Free Love Reborn (A Dead Beautiful Novel) by Yvonne Woon

are on their way. They know you are coming here. Do not let them find you.
    Monsieur
    The cold bit at my cheeks as I lowered the page. Dante stood beside me beneath the awning of the hotel, his face barely visible in the shadows.
    “Who is he talking about?” I asked. “The Monitors or the Undead?”
    Dante ripped the note to shreds and threw it in the waste bin. “We’ll find out soon enough.”
    He led us across the street, stealing through the darkness toward a run-down boarding house, where he asked for a room overlooking the street. The attendant grunted in response and disappeared behind the counter to produce two rusty keys. Our room was cramped, the air smelling faintly of an ashtray. Two metal bunk beds stood against either wall. The neon sign outside flickered, casting a red glow over the floor.
    Our window overlooked the hotel we had just come from, a pair of decorative lamps flanking the door, one bulb blown, the other flickering, threatening to go dark. We took turns sitting on the sill, waiting for whoever was looking for us to come and collect. But the hours wore on, and save for the occasional passing car, the street remained still. Then it was my turn.
    Dante sat beside me in the dim light, sketching in a pad while his eyes shifted between two things: the map on the inner lid of the chest, and me. Behind us, Theo sat sideways on an armchair, his legs slung over the armrest while he whittled away at a bit of wood. Anya sat on the floor, nervously shuffling a deck of tarot cards. I heard her murmur to herself while she laid them out on the floorboards and practiced reading them.
    Dante studied me in between strokes of his pencil, sketching my face on the page in his long scrawl. I watched as he drew me, the blunt lines slowly forming my eyes, my hair, my lips. I looked sad, I realized. Older. Without looking up from his work, Dante touched my hand, his cold fingertips tickling mine, as if we were just a normal couple waiting for the sun to rise over Paris. I tried to hold that image in my head when I heard Anya sigh.
    Blowing the wood shavings off his pants, Theo leaned toward her. “What are you doing?”
    Anya furrowed her brow as she studied the cards laid out before her. “I’m perfecting my tarot readings.”
    “Tarot?” Theo said. “What, like palm reading or something?”
    “No,” said Anya. “It’s a lot more precise than that. The cards can tell us what lies behind us, what lies directly in front of us that we may not be able to see, and what lies ahead of us. It depicts one version our lives can take.”
    Theo swung his legs to the front of the chair, suddenly interested. “One version? What do you mean?”
    “All of our possible futures are imprinted on our souls,” Anya said. “They change depending on the choices we make. When done correctly, a reading of the tarot cards is supposed to reveal the path your life will take based on the state of your soul at this very moment. But what the cards tell you isn’t written in stone. The future isn’t fixed; it can always be changed, but that requires a choice.” She fanned the cards out over the table until they formed the shape of a crescent. “It’s all here,” she whispered, staring at them. “Waiting to be turned over.”
    “How do you know they work?” Theo said.
    “Before I came here, I had a reading of my own. They told me I was going to go on a journey that would change my life forever. The next morning I received the note from Monsieur.”
    “Really?” Theo said. “All right, let’s give it a go.”
    Anya eyes brightened.
    “It can’t hurt, right?”
    Anya looked like she was about to disagree, but then changed her mind. “I suppose not,” she said. “Though only the cards can say.” She stacked the deck and held it out to Theo. “Choose a card, and without looking, press it to your forehead.”
    Theo leaned back, an amused grin on his face. He chose the card at the bottom of the deck and held it to his head.