The card lay between them, its black-inked skeleton grinning as though it knew some secret neither woman wished to hear aloud.
The widow clutched her shawl tighter, her knuckles pale beneath the thin lace gloves. "Death," she whispered, the word trembling from her lips like a prayer half-forgotten.
Esther's gaze lingered on the card. Her fingertips traced the etching as if she could summon its truth by touch alone. "Death does not always speak of endings," she said, her voice low and steady, "but of transformations. It is a threshold… one you are meant to cross."
Horace's golden eyes glimmered in the candlelight. He leaned forward, tail twitching. Morrigan gave a harsh croak from the rafters above, her shadow stretching over the table like an omen cast in feather and wing.
The widow shook her head violently. "No more," she pleaded. "I should not have come. I do not want to know." She made to rise, but Esther's hand, pale and slender, pressed gently against hers, stilling her trembling.
"You came because the truth was already whispering at your door," Esther murmured. "You would not sit before me if you had not already heard it."
The woman's eyes filled with fresh tears. She sank back into the chair, defeated. "My husband… his death was sudden, cruel. I cannot rest. I feel him near me at night, but… it frightens me."
Esther turned the second card. The Tower.
The candle nearest them guttered violently as though some unseen breath had blown across its flame.
"Change," Esther said softly. "Sudden. Violent. I fear the veil is thin around you, madam. You are not haunted by your husband… but by what his death has unbound."
The widow's sob broke into the still air, raw and aching. She snatched her gloves, rising so quickly the chair scraped across the floorboards. "I cannot hear this. I will not."
She fled into the fog, the bell above the shop door jangling mournfully in her wake. For a long moment Esther remained still, the cards spread before her.
Horace yawned, stretching languidly, though his eyes remained fixed on the door. Morrigan let out another croak, sharper this time, her head tilting toward the night beyond the glass.
Esther gathered the cards with deliberate care, sliding them beneath their veil of silk. Yet the shadow of Death and the Tower seemed to linger upon the table, carved into the very grain of the wood.
She moved to the window and peered through the fog-drenched glass. The woman was gone. Only the mist and the weak glow of gas lamps remained, each halo of light barely cutting through the London night.
But Esther felt it—the weight of eyes upon her. Somewhere beyond the veil of fog, someone watched.
And the whispers began.
The next morning, as Esther walked the market square for herbs and supplies, voices trailed behind her. Witch. Sorceress. Devil's bride. Mothers tugged their children aside. Men crossed themselves as she passed. Yet others—those with sickness in their eyes, or grief carved into their faces—followed her at a distance, waiting until shadows fell to approach her door in secret.
Esther bore it with silence. She had been marked since birth, and whispers were no stranger to her. But the widow's fear still clung to her like damp cloth, and Morrigan's restless wings spoke of storms gathering unseen.
The city itself seemed to sense it. The gaslight flickered more dimly. The fog lingered longer. And beneath the whispers of the people, another voice stirred—dark, unseen, waiting.