The High Priestess’ Game – Chapter 3
This first part of my series, “The Tarot Dimes”, is free and will remain free. You can read all chapters here on the blog, or download the full book (epub and pdf) either via the button in the footer or via the shop on www.empowering-tarot.com – the download is free as well! If you enjoy this story, you can support my work by leaving a tip or checking out the rest of my books. The other volumes of the series are priced at € 2,49 (automatically converted to your local currency). At the time of writing, that’s about 3 USD, tough it may vary slightly depending on exchange rates – something I sadly can’t control (but I appreciate your understanding!).
Chapter 3
The clock’s soft ticking mocked me as I stared at the ceiling, tracing the hairline cracks that spiderwebbed across the plaster like fortune lines on an aging palm. Three-seventeen. Again. The witching hour that had become my faithful companion since the final notice had arrived.
I kicked at the sheets tangled around my ankles, prisoners of my restlessness. The fabric twisted tighter, as if determined to strangle what little hope remained.
“Stop it,” I whispered to the darkness. “Just stop thinking.”
But my mind refused to obey, calculating and recalculating figures that never balanced.
I rolled onto my stomach, burying my face in the pillow. The cotton smelled faintly of lavender – the last of my homemade sachets. Even this small comfort felt like a taunt, a reminder of products that I could no longer sell.
“I could call Steve,“ I murmured into the fabric. The thought emerged before I could suppress it.
No. I had promised myself I would never ask him for help again. Not after last time, when his assistance came wrapped in condescension. “Poor, naive Rahel,” he’d said, not in words but in every pitying glance. “Always dreaming too big.”
The pillow grew damp beneath my cheek. I hadn’t realized I was crying.
“It’s just a shop,” I told myself, voice breaking on the lie. It wasn’t just a shop. It was everything I’d built from nothing, every sacrifice, every sixteen-hour day. My sanctuary of aromatic herbs and whispered hopes.
I flipped onto my back again, arms splayed wide like a snow angel pressed into my mattress.
The ceiling fan wobbled slightly as it rotated, hypnotic in its imperfection. Round and round and round…
My eyelids grew heavier with each rotation. The tightness in my chest loosened, just slightly.
“Just for a moment,” I promised myself. “Just rest for a moment.”
The room began to tilt, slowly at first, then with increasing momentum. My body remained anchored to the bed while my consciousness detached, floating upward like a balloon cut from its string.
I was falling upward, if such a thing were possible. Suspended in the strange netherworld between wakefulness and sleep, where logic bends and breaks.
The darkness rippled around me like water, cool and encompassing. My limbs felt impossibly light, unburdened by gravity’s persistent pull. This weightlessness was seductive, a blessed respite from the heaviness that had settled into my bones over these past months.
“Let go,” a voice whispered, though whether it was mine or something else’s, I couldn’t tell.
The anxiety that had wrapped barbed wire around my thoughts began to unravel, replaced by a curious detachment. Financial ruin was still waiting—but somewhere distant, on the other side of consciousness.
“Am I dreaming now?” I asked the void.
The darkness pulsed in answer, drawing me deeper, deeper still.
A memory surfaced: Grandmother teaching me to swim in the lake behind her house. “Don’t fight the water, Rahel. When you struggle, you sink. When you surrender, you float.”
I surrendered now, letting my mind dissolve at the edges, fragments of thoughts breaking away like ice from a spring thaw.
The sensation of falling intensified, my stomach lurching as if I’d driven too fast over a hill. Yet there was no fear, only a strange exhilaration as I plummeted through layers of consciousness.
I thought I heard the soft flutter of wings somewhere in the distance.
And then I was no longer falling at all, but standing, though I had no memory of my feet touching ground…
Suddenly, I was standing upright in a sea of light. The casino materialized around me with such abruptness that I gasped, my lungs filling with air perfumed by expensive cologne and cigarette smoke. The contrast against my dim bedroom was jarring—like stepping from a darkened theater into blinding midday sun.
Everywhere, light assaulted my senses. Chandeliers dripped crystal tears from ceilings so high they seemed to vanish into another realm. Slot machines pulsed with neon heartbeats, their digital displays flashing promises of fortunes in hypnotic sequences. The golden glow of polished marble floors reflected it all, doubling the brilliance until it bordered on painful.
“Where am I?” I whispered, though no one answered.
The cacophony was overwhelming—coins cascading into metal trays with metallic music, roulette wheels spinning their perpetual hymns, the low thunder of uncountable conversations blending into white noise. Dealers called numbers and suits in ritualistic chants while players responded with cheers or groans that rose and fell like tides.
I pressed my hands against my temples. “This isn’t real.”
A man in an immaculate tuxedo brushed past me, close enough that I should have felt the fabric against my skin, yet I sensed nothing. He carried a martini that didn’t spill despite his hurried gait.
“Excuse me,” I called, but he didn’t turn.
My eyes struggled to focus on any one thing for long. The casino seemed to breathe, expanding and contracting with each pulse of light from the fixtures overhead. I looked down at myself—still wearing my faded blue pajamas, absurdly out of place among evening gowns and tailored suits.
“I don’t belong here,” I murmured, fingers fidgeting with a loose thread at my sleeve.
Yet something pulled at me, an invisible current drawing me deeper into this fever dream of wealth and chance. I found myself taking hesitant steps forward, navigating between the crush of bodies that seemed not to notice my presence.
The opulence was suffocating. Gold-leafed pillars reached toward painted ceilings depicting gods at play. The carpet beneath my bare feet—when had I lost my slippers?—was plush enough to swallow my toes, its pattern a maze of crimson and navy that seemed to shift when viewed from different angles.
A woman with diamonds cascading from her ears laughed sharply at a nearby blackjack table, the sound like breaking glass.
“Twenty-one!” the dealer announced, and chips clattered across green felt.
I couldn’t help but stare at the pile of colored discs being pushed toward her—more money than I’d see in months at my failing shop. My throat tightened.
“Just a dream,” I reminded myself, yet my palms itched with inexplicable longing. “But maybe…”
The thought formed before I could suppress it: what if there was something here for me? Some wisdom or opportunity I was meant to discover? The universe works in strange ways, Grandmother used to say. Sometimes the answers come wrapped in unexpected packages.
I moved deeper into the labyrinth of games and gamblers, drawn forward by something I couldn’t name but felt with undeniable clarity—as if I had an appointment to keep with destiny.
That’s when I saw it.
The bat materialized above a roulette wheel, hanging impossibly in mid-air, its wingspan nearly three feet across. Unlike any bat I’d ever seen, its fur was translucent, shimmering like black opal, with veins of electric blue pulsing beneath. But it was the eyes that froze me in place—two perfect orbs of amber luminescence that fixed on me with unmistakable intelligence.
“Oh God,” I whispered, my hand flying to my throat.
The casino din faded to a muffled hum. My skin prickled with cold recognition.
The bat’s eyes held mine, unblinking, hypnotic. It raised one wing in a gesture so deliberate, so human-like, that I took an involuntary step backward. It was beckoning me. Calling me forward.
“No,” I said, though no one seemed to hear. “No, I know what you are.”
Memories cascaded through me—Grandmother’s bedroom, the open window, the frantic flapping. I was awakened by strange sounds in the night. A bat, disoriented and panicked, circling the ceiling fixture before disappearing into the darkness. By morning, Grandmother was gone, her face peaceful but unmistakably empty of life.
“Death’s messengers,” she’d told me once while hanging garlic over doorways. “When a bat enters your home, someone is marked for passing.”
The spectral creature floated closer, its movements fluid and impossible. It circled my head once, close enough that I should have felt the disturbance of air from its wings, but there was nothing—only a terrible, magnetic pull.
“My shop,” I murmured, understanding blooming like ink in water. “You’re showing me my shop is dying.”
The bat dipped its head in what seemed like acknowledgment before gliding away between the rows of slot machines, pausing to look back at me with those burning eyes.
I hesitated, feet rooted to the carpet. Following death’s messenger seemed unwise at best, catastrophic at worst. Yet something in its gaze promised not an ending but a revelation.
“Damn it,” I muttered, and took my first tentative step forward.
The casino floor seemed to stretch and contract as I followed the ghostly creature. Slot machines towered impossibly high one moment, then shrunk to child-size the next. The paths between gaming tables narrowed and widened without reason, sometimes forcing me to turn sideways to slip between players who never acknowledged my presence.
“Excuse me,” I said reflexively, brushing past a man in a tuxedo who continued his conversation as if I were made of air.
The bat led me past a craps table where dice hung suspended mid-roll, the players’ faces frozen in expressions of anticipation and dread. I reached out to touch a floating die, but my hand passed through it like smoke.
“What is this place?” I asked the bat, who continued its silent journey.
The carpet pattern beneath my feet began to animate, swirls of crimson unfurling like blooming roses, navy lines forming arrows that pointed in contradictory directions. The ceiling seemed to lower, then recede to cathedral heights. A chandelier transformed into a constellation of stars, then back again.
“I don’t understand what you want from me,” I called to the bat, my voice sounding strange in my ears—both too loud and too distant.
The bat paused at a roulette table where no one sat, the wheel spinning without a dealer’s hand to guide it. Numbers flashed by—17, 34, 6, and others I couldn’t quite see—their meaning dancing just beyond my comprehension.
The bat’s wings beat the air without making a sound, its spectral form hovering over the spinning wheel. Something about those numbers tugged at me—each one a thread that seemed strangely connected to my life.
“Is this about money?” I whispered, my voice trembling. “Are you showing me a way out?”
I found myself moving closer, drawn by the hypnotic rotation of the wheel, each click of the silver ball against the polished wood sending vibrations through my chest.
“I’m afraid,” I admitted, both to the bat and to myself. “But I’m more afraid of what happens if I do nothing.”
The fear that had been my constant companion these past months—waking me in cold sweats, tightening my chest as I reviewed my dwindling accounts—suddenly felt different. It was still there, but now it stood alongside something else: a desperate, reckless hope.
The bat swooped away from the table, and I followed, moving faster now. My hesitation dissolved with each step, replaced by an urgent need to know what waited at the end of this bizarre journey.
“Where are we going?” I called after it. “What’s at the end of this?”
No answer came, but I no longer expected one. The spectral creature led me past a poker game where the players’ faces shifted between strangers and people I knew—my landlord, my bank manager, my competitors, happy to see me out of business.
I found myself hurrying, nearly jogging after the bat as it wove through the casino. The sounds around us began to change, the cheerful chimes of slot machines fading, the murmur of voices growing distant until they were barely whispers.
“Wait,” I called, but the bat pressed on, its luminous eyes fixed ahead.
We approached a velvet rope cordoning off a darkened corridor I hadn’t noticed before. The bat slipped through it, and I ducked under, feeling the plush material brush against my hair.
The noise of the casino fell away completely, as if someone had closed a heavy door between us and the main floor. The silence pressed against my ears, making them ring with its intensity.
“Hello?” I whispered. My voice didn’t echo; it seemed to be absorbed by the darkness around us.
The corridor narrowed, the walls closing in until they nearly touched my shoulders. The only light came from the bat’s eyes, twin points of bluish-white illumination guiding me forward.
The corridor suddenly opened into a small, circular room. The bat hovered in its center, directly above a single table draped in black velvet. On the table sat a deck of cards, their edges gleaming silver in the darkness.
“What is this place?” I asked, my voice barely audible even to myself.
My heart hammered against my ribs, blood rushing in my ears. Something profound awaited me here—I could feel it in the heaviness of the air, in the way the silence seemed to listen.
The bat descended to the table, its wings folding as it perched beside the deck of cards. It looked at me, then at the cards, then back at me, its intent unmistakable.
I stepped forward, each footfall seeming to take an eternity. My hand hovered over the deck, fingers trembling.
“This is madness,” I whispered, yet I couldn’t pull away. “Just a dream.”
But it didn’t feel like just a dream. It felt like standing at a crossroads, like being offered a key to a door I hadn’t known existed.
The bat’s eyes blazed brighter, and I felt a sensation of standing on the edge of an abyss, about to learn something that would change everything.
I reached for the cards—
And gasped awake, my body lurching upright in bed. The ceiling fan spun lazily above me, its gentle whirring replacing the casino’s cacophony. My alarm clock cast pale red numerals against the darkness: 3:17 AM. Sweat had plastered my nightgown to my skin, and my heart still thundered as if I’d been running.
“God,” I whispered, pressing my palms against my eyes.
The dream clung to me like cobwebs, refusing to dissolve completely. I could still feel the weight of anticipation in my fingertips, still see the bat’s luminous gaze fixed on mine.
I fumbled for the lamp switch, wincing as light flooded my small bedroom. The familiar surroundings—the chipped paint on the far wall, the stack of books on my nightstand, the framed photo of my grandmother—should have been comforting. Instead, they seemed hollow, as if the dream world contained more substance than my waking life.
“It was just a dream,” I told myself, but the words rang false.
My gaze drifted to the window, half-expecting to see a bat perched on the sill. There was nothing there, of course. Just the faint reflection of my own haunted face.
I slid out of bed and padded to the bathroom, splashing cold water on my face. In the mirror, my eyes looked different somehow—brighter, more determined than they’d been in months.
“Bats,” I murmured to my reflection. “Why bats?”
The memory surfaced like a corpse in still water: the night before my grandmother died, a bat had somehow gotten into her apartment. I’d been staying with her, helping with her medication. The creature had flapped frantically around her bedroom, its panic mirroring our own. By morning, my grandma had passed away.
“A harbinger,” I whispered, the realization jolting through me. “Death follows the bat.”
I returned to bed but sat upright against the headboard, unwilling to surrender again to sleep. My mind raced with connections forming like constellations.
The bat in my dream hadn’t been threatening—it had been guiding me. Leading me through the casino, to that table, to those cards…
“My shop,” I said aloud, clarity rushing in like cold air. “The bat isn’t predicting my death. It’s predicting the death of my shop.”
I hugged my knees to my chest, rocking slightly.
“But the casino… the cards…” I muttered, pieces shifting in my mind. “The bat wasn’t just showing me death. It was showing me a way out.”
A wild, desperate hope fluttered in my chest.
“Gambling,” I said, testing the word. “Is that it? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
The empty room offered no answer, but I felt something I hadn’t felt yet: possibility. Not just any gambling—there was something specific about that table, those cards, that secluded room away from the gaudy machines.
“A system,” I breathed. “A pattern. Something I can use.”
The desperate logic of the truly desperate, perhaps. But what choice did I have? Soon Mr. Goldstein would change the locks on my shop. And not long after, I’d be unable to pay my own rent.
I reached for my grandmother’s photo, tracing her smile with my fingertip.
“You always said I had good intuition,” I whispered. “Was this you, sending me a message? When my spirits refuse to give me a clear answer, you will?”
The silence felt weighted, pregnant with meaning I couldn’t quite grasp. But one thing was certain—the dream wasn’t random. It was a sign, as surely as that bat had been a sign all those years ago.
Dawn began to creep around the edges of my curtains, gray light seeping into the room. With it came resolution, sharp and clear as broken glass.
I paced the cramped confines of my apartment, my mind racing faster than my feet could follow.
“Gambling magic,” I muttered, the words strange and thrilling on my tongue. “There has to be something to it.”
My grandmother had whispered stories of such things when I was young—rituals for luck, candles burned at specific hours, cards blessed under moonlight. I’d dismissed them as superstition, the fanciful beliefs of a woman born in a different time. Now I clung to those half-remembered tales like a drowning woman to driftwood.
I pulled my laptop from beneath a box of cards and typed frantically: *ancient gambling rituals*, *casino magic systems*, *how to guarantee wins at cards*. The results were a jumble of scams and desperate pleas from people as lost as me.
“Not good enough,” I said, slamming the laptop shut.
The clock on my nightstand showed 6:43 AM. The spiritual bookstore wouldn’t open until ten. Each minute felt like water slipping through my fingers.
“I can’t just sit here.”
I yanked open my dresser drawer and pulled out a decent outfit—black slacks and a blue blouse that didn’t scream desperation. My hands trembled as I laid them on the bed.
“Get it together, Rahel,” I told my reflection in the mirror. The woman staring back looked hollow-eyed, haunted. “You can’t show up looking like this. They’ll think you’re crazy.”
Maybe I was. But crazy was better than destitute.
I gathered my purse, checking the contents: wallet with its pitiful collection of cards and cash, notebook, pen, phone. On impulse, I opened my jewelry box and removed the silver pendant my grandmother had given me shortly before her passing.
“For protection,” she’d whispered.
“What else?” I muttered, scanning the room. My gaze fell on the small wooden box where I kept the few remaining mementos of my shop’s early success—a newspaper clipping, the first dollar I’d earned, a photo of the ribbon-cutting.
I hesitated, then tucked the box into my bag. A reminder of what I stood to lose.
The sunlight strengthened, casting long shadows across my floor. Time was a luxury I no longer possessed. I changed quickly, movements sharp and precise, no wasted motion. The woman in the mirror looked different now—still afraid, but with purpose hardening her features.
“Three hours until the store opens,” I said, checking my watch. “I’ll get coffee, review what I know, be first in line when they unlock the doors.”
I grabbed my keys, hesitating at the threshold of my apartment. The reasonable part of me—the part that had managed a successful business—screamed that this was madness, a fool’s errand.
But the bat had shown me the way. And I had nothing left to lose.
The world outside my apartment seemed duller than the luminescent dream casino—a cruel parody of my subconscious creation. I descended the cracked concrete steps of my building, each footfall echoing against grimy walls tagged with faded graffiti. A far cry from the plush carpets and gilded corridors the spectral bat had guided me through.
Morning light strained through a veil of city smog, casting everything in a sickly yellow glow. The street was beginning to stir—delivery trucks rumbling past, early commuters shuffling with zombie-like determination toward bus stops and subway entrances.
“Spare some change, lady?” A man huddled in a doorway extended a paper cup toward me.
I hesitated, then dropped in my last dollar. “For luck,” I murmured, more to myself than to him.
“Luck?” He gave a hollow laugh. “Could use some of that myself.”
“Couldn’t we all,” I replied, moving on before his desperation could mirror my own too closely.
The amulet bounced against my collarbone as I walked, keeping time with my quickening steps. My grandmother’s voice seemed to whisper with each tap against my skin: *Follow the signs, Rahel. They’ve always been there.*
I cut through an alley that smelled of last night’s rainfall and this morning’s garbage. A dead rat lay on its back, paws curled toward the sky. I looked away quickly, but not before noticing its wing-like forepaws. Another bat. Another sign.
“I’m coming,” I whispered. “I’m listening now.”
The neighborhood changed as I walked. Coffee shops replaced liquor stores; yoga studios stood where pawnshops once dominated. The irony wasn’t lost on me—I was seeking ancient wisdom in this sanitized landscape of modern spirituality.
My destination appeared at the corner—Ethereal Enlightenment, its name painted in flowing purple script across a storefront window. Crystal prisms hung in the glass, fracturing the morning light into rainbow shards that danced across the sidewalk.
The door was propped open despite the early hour. A sandwich board on the sidewalk proclaimed, “Find What Seeks You.”
I paused, heart suddenly hammering against my ribs. “This is insane,” I told myself. “You’re chasing a dream. Literally.”
But then I thought of the bat’s glowing eyes guiding me through the casino.
“Sometimes insanity is just what we call the truth when it’s uncomfortable,” I muttered, echoing something my grandmother once said.
The small brass bell above the door chimed softly as I stepped inside. The air smelled of sandalwood and old paper. Shelves lined every wall, crammed with books whose spines formed a colorful mosaic of promises—ancient wisdom, hidden knowledge, secret rituals.
A woman with silver hair and eyes like polished onyx looked up from behind the counter. “I’ve been expecting you,” she said, her voice smooth as river stones.
I froze. “You have?”
She smiled, revealing teeth too perfect to be natural. “In a manner of speaking. Someone always comes when the doors open. What are you seeking today?”
My fingers touched the amulet at my throat. “I need to know about gambling magic. Luck spells. Ways to… influence chance.”
“Ah.” Her smile never wavered, but something in her eyes shifted. “Looking to beat the house, are we?”
“Looking to save my house,” I corrected, moving closer to the counter. “And my business. My life, really.”
She studied me for a long moment. “The books you seek are in the back corner. Under lock and key.” She lifted a small brass key from beneath the counter. “Not everyone who wants this knowledge should have it.”
“And I should?”
“I don’t judge who should or shouldn’t,” she replied, holding out the key. “I only guard the door. What happens after you step through is between you and whatever powers you invoke.”
My hand trembled slightly as I reached for the key. “What if I’m making a terrible mistake?”
“What if you’re not?” she countered. “Sometimes the greatest risk is refusing the path laid before us.”
The key was warm in my palm, as if it had absorbed her body heat—or perhaps it contained some energy of its own. The bat in my dreams had led me here, to this moment, this decision.
“Third bookcase from the right,” she said. “Bottom shelf. Look for the green bindings.”
I nodded, clutching the key so tightly its teeth bit into my flesh. As I turned toward the back of the store, she called after me.
“Remember, Rahel—magic doesn’t create. It only redirects.”
I stopped, a chill crawling up my spine. “How do you know my name?”
Her laugh was soft, musical. “You’re wearing your nametag from the shop. ‘Rahel’s Empowering Tarot.‘ Quaint name.”
I glanced down. My hand instinctively covered the small brass pin I’d forgotten to remove. “Right. Of course.”
The floorboards creaked beneath my feet as I made my way to the back of the store, each step bringing me closer to knowledge I wasn’t sure I was ready for. But the image of the spectral bat remained vivid in my mind, its glowing eyes promising salvation.
I found the bookcase with its small brass lock, inserted the key, and turned it. The lock clicked open, revealing a row of slim volumes bound in deep crimson leather.
“Help me,” I whispered to no one and everyone. “Show me the way.”
