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He’d been trying to find a way out of the trap, the place he’d been in since the hotel, since the sword, since he’d taken two lives.

The weight of it hadn’t shifted, hadn’t lessened. He carried it like a boulder on his back, and if anything, it only grew heavier the more time he spent with it.

He stared at the card. The warrior held one wand but the others were arrayed against him, like a thicket wielded by his unseen foes.

Adam needed a way forward, a way out, or past the danger.

He decided to modify Jodi’s approach.

“What stands in my way?”

He drew the Page of Swords and laughed out loud.

Jesse had drawn a young man standing atop a fertile field. He held a sword and appeared ready to go one way while looking the other.

The model didn’t resemble him. His hair was brown and long. His arms were bare, and where Adam had scars, this man had tattoos, twisting, tribal lines.

Adam probably couldn’t talk Bobby and Annie into moving or repainting their house, but maybe he could change himself in a little way that might change the future.

It was a thought. He wondered what Vic would think, really think, because he knew Vic would give him a nice answer like, it’s your body and I’ll love it no matter what you do to it. Maria, his mom, would probably freak.

Adam refocused on the cards and drew again.

“The destination.”

The card he drew was what he’d expected, and he sighed.

The rider was a woman and the horse beneath her was skeletal. In traditional decks the banner she carried bore a white rose, but Jesse had colored it black. The sun set between twin towers, and the figure dead on the ground wore a suit, not a crown. The man pleading with her had a similar look. It was not a pleasant card, though not as disastrous as people thought.

It also didn’t lie. She was everyone’s destination.

It helped that Adam knew her personally.

He’d wanted a path, somewhere to go for answers, and now he had it.

Moving to the bed, he sat crosswise and shuffled a third time, twisting the cards this way and that, handling them carefully. He wanted them to last the rest of his life. Maybe they’d become an heirloom like his great-aunt Sue’s had been. Maybe he’d pass them to Ian, who would pass them to his own kids or his own magical heir, someone who was to him what Adam had been to Sue.

Adam cut the deck and pulled a single card.

The Fool stood on the edge of a cliff, in this case, a bridge to nowhere. Jesse had dressed him in a bright jacket, the kind sports fans wore. It was covered in sunflowers. He held a white rose in one hand. A backpack dangled from the other. His hair was sandy blond and his eyes the same blue as Adam’s. The white dog in the corner of the card was winking, so Jesse had likely meant it to be a joke.

The draw matched, though. This might be the dumbest thing Adam had done in a while, and after not fleeing from the battle at the tower, that was saying something.

He lay down on the bed and assumed a position similar to the figure in the card.

He shut his eyes and felt consciousness fall away. This used to take a while, the shift from here to there, from waking to the dreamlike state of spirit walking, but now it was nearly instantaneous. He could come and go with ease.

There had also been a time when he’d have to psych himself up to go to the Hanging Tree. That wasn’t a problem now. Maybe he’d come too close to the edge too many times. Maybe it just wasn’t as scary anymore like some kind of fucked up exposure therapy.

The crows cawed an almost friendly welcome when he appeared beneath the blackened branches.

He’d expected a field of sunflowers and a beaten Airstream trailer. As long as he’d known Sara, that was how she’d lived.

Things had changed.

The fields were distant. They lay off the road, on the other side of a crossroads.

The structure set on this side was long and low, like several single-story buildings had grown together.