The Arcana Club

Mom was fine. She’d apparently run to find Cindy and me, then found River, Kei, and Lei, who’d joined in the search.

“What happened to your face?” Mom’s touch stung as I realized I somehow had a sunburn. That’s probably why Cindy said to save transformation for emergencies.

“I don’t know,” I lied, “It seemed fine before.”

“Sorry to scare you Mrs. Chastfield,” Cindy said, “We got out of the bathroom, and then everybody was screaming, and we went in to find you.”

“I guess they fixed the AC a little too well,” Kei said. “They’ll probably make the game continue anyways.”

“And we’ll still win,” River answered, “I’m going to talk to the coach.”

“You’re staying with me,” Mom said, grabbing my arm and River’s. She gave Cindy a look that gave me a bad feeling.

In the middle of Nerves’ yard, while everyone else was busy in his pool, the four of us and Cas were figuring out our little club. Apparently Cindy needed to rebalance with Death.

“Has anyone other than Summer managed to transform again?” Cas asked.

Van raised their hand, with the other two avoiding gazes.

“How did it go, and why did you transform?” Cas asked.

“Lacey was stuck,” Van said, “And I couldn’t unstuck her as Van, so I summoned the better brain, and I got her unstuck.”

“Who’s Lacey?” Cas asked, concerned.

“My dog. She’s pretty stupid.”

“Okay…” Xe turned to Nerves and Emmy “We know about Summer. Why haven’t you two transformed?”

“We’ve been bonding,” Emmy said, pulling out a mediocre picture of a wolf, “I’ve been working on drawing him so it’s easier to see him, on his recommendation.”

“He talks to you?” I asked. Summer only seemed to talk the one time, plus the dream.

“Yep. He says I need to understand him in my own way before I can see him.”

“So you’re learning to draw wolves?”

“Yep.”

“It could work,” Cas said, “Princess?”

“Nerves,” he corrected, “And I haven’t talked to her because I can’t stand her voice.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, it just hurts my ears.”

“If you say so.” Xe adjusted again, “Van, have you been dealing with side effects?”

Van shook their head.

“I’ve been a little shaky, but not like shakier than usual.”

“Great, great,” Cas nodded inattentively, “So Cindy mentioned I forgot to talk about The Unseen, which Summer has now apparently dealt with, so it matters.”

“It didn’t matter before?” I asked.

“The Unseen can’t be unknown once you’ve seen it.”

I unsuccessfully tried to parse that sentence out.

“So what’s The Unseen?” Emmy asked.

“The unseen is the world of the spirits, and not just the ones in talismans.”

“Ghosts are real?” Nerves asked.

“Yes, but they don’t talk to us most of the time. What’s important is that when you’re transformed, you’re of both the seen and the unseen.”

“But when we aren’t…” I fished.

“Then you tend to be closed off from the unseen, though you still have some sense of it. You’ll usually be more sensitive immediately after transforming back. I’m one of the exceptions.”

“What’s your talisman anyways?” Nerves asked, “Since you seem to know everything?”

“Probably like an owl or something,” Emmy proposed.

“I don’t have one,” Cas explained, “You all were chosen, but Cindy got our family’s by being the oldest. I’m just support.”

That didn’t seem right. Cas was around while Cindy wasn’t. Though maybe, considering what Winter was willing to do, there was a reason only one sibling wielded Death.

“The reason I’m an exception,” Cas said, “Is that I can see into the unseen all the time.”

“Can you see our talisman spirits right now?” Nerves asked.

“Only if they exit the talismans. The unseen is made up of pockets, rather than constantly being active. The spirits make the pockets, and when they all leave—”

“It leads to that collapse Cindy and I saw.”

“And you don’t want to be caught up in a collapse,” Cas said, “Trust me.”

“Why should we?” Nerves asked. We all stared at him.

“We never get to know anything, but Cas and Cindy have all the answers. Why should we trust them?”

I looked at my still pink-ish skin, mostly recovered from Saturday. I watched Cas pull xer legs up to hide behind. I tracked the flickering movements of Nerves’ eyes.

“Because they haven’t lied to us yet.”

The Sun keychain, which I’d moved to my cover-up pocket, burned a little. Images of a dark woman in a cloak of shadows falling into light swallowed my mind.

“What happened to your eyes?” Van asked.

I couldn’t respond. The woman in shadow was running, but being overtaken.

“Summer’s covering her eyes,” Cas said, “She’s being shown something.”

“What?”

I lifted my hands up and pulled the arms away from my eyes. I could see again. In my hands were two arms whose hands were covered in flaming driving gloves. The skin tone was familiar, like my own hands. When I looked up, a woman in a newsie cap moved a finger to her lips, which I felt on my own, singeing them closed of this secret.

“Let’s not push the issue,” Cas said.

“Her eyes went like this!” Van made circles over their eyes, “That seems like an issue to push.”

“Well Summer covered my eyes, then I pulled her hands off, and she looked like she was from the late 1800s, and she did this—” I imitated the finger on the lip, “And I don’t think I can talk about what she actually showed me.”

“Summer’s last host was from around that time, that’s probably the form she chose to appear in.”

“Where was she when she didn’t have a host?” Emmy asked.

“Moving, waiting for someone worthy, but once Talisman needed new heroes for this purpose, she volunteered, and was placed with Summer.”

“How?” I asked.

“Talisman is the lord of The Unseen.”

“Creepy,” Nerves said, “Anyw—” Nerves shut up and pointed at the pool. We followed his finger. One of the trees was moving in the wind.

“Calm down,” Emmy said, “Just a tree.”

Nerves jabbed the air to make us keep looking.

The tree wasn’t just moving in the wind. Its branches were crawling, wrapping around the wall, stacking on top of each other. We started running towards it.

“No running near the pool,” Nerves’ mom scolded before chiding him with his real name, which made all of us cringe.

“Yes, mom,” Nerves replied.

We walked with purpose toward the tree, spotting movement from one of the holes in the wall.

“Summer,” Cas said, “Stay back. We can’t risk you setting this thing on fire.”

I took a few steps back.

“Actually, why don’t you take a dip in the pool for awhile. Really make sure you don’t set this place on fire.”

I obliged, carefully placing my cover-up away from anyone else’s things, especially River’s. I jumped into the pool watching Cas and the others.

Van grabbed their beanie, spinning it around at a pace beyond human ability, chopping off various small branches. Then the beanie fell out of their grasp, all the way to the side of the yard. They walked with purpose until getting far enough away from the pool to run and grab the beanie.

Nerves and Cas argued in whispers for a moment before Nerves sang an awkward low note, voice cracking.

Woodpeckers came down, going after individual branches and breaking them off. Cas said one more thing that made Nerves yell, “What!?” Everyone stared at the group near the tree.

“Cas recognized the tree,” Emmy said, “Fun facts.”

“What fun facts?” one of the kids closer to that end of the pool asked.

“It’s only native to the Sonoran Desert?” Cas offered.

The whole pool made approving noises about the fact and returned to their business.

The woodpeckers flew back in to return to their work, Van made a disappointed huff when Cas made a stopping motion before they could get their beanie back in branch-whacker mode.

Emmy pulled her nails over some of the smaller ones, slicing them off, then a shift in the air made the tree stop. Cas’ expression wasn’t promising.

“What were you thinking!?” Cindy screeched at the skate park near Van’s house. It was a good neutral location between Fridays.

“We couldn’t let the tree attack the party,” Cas said, “That would have caused more problems. Do you want to explain that to our parents?”

“Actually yes, you do let it attack the pool, because then everyone leaves, and you’re all safe to transform and do things, not use your talismans as yourselves.”

“Why not?” Emmy asked, “It was pretty cool to know we could.”

“Haha, leaves,” Van chuckled.

“Because that was clearly the ploy,” Cindy explained, “They knew about Summer because she transformed in front of Winter. They knew enough to connect that to the homeschool group, so they left a small lure that you wouldn’t consider worth transforming for, and would try to resolve as yourselves with the help of your talismans. Now they know who all of you are outside of transformation and that Cas knows!”

“Why is that such a problem?” Emmy asked, “Cas knows everything about these things. You brought xer on board.”

“Because I can’t defend myself,” Cas said, “I’m an easy target who doesn’t have a talisman. They could use me as a way to get to Cindy, or worse, use me as a vessel.”

“What’s a vessel?”

“A non-consenting host,” Cindy explained, “It’s what the light-brother uses all the time, but they’re also used for much worse things.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t want to get into it.”

“I do,” I said, “You guys keep waiting until the right moment to tell us, but the right moment always seems to be after it’s useful.”

Cas nodded.

“Fine,” Cindy sat on the ground, “Some vessels serve the purpose of ‘healing’. They can’t transform, all that happens is the talisman leaches their energy without them realizing what’s happening. Proper healing is when someone already wielding a talisman takes others on. They provide extra power to the transformed state, but don’t get full control again. If there’s no give from the talisman to the vessel—”

“Bad things happen,” we all said in our own way.

“Tangent aside, let’s not use our abilities unless transformed, and hope none of them got a good look at you.”

I agreed with Cindy, but I so wanted to tell her she was wrong.