Perigee - Chapter 27: Chapter 27

Sadie watched his eyes turn gold in the gray morning light as Matt shuffled the deck in his hands and cut it in two.
"Now what?" he asked.
Sadie held out a hand. "Give me the bottom half." And as he did, she dealt the first three cards, face down upon the floor. "You thought of your question while you shuffled, yeah?"
"Yeah," Matt said. He looked bored, all slouched to the side. She'd practically had to beg him to let her do a three-card spread so early in the morning. His coffee still sat steaming, fresh from the pot.
"Well, tell me the question," Sadie said.
"I don't wanna."
"Matt, I can't translate the cards if you don't tell me the question."
"Fine, I'm starving anyway." He started to get up, but Sadie caught him by the shirt and heaved him back down.
"Matt," she said firmly, and he let out a deep, nervous sigh through his nose.
"What's my part in all this?" he said. "That's my question. Why am I here, involved in this mess? And what the hell am I supposed to do?"
"I can work with that," Sadie mused. She turned the first card over and laid her hand upon the elegant hunchbacked man, carrying a lantern.
"Who's that?" Matt asked.
"He's your past," said Sadie. "The hermit."
Matt gave an insulted snort, but Sadie admired the card he'd chosen, tracing all of the hermit's jagged edges with the tip of her fingernail.
"It's a good card, Matt. It means wisdom, preparation. But it can also mean that you're on some kind of journey to self-understanding. That isolation is just another means of soul-searching. You were trying to find yourself."
Then Sadie moved onto the next. At the flip of the card, a tower shown—flames blooming from the top where a lightening bolt had struck. She made an unsure sound and Matt looked as if he might slide right out of his skin
"What?" he asked. "What is it?"
"This card is not so good," she admitted. "But this card is the present, Matt. Meaning it's happening now. Don't freak yet, alright? If it's happening now, then you already know."
"What's it mean?" he asked.
"The Tower signifies destruction, disaster. Or sometimes... a sudden epiphany. A flash of truth. But it's not all bad. It can also mean it's time to forfeit your old truths."
"My old truths?" asked Matt, fingers tucked in the loop of his mug. He looked like such a boy in the mornings—hair all lopsided from sleep, lounging about in nothing but his boxers and a t-shirt. Matt had a lot of old truths. Even Sadie knew that.
"Ideas you have built on foundations that aren't exactly right anymore," she explained. "I guess it makes sense that you'd get this card. Disaster has been all around us. But maybe The Tower's a way of saying that you were meant to experience it. Maybe you were... you know, needed the other night. I think this card is telling you to move on from your old life. To face the fire."
She could tell by the frustrated look on his face that Matt wasn't putting the pieces together. To her, both cards made perfect sense. Matt had done more growing than all of them combined; he was a boy from a home of close-minded principals. A home that fed on hate and habits. Matt broke free from that—he was putting himself in a more positive place. Understanding what he really wanted from life. If there was a card to signify his past, the hermit was it.
In terms of the tower, though—Sadie could only really relate it to one other thing. There was his place in the werewolf world and then there was Jessy. She was an old truth, and his being here would make him realize it. In time. That's often how the cards worked, Sadie had come to realize. Sometimes past, present and future were all one in the same. Sometimes it took looking into the future to see your past and looking into the past to see your future.
She reached for the next card, and it was like all the air in the room had been sucked into the next nervous breath Matt took.
"Tarot cards aren't that serious, Matt. Relax."
But when she turned the card over, Sadie was struck by the image on the other side. At first, it looked as if nothing was wrong—a man standing straight as a pencil, with one leg crossed behind the other. But the card was upside-down. The man wasn't standing, he was hanging by his ankle.
"What?" Matt asked in a panic. "Why are you making that face?"
"Well, just—um..." Sadie started. "I don't remember turning any of the cards upside down."
"Why?" Matt asked. He looked like a doe who'd just heard the slightest rustle in the bushes. "What does that mean?"
In most cases, an upside-down card wasn't a positive thing—but Sadie didn't know much about reverse readings. So for Matt's comfort and her own, she turned the card right side up. She'd have to be careful how she worded this.
"Your card is The Hanged Man. It means... it means you'll probably have to give something up to achieve something greater. I think when you apply that to the question, it means you'll be putting the rest of your life on hold to deal with all of this. Do you get what I'm saying?"
Don't use the word sacrifice, she told herself. But it was really the only way to put it.
Matt nodded—and shook his head. Somehow in one smooth, befuddled motion.
"You're here to give something, Matt," Sadie clarified. "That's a good thing, right? That means you're useful. You have a means to contribute."
"But what am I giving?" Matt asked.
"Well," said Sadie, "you'll just have to think about that."
A fist rapped on the bedroom door, and Sadie gathered her cards into her deck as Tisper stepped inside. She was still sleep-pressed too, standing there in nothing but an over sized shirt that hemmed at her thighs.
"He just woke up," was all she said.
Sadie stuffed her cards into their case and tucked the deck in her back pocket, and Matt scrambled onto his feet, careful not to spill the coffee in his hands.
They followed Tisper down to the livingroom, where Jaylin already sat at the edge of the couch, cracking every knuckle on his hand one by one. Alex was beside him, no interest in the platter of food that had been set before them. They could be brothers, really. Alex was broader in the face, a little taller, but not a bit of muscle on his bones. Jaylin was softer, but all the strength of being a were had broadened him, and in doing so, it aged him. It was funny in a way—their faces looked more suited to one another's bodies.
But above all, it was not the the color of their hair, the slight variation of their eyes that made them look so similar. It was the expression on their faces—the both of them so pale, so cold looking. It took all of the restraint Sadie had not to squeeze them both into her arms at once. She ached for her boys.
She minded her steps, taking a slow seat beside Alex, and quietly, Sadie asked, "He's awake?"
"He's awake," Alex said. "Imani's explaining everything to him. That he's getting worse. That they still don't know what's doing it."
Jaylin didn't glance up from his hands.
"Can you hear their thoughts?" Tisper asked.
Alex didn't give her a definite answer. He shrugged his shoulders instead. "I've been trying not to. It's hard."
"So you can hear Bronx?" Matt asked.
Sadie couldn't help but ask, "What's he thinking?"
It looked difficult to answer; Alex took his time. And when his contemplative silence ended, he said, "That it makes sense now." His breath moved out in a wrong and rickety way. "Makes sense why Jaylin was crowned alpha. To take his place."
Sadie expected something from Jaylin. Any kind of negative reaction, but he must have already put the pieces together. Because he sat there, head still hung and no more knuckles left to crack.
All she could think was that The Tower was a strikingly accurate card.
They were trapped right there in the flames and any minute now, their foundation was going to crumble.