Annie adjusted her turban and rearranged the folds of her black velvet robes for what seemed like the thousandth time. The bracelets on her arms jangled softly, and she paused to examine her fingernails, which Kate had spent half an hour painting a deep red. She liked the polish, which she'd never tried before, but she wished she hadn't let Kate convince her not to wear her glasses.

She could see things close up, but anything farther away than the ends of her arms started to get blurry. She was just able to make out the entrance to the tent, but it was as if she was looking at everything under water. She couldn't believe that they had talked her into doing this. What had she been thinking? What if she made a mess of everything? What if nobody even came? At least then no one will see you looking like some kind of thrift-store genie, she thought, once more pushing back the turban, which kept threatening to slip down over her forehead.

Despite her reservations, she had to admit that she was sort of getting into playing the part of Miss Fortune, Tarot reader and seer into the future. They'd done a great job of setting up her tent for the carnival. The table in front of her was covered with a black cloth, and there were candles flickering in different parts of the tent, filling it with constantly moving shadows. All in all, the mood was very witchy.

It had all been Cooper's idea. Two weeks before, during their weekly Wicca study group at Crones' Circle bookstore, they had been working with Tarot cards. Archer was describing the different cards and their meanings, and Annie had been fascinated by them. She'd been doing a lot of reading about the Tarot on her own, and it was fun to put what she'd learned to use. Archer showed them how to do a simple reading using five cards, and then they'd split into pairs to practice. Annie and Cooper had been partners, and Annie had really gotten into it.

But when Cooper suggested that Annie tell fortunes at the upcoming school carnival, held every year before finals, she'd hesitated. For one thing, she was still getting over the events of the weeks before, when she, Cooper, and Kate had become involved in solving the murder of a girl at school and Annie had been used as a hostage by the girl's killer. Even more important, while she'd practiced with the Tarot cards a lot outside of class, she wasn't at all sure she could read them accurately, especially for other people.

Cooper and Kate worked on her, however, and finally she agreed to give it a try, if only to get her friends off her back. Now, sitting in the tent they'd put up for her and waiting for her first visitor to come inside, she decided that she'd made a terrible mistake, excellent costume or not. She listened to the sounds of the carnival going on outside her tent. There were booths of all kinds set up around the school grounds, and the air was filled with voices as people talked, laughed, and shouted to one another. Why would any of them come in here? Annie asked herself. There were so many other things to see and do.

Every club, class, and student organization had come up with something to do for the carnival, so there was a lot going on. She herself was doing the readings to raise money for a new science lab.

She sat there for fifteen minutes, listening to everyone else having a good time and smelling the scent of popcorn and hot dogs that wafted in on the breeze. Her stomach rumbled, and she thought about how much nicer it would be to be chewing on a sugary sweet cloud of cotton candy and talking to her friends. She was just about to take the irritating turban off and call it quits when she saw the flaps of the tent open and someone came inside. Between the darkness and her bad eyesight, she wasn't sure who it was.

"Welcome," she said, trying her best to sound mysterious but coming across more like she had a bad cold. "I am Miss Fortune. Please sit."

"How very spooky," the person said, walking to the table and dropping into the chair across from Annie. "And what a lovely turban. Very Aladdin."

Any excitement Annie might have been feeling about playing Miss Fortune disappeared as soon as she recognized the voice and saw the familiar face framed by the glow of candlelight. It was Sherrie Adams. Of all the people who could possibly walk through the tent flaps, why did popular-but-mean Sherrie have to be her first customer? If Annie hadn't been nervous before, she certainly was now. If there was anyone at Beecher Falls High School who would like to see Annie Crandall make a fool of herself, it was Sherrie.

Sherrie was looking at Annie expectantly, a mocking smile on her face as she twirled her long, curly black hair around her finger. Her eyes sparkled mischievously in the candlelight, and Annie knew that she was dying to get back to her friends and tell them how ridiculous Annie's performance was. She'd probably recite it word for word, embellishing the story with dramatic gestures. Annie had witnessed Sherrie's storytelling abilities more than once in the school cafeteria, and she knew Sherrie would use this opportunity to get more than a few laughs at her expense.

"Well?" said Sherrie teasingly. "Are you waiting for your crystal ball to warm up or something?"

Annie tried to relax. She had to say something. She couldn't just sit there and hope Sherrie would go away. She picked up the deck of Tarot cards sitting on the table and began to shuffle them, buying time while she thought. She could sense Sherrie growing impatient as she slid the cards from hand to hand, so finally she brought the deck together and placed it on the table. She turned five cards over one by one and laid them out in a row, hoping she would be able to pull off the reading.

She saw Sherrie staring at the cards and wondered if the other girl had any idea what they meant. She doubted it. Probably she could say whatever she wanted to and Sherrie would believe it. I should just tell her that she's going to be really popular and really successful, Annie thought, knowing that would be exactly what Sherrie wanted to hear.

She looked at the five cards she'd turned over. As she gazed at the pictures, she tried to remember everything she'd read in the book she'd been using to learn about the cards' meanings. Each card could have several different interpretations, and remembering everything was difficult, particularly with the added pressure of knowing that Sherrie wanted her to fail.

"This reading is very interesting," she said, and saw Sherrie roll her eyes.

It was true, though. Sherrie's reading was interesting. As Annie let her eyes wander over the five cards that represented some aspect of Sherrie's life, she saw a pattern emerge. It was as if the cards were telling her a story, a story she then shared with Sherrie.

"You're going somewhere," Annie said, touching a card depicting a woman in a boat. "A trip."

"A trip?" Sherrie said as if she didn't believe Annie. "Where?"

Annie shook her head. "I don't know," she said, looking at the other cards. "But it's going to be somewhere you've never been. And you're going to meet someone there. I think it's a young man."

"This gets better and better," Sherrie said sarcastically. "Couldn't you at least come up with something a little more original?"

"I'm just telling you what the cards say," Annie insisted.

"Right," said Sherrie. "So what else is there?"

"Romance," Annie continued. "But I don't know how it will end. That's where the cards stop."

"I see," Sherrie said. "So I'm going to go on a trip to somewhere I've never been and have a romance with some guy I've never met?"

Annie sighed. She knew she should have just made something up instead of telling Sherrie what the cards really showed her. Anyone else would have been happy to hear that she might be going somewhere and meeting someone. Sherrie, however, was determined to make the worst of it.

"Since the only trip I'll be taking any time soon is the one this summer to see my grandmother in Florida -- where I've been about a billion times -- and since the only guys there are all my cousins, I think you're a little off," she said. "But thanks for trying. Maybe you'll have better luck with the next victim who comes in."

She stood up, gave Annie a final smirk, and marched out. Annie looked down at the cards on the table. Then she took out the Tarot book she'd been using to study from and looked up each card one at a time to make sure she'd read them correctly. She really hadn't made anything up. The cards showed her exactly what she'd told Sherrie they said. She couldn't help it if her reading sounded like the sort of thing a Gypsy fortune-teller would say. It was what the cards said.

She closed the book and gathered up the cards. As she reshuffled the deck, she tried not to think about what Sherrie was probably saying to her friends at that very moment. She didn't need any Tarot cards to foresee how that was playing out, and she knew that it meant that her future was anything but bright.

"Hey," a voice said, interrupting her gloomy thoughts.

Annie looked up. Sasha was standing in the doorway. Sasha had been going to Beecher Falls High School with the girls ever since coming to town a few months before. A runaway, she had been taken in by Thea, one of the members of the coven that ran Crones' Circle bookstore. But she hadn't been in school much recently, mainly because her case was being reviewed and she was spending a lot of time going through the process required to allow Thea to officially be appointed her guardian.

"Hi," Annie said brightly, pleased to see her friend. "Did you come for a reading?"

"No time," Sasha answered. "I'm helping the drama club out with the kissing booth. But Cooper and Kate said you were here, so I thought I'd drop in for a minute. How's it going?"

"Okay, I guess," Annie replied. "I predict a slow day."

"Well, we have a line at the kissing booth," Sasha told her. "There are some hotties in it, so I need to get back. If my lips get tired I'll check back in later."

Sasha waved good-bye and disappeared through the curtains, leaving Annie more dejected than before. Everyone else seemed to be having a great time, and she was stuck inside a hot tent. Her first reading had been a disaster, and the robes were making her sweat. Why had she said yes to this? Only four more hours, she thought grimly as she checked her watch, slumped in her chair, and waited for the next customer to arrive.

Later that night Annie was sitting in her bedroom with Kate and Cooper, feeling much better. While she had been telling fortunes they had been involved in their own carnival activities: Kate had helped the rest of the athletic department run a dunking booth featuring some of the more popular teachers at school, and Cooper had assisted a friend who was in charge of the sound equipment. They hadn't seen each other all day, and now they were catching up over the pizza Annie's aunt had ordered for them.

"You should have seen Mr. Draper's face when he went into the tank," Kate said, recalling her favorite moment of the day. "It was priceless."

Annie hadn't told Cooper and Kate that Sherrie had come to see Miss Fortune for a reading. She knew Kate was still sensitive about her old friends, and Cooper would definitely say something rude about Sherrie if Annie brought her up. Besides, it had been a long day, and she would just as soon forget about it.

"I hear you did big business today," Cooper said, turning to her. "So was I right, or was I right?"

"It went okay," Annie said vaguely. "I'm kind of tired, actually."

The truth was, she was exhausted. After Sherrie there had been a steady stream of customers for her tent after all. She'd been totally shocked at how many people wanted to have their cards read. She had done reading after reading. Luckily, none of the people who came in had been as intimidating as Sherrie, and most of them seemed satisfied with hearing that everything was going to go well for them. Annie was happy about how much money she'd helped to raise, but she was surprised at how much doing the readings had taken out of her.

"I told you that you could do it," said Cooper. "You're a natural."

"It was a Tarot reading that brought us all back together, remember?" Kate commented as she picked up another slice, pulled a piece of pepperoni from it, and popped it into her mouth.

Annie looked over at the altar the three of them had set up near the window just the week before. Because they did a lot of their group rituals in Annie's bedroom, they'd decided to make an altar there with things that were important to all of them. Besides, Annie's aunt was open about her niece's involvement in Wicca. Cooper's parents reluctantly allowed her to have a small altar in her room, but Kate's parents knew nothing about their daughter's interest in the Craft. She didn't like to keep too many magical things in her room at home, in case someone accidentally stumbled across them, so she kept most of her witchcraft-related items at Annie's house.

One of those things was a Tarot card that Archer had given Kate when Kate was first trying to make sense of her interest in Wicca. It was the Three of Cups, and it depicted three young women holding up goblets as if they were toasting their friendship. It reminded the girls of their own friendship, and it had seemed a natural thing to place in the center of the group altar. Looking at it, Annie marveled at how seeing that card in a reading had made Kate take a chance on trusting Cooper and Annie to help her when her spells went wrong. She'd taken it as a sign, and she'd acted accordingly.

I guess people really do take the cards seriously, she thought to herself. But what would have happened if instead of the Three of Cups, Kate had drawn a different card, one that warned her against letting Annie and Cooper help her? Would she have followed its advice, or would she have risked believing in her friends despite the warning? How much influence did Tarot readings have on people anyway? She hadn't really thought about that before. It just seemed like fun, but now Annie was worried. What if what she'd told people affected them and the decisions they made? What if something bad happened because of it?

"Did that card really make you decide to stay with the group?" she asked Kate.

Kate thought for a minute, still chewing her pizza. "I wouldn't say it made me decide to stay," she said. "It was more like it confirmed things I already knew. I think deep down I really wanted to trust you guys, but I was afraid. When Archer showed me the card and told me what it meant, it kind of broke through that fear. It was like someone else was confirming what I wanted to hear."

"Say something else had come up instead," Annie continued. "Some card that wasn't as positive. What do you think you would have done?"

Kate shrugged. "I really don't know," she said. "I'm just glad that one did come up."

"What's with the questions?" Cooper asked Annie. "Did you tell a few people they were going to die or something today?"

"No," Annie answered. "I was just thinking about it, that's all. People seem to want to know what's going to happen to them, but only if it's good stuff."

"Did anyone you saw have a negative reading?" asked Kate.

"Not really," said Annie. "A couple of them got cards that weren't exactly sunshine and kittens, but nothing too awful."

"And did you tell them when the cards weren't good?" Cooper wanted to know.

"I tried to be neutral," admitted Annie. "I figured it wouldn't do anyone any good to get bummed out."

"So what did you see?" Kate asked.

"Oh, you know," Annie said in her most mysterious voice. "The usual. Lots of change. Lots of unexpected events." She thought about Sherrie and added, "Lots of romance."

"Sounds good to me," commented Cooper. "I'm sure everyone went home happy."

"I'm just afraid they might take it too seriously," said Annie. "I meant for it to be fun."

"That's not your problem," Kate said. "You can't be responsible for everyone."

"I know," Annie agreed. "But I do feel sort of responsible. I mean, isn't it sort of like doing a spell? You put this stuff out there and it has some kind of effect."

"You just did a few readings," Kate said, closing the pizza box. "It's done. Over. No one got hurt. Now let me see your nails."

Annie held out her hands for Kate's appraisal.

"This is a good color for you," Kate said. "Summer's coming, so let's do your toes."

Annie began to protest, but Kate had already retrieved the nail polish from her bag and was shaking it vigorously. Annie knew that it wouldn't do any good to put up a fight, so she tugged her socks off and let Kate take one of her feet in her hands, put toilet paper between her toes, and begin painting.

"I guess you're right," Annie said, leaning back against the pillows on her bed as Kate worked on her feet. "I didn't tell anyone anything that might cause any trouble."

"That you know of," Cooper said, looking at Annie's nails doubtfully.

"That's enough out of you," Kate said to Cooper, pointing the fingernail polish brush at her. "One more word and we're doing your toes in bubble-gum pink."

Cooper feigned a look of horror and tucked her feet underneath her while Annie laughed. Kate's right, Annie thought. I'm taking this too seriously. It was just a game. She was glad that, as usual, her friends were around to remind her when she was getting too uptight about things. The Tarot readings were just harmless fun.

Probably, she told herself as Kate made her toes sparkle, everyone has forgotten all about them already.