“Agreed,” I said. “What do we do with this thing?” I motioned to the mattress and Leanne shuddered.
“No idea. I think Paul conjured it, so he should be held responsible for un-conjuring it.”
As I tied a scarf around my neck, Leanne placed a hand on my arm. “We haven’t talked about all that’s been going on with you,” she said, “the media attention, the Politia, your nighttime visitors, Andre. Is it happening all over again?” She meant the attempts on my life.
“No, there have just been a lot of different events that have all happened at once. They have nothing to do with me.” All these events that were occurring at the same time made it appear as though I was the eye of a storm. But I wasn’t.
She studied me. “Can I give you a reading?” Leanne had recently acquired a deck of tarot cards to help channel her seer abilities. Without such an instrument it was hard for her to make sense of the chaotic images she received. But she’d never used it on me—she hadn’t offered to give me any readings since the fire.
“Sure,” I said, “but I doubt you’ll find much of interest.”
“You’re probably right,” she said, grabbing the stack of cards from off of her desk.
Because there was no other place, we sat on our floor. Leanne spread the cards out in front of me. “Choose three at random.”
I pulled the first card. “The high priestess,” Leanne said. She took the card with the image of a regal woman and laid it between us. “This represents your spirit—wise, introspective, otherworldly.” She smiled at this last word, since that could describe any Peel student.
I moved my hand to another section of the deck spread in front of me and drew a second card. On it, people fell from a burning building. That couldn’t be good.
Leanne made a small noise when I handed it over to her.
I furrowed my brows. “What?”
“The tower. Violence. Chaos. Murder without remorse. I can’t tell how you fit into that, but this is either your present situation or one that is quickly approaching.”
Leanne must be seeing the murders I was investigating with Andre and the Politia. I hadn’t told her that I was on the case, so she only knew that the Politia had called me in early in the morning during the last few days.
I moved my hand again.
“Your third card represents the challenge you face.” Funny, based on the card I already pulled, I thought my situation was challenging enough.
I grabbed a card and pulled it out.
I took one look at it. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
I handed Leanne the card. She dropped it like it had burned her. “It’s metaphorical Gabrielle.”
“I seriously doubt that.”
We stared at the horned beast depicted on the card. The devil.
This one I could interpret on my own.
Chapter 7
Later that day I entered my anthropology class. Just like everywhere else on campus, pumpkins of all sizes, shapes, and colors had been brought in. A skeleton wearing a black, pointed hat grinned at the class. Next to him an enchanted spider crawled along a glittery web.
Just like the day before, I could smell the fear in the room. Head down and fangs firmly hidden behind my sealed lips, I made my way to my seat.
Shortly after I took my seat, Professor Blackmore entered the room. “Morning class,” he said. “In honor of the upcoming holiday, I’d like to focus today’s lecture on the customs and celebrations of Samhain, known locally as Hop-tu-Naa, which means ‘this is the night.’
“In other cultures, this day is known as All Hallow’s Eve, Halloween, and Dia de los Muertos—the Day of the Dead. It’s a celebration of the dead, but more broadly speaking, the night of October thirty-first is when the barrier between worlds is at its thinnest. And, in certain areas, it is nonexistent.
“The Otherworld is the general name we use for all those worlds outside our own. The Underworld and the Celestial Plane are examples of other worlds that are included in this umbrella term. And on the night of Samhain, the barrier between all of these worlds thins out.
“Once these barriers thin out enough, beings can cross from their world into ours, and vice versa.”
I tried to wrap my mind around that idea, but I had a hard time doing so. I raised my hand.
“Yes, Miss Fiori?”
“When you say that at certain points the barrier nonexistent what do you mean by that?” I asked. “It sounds like there are places on earth that act like portals.”
He gave me a small smile. “I’m glad you asked. Portal is a good term for it. There are certain physical locations where, at the right time and place, someone could literally walk from one world into the next.”
***
After Anthropology, I went to the library to get a head start on my history homework. I opened my abandoned calendar to write in some of my homework assignments when a previous note I’d left myself caught my eye. TOM’s weeklong fling. TOM was code for that Time Of the Month.