“It’s bad luck to buy your own tarot deck,” Semele read in Tarot for Dummies.
She looked at the bag on Cabe’s coffee table. She had purchased not one, but two decks at the bookstore, the Rider-Waite Deck and the replica of the Visconti Deck, and brought them back to his apartment. More bad luck. Lovely.
But as she continued reading the how-to book, the author clarified her position. It was the tarot’s wisdom that couldn’t be bought, not the cards themselves. So people could, in the author’s opinion, disregard this belief. Semele grimaced. At least that was something.
She moved on to the next chapter. Within an hour she had covered many of the highlights, including the history of the cards and their meanings, some of which she already knew from Sebastian.
A typical tarot deck was comprised of seventy-eight cards. Twenty-two of those cards were called the Major Arcana, a group of symbolic cards starting with The Fool and ending with The World. “Arcana” meant “mystery of the mysteries, the ultimate secret.” The Major Arcana was the backbone of the tarot.
Semele got out her new deck and studied each card. There were also sixteen court cards, consisting of four groups made up of a king, a queen, a knight, and a page, each in a suit of cups, pentacles, swords, or wands.
In a sense, the suits were similar to astrological signs: cups signified water or the emotions, pentacles were the earth and the material world, swords represented air and the mind, and wands symbolized fire and spiritual energy. The numbered cards were organized into four sets of ten cards that ranged from ace to ten. These were also grouped by suit. Every card had a meaning, and together the deck formed a system that allowed the tarot reader to see life’s progression, reflected through symbols and archetypes. A trained reader could use his or her psyche to interpret the answer to any question being asked.
There was a chapter that discussed the “freak-out cards.” That made her laugh. Yes, she had definitely been alarmed by some of the cards that came up in her reading. But the book explained how Death, The Devil, and The Tower cards, for instance, were nothing to fear. They meant different things at different moments: it all depended on where you were.
Another chapter explained how to find your soul card by adding up the day, month, and year in your birth date and then adding those digits to arrive at a single number. Semele quickly grabbed a pen and did the math. Her number was two.
She flipped to the chapter entitled “Pick a Card, Any Card” and was stunned to find that card number two was The High Priestess, the same card she had drawn at the bookstore.
Semele couldn’t help shivering. She closed the book and put it back in the bag. That was enough card reading for her. She wasn’t ready to attempt a tarot spread, no matter how simple Tarot for Dummies made it sound. Maybe she never would be.
After Cabe dated Ionna’s cards, she would store them in the safe-deposit box, along with the USB and her father’s translation of the manuscript. This weekend she would read the rest of Nettie’s story and then go to Beijing and get on with her life. She couldn’t do any more than that.
As if to prove her wrong, her cell phone rang. She answered, trying to keep her voice steady. “Hello?”
“Semele? It’s Theo.”
“I know,” she said before she could help herself. Even the sound of his voice affected her.
“I want to schedule our meeting tomorrow. I’m about to get on the plane.”
There was so much she needed to ask him, but she wanted to see his face when she did. “I’ll be at the office until noon. I could meet you then?”
“Let me take you to lunch.” He suggested The Garden at the Four Seasons, where he was staying.
Semele agreed to meet him there at 12:30 P.M. and hung up.
Anticipation built inside her, and her imagination began to conjure fantasies about tomorrow, of another kiss on another table. To take her mind off Theo, she jumped on the Kairos server and caught up on the latest industry news. It was the quickest way for her to refocus.
She smiled when she saw that Christie’s had sold one of George Washington’s personal ledgers for two hundred thousand dollars. She bet the letters Cabe was restoring would do nicely when they went to auction.
Scanning the rest of the week’s highlights, she noted that Christie’s had also sold a letter written to Beethoven, the original copy of a poem that had influenced van Gogh, and a map of the Siege of Louisbourg. As she read over the auction details, she was amazed at how many custodians and janitors were credited with making these finds while cleaning out old closets and basements. There was so much buried treasure out there in the world, waiting to be discovered, which was why her favorite assignments sent her to the mustiest spaces.
The next auction she read about made her sit up. J. A. Stargardt in Germany was selling the original handwritten manuscript of Mirabilis Liber, an infamous compilation of prophecies from Christian saints and religious men published in France in 1522. The book was quite popular in its day. Nostradamus had relied heavily on the Mirabilis when composing his prophecies, and there was even speculation that Nostradamus’ father, Jaume de Nostradame, was the anonymous compiler.
A flurry of articles about ancient manuscripts and prophecies was circulating because of the auction. As Semele clicked on them, her despondency over the theft grew. These articles should be focusing on Ionna’s manuscript, not the Mirabilis, which had been read and analyzed around the globe countless times. She had imagined the manuscript’s announcement would be met with this same kind of excitement, if not more. Now no one would even know it existed.
She wondered about who was behind the theft, and rage filled her. Again she questioned Raina’s involvement. Were others at Kairos involved too? She had a hard time believing it. Nothing made sense.
With angry pecks at the keyboard, she logged into her office e-mail to see if any progress had been made on the investigation. There was no news. She had no idea how to talk to Mikhail about Raina, but he needed to know.
Mikhail had replied to her last e-mail. He was expecting her tomorrow morning at nine. They would finalize Beijing, and he had carved out an hour for them to go over specifics.
From his curt reply, she could tell he wasn’t happy that she’d taken additional days off. Her flight to China left at noon on Sunday, which didn’t give her much time. Raina had already forwarded her itinerary. Semele was scheduled to be away for a month with the possibility of an extension.
Raina’s reaction to her new assignment was beginning to make sense. Raina wanted her out of the way. At the time Semele had thought she was jealous of her relationship with Cabe, but now she was certain it was because of the manuscript. Semele would have to talk to Mikhail tomorrow. That would be her only opportunity.
She was about to reply when out of nowhere a wave of nausea hit her. It was so intense she had to close her eyes.
Once the worst had passed, she went to the kitchen and drank a glass of water, hoping it would help. Then she checked the time and saw it was already seven. She hadn’t eaten all day. Maybe she’d duck out and pick up some Thai takeout. Cabe should be here soon.
She grabbed her phone to order the food and noticed that she had a missed a call from him. He had left a voice mail too. Her stomach fluttered again and she had to sit back down.
How had she missed that? She was about to listen when her phone rang.
Raina was calling her.
Just seeing her number made Semele’s nausea worsen. She answered the call, knowing that, whatever this was, it had to be bad.
“Semele?” Raina’s voice was thick with emotion. She didn’t sound like herself. “Cabe’s been in an accident.”