“Do you know what these are?” Julian asked quietly, breaking the silence between us. I had kind of forgotten about him.
Perhaps I had been too hasty in my earlier assessment of him. Apparently, he couldn’t keep quiet.
I nodded in answer, words had escaped me. My eyes never left the two beautiful black and white pen and ink drawings that were framed and hanging on the wall above the bed.
“Are you sure you know what these are?” Julian asked hesitantly.
I got his hesitancy. Those two pieces of art hanging over my new bed were priceless heirlooms that belonged to the Alexander family. They were beautiful black and white ink drawings, the details impressive. A true artist had created them.
They were giant, poster size tarot cards.
The Magician and The Moon.
The Alexander family had once owned an entire deck of poster sized ink drawings of tarot cards. They were over three hundred years old and the family had lost the majority of them in a fire years ago.
Only eight of the deck remained. Tyson had four and Quinton had the other four.
The Magician had come from Tyson and The Moon had come from Quinton.
This left them each down to three.
Do you know how many cards are in a full deck of tarot cards? Seventy-eight, that’s how many. And they had a whole eight of them left between the two of them.
And they had each given me one of theirs. I had a hard time wrapping my brain around it.
I had looked up the cards and their meanings after seeing them on Ty’s wall and him telling me which one’s Quint had. The Magician card could mean two things. The first meaning represented control, taking control over your life and having a certain level of success. The second meaning had to do with being creative and talented. Since I wasn’t very creative or talented, I liked the first meaning a whole lot better.
The picture showed a bald man in a cape standing in the center of a pentagram. He held a sword in one hand with the tip pointed towards the ground. In his other hand he held a cup raised high in the air. The words The Magician hung in the air above his bald head.
Because it represented taking control of your life, I loved that they had chosen that card to give to me.
The Moon is the card of intuition, dreams and the unconscious. I found this choice in cards interesting because of the dreams I always had. They meant something, and I couldn’t always figure out what.
The card showed a moon glowing high in the sky. Wolves were on the ground with their heads thrown back, howling at the moon hanging high in the sky.
They were both awesome, but I liked The Moon more.
This was important. These drawings were important to Tyson and Quinton.
Why had they given them to me?
I wasn’t certain sure, but I thought I knew.
And what I thought scared me.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Ariel,” Julian called, making me jump.
As nice as he was, I needed him to go away.
I wanted to be alone to explore my new bedroom. Or one of my new bedrooms. Quinton had said they had a room for me at the big house. I had no intentions of seeing that one.
I turned in time to see Julian drop my bag at the foot of the bed.
“I’m going to go make dinner,” he said. “That’s what I was planning on doing before you showed up. You take as much time as you need, honey. Get comfortable in your new space and come down when you’re ready.”
He smiled kindly at me as he left me alone in the room.