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gift.”
    â€œMy mother claimed to be a medium?”
    â€œShe didn’t claim to be one. She was one.” Honoria’s eyes widened. “Didn’t your father ever mention that to you?”
    â€œNot a word.” Father had never said my mother had any extraordinary gifts. He did his best to never mention her. Even so, I was surprised that he hadn’t trumpeted that story to bolster my credentials as a medical intuitive. The rubes lapped that sort of nonsense up as eagerly as our old horse did water at the end of a long day’s work pulling the wagon. Honoria shook her head in disbelief.
    â€œPreposterous. Still, there must be something. It is unthinkable that you are the first woman in the family to have no metaphysical abilities.”
    As kind and welcoming as she had been, I didn’t know Honoria well enough to mention the voice. Hearing disembodied whispers was the sort of thing that got a person sent to an asylum. And even if she did believe me, I was not convinced myself that the voice was more than an amplified version of my intuition. However, desperate times called for desperate measures. And no one was so desperate as a girl left as much to her own devices as I had been. Clearly, I had to tell her something.
    â€œI wouldn’t claim to be gifted, but I sometimes turn to these for advice.” I reached into my purse and pulled out the small deck of worn tarot cards I always carried with me. I fanned them outon the table positioned in front of the settee and held my breath, hoping they were enough to secure my position. Honoria leaned forward, knocking over a vase in the center of the table in her excitement.
    â€œWhere did you get these?” Honoria snatched them off the table and thumbed through them carefully, examining them one by one.
    â€œI don’t actually know. I’ve had them so long I can’t remember ever receiving them.” From the way tears threatened to fall from her eyes, I regretted revealing the cards. Honoria stood and crossed the room to a small mahogany desk. Unlocking the drop front with a key dangling from the chatelaine at her waist she slid open a drawer and withdrew a silken drawstring bag. Returning to the table, she handed it to me.
    â€œOpen it,” she said, sitting back on the settee once more. I loosened the smooth cord and slipped my hand inside. Wrapping my fingers around the contents, I discovered a deck of cards very much like my own. The artist seemed to be the same and the amount of wear suggested they were of a similar vintage. The backs of her cards matched mine, but the images on the front were unfamiliar. “They are all from a deck your mother and I shared as children. The night she slipped out of the house and off to a new life with your father we shuffled the deck and divided it in half.”
    â€œDo you know how to correctly read these cards?”
    â€œYour mother and I learned to read tarot before we learned to read the written word. Delphinia was always more adept at it than I. The night she left I urged her to take the entire deck as she valued it so highly but she refused, saying she would feel comforted if a part of her remained here with me.” Honoria brushed a tear from her cheek. “You read them yourself?”
    â€œI’ve always made up my own stories for the pictures. I would dearly love to know what they really mean.” I slid the pile toward her and watched with anticipation as she scooped up the deck in its entirety and shuffled the cards with a deft hand.
    â€œFirst, I’d like to watch you do a reading, to hear how the cards speak to you with no outside influence.” She placed the deck in front of me and nodded encouragingly.
    I had performed hundreds of readings for visitors to the show over the years, but this was different. Most of the querents’ body language had been simple to read, and providing the information they wished to hear was an easy enough