," she breathed when the picture was full.

"What, what?" asked Vic.

"All but one are reversed," she replied.

"What does it mean?" asked Kori.

"Basically that the meaning of the card is… worsened. Darker, so to speak."

They were all around her now, watching the cards intently. Only Dick stayed plopped down in the chair, watching them from afar.

Raven tapped one of the reversed cards, which was called The Emperor. "I see problems with authority. No surprises there. Bad habits, probably inherited from a father figure." Her eyes shifted to the rest of the spread and came back. "…Definitely inherited from a father figure."

"What else, what else?" prompted Gar.

"He's currently facing a time of crisis," said Raven.

"It's a he?" asked Vic.

"Oh, yes," she affirmed. "Look at this spread. It's a sausage fest." They looked; all the cards were male.

"That matters?" asked Dick, from the chair.

"Everything matters," replied Raven.

"Raven, are you sure?" asked Kori. "There is graffiti in the girls' bathroom, but none on the boy's."

"Maybe he did that on purpose to throw us off," said Gar.

Vic turned to him. "Oh, come on. Don't tell me you believe this crap."

Raven stared daggers at Vic. "Excuse me?"

"Ah… I didn't mean…" Withering under Raven's glare, Vic briefly wondered why it was that Gar was able to push and push Raven to the edge, and yet Vic recoiled at the first hard gaze. But he accepted it as Gar's personality making him disregard danger and decided himself to keep his life intact. "I'll shut up."

"Anyway." Raven focused back on the cards. "He's very misunderstood. Everyone thinks they know exactly who he is, but everyone's wrong. He projects a certain image, but he's much more complex. And he's determined. He'll burn himself out trying to get his goal."

"Okay, let me piece this together," said Vic, looking at the cards intently. "Where'd you see all that?" he asked.

Raven thought he was just trying to analyze the process to make up for his earlier scorn of it, but she went with it. "Here's the problems with authority, here's the time of crisis, here's the troubled personality," she said, methodically pointing at three cards—The Emperor, The Trial and The Magician. "But most importantly… I see nostalgia. I see a lost friendship. I see a need for healing. Here." She tapped the sole upright card, The High Priest. "There's this presence that speaks of… mentorship, buffering. Either he needs someone like that, or…"

"Or?" prompted Kori.

Raven didn't stop staring at the cards, like if she looked away she would sever a connection. "I think at one point he had that, and he lost it."

Dick suddenly jumped from his seat. "Where's your bathroom?" he asked Raven, mostly to justify his outburst.

"Down the hall. Last door," said Raven, and Dick all but ran out of the room. When he was gone, Raven turned to the rest of her friends. "Okay. What's going on with him?"

"He's been acting weird all day," said Gar. "Ever since we got the mission."

"I thought the getting a mission from the principal would be what he wanted," said Kori.

"It should be," said Vic. "But now he's saying he thinks Blood's using us. I don't know what he expected to happen if we're really gonna do this defense of the student body thing."

"Please, Raven, tell us what we need to look for so we can solve this mission quickly," said Kori.

"The way I see it," said Raven, looking at the spread, "this guy's betting his all on getting this one person's help and attention." She paused. "We should look for someone new. Someone who just transferred or moved from another town. Someone with a record, obviously. Someone who… just seems reckless and wild."

"That's not a clue, that's subjective," said Vic.

"It's a profile," returned Raven. "Police do that."

"Hey, Raven, what about this card?" Gar asked, pointing at The Lovers.

"That's where I saw the need of friendship," replied Raven.

Kori said, "It is reversed, because he is seeking friendship but… going about it in a wrong way?"

"Exactly," said Raven, mildly impressed at how quickly she'd gotten it.

"So, our juvenile delinquent just needs a friend?" surmised Vic.

"We can provide that," said Kori, smiling. "That would make for such a happy ending!"

When Dick came back, Raven was putting the cards back in their bag, but Gar stopped her.

"Oh, Rae, Rae! Read our future now!" (Gar had heard Victor call her 'Rae' once. He'd immediately loved it, and hated that he hadn't thought of it first. Since then he had appropriated it to the point everyone forgot Vic had been the one who'd done it first.)

"Oh, yes!" echoed Kori.

"I don't think so," said Raven. "It's not a good idea to read for friends."

Gar's eyes flashed, and he decided in a split second to go for broke. He propped himself up with his arms on the bed, got close to Raven's face and cocked his head, smirking. "Aaw, Rae, I didn't know we were that good of friends."

Her eyes locked in his. He was challenging her.

Using all her might not to blush, Raven glared at him. "Good point," she said. "You barely count. Come on, then." And she got the cards back out.

Kori relinquished her spot on the bed, and Gar jumped on in a flash, sitting cross-legged in front of Raven. Dick decided to join the group for this, and sat on the floor where Gar had just been.

"Okay, what do you want?" asked Raven, shuffling the cards. "Are you asking a question? Do you want to hear your future? Or you want to hear about yourself?"

Gar rested his head on his hands, elbows on his knees. "Mmh. Do I have to tell you the question?"

"Strictly, no, but it would make things easier."

Gar considered this, then waved his hand. "Nah, just tell me about me."

"His favorite topic," said Vic.

Raven handed Gar the deck. "Shuffle them."

Gar did so. When he gave her back the deck, Raven cut it. Gar got the flash of a really weird feeling when she did it: as if in shuffling the cards he'd tried to hide something, and in cutting them Raven had left that out in the open. It was a second-long impression, and it passed immediately. But being this close, watching Raven's concentrated expression and methodical motions as she took six cards and arranged them in a cross pattern, Gar began having second thoughts about this whole thing.

He looked around the room, as if appreciating for the first time the grand and forbidding creepiness of it. The sun had gone behind a cloud, and inside, the flickering candles in her desk and bookcases stood out against the new darkness, and made the trinkets and crystals and bottles twinkle and seem to come alive. Gar did a double take at the scene. He leaned towards Victor.

"Um, dude, were those candles always lit?" he whispered.

"What?" Vic returned.

"Those candles over there and there. Have they been lit this whole time?"

Vic shook his head. "Gar, you have the attention span of a mosquito."

"So they were?" Gar asked desperately.

"Uh…" went Vic, considering that he wasn't sure himself.

"Gar?" Raven called. "You can turn the cards now." She was pretending she didn't notice his discomfort. This had been his idea—now he was going to have to deal with it.

Gar visibly hesitated.

Dick and Victor looked on amusedly.

"It's okay, Gar, you can back out," said Dick. "If you're a chicken."

Vic then imitated a chicken.

That made Gar angry enough that he stuck his chin up, and started turning the cards defiantly.

Everyone looked down at the spread.

"They're mostly upright," said Gar, grinning.

"Um, no, they're mostly reversed," said Raven. "Now the cards are facing you."

"Oh." Gar's smiled dropped. Then he brightened. "Oooh, I see the lovers in there!" he said, and made his eyebrows wiggle.

"That one was also there in the last read," Vic reminded him. "It just means friendship."

"The same cards can mean different things in different sessions," said Raven, staring at the cards.

Gar hawked at Vic. "Ha! See? What'd they mean here, Raven?"

"They do mean a romantic future is on the way," she said off-handedly. She wondered how they had failed to notice that The Lovers was reversed.

"Okay," Gar smiled wanly, not understanding why she was being so unforthcoming. "That's good, right?"

"Um, I also see something ending badly," said Raven, forcing it out. She wanted to kick herself—this was why you didn't read for friends.

"Oh," made Gar.

"Hey, remember it's just a game," Dick told him. Raven didn't correct him; it was better if Gar thought it was.

Her eyes darted through the rest of the spread, wondering how she was going to get out of this situation.

Gar's cards were a mess. She wasn't sure what she'd been expecting, but it wasn't this. So… intense, so extreme and so negative. The Devil in his remote past? That inverted Star in his near future? She didn't want to look at these cards; she didn't want to know what they would tell her. She stuck to the middle, to the Fool and the High Priestess crossed over it. That she could deal with.

"Okay, this represents you. The Fool." She made a pause so Vic could tease him ("I coulda told you that myself!") and went on. "It speaks of a free spirit, an open and curious mind, a person ready to go with the flow."

Gar looked extremely satisfied. "Yep, that's me!"

"And the High Priestess speaks of a wise, enlightening figure in your life. A feminine presence that guides you."

"What, like my mom?" asked Gar.

"Could be," Raven replied.

Then she was stuck again; in light of the four other troubling cards, she decided to finish the picture. She drew four more cards from the deck, arranging them vertically next to the others. She told Gar to turn them, and he did so silently.

The four new cards didn't make it much better.

Raven bit her lip. Gar was sure he'd never seen her do that before.

She stuck to the good cards—The Magician and Strength. "Okay, I see you having all sort of tools at your disposal to rise above every obstacle. I see hardships that will wind up on you becoming a strong, solid person."

"What kind of hardships?" asked Gar.

The Sun, reversed, was calling to her in answer to his question. Above it, The World, also reversed, wanted to join it. But Raven didn't want to know more. She didn't want to hear what these cards would tell her.

"I can't say," she lied. She leaned back on her bed, as if to signal the read was over.

"Wait, is that it? There are so many cards," said Vic.

Dick said, "You're only talking about the ones that are upright."

Raven breathed deep, rolling her eyes away so as not to face Gar or the cards. "Okay, just…" She finally looked at the rest of her friends. "Step into the hallway for a second."

Dick was unsettled. "What?"

"Can you go out onto the hallway?" she said. "Just for a second."

Dick, Victor and Kori exchanged alarmed glances.

Vic was the first to stand up. "Um… sure."

The three got up gingerly. Raven got up after them and closed the door behind them. She stayed there a while, her back to Gar.

Gar felt hot and cold. He was conscious he had supremely fucked up. Why had he asked the cards about himself? He should have asked a question. He should have said to focus on the future. What the hell had she seen?

After a while, his need to know was stronger than the fear. "Raven?" he called. "What did you see? …Why'd you tell them all to leave?"

She responded, "I have a reputation to maintain, don't I?"

Gar gaped. "What?"

She came back to her bed, smirking lightly. "When they come back, pretend I told you something big."

Gar stared at her for a while before her meaning got through; slowly, he began to smile, and then laugh. "Oh Rae, you sly dog, you!"

Raven shushed him and moved to gather the cards. When the others came back, he did his best to act casually shocked. Raven quickly changed the subject back to the mission, and the others went with it.

At no point did Gar truly believe her—he could tell she was lying. She just didn't want to tell him what she'd seen. But he only let himself dwell on that after he got home: what had shocked her so much that she had to lie?

Over the next few days, he found himself looking at her. Wondering if she knew something about him now that the others didn't. If she knew something Gar himself didn't know.

He always meant to google the meanings of the cards himself—find out by himself what she could have seen and rip the Band-Aid off. But he never seemed to get around to it, and slowly, he began to forget the names of the cards he'd gotten.

I'm taking bets as to who's behind the graffiti!

If you're interested, the spreads Raven did was a five-card cross first (better for asking a specific question) and then a Celtic cross (better for hearing what's going on with a querent at a point in time). I didn't go too much into card placement and role in order to weave in naturally into the story, but if you're into Tarot hit me up and I'll break it down.