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drawn to represent herself. Her hands self-consciously flitted to her throat.
    “That’s me,” was all she said. “The next card shows the environment around the question.” She turned over a card showing a knight holding a golden disk with a star engraved on it. He gazed at it pensively. “This is the Knight of Pentacles. He’s a practical, methodical person. Well grounded. Pentacles are associated with the stable element of earth.”
    “Does this relate to our subject?”
    “Unlikely. This is a card I associate with you.” She said it matter-of-factly, but wondered if the admission made his skin crawl.
    “You have a card for me?”
    “Not intentionally. It just sort of happened, over time.” She plunged ahead to the next card up. “This represents the inner emotions of our subject, his secret wishes and fears.” The Nine of Wands showed a wounded warrior leaning on a staff. He seemed to be scanning the horizon for the next threat. Wands were associated with fire. “This is a card of obstacles and adversity. Vigilance is recommended.”
    She turned over the last card. “This is the outcome, the Eight of Cups. See the figure fleeing in the night from the treasure of the eight stacked cups? This means that your subject is fleeing. He might abandon the effort of his own accord, or he might simply be one step ahead of you.”
    “Great.”
    Tara rested her elbows on the tray table. “Overall, I’d say that you’re dealing with a person who’s out for revenge for past wrongs. Someone who’s survived a great deal of calamity—perhaps a natural disaster, maybe something like 9/11. Some event that really made an indelible mark on the world stage. Your subject is feeling isolated, and is searching for completion. That could be in a relationship, like a lost love, or it could be as part of an organization. Maybe a terrorist one. The Nine of Wands suggests to me that he knows how to wait, and the Eight of Cups tells me he knows when to run. The World, with the Sacred Androgyne, indicates he may be able to disguise himself, or at least that he’s well traveled. He may not be a U.S. citizen.
    “From a numerology standpoint, the presence of two eights—Strength is the eighth card in the Major Arcana, and we have the Eight of Cups—brings up the underlying theme of karma, of mastery. He’s doing what he’s doing because of something in the past, perhaps as retribution.
    “The two nines in the spread imply your subject has issues with completion and attainment. He feels incomplete, unworthy. That may be something you can use to bait him.”
    Tara trailed off, lost in thought. Her mind churned, seeking connections between these symbols and others in the physical world.
    “Damn,” Harry said, quietly.
    She blinked, looked at him. Her face flamed, and she instantly regretted sharing the experience with him. “What?”
    “The more I learn about how you think, the more I wonder …” He shook his head. “It’s like the rest of us see light in the visible spectrum, and you see infrared and ultraviolet.”
    Hearing the rattle of the refreshment cart coming, Tara scooped up her cards and stowed them in her purse. “Growing up, as an oracle, I never had to explain. And the rest of the time, I hid it … so … I realize it doesn’t make much sense.”
    Harry shook his head. “It doesn’t need to make sense to me. It just needs to work.”
    Tara stared at her ghostly reflection in the window. She hoped that she could do this for him. He’d never asked her for anything, and she’d do everything in her power not to let him down.

Chapter Three
    S PECIAL P ROJECTS was not as she’d remembered it.
    When Tara had been an agent, Special Projects had worked out of backrooms of nondescript office buildings in a dozen cities. Special Projects had kept a low profile then, making do with mismatched office furniture and scavenged equipment. SP HQ in Washington had been a redheaded bureaucratic stepchild, housed in the