Trisha told Cherry to call her Trish. A strange nickname—it was only one letter away from her actual name—but Cherry was being good, so she complied. She dipped her toes into the warm basin and let the water cloud over her ankles, buying herself a moment.

"All my friends call me Trish."

"Oh yeah?" Cherry droned, wondering when she had asked and when she and Trisha had become friends.

"Yes, girl! Well, except the monks in Brunei, but between you and me, they were rather b-o-r-i-n-g." Trisha slapped a hand over her mouth. "Did I just say that?"

"What was it like there?" Cherry prodded. She was waiting—impatiently—for Trish to tell her more about the man. Who was he? Was it the same man she had seen? And why was there something connecting the two of them—something only they seemed able to sense?

Cherry was desperate. Anxious to prove she wasn't crazy. To prove she was normal. So far, she and Trish were "bonding," as Antonio had put it, getting their nails done in the beauty salon. Cherry kept her eyes shut so her anxiety wouldn't sabotage the moment.

"We're not supposed to talk about it...are these finished?" Trisha asked the nail tech.

"Five more minutes," The nail tech replied.

"Why?" Cherry pushed for an answer. Trisha had that way about her—words spilling, ominous mantras—like she was always one sentence away from something important and always stepping neatly around it.

"It's the way of the shai, just how things are." 

Cherry peaked one eye open just in time to see her nail tech signalling for her. She lifted her feett from the basin and plodded them dry.

 In the end, Cherry settled for a french tip design with a simple jewel on her pointing finger. Trisha got some swampy spiritual looking thing. Cherry offered a fake compliment and said little about it again. The two girls paid for their sets then exited the salon.

"Where to next?" Trisha asked, already halfway down the street, bangles clinking like they were impatient too.

"Next?" Cherry echoed. Her feet still felt damp inside her sandals.

"Well of course, we're-" Trisha rubbed her shoulder up and down Cherry's arm. "-bonding."

Cherry stifled her grimace. Groaning internally, she forced herself to look around. The street was familiar enough—boutiques she'd passed a hundred times, a coffee shop on the corner with fogged windows and a chalkboard sign advertising oat milk like it was a moral stance. "I mean, there's a coffee shop," she offered. "We could—"

"Tarot!"

The word landed between them like a dropped glass.

Cherry stiffened. "No."

"Oh yes." Trisha beamed, already pivoting toward a narrow ally tucked between a florist and a closed-down travel agency. "Perfect timing, too."

Cherry followed her pacing. "I don't really believe in that stuff."

Trisha shot her a look over her shoulder. "Sweetheart, you don't have to believe in gravity either. It still works."

"That's not the same thing." Cherry mumbled over deaf ears.

The two's footsteps continued down the cobbled alleyway. Dingy and dimly lit. Suddenly, they slowed to a stop. Cherry spotted a nest of damp blankets perched against a wall.

Concealed within the blankets was a women, dark hair streaked with silver. Decks of cards were stacked around her, their boxes worn soft.

"Trisha," the woman crocked, smiling. Her clouded eyes indicated her prohibited vision.  Although her were already lifted as if she'd been expecting them.

"You know her," Cherry said flatly.

Trisha's mouth stretched into a mischievous grin. "Mara reads for me whenever I'm back in town."

Mara's clouded gaze slid to Cherry. "You brought her this time."

"I did," Trisha nodded. "She's ready."

Cherry's pulse thudded in her ears. "Ready for what?"

Mara ignored her as she shuffled the deck in her hand with practised ease. The cards made a dry, whispering sounds. 

"You've been seeing him," Mara finalised, not looking up.

Cherry's breath caught. "What?"

Mara laid the first card down. Except it wasn't a card, it was a photograph. Oh him! His waned face, his silver hair, those black soulless eyes.

"The one who watches." Mara let out a deathly chuckle that morphed into a cough. 

The road seemed to tilt. Cherry felt it then—unmistakably—that thin, electric thread humming beneath her skin. The same sensation she'd felt in her dreams. The same sense of being watched, not unkindly, but with purpose.

Cherry stared at the photo, at the image she couldn't quite focus on, and understood one terrible, exhilarating thing: he was real, dear lord, he was real. 

"How?" Cherry began, her voice thin. "Where did you get this?"

Mara leaned back, unbothered. She shuffled the deck once more, then placed two cards beside the photograph, their edges perfectly aligned.

"All will be revealed, my child," she sang. "But only if you follow those already moving around you. They are closer to the truth than you realise."

Cherry recoiled, her feet bucked backward. Her heart hammered. "I want to leave," she spat at Trisha.

Trisha opened her mouth to protest, but Mara raised a single finger.

"You may," Mara purred, her tone calm, almost kind. "Of course you may."

Cherry was already halfway out of the alley when Mara spoke again.

"Because if you don't find him," Mara added, "you will surely be dead within forty-eight days."