Free The Djinn by Graham Masterton

sure of it, in fact.”
    She smiled
uneasily. “But don’t you always know? You are a clairvoyant, aren’t you?”
    I lowered my
eyes. “Sort of. I mean, I have a modest gift.”
    “Then-”
    “Then nothing. I’ve never known before what a card’s going
to be. I’ve guessed, but I’ve never known.”
    “Don’t be so
worried about it. You said yourself that telling fortunes was like servicing
cars. The more you do, the better you get. Perhaps all your practice is paying
off. You’re a full-fledged mechanic.”
    I laid the
Tarot pack on the low glass-topped table without revealing the top card,
    “That top
card,” I said, “is the Star. It shows a woman emptying jars into a stream. Its
meaning is usually interpreted as loss or deprivation. In some ways, the loss
is often more tragic than any of the losses that the Death card predicts. On
the Death card, Death is riding into town on his black charger, and he’s being
greeted as an inevitable part of life. But the Star shows life forces being
spilled away for no reason at all.”
    “Out of jars?”
whispered Anna.
    “That’s right. Out of jars.”
    For a little
while, Anna sat there with her drink in her hand staring at the Tarot deck and
saying nothing. Then, hesitantly, she reached forward and picked up the top
card. She turned it around and looked at it.
    “You see,” I
said. “The Star.”
    Anna shook her
head. “You’re wrong. It’s not the Star at all.”
    I couldn’t
understand it. The card had given me such powerful and magnetic sensations that
I could hardly believe she was telling me the truth.
    “Let me see
that,” I said, taking the card from her.
    It wasn’t the
Star; it was worse. It was the Ten of Swords. The picture on the card depicts a
man lying dead on a deserted seashore, under a
darkening sky, with ten long swords piercing his body. His head is turned away,
although it is obvious that one of the swords is stuck right into his face.
    On an impulse,
I picked up the next card in the pack and turned it over. It was the Star. I
laid the two cards side by side on the table and sat looking at them for a long
time. For some reason I couldn’t understand, it appeared that I was being given
a warning by the Tarot. It had happened to me before, and I had felt just as
creepy and just as uncertain about it then. Now, with these two cards
reinforcing each other’s mystical message of fate, loss, and injury, I was
being informed by whatever influences surround the occult that I was treading
dangerous ground-and that further steps along the path I was pursuing might
result in tragedy.
    “Do you believe
it?” asked Anna.
    I shrugged. “I
don’t know what to think. These cards are very strange and temperamental; it
doesn’t pay to mess around with them unless you know what you’re doing. In effect,
they’re telling me to drop this jar business.”
    “But you’re not
going to leave your godmother alone with the jar, are you? I mean, you can’t”
    I shuffled my
cards and put them away. “Anna, she may be my godmother, but I don’t know her
that well. Not well enough to start taking full responsibility for everything
she does. Today was the first time I’ve seen her in three years. You couldn’t
call us bosom pals.”
    “But what about that man in the robe?”
    I raised my arm
to call the waiter. All of a sudden, I felt I needed another drink.
    “Anna,” I told
her, “we don’t even know it was a man. It could have been a friend of
Marjorie’s in a bathrobe. Maybe he or she just came to the door to watch us go.
We were all tired. It could have been a mistake. But i£ it makes you feel any
better, we can go around there tomorrow and check up.”
    The waiter
arrived-a lugubrious soul with a maroon jacket and a smile like a hotel coat
hanger. I ordered a bourbon and branch water; Anna asked for a Coke.
    “I think you’re
as frightened as I am,” said Anna provocatively, as we waited for our drinks.
    I didn’t say
anything at