Page 17 of Midlife Demigod Unexpected

“Jag,” I said with a sigh. “It’s not you. It’s me. It’s…you’re a demon.”

“I know it’s me. I’m a demon, and I understand it’s new territory to have a demon in your life. Still, it isn’t like you’re exactly human either.”

“Not as inhuman as a demon,” I said. “At least I was born in this realm.”

“We know you were born in this realm, but we don’t know if you’re of this realm. You could be half from earth and half from beyond the rift.”

“That’s not the point,” I said, folding my arms across my chest.

“The point is you’re not interested,” Jag said with a nod. “I understand. I’ve been around the human world enough to know. I get it. I learned a lot from humans. Come on.” He motioned me toward the house. “Let’s get you back in The Estate and get you some Witch’s Brew.”

Chapter 13

I stayed at The Estate into the evening but wanted to go speak with my mother. I didn’t trust myself walking out with Jag, so when Chloe headed for the front door, I made my move with her.

“You going to be all right getting home?” Chloe asked.

“Yes Deputy,” I intoned with a smirk as I got in my car. “Don’t worry. The biggest threat to me is in the car behind me.”

“I heard you,” Jag said.

“I meant it,” I said. “Keep your distance.”

I got behind the wheel and headed to my mom’s house. I knew Jag would follow me until I got safely in the house. I didn’t mind. It was quite a gentlemanly custom and pleasantly surprising for what I imagined a demon would behave like.

When I walked into Mom’s house, she was awake and in the living room with her tarot deck out.

“What are you doing?” I raised my eyebrows at the beautiful, weathered deck that had seen so many spreads over the years.

“I was doing a tarot reading on Jag and you,” she said unabashedly.

“My friendship with Jag is none of your business.” I put my hands on my hips. “I’ll thank you to keep your tarot out of it.”

“I was just having a little look. There’s no harm in it,” Hilda said.

“Don’t you have anything better to do with your time? Like maybe try to figure out what species my father was?”

“Don’t you want to see the reading about Jag?” Hilda asked.

I stood there for a moment with my hands on my hips, not wanting to give in but being irrevocably drawn toward the tarot deck. I had always enjoyed the beautiful cards and the wild spreads my mother had done, until we realized I wasn’t going to have magic powers and I became considerably less welcoming of anything to do with the magic world.

Now the three-card spread she had in front of her was drawing me in and I found myself leaning over to look down and see what the cards said about me and Jag. I knew they were served in order of past present and future and they would’ve been set up facing my mother. I moved by her side, looking over her shoulder. She pointed to the past card.

“This one fell right out of the deck. The World. You both have had a lot of experience in the world prior to coming together. The present is the Knight of Cups which I think is pretty obvious from the way he is behaving toward you.”

I rolled my eyes. “Seriously, Mom? I’m in my mid-forties and you act like a boy at school has a crush on me.”

“But it’s the future I did the cards for, because I have an uncomfortable feeling about your new beau, and there it is. The cards never lie. The hangman.” She stretched out her knobby finger, tapping the worn surface of the card right in the hanging man’s belly.

“He’s going to die?” I asked.

“You’ve forgotten everything you ever learned,” Hilda grumbled.

“Read the cards in order. It shows the past there was a sense of completion and wholeness as the world is a circle encompassing all things. It means you completed a cycle, and you will start another cycle now. The current cycle is the Knight of Cups. This is a male suitor coming for you and you can definitely believe Jag is going to be looking for a romantic entanglement with you.”

Which was going to end up being the hangman.

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