Flamebound by Tessa Adams Read Free Book Online Page B

Heka—but the spread doesn’t look too bad to me.
    None of the cards that I consider particularly menacing are there, at least none of the ones that normally pop up in my readings. I can only consider that a good thing since mine are usually so awful that I’ve made Lily stop doing them for me.
    Still, I’m impatient. I want to know what she sees, but when Lily’s reading tarot, she can’t be rushed. The meaning of the cards mingles with something else inside her, some bit of foresight that allows her to get a really good grasp of the picture at hand.
    â€œShe’s alive,” Lily says after a minute. She’s touching the first card in the spread—the Seven of Pentacles. “But everyone involved in the situation is frustrated. Her parents are terrified, the cops baffled because they have no real leads. Even the people who have her—” She closes her eyes for a second, concentrating. “I can’t get a read on them, but they’re also getting frustrated. Little Shelby is more trouble than she’s worth. She cries all the time; nothing makes her happy. What are they supposed to do? If she doesn’t shut up, someone will hear her.”
    A chill runs down my spine at the words, and the singsongy way Lily says them. Her body’s right in front of me, but I know that she’s gone far away. I want to scream at her to come back, to tell her that it’s dangerous, but she wouldn’t thank me for it. This is what she does—what I asked her to do. It’s not her fault that I’m suddenly filled with an overwhelming trepidation, a sickness in my stomach that warns me this reading isn’t going to end as well as I had hoped.
    She moves on to the second card. It’s the Seven of Wands, the siege card that pictures a man defending himself against six other wands. “Whoever has Shelby is anticipating an attack. They will be the ones to start it, but whether they finish it is still up in the air. But their resolve is strong. They’re determined to make it through, to win, no matter what they have to do or whom they have to kill.”
    The chill becomes a full-blown shivering. Dread starts in the pit of my stomach, a small ball that gets colder and more deadly with every second that passes. My palms and the bottom of my feet start to ache, and I know it won’t be long before I have to listen as my hopes for Shelby crash and burn around me.
    The third card, the King of Cups, is the contradiction card, the one that warns that things are not what they seem. As Lily talks about it, I try to puzzle out what is being hidden—besides Shelby herself. This is the card of ulterior motives and hidden agendas, and I can’t help but wonder what we’re missing. Is this not a straightforward kidnapping? And if it isn’t, what is the real motive? Murder? Sexual abuse? Or something darker? Something involving black magic?
    I know the odds are against the kidnapping being magic related. This is a human child in the human world. And yet . . . something niggles at me. Some detail I’ve failed to pick up on or one I haven’t yet learned. Whatever it is, there’s more going on here than meets the eye.
    The more I think about this, about Shelby, the more nauseated I get—until it takes every ounce of self-control I have to stay seated as Lily’s hand brushes over the fourth card, the Three of Swords. This card is secrets—I know because it shows up in my readings a lot. It’s not a bad card, has no harsh meanings associated with it, yet as I stare at it, I start to wonder.
    No, please, no. I don’t want to. I don’t want to.
    The voice comes out of nowhere, slams into me with the force of an eighteen-wheeler at top speed.
    I won’t. I won’t. I
—
    I hear a high-pitched scream deep inside my mind and then a silence so ominous it scares the hell out of me. It’s Shelby. I don’t know