CHAPTER 17
Meredith wandered the Parisian streets with no track of time, holding the cards in her hands and feeling like, at any moment, they might blow up and somehow take her with them. She didn’t want them, yet she understood she wasn’t going to be able to bring herself to get rid of them.
It was only when she heard the bells of the church of Saint-Gervais striking one o’clock that she realised she was on track to miss her flight to Toulouse.
Meredith pulled herself together. She flagged down a taxi and, yelling at the driver that there’d be a good tip if he could get her there quickly, they screeched out into the traffic.
They made it to rue du Temple in ten minutes flat. Meredith threw herself out of the cab and, leaving it on the meter, charged into the lobby, up the stairs and into her room. She tossed the things she’d need into her tote bag, grabbed her laptop and charger, and then raced back down. She checked the stuff she wasn’t taking with the concierge, confirmed she’d be back in Paris at the end of the week for a couple more nights, then jumped into the car and headed across town to Orly airport.
She made it with just fifteen minutes to spare.
The whole time, Meredith was on automatic pilot. Her efficient, organised self kicked in, but she was only going through the physical motions while her brain was elsewhere. Half-remembered phrases, ideas grasped, subtleties missed. All the things Laura had said.
How it made me feel.
Only when she was going through security did Meredith realise that in her hurry to get out of the tiny room, she’d forgotten to pay Laura for the session. A wave of embarrassment washed over her. Working out that she’d been there for at least an hour – maybe closer to two – she made a mental note to mail the money and extra besides as soon as she got to Rennes-les-Bains.
Sortilège. The art of seeing the future in the cards.
As the plane took off, Meredith pulled her notebook from her bag and started to scribble down everything she could remember. A journey. The Magician and the Devil, both with blue eyes, neither to be entirely trusted. Herself as an agent of justice. All the eights.
As the 737 swept through the blue skies of northern France, over the Massif Central, chasing the sun down to the south, Meredith listened to Debussy’s Suite Bergamasque on her headphones and wrote until her arm ached, filling page after small, lined page with neat notes and sketches. Laura’s words replayed over and over in her head, like they were on some kind of loop, fighting with the music.
Things slipping between past and present.
And all the time, like an unwanted guest, the presence of the cards lurking in her bag in the luggage bins above her head.
The Devil’s Picture Book.
