Damen, Dryas, and I are holed up in a little apartment in Tower Hamlet, waiting for a mark to leave his house. I can’t stand the crumbling walls and the moldering carpets in this apartment. Still, this shithole apartment’s value is not in the peeling linoleum tiles or the oddly painted rooms.

No, this apartment is valuable because it sits across from John Libbey’s house, looking out over his front porch. And seeing as how John Libbey is the next on a long list of people who we’re assigned to kill…

We’ll be here until John Libbey is no longer breathing.

I lean forward in my seat, using my fingers to part the blinds. Glancing at Libbey’s door, I see no change. Same pale blue door, beaten all to hell. Same brick facade, dingy and worn. The postage stamp-sized yard is still totally empty, with the exception of some fast food trash that’s been thrown in one corner.

Sighing, I close the blinds and turn back to my brothers. Dryas is in the corner, asleep somehow despite him being on the bare floor. That fucker has always been able to sleep anywhere, anytime.

Damen sits on a metal folding chair and watches old cartoons on the apartment’s busted-looking tv. He is so intense when he’s watching, almost unblinking. Why he’s like that I don’t know, but he’s been like that for years.

Damen has a deck of Tarot cards in his hands. He’s shuffling them mindlessly, not even looking down at them. I stand up, stretching and yawning.

He looks at me, blinking. He appears confused as if I’ve just interrupted his early morning cartoons. Except it’s nine at night and we’re too fucking old to watch cartoons.

“No change out there,” I tell him, nodding to the window.

He just grunts, running a hand through his short dark hair. “The cards say it’ll be tonight.”

My gaze narrows. Not this shit again.

“Yeah, you said.”

His attention wanders back to the TV screen, although he keeps talking to me. “The cards are almost always right. Actually, they are right every time, I just have a flawed interpretational skill set.”

Interpretational skill set? Jesus. He definitely has something flawed, all right.

I glance over at the window. Opening the blinds so that I can make out the front door across the street, I move my chair closer to Damen.

“You really think those things can predict the future?” I ask, nodding my head at the cards in his hands.

He stops shuffling them, looking directly at me for a long moment. “Yes.”

“Read me, or whatever.” I’m not convinced of anything, far from it. But I am bored, having left my book at home. Damen holds the only source of amusement.

He narrows his gaze. “I told already, tarot requires a certain level of belief to even work at all.”

“So, let’s just say I believe then.” I try not to let my total boredom and exasperation bleed into my tone of voice, but I can see from his face that I’m not fully successful.

Damen keeps his eyes trained on me, but he starts shuffling the deck. “Alright, then. Let’s do a spread.”

“Yeah, alright.” I move my chair closer again. “What do I have to do?”

Damen looks at me, his grey eyes curious. “Cut the deck a few times. Think about the biggest problem in your life while you do it.”

He hands me the deck. Glancing out the window again, I try to think. What problems do I have that need solving?

I can easily think of ten things, but the biggest and most persistent issue is Grigori Aurari. He’s a mid-level Romani mafia goon that I keep running into, and sooner or later his sneers are going to upset me.

When his sneers upset me, I’ll snap. I will kill him, which will set off a turf war between The Cypriots and The Romani. Then the Romani will hit back.

The rest of the world, the Italians and the Irish and the Jews, they will look on disdainfully as we kill each other’s families. Good riddance, they’ll think.

I don’t want that, not before I get my chance to show the world what the Cypriots are made of. I don’t think the Romanis do, either.

So, I focus on Aurari’s snide face as I handle the cards, cutting the deck a few times. When I return the cards to Damen, he lays the top three down, the cards going thwack, thwack, thwack.

The three cards are The Magician, the Ten of Pentacles, and the High Priestess. Damen stares down at them in puzzlement, then looks up at me.

“What the fuck did you ask?” he says, his brown drawn low over his eyes. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

I shrug. “I asked how things will be resolved with Grigori Aurari.”

He shakes his head, muttering a little. “Let’s do them again. Maybe this is a bad draw.”

He shuffles the cards back into the deck for a minute, then offers them to me. “Here, think of your question again.”

I accept the cards from him, closing my eyes and concentrating. Cutting the deck several times, I hand it back to him. He lays down three cards, thwack, thwack, thwack.

The first two are different. They’re a Seven of Swords and The Moon. But the third is exactly the same, a very cool-looking woman staring up at me from her throne.

“The High Priestess again,” I say, raising my eyebrows. Glancing up at Damen, I frown. “What could that mean?”

“Well…” Damen says, touching the cards with just his fingertips, sliding them apart slightly. “The Seven of Swords means secret plans or abandoning ship. The Moon is the subconscious, or else it is… I don’t know, mystery perhaps?”

“And the third one? The High Priestess?”

He furrows his brow. “That one, I admit I do not know. I mean, it means loosely a course of inaction or going within to tap into your true power. But to draw this card twice…”

He trails off. I feel a sense of anxiety, of foreboding, that I didn’t feel before. “What does it mean when the High Priestess turns up twice?”

Damen picks the card up, inspecting it more closely. “I don’t know. It’s all contextual. I’m getting a sense that the card isn’t merely representing what it usually means… I don’t know. Maybe it was a fluke.”

I squint out the window. “Maybe.”

“We should draw again. I mean, to be safe.”

“Safe? Safe from what?” I ask, standing up. “They’re just cards. It’s just a game.”

Damen glances at Dryas, who is still asleep. “We’re doing another spread. If it’s just a game, there is no harm in doing it.”

I roll my eyes, even though a chill creeps down my spine. “Whatever.”

Turning toward the TV, which is still playing silent cartoons, I try to relax. It’s not helping that Damen used the word safe, implying that we might not be safe right now.

He shuffles the deck for a long time, his eyes focused on the cards in front of him. Then he hands the deck to me. I cut it once, letting my annoyance show when I practically shove them back at him.

He lays down three cards, thwack, thwack, thwack. The Five of Wands, the Devil, and The High Priestess stare back at us, seeming accusing.

“Son of a bitch!” Damen exclaims, waking Dryas up.

“Libbey’s home?” mumbles Dryas, sitting up.

“No!” Damen and I both answer at once. Dryas looks confused and sleepy.

“Go back to sleep,” I say, waving my hand. “It’s nothing.”

Dryas glares at me, then rolls over on the floor and goes back to sleep. I glance at Damen, who is looking extremely worried. He just keeps looking at the cards, shuffling the deck in his hands.

“If I didn’t know better, I would say that the High Priestess card is supposed to stand in for someone or something. But…” He glances up at me, his expression pensive. “Assuming that the High Priestess is a person… and assuming that this deck is scanning your energy… who would it be?”

Shaking my head, I pace the few feet between my brother and the window. “I don’t know. Maybe someone I haven’t met yet. Or, more likely, it doesn’t really matter because tarot is all made up bullshit. Your choice.”

Damen glares at me. “I think it means you’ll meet your queen.”

I freeze. “I’m sorry, you’re saying that? You? You have the most warped, twisted idea of romantic relationships of anyone I’ve ever seen.”

He raises one shoulder in a Gallic shrug.

“So? That doesn’t make me wrong. In fact…” He leans forward, looking at the cards again. “One could interpret these cards as saying that all three of us will be felled by our queens and be thankful for it. Do you see?”

He gestures to the cards as if it’s somehow evident. I open my mouth to rebuke him, but at that moment, I see something move out the window.

Holding up my hand, I watch as Libbey’s door slowly opens. A head pokes out, looking both ways before apparently deciding that it’s safe.

“Libbey’s on the move,” I say, the tarot cards forgotten.

“The cards are never wrong,” Damen says, smugly picking all the cards up. “They’re just hard to interpret at times.”

“Sure, they are,” Dryas says, standing up and rolling his eyes. “Arsen, you got eyes on Libbey? I’m ready to get the fuck out of here.”

After that, talk of tarot cards is lost in the quick-footed pursuit of John Libbey. But I haven’t forgotten the way the High Priestess looked at me. Like a sovereign trapped between two pillars, her expression one of perplexing dignity.