Free Temptation: A Novel by Travis Thrasher Page A

game, but there’s no way I’m telling Lily no. Or backing down from Ray. He only nods and then tells Lily and me to sit. He takes a seat right next to me.
    He can’t keep his grin down.
    “This game—it doesn’t really have a name. We just call it the cards. It’s only brought out at special occasions. Since these cards—well, they’re quite special.”
    All the cards I’m looking at have different pictures on them. I see a small dog. A car. A candle. Other things I don’t immediately recognize.
    “So how do we play?” Lily asks as she glances over at Ray and me on the couch facing her.
    “You just pick a card and then hold—”
    “Uh-uh-uh.” Ray interrupts a little dark-haired guy I’ve never seen before. “Let me explain, Doug.”
    Ray looks at the cards, then back at Lily. It’s as if nobody else is in the room.
    “Every now and then, I have the great privilege to play with these cards. They are—well, on loan, I guess. They’re what I call magical cards.”
    “Magical cards, huh?” Lily asks.
    “Don’t you believe in magic?”
    “I believe there are men in this world who like to play games and cover up secrets,” she says. “Sometimes they call their little tricks magic. But that’s all they are. Little tricks.”
    “You don’t believe in the supernatural?”
    “Like ghosts and goblins?”
    Ray just chuckles, shaking his head. She’s mocking him in front of everybody.
    That’s fine, he seems to say. That’s quite all right.
    I look behind us and see that more kids have gathered around to watch.
    “A lot of people don’t believe the magic of the cards at first. That’s the fun. That’s their power.”
    “Do they tell your future?”
    Ray shakes his head. “They’re not those kinds of cards.”
    “Then what do they do?”
    Ray looks at the others sitting around us. “What do they do? The big question.” He reaches over and takes a card from one of the decks. He turns it over and shows Lily.
    The card is blank. Just white and empty.
    “Looks like you got a dud,” Lily says.
    “Where are you from again?”
    “I never said.”
    Ray nods. “This is what you do. You take a card. Pretty hard, huh? They’ll always be blank at first. Hopefully just at first. You take your card and hold it a few inches above the ashtray.”
    “And what’s in there?”
    “Just part of the game.”
    Lily glances at me and continues looking skeptical and amused.
    Ray holds his card over whatever is glowing or burning in the ashtray. After a few seconds, a picture begins to form.
    The image forming on Ray’s card first looks like a sun—it’s yellow—but then a smiley face appears on it. He puts the card down just like the others on the table.
    “That’s it?” Lily asks.
    Ray nods.
    “Wow—that is absolutely captivating. A sunny face. What an amazing trick.”
    “Are you always this, um, friendly?”
    “I can be very friendly,” Lily says in a very adult manner that shuts Ray and the rest of the room up.
    She goes to pick a card, but before she does, Ray holds out his hand.
    “Let me just—jokes aside, okay—let me warn you.”
    “Warn me about what?”
    “This is serious. Even if you don’t believe the game, it’s serious.”
    “What? Little pictures pop up on the cards. So?”
    “They’re very real. And they’re always very different.”
    “What are they supposed to mean?”
    “The pictures say something about the person holding the card. About who they are.”
    “That’s it?” Lily asks, sounding amused and annoyed in the same breath.
    “The rules of the game go like this,” Ray says. “You only pick one card. The card represents you—here, tonight. If someone happens to pick up a card that has the exact same image as yours, you leave the party with them.”
    “For what?”
    Ray stares at Lily and just smiles. “I think you know for what.”
    “Says who?”
    “Says the cards.”
    “Oh, now I get it. This is some silly way for kids to hook up.”
    “It