Shadows Out of Time

Thom stretched his long legs out and said, “Don’t let it worry you. It gets thin about this time of year. But Miss T. never lets the store run out.” He cocked an eye toward an astrological calendar on the wall. “December coming up soon enough. New tea always comes in on the second new moon every December. Has since 1853.”

“Good,” I said.

“We shut down the whole month of December. Anybody tell you that?”

“No.” But it made sense. December is dead wherever you read. Caught up in Christmas shopping, few splurge on psychic readings.

Thom looked at me suddenly. “You planning a sea cruise?”

I shook my head. “I’m an earth sign. I hate the water.”

“Earth sign? Thought you were a Gemini.”

“That was for Starla’s benefit. She’s a Virgo. Couldn’t have her knowing I’m a Taurus. She’d be on me like paint on plaster.”

Thom laughed good-naturedly. “My moon’s in Taurus. Rising too. It mellows out all my dark, Scorpionic tendencies.”

I started. I’m a Sun Taurus. On the night I was born, a full Scorpio Moon was rising in concert with the constellation of Scorpio. Thom was my natal opposite. But I didn’t tell him that. I learned a long time ago never to give out my astrological information. Knowledge is power, and when you understand a person astrologically, you know them better than they know themselves. Without realizing it, Thom had handed me the key to controlling him. As a Double Taurus, he’d fallen into a classic Taurean rut. Only one thing would prod him out of it: money.

Lots of it.

I immediately went to work on him.

“You’ve been here a long time, haven’t you?”

“Too long,” he admitted.

“I’m getting you need a change of pace.”

His shoulders rolled. “Do I ever! But I can’t make this kind of money reading Tarot in some chintzy storefront, or out of my apartment. Tea is my lifeline.” He lifted a cup of the stuff in salute. “Good old Kingsport Tea.”

I shuffled my Rohrig deck, made a fan as perfect as if created by Mother Nature, and said, “Pull three on whether or not you need a change of pace.”

Thom drew three cards into a neat pile and handed them to me. I laid them out in a spread. The Chariot came up, followed by the Death card, and lastly the Sun.

Thom squinted at the array of vivid images. “I don’t read that deck. What are they saying?”

The cards were warning, Don’t Trust Anything You Hear. But I slanted the reading for my own purposes.

“They say you need to move on, or you’ll die,” I said solemnly.

Thom sat up in his chair. “Die?”

“The Death card might mean either way,” I amended.

Thom grew reflective. “I have been giving shaky readings lately. Last weekend I was just throwing down cards. Wasn’t getting hardly any information at all. And you know how I hate doing mechanical reads. I don’t trust them.”

I nodded. I had the same problem, too. But the moon was in Aries then. I always read badly under an Aries Moon. Given our similar astrological energies, Thom would, too. But I kept that insight to myself.

“The Sun came up last,” Thom mused. “That means I’ll pull out of it, won’t I?”

I made my face frown a negative. “I’m getting you need to go live in a sunshine state. Florida. Arizona. California, maybe.”

“They say there’s a lot of positive energy around Sedona,” he mused. “Always wanted to check it out for myself. I think I have some Navajo blood. I’d fit right in.”

I went for his soft Taurus underbelly. “I hear out in California, a thirty-minute reading goes for two bills. Some psychics set up shop on the beach. Think of it: you hang around all day, soak up the rays, watch the bikinis, knock out two-three easy readings and you’ve pulled down a day’s pay without squeezing your brain into dry sponge.”

Various thoughts crawled across Thom’s pale bulldog features. Anyone could have read them.

I drove the point home. “Maybe you ought to think about wintering out there. Get in touch with your native American roots, then move on to Venice Beach, or Malibu. If you like it, stay. If you don’t, come back. You hate winter, don’t you?”

“I drag myself from November through March,” Thom said, staring at the cards. I had picked up Seasonal Affective Disorder around him once before. He seemed unaware he had the problem.

I let the reading hang in the air while Thom absorbed it.