Taehyung watched as Amaris gracefully walked through the dark room lighting candles. She looked like a ghost, a pale frame gliding across the floor. She was rather wasteful in her candle lighting, striking a new match for each candle she had to light. He figured, though, that with all the ornate things in the house, Amaris didn't have to worry about being conservative.

As Amaris continued her rounds, lighting the just absurd amount of candles, Taehyung wondered what she would do. He was still skeptic about the existence of the Oracle, so far Amaris had done nothing to prove the existence of this all-knowing entity except acting painfully lonely. He almost wanted to believe in the Oracle; he wanted to believe that Amaris' pain wasn't for nothing.

"Why so many candles?" Taehyung half laughed when Amaris finally finished.

"Ambiance." She shrugged rather nonchalantly and sat before him.

Amaris reached out to grab Taehyung's hands in hers. He shivered from the contact, her icy fingers sending goosebumps up his arms. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, turning his hands so his fingers pointed to the ceiling and interlaced her fingers in his.

Taehyung watched Amaris' face carefully, seeing the slight wrinkle between her eyebrows as she focused on something. As he watched her, Amaris' features flitted through several emotions: happiness, sadness, remorse, and joy.

"You've had a good life in the past ten years," she said when she opened her eyes, a slight smile on her lips.

"Have I?" Taehyung raised an eyebrow. He was shocked by his own words which held a certain animosity. It wasn't like he disliked Amaris, but he couldn't help how he felt about the ridiculous word of the supernatural.

"You did well in school, graduated top of your class in university," she said with her scratchy low voice, "you even got the job at the police department only a few months after graduating. You've got a great rate in how many cases you solve, you're practically the best."

"No offense, but anyone could figure that out with a simple Google search," Taehyung muttered.

"You're right." Amaris nodded. "But you have to keep in mind, Taehyung, that I'm not trying to prove anything to you. I just asked the Oracle if she would show me how you've been because you were my best friend."

"She?" Taehyung was caught off guard. He thought something as great as the Oracle would be genderless.

"I don't know much about the Oracle, but I do know that she prefers female pronouns." Amaris lifted her shoulders just a centimeter up in a very pathetic shrug. "She hated it when people would refer to her as 'it'."

"Well, what else did she show you?" Taehyung asked. He didn't want to admit he was curious, but rather justified it to himself as wanting to see if Amaris could come up with something about him that couldn't be found through the internet or a phone call.

"She showed me how angry you were with me when I left without a word." Amaris looked at him with sad eyes. "I can't apologize enough about that."

Taehyung didn't say anything as Amaris grabbed his hands again and closed her eyes. This time, her eyes snapped open almost immediately and she pulled her hands away quickly.

"I'm so sorry." Her voice quivered as she covered with her hand. "I'm so, so sorry. I shouldn't have seen that."

"What? What did you see?" Taehyung asked, placing his palms firmly against the table.

"Your fiancé...your leg." She shook her head, sending her locks into disarray. "Neither of you deserved that."

As Amaris spoke, Taehyung's mind was flung to the past, to a dark night on a winding road with rain pelting down from the heavens. He could remember vividly the screams of his fiancé, the screech of the tires, the blinding pain, the EMTs saying she was DOA and they couldn't save his leg. It was his fault. She had wanted to stop a few miles back. If they had just stopped, maybe even paused for a few moments, they wouldn't have been on that bend when the drunk driver in the red sedan drove into the wrong lane. They would have been safe if he listened to her. If he just...

"It's fine, it's in the past," Taehyung said firmly, shaking away his thoughts.

Amaris nodded despite looking decidedly unconvinced. Instead of prying, she pulled out a deck of tarot cards and placed them in the middle of the table.

"I'm going to do a simple three card reading on this case for some guidance, and then I would like if you take me to the crime scenes," Amaris said.

"There's dozens of crime scenes," Taehyung said, "the most recent is two decades old. I don't know what you think you're going to find there."

"You'd be surprised the ghosts of the past that hang around," Amaris murmured as she picked up the deck and began to shuffle.

Carefully, quickly, she moved the cards into some random order. After shuffling for about a minute, she began to lay them out. She would first set aside exactly seven and then turn over a card to face Taehyung. The first card was the Tower, followed by the Devil and the Lovers.

"Well that doesn't match," Taehyung chuckled. He knew those card tricks were a sham.

"Not necessarially." Amaris shook her head, cupping her cheeks in her hands and staring intently. "See, it reads as past, present and future. The Tower in the past means that something drastic happened to cause this. The Tower signifies an end, a fall."

"So whoever is doing this fell from great heights?" Taehyung asked.

"Perhaps," Amaris said, "you have to keep in mind that tarot is an outline, an interpretation. Nothing is to be taken at face value with tarot."

"Okay, so what does the Devil maybe mean?" Taehyung raised an eyebrow.

"A keyword for that card would be trickery," Amaris chuckled lightly, "but the card is not inherently bad. It's a card about , metaphorical and internal . This card calls for us to look deeper into the meaning of the truth in this situation. To solve this case, we'll have to dig deep." 

"One of these things is not like the other," Taehyung said, tapping the Lovers card gently.

"It signifies a choice," Amaris sighed, running her hand through her hair. "Somewhere in this journey, we'll have a decision to make. What kind, however, we won't know until we get there."

"This is all a whole lot of vague card stuff. You know that, right?" Taehyung looked at Amaris, trying to find something in her eyes that could convince him to believe her.

"Taehyung, I can't make you believe in all these things that fill my everyday life." Amaris shook her head and took his hands in hers. "All I can do is guide you to help solve these murders. Whether you believe me or not is up to you completely. But I do want you to respect that this is how I see the world. This is what my life has been for the past ten years, and I can't escape that."

She let go of Taehyung's hands and began to put her tarot deck back in order. Taehyung looked at her with wonder. Everything she said and did led him to believe that the Oracle was indeed real to some degree. His own personal beliefs from his whole life, however, made him a natural skeptic. He couldn't possibly believe in the supernatural with outrageous things like angels, demons, ghosts, and oracles. This wasn't a fairy tale, this was real life.

This was real life and whether he wanted to admit it or not, he needed Amaris' help.