“Yes, sir.”

The humans connected to the Courtyard needed to maintain the illusion of business as usual—right up until the moment that it wasn’t.

• • •

Meg closed the Private door almost all the way. The front door was still locked. It wasn’t time to open the office yet, so Nathan wasn’t there to keep an eye on things—including her. Especially her.

Returning to the sorting room table, she picked up the silver folding razor. One side of the handle had pretty leaves and flowers. The other side was plain and had cs759 engraved on it. It had been her designation; the closest thing she had to a name for twenty-four years.

No one wanted to tell her what was going on, but the razor would tell her. Except she didn’t feel any prickles that would guide her to the right part of her body to make the cut.

Frustrated, Meg shoved the razor into her pocket, opened a drawer, and pulled out the box of prophecy cards. She spread all the cards over the table, including the new ones that were actually a children’s game that had simple illustrations. She ran her fingers over all of them, moving back and forth.

Needed a question.

One good thing about using the cards was she could ask as many questions as she wanted. If she didn’t get it right the first time, she could try again. But she still needed a starting point and didn’t know how to distill the question.

Something had happened in the Market Square last night. Was it done, or would something happen because of it?

Her fingertips tingled, then began to burn as she brushed the cards.

One, two, three. Subject, action, result.

She turned the cards faceup. The hooded figure with the scythe. A police car with the lights flashing driving down a city street. A fierce-faced cartoon man gripping the bars of a jail cell.

Meg picked up the card of the man in jail and frowned. The cartoon face made her think the card was from the children’s game, not from the cityscape deck of fortune-telling cards. She turned the card over to look at the back. She was working with several decks in order to create a new deck of prophecy cards that could be used by cassandra sangue, but she could tell which deck a card came from by the design on the back.

The card fluttered out of her hand. When she picked it up and turned it over, she realized she’d picked up two cards.

The new card was a sign that said DANGER!

“That’s not much help,” she muttered. “What kind of danger? Who is in danger?”

The tip of her tongue prickled at the same time a harsh buzz filled her fingertips. Then her mind went blank for just a moment. No, not blank. Her mind became . . . veiled.

Meg blinked. Braced her hands on the table.

That was odd. There had been no feeling of the euphoria that usually veiled a blood prophet’s mind from the images she saw, but Meg had definitely experienced the protective veil.

She examined her hands for paper cuts or punctures that might have bled, then pressed her tongue against the roof of her mouth. No cuts, no feeling of pain.

But there were three more cards turned faceup on the table.

The first card was a dappled forest, as if a person was walking between the trees toward a sunlit meadow. The second card was a tombstone. The third card was a mirror.

She swallowed hard and wished she hadn’t asked any questions.

Somehow, whatever had happened in the Market Square would lead to a grave in the woods. As for who was in danger . . . Well, who did a person see when she looked in a mirror?

Meg put the cards back in the wooden box, put the box in the drawer, and slammed the drawer shut. Prophecy wasn’t absolute, even with the razor. And she still didn’t know enough about using the cards to be sure of her interpretation. Besides, if she kept asking questions and turning over cards for answers, how could she know if any of them were the question that needed to be asked?

And there was that disturbing experience of her mind being veiled without the euphoria that followed being cut.

Maybe she should check with Theral and find out if Emily Faire, the nurse practitioner, had office hours today. And she should write down the details of this episode for Dr. Lorenzo, since he was working with a task force to check on the well-being of the cassandra sangue. This was exactly the kind of thing he should know about.

Stress or anxiety could cause the body to react oddly. She’d read an article about that recently. So maybe her mind hadn’t veiled the way it did when she used the razor and that’s why she hadn’t felt the euphoria. Maybe she’d blanked out because of stress or anxiety. Did that happen to people?

She pulled out the notebook she used to record anything revealed by using the cards, dated a clean page, and wrote:

hooded figure with scythe + police car + man in jail

Danger sign

woods + tombstone + mirror

How did a sequence of events begin with death and end with her? Assuming her interpretation was remotely accurate.

“Arroo!”

Nathan, reporting for work.

Nothing more she could do right now. Even if her brain was just being wonky and the cards didn’t mean anything, she should show someone. Henry or Vlad or Merri Lee.

She wanted to show Simon, but what if he wanted an excuse to stay away, to back away from being friends? The Wolves didn’t turn away from pack members who had wonky brains. Skippy was proof of that. But she wasn’t a Wolf, wasn’t really pack.

If she told Henry or Vlad, they would tell Simon. Merri Lee, then. She would show Merri Lee during their midday break.

“Arroo!” More insistent. If Nathan had to wait much longer, he’d really start howling.