The Lie of Love by Belinda Martin Read Free Book Online Page B

a
front, to lull people into a false sense of security so she could stealthily
unlock their souls for the reading?
    ‘Nothing,’ Darcy faltered. ‘I’ve
just never really been into all this stuff. I shouldn’t say that to you,’ she
added with an uneasy laugh, ‘of all people. Not when you’ve been so kind to me
today.’
    ‘Then indulge me and sit down. I
don’t bite and perhaps I can change your views on all this stuff …’
    Darcy gave a stiff smile and
glanced across at Amanda. No rescue was coming from that quarter, she decided,
as her friend seemed to be engrossed in a deep and meaningful conversation with
Rachel.  Doing her best to engineer a liaison between her and Harry, no
doubt, Darcy thought.  She turned back to Storm. ‘What
the hell… why not?’ She took a seat across from her, hands twisted
together on her lap.
    Storm handed her the deck of
cards. ‘You must shuffle them.’
    ‘Me?’
    ‘It’s a way that the cards can
get to know you.’
    ‘That sounds a bit strange.’
Darcy took the pack and clumsily began to separate the cards, filing each one
back in a different place as she went. She somehow didn’t imagine her card
shuffling looked quite like the deft movement she had witnessed on so many TV
shows over the years.
    ‘No stranger than training a
phone to recognise your voice.’
    Darcy shrugged. ‘I suppose not. Although my phone never seems to get it right so I gave up on voice
commands after the first few attempts.’
    ‘Put the pack on the table, face
down,’ Storm said.
    Darcy did as she was asked and
looked up for further instructions.
    ‘Now cut the deck in half and
think about what question you want answered.’
    ‘I’m not sure I want anything
answered.’
    ‘There must be something,’ Storm
smiled. ‘Some endeavour that you worry about, some outcome that you wish you
could see more clearly. For example, what about the reason I’m here today?’
    Darcy did as she asked. It came
as a shock to her that the question she would have thought was the most obvious
one, the one that Storm had suggested, did not spring into her mind, but
another one, one that had no business being there. Somehow, it had just planted
itself and would not budge. She decided there and then that it was a question
too dangerous to know the answer to and she would take no notice of whatever
Storm told her.
    ‘Lay out three cards. Keep
thinking of your question. Yours will probably be my most accurate reading of
the day,’ Storm said as she watched Darcy. ‘It’s nice and quiet here now and it
got a bit hard to concentrate earlier on with all the yakking from the corner.’
    ‘We could have got you a quieter
spot…’ Darcy began.
    Storm shook her head. ‘I managed
just fine. Nobody had anything particularly taxing to ask anyway.’
    ‘How do you know? They don’t ask
out loud, do they?’
    ‘No. But the answer on the cards
tells me what they asked – at least, I get the gist of it.’
    Darcy wondered if she had gone as
pale as she felt. She wished dearly that she could have got that bad, wrong,
dangerous question out of her head as she cut her cards. ‘I think I should cut
again. I don’t think I was focused on the question properly when I did it last
time.’
    Storm
turned over the first card and then looked up at Darcy with a slow smile. ‘I think
you were focusing just fine. Although it’s not the question I expected you to
ask either.’
    Darcy couldn’t get the tarot reading out of her head. All
thoughts of what the event had really meant were pushed to the back of her mind
as she negotiated the twisting hills out of the town and home. Storm had said
that a rift was coming, and a choice. Darcy almost fainted when she turned over
the Death card, until Storm told her that it really didn’t mean death at all,
but that some huge change that was imminent. The thought of that was almost
more terrifying than Darcy’s own more literal interpretation. Every card told
the same story: of