Oracle

Stepping into the back of the tea shop felt as though Merrin had stepped into another realm. There was still the overwhelming smell of tea leaves from the front of the shop, the drawers lined with the various types all merging into one earthy blend. But now there was a new scent in the mix, the name as to what it was lingering just out of Merrin’s reach. A memory of something, somewhere. It was anywhere from yesterday to the day he was born, so familiar and yet he still couldn’t name it.
Naming it wasn’t important, Merrin hadn’t come to the tea shop to distinguish whatever made up the scent swirling in the air around him, he came here for one reason and one reason alone. Or rather, one woman.
‘Merrin Meredith, what a delight it is to see you,’ the woman said as she drifted into the small room through the beaded curtains on the opposite side of the room.
The soft clink of the beads followed her entrance like a trance, the faceted glass spreading rainbows across the room as it danced with the flickering candles. Cassandra was like a ghost against the rest of the room, pale skin draped in white fabric that flowed like a river over her. The long platinum curls of her hair hung loose down to her hips, a thick braid pulling strands of it out of her face. One horn sprouted from her temple and wrapped around her skull like a halo. The soft glow of her eyes glowed like a full moon as she smiled at him.
‘Cassandra,’ Merrin said from the doorway, feet suddenly too heavy to move any further into the room.
‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’ Cassandra asked as she leant against the table in the middle of the room, the glistening onyx top obscured by a spread of cards.
‘I need your advice,’ Merrin said, but he still couldn’t find it in himself to walk into the room.
It wasn’t a large space by any means, and Cassandra wasn’t an intimidating woman. She hardly reached his chest even when she wore heels and her voice had never been louder than a whisper. A soft spoken woman without an ounce of hatred in her heart, nothing but love flowing through her veins. The magic within her couldn’t harm him, it was nothing but divination. Perhaps at the worst she could put a hex on him, but even then it would take time to enact. Time that Merrin wasn’t even sure he had.
No, what frightened him was what being here even meant.
Cassandra was the only person that Merrin couldn’t lie to even if he tried. Every word he said would be weighed against his soul and only she could read what the tipping scales meant. Everything that Merrin had buried deep within him would be laid bare for her to read as if they were tea leaves.
Even as Merrin stood there unmoving in the doorway, he could feel the way she looked at him, into him. Reading whatever worries wrapped themselves around his bones like the sinewy strands of his muscles. Her features softened as she looked, and swept her way into the short stool tucked beneath the table and began to pile her cards back up.
‘I really had hoped we would stop meeting like this, Merrin,’ Cassandra said, though her words were untainted by disappointment like he had expected. A strange melancholy lingered in the air as she refused to look up at hime.
Was it really that obvious? Was he that obvious?
‘You need to confide in those around you,’ Cassandra said without a hint of malice.
Her fingers danced across the edges of the cards as she shuffled them into one neat pile, card after card slotting into place. At no point did she look back up at Merrin, her focus remaining on chanelling the divine into the well worn cards in her hands. They were no paper or parchment, but something more akin to thin slices of the soul, each weighing on his conscience and he could almost feel the noose around his neck.
Taking those few steps towards her was the hardest thing Merrin had done in weeks, and the numbness in his body was worse than he’d ever had. But he needed this, even if he didn’t want it.
‘They won’t understand,’ Merrin said, if only she knew that he’d tried so hard to get those words out, but they never made it past his throat. The sound becoming lost as he choked on the words. ‘They never will.’
‘How can you be so certain? If you are to think that I will understand, then why can’t they?’
Cassandra had a way of making sense that made Merrin want rip her tongue out, that way she would never be able to say such things again. But he would never be able to bring himself to do such a thing, especially when he knew that she would almost certainly haunt him for the rest of his days.
But that’s what this was, right? A haunting? Some vengeant spirit trying to take their own back against Merrin for no doubt harvesting whatever body part he needed in order to keep Zane going just that bit longer. And now he was stuck with it, with the taunting voice and the shadows swirling at the edge of his visions making him feel as though he was losing his mind.
‘I just need to know how to get rid of it,’ Merrin said. ‘An exorcism or some shit like that. That would work, right? Right?’
‘Merrin,’ Cassandra said and spread out the cards before him. ‘No such magic would work. It is not a haunting in the typical sense like you suspect. I can feel it within you, another soul interlaced with your own. You will not be able to remove it without removing a part of your own, unless there is a way to trap it within.’
She flipped a card before him, a dazzling burst of starlight cascading from the side and pooling on the table before weaving itself in the air between them. Stars, again. They sparkled in his vision even when he closed his eyes, everywhere he looked they were there waiting for him. But Cassandra only looked up at Merrin with that same worry she wore when she looked at Zane.
‘I cannot help you with this,’ Cassandra said and reached out a hand to Merrin’s. ‘She will not let me intervene.’
‘Who is She?’
‘Vynus.’