All Our Hidden Gifts by Caroline O’donoghue (ink ebook reader txt) 📕

I close my eyes for a moment, and search for … something. Some nameless, shiftless presence or sign that she’s near. I burrow down into the deep black nothingness of myself, in the hopes I’ll dredge up a fossil of Lily.

“No,” I reply, opening my eyes. “Sorry. It’s just a dream. I don’t know why I brought it up.”

“Read my cards.”

“Here?”

“Yes. That’s how you summoned this … thing. Maybe we could summon her again.”

“Roe, I don’t know. I haven’t done this in a while. And the last time I did the results were … well…”

“I don’t care, Maeve. Just read me, OK? You read me before, remember? Just do this. I’ll never ask you again after this. I swear.”

His voice is so desperate, his eyes shining with tears. The winter light is so dark that his lips, so full they look almost like they’re pouting, appear purple.

How can I say no to him? What right could I possibly have?

“Grand,” I say. “Let’s get into the tunnel, though, it’s too wet out here.”

We sit, crouched and uncomfortable, our phone torches the only source of light. Every couple of minutes a car drives past, sending vibrations in the air around us, filling our ears with noise. People are driving carefully, slowly in the snow, and when the crunch of wheels rumbles past, we’re forced to stop talking, and just stare at one another.

“Shuffle,” I say, handing him the cards.

The minute he touches them, the magnetic pull I feel with the cards grows even stronger. Like the deck has a rope attached to it, and the other end is wrapped around my ribcage. The cards slip through his fingers as he shuffles, falling through the empty dark space between one hand and another. My chest tightens with each movement. My lungs feel like they’re working at half capacity.

“Are you OK?” he asks, passing them back to me.

“Yeah,” I murmur. It would be too much to tell him about this. Too much weird stuff for one day.

“Right, I think this will work best if we invent a spread. For finding Lily.”

“Right. Great. Good plan. What does that mean?”

“It means we decide what each card means. Like, one card could be ‘where Lily is’ and another could be ‘what’s blocking her from coming back’ and another could be ‘what we need to do to get her back’.”

“Yes. This is all good. Is this how it works?”

“I don’t know. I’m sort of making this up.”

“Well, it sounds legit. So should I pick the cards?”

“Yeah, go on.”

I fan the cards out in front of him. His hands, now red from the cold, hover over each card. He plucks three and lays them face down in front of me.

I flip over the first card. The “where Lily is” card. It’s the Four of Swords. The card shows a knight in full armour lying on top of a tomb. Stained-glass windows are winking in the background and three swords are hanging above him, the points facing down. The fourth sword is lying by his side.

“Jesus,” Roe says, panic in his voice. “She’s dead?”

“No, no. This is good. This is positive, I think. It means rest. Of prolonged, enforced rest. Look, the sword is still at the knight’s side: he’s going to get up and fight; he just can’t right now.”

“OK,” Roe says, picking up the card to peer at it closer. As his fingers pinch the card, I feel the pull again. A slight fizzing beneath my skin, like my blood has changed its direction of flow.

I blink my eyes a few times, trying to steady myself.

From where I sit opposite him, I can only see the back of the card, a plain red square pattern. But between blinks, I can suddenly see the card from his point of view. I see the knight on the tomb. I see my own face, looking tired and desperate.

I am Roe, and I am watching myself blink like a startled rabbit.

What?

I blink again. It’s gone.

“Are you OK?” he asks. “You look like you’re going to be sick.”

“Uh, yeah. Let’s … let’s turn over the next card.”

“Which one is this?”

“This one tells us what’s blocking Lily from coming back.”

I flip the card over and immediately put my fingers in my mouth.

It’s the Devil. Not a Halloween devil, either. This is an old-school biblical devil, with horns and goat legs. Alongside him trail two people, a man and woman, naked and in chains.

Neither of us says a word.

“Maeve,” Roe prods. “This is the part where you tell me that this card isn’t as bad as it looks.”

“Um…”

“Maeve.”

“I’m thinking! I’m rusty at this, remember? So the Devil is mostly about something having control over you. It’s usually about addiction or being unable to break out of a bad relationship. But in Lily’s case, it could be the Housekeeper.”

He picks it up and peers at it again. Again, the tug, the nausea, the sense that my body is connected to the cards and therefore connected to him.

“Roe, stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“Touching them.”

“But … why?”

“I don’t know. It’s making me feel sick.”

“I don’t understand. Are you all right?”

“Give me a second, OK. Just give me a second.”

I line my back against the tunnel, close my eyes and breathe in and out, in and out. The wall is cold and damp, its grey wetness soaking through my coat and raising goose pimples on my spine.

Another car passes. Another flash of headlights, dancing on the thin skin of my eyelids.

A split happens inside my own head, like a TV screen divided into two. I am lost in the darkness of my own head, but I am also watching myself from the other side of the tunnel, seeing my head loll. Beads of sweat gather on my forehead, illuminated by the passing car.

“Maeve,” Roe says. Or I say. I can’t tell. I can feel my mouth saying my own name, but it doesn’t feel like my mouth.

I bury my face in my knees, wrapping my arms around my legs. Am I