“Customers. Come in, come in! What can I do for you today? A tarot reading, perhaps? Look at some tea leaves? Or perhaps a message from beyond?” Not my usual sales pitch, but it seems to work.

“We’d like card reading, please,” said the feminine half of the couple as they walked in. “Our families don’t approve of our dating, and we want to see if that will change.”

“For star-crossed lovers such as yourselves, this is on the house,” I say with a wink. I pull my cards out of their box, and give them a quick shuffle. Several cuts later I begin to lay out the cards in my usual pattern. No surprise here, the first card is the Lovers. The next two cards are the 2 of Cups and 10 of Wands. And then I pull a bombshell; the 10 of Swords.

Seeing my face turned white, the guy asked, “what’s wrong?”

I say nothing as I prepare protection bags for both of them. “Carry these with you always,” I tell them as I shuffle them out the door. Two days later, I hear that he was murdered.