"'The tower,'" Marcus read aloud from the card as he laid it face up. The image on the card was of a
medieval siege tower, starting to disintegrate as lightning bolts from the clouds struck it. "Is that a
good sign... or bad?"
"The cards themselves are neutral," Cassandra told him, almost automatically. "They merely reflect
the situation. It is the human reaction to the situation that is significant."
"Yeah, yeah," Marcus muttered. A stab of pain raged through the left side of his face, all the way from
his mouth to his forehead. "Spare me the details. Is it good or bad?"
Cassandra gazed steadily at the upturned card, striving to understand how it might apply to this man's
pain-wracked life. Although it had its positive aspects, the tower card often signified death, or
outright destruction. But how did that tie in with Marcus's hope for a miracle cure?
She frowned suddenly. There was something in the image on the card she'd never seen before. How
could that be? She'd used this deck for a thousand readings, practiced with it for a thousand more. She
knew every card, every detail of every illustration, back to front and inside out.
Narrowing her eyes, Cassandra stared harder. She could swear something in the picture was moving
— something hidden behind the tower was making its presence known. Fighting down a little knot of
panic, she forced herself to stay calm. When you're dealing with the unknown, she reminded herself,
you should always expect the unknown!
The image on the card seemed to expand until it filled her consciousness, sucking her into it like a
visual whirlpool. Marcus, and the whole consultation room, could have gone up in flames and she
wouldn't have noticed. Her entire attention was fixed on that hidden figure.
Suddenly, it revealed itself to her. It was a man—or at least the semblance of a man. It stood on two
bare human legs, but from the waist up it had the body of a beast Thick, matted hair covered its torso,
darkened here and there by black stains that she somehow knew were blood. Its head was that of a
bull, red eyes glinting dangerously from a deep-shadowed face surmounted by two golden horns. The
figure was chanting, a singsong noise that made no sense to her at all. She looked at the ground
beneath the beast and saw the twisted, broken body of Raymond Marcus lying there, drenched in his
own bright red blood.
"No!"
Marcus started as Cassandra jerked from her reverie. Her breathing was fast and shallow, and though
she tried to hide it, her deep blue eyes showed terror.
"What is it?" he demanded anxiously. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," Cassandra lied. She shook her head, as if to clear it of the final traces of that hellish
vision. "If I were you, Mr. Marcus," she told him, doing her best to keep her voice even, "I would go
home now. I would not go to the Gotham Cathedral tonight."
"And that's it?" Marcus's disappointment was so profound that, for a moment, it made him forget his
pain.
Cassandra nodded in silence. It was obvious she wasn't going to say any more.