Yes!  Yes!  Yes!

Nico can read a spread like this as easily as he reads English.  He's supposed to be outside during the day (the Sun in the south, a source of energy, doubled fire alignment), alone (stability from the two in the north reversed by the upside-down card, a warning against performative enjoyment, the Hermit to the east, connection and communication denied), near here (passivity of the four of cups, reflection rather than action), and at the intersection of all four elements (the alignment of the cards and compass points, the progressive dislocation of the spread).  It should be easy to find a spot tonight, with the GPS or just driving around, and then he'll call his two henchmen down from the lake and they can finish setting up.  The rest is going to be easy!

Nico takes a few deep breaths, tries to tamp his spreading elation down to something more reasonable.  The cards are dangerous; you want to approach them with a tranquil mind, always.  But he's so close!  He flips the four cards back over, piles them back together.

Oh, by the way, what were the thermometers doing?

73.2 degrees to the left, 75.7 degrees to the right.

Time for the third deck, then.

Conventional alchemical wisdom says there's only so good a Tarot deck can be.  Nobody thinks the Rider-Waite deck is the best possible representation of the core building blocks of the human mind, it's just that if you want better symbols a human has to paint them, staring at them for hours or days while picturing them perfectly.  Not a lot of people can improve on Rider-Waite; hardly anybody can paint 78 cards and still retain enough personality to remember why they're doing it.

Nico had to invent a whole new method, painting a dozen cards at once to keep any particular one from digging into his mind too deeply.  Even then, this last deck took him two years and almost half a million dollars of highly customized image-editing software, supplied by a confused team of freelance programmers from Poland.  The details could fill a book, if Nico ever had the patience to write one, but the gist is that he drew them all on a computer according to his own sense of what was right, printed and laminated them with his own customized equipment, and has never seen or precisely visualized a whole card from the deck.

They're big for playing cards, probably longer than your hand.  Between that and the lamination you'd think they'd be hard to shuffle, but they're not: they like to stick together.  Cutting them can be difficult.  Once, as an experiment, Nico peeled off the top card and tried to throw it away.  A stray breeze caught it, inside his sealed workshop, and dropped it right back on top of the deck.

He keeps them in a lead box when he's not using them.

He lays the deck face-up on the table, his palm over the top card, and smears them over the table, just the top-left corners showing.  Then, just like it says on his checklist, he declares his intention:

I will break in the doors of hell and smash the bolts; there will be confusion of people, those above with those from the lower depths. I shall bring up the dead to eat food like the living; and the hosts of dead will outnumber the living.

He wanted to learn it in Akkadian, the language the Epic of Gilgamesh was originally written in, four thousand years ago.  But no one knows it; the sounds scholars make when the speak Akkadian to each other are all lies, guesses to make it easier to talk about the language.  English will have to do.

A lot more people spoke it than ever spoke Akkadian, anyway.

The animals hated that!

The basement explodes with noise: cats snarling, geese hissing, and cages rattling,   The rabbits are screaming like you tried to kill them.  They're just making animal sounds but you imagine you can hear them saying, "Go!  Get out of here!  You don't belong in this town!"

This takes Nico back to his school days too, back before he learned to make his weirdness productive, to stand in front of crowds instead of just outside them.  He won't bother putting everything away properly, he'll just pinch out the candle, grab his bag and deck, and flee up the stairs.  Then he'll take a minute, leaning against the door, and run a little energy up and down his spine and vagus nerve until he has himself back together.

It's ok, he reminds himself, that he feels this way.  Alchemists can't have any buried trauma; to refine yourself you have to know yourself.  But unburied trauma is allowed, temporarily.

Gradually, as your nerves settle, you become aware that someone's knocking on the front door.

Now what.  There's only the one door (right?) but Nico could flee out a kitchen window...but no, his car is parked out front.

Ok.  Fine.  He'll put his deck away in its lead box, but he'll pull out the Tower first, and put it in his pocket.  Just in case.

Who's at the door?

The Raymond, New Hampshire police force is not in the habit of sending a car over every time Missus Emery thinks she saw a stranger.  Raymond is a small New England town, yes, but there are limits.  But usually she thinks she saw someone planning to break into the graveyard down the street and steal the bones, or do heathen rituals, or whatever bad people get up to in graveyards.  "A strange car is parked outside Mr. Lane's house" is actually pretty mundane, for her, which wraps around and makes it weird again.

And Mr. Lane himself is a bit of an enigma, in fact.  Bought his house for cash 12 years ago.  Allegedly had people out west in California, or maybe in Florida; rumors disagreed.  No close friends, no visible means of support.  Maybe a writer, maybe a retired stock broker; rumors disagreed about that, too.  Pays neighborhood kids to keep up his lawn, instead of doing it himself.  Nothing illegal about any of that, of course.  Just odd.

And there is that missing kid.  The Merrill boy, Ken, Keith, no, Kyle Merrill.  No reason to expect him to be here, or even alive at all, for all they'd talked around it with the boy's father.  Mysterious, though.  The last kid they lost was that poor girl who drowed herself, six years back now.  No mystery there; her parents moved away, afterwards, and good riddance.  But Kyle's folks were good people.

And now that Officer Radley is driving past, sure enough, there's a strange car in the driveway, an old blue Toyota with Massachusetts license plates.  Mr. Lane drove a Ford, Radley seems to recall, big enough that you could hardly miss it, but it's not here now.

Radley came out here without a partner, like they always do when they want to soothe Missus Emery down.  He's tempted to get on the radio, call for backup, do things right...but no.  His boss already razzes him for reading Stephen King; if he lets himself get spooked by a stray car he'll be hearing about it for months.

Better just to get it over with.  Radley parks his car, blocking in the Toyota, and walks up to the front door and knocks.  

The cops are here?!  They shouldn't even know the wizard's dead yet, how could they -- probably they don't.  Probably this is something else.

This is fine, he can talk his way through.  Nothing he's carrying is illegal, and any weird stuff in the house clearly isn't his responsibility.  He doesn't live here, he's just, let's think, the dead wizard's nephew, visiting from Ohio.  Nico was born in Ohio, he can sell that even if the cop was born in Youngstown, or something absurdly unlucky like that.  Worst case, the body he's wearing isn't even his.  Whatever he does here doesn't have to be foolproof, it just has to hold up for one more day.

He'll set down his bag by one of the recliners, then pull open the door.

"Oh, hi officer, how can I help you?"

The kid looks familiar.  Probably a local, though he can't place the name.  16, 17, somewhere in there.  Real composed.  Most kids are a little shy of the uniform at first, Radley finds, but not this one.  Odd, just odd.

"Afternoon, son," he hears himself say.  "You mind if I come inside?  This might take a minute."  There's no strategy behind this, just instinct: no matter what, it's always best to do things behind closed doors.

"Uh, sure, I guess.  Come on in."  Over the cop's shoulder, he'll check for a second one in the car, then step aside and wave him in.

"You want a glass of water or something?  I should tell you, if you came to talk to my uncle, he won't be back until later."

Uncle, huh?  Not a lot of family resemblence there, Sam Lane was a big blonde guy.  Damn it, why is he so familiar?

"That's funny, I didn't know Sam had any siblings.  I always thought he was an only child."

"He had a younger sister, at least.  She died when I was little, maybe he doesn't like talking about her?"

That doesn't quite scan, to Radley.  The kid's a little too eager to explain himself, a little too aware that his story might sound like bullshit.

"Well, it's good to meet you, Sam's nephew.  I'm officer Radley."

Ugh why hasn't he said what the problem is.

Nico can't remember the name on his stolen driver's license.  He's probably only looked at it once this whole time, and he's been busy.  "I'm Nick, uh, Nick Tempesta."  Okay, Nico's fake dad is Italian apparently.

Those "uh"s aren't doing it for Radley either.  Too controlled somehow, like hearing a dog say "woof" instead of barking.  He nods in a friendly way, walks around the kid a little like he's headed to the kitchen, and tries like hell to think who he reminds him of.

"And what brings you here to Raymond, if you don't mind my asking?"

No one ever says they mind; they think it sounds suspicious.

He absolutely minds but you're not supposed to say that, are you.  "I, uh," what's a story a small-town cop would find sympathetic, "I got in a fight with my stepmom.  Uncle" what was his name "Samuel said last time that if it happened again he'd put me up for the weekend and give everybody a chance to cool off, you know?  He even gave me a key, see?"  He roots it out of his pocket as evidence.  "I'm not running away, honest; I'm driving back tomorrow night."

Oh no, what if the cop wants to talk to his fake parents.  Is there a number he remembers that he's sure no one will pick up at...

It's the phrase "running away" that makes it click, for Radley. Dark hair, skinny, little hints of Chinese ancestry in the nose and chin. This kid looks like a teenage Abe Merrill, is what, and lately Abe is better known as "the missing kid's dad". Four out of four members of Raymond law enforcement agreed that poor Kyle was probably dead, but he could just have run away, and stayed away. "Nick Tempsta", Radley's hairy ass; this kid's name is Kyle. When Radley can get a minute he'll check the picture on his phone, just to be sure. Or no, not "just to be sure", he's already sure. Just because that's what you do.

Run away, stayed away, and then popped up at Sam Lane's place for some goddamn reason. Running from something? Hiding from something? He disappeared in Boston, so maybe drugs? How did Lane pay for this nice house, anyway? Radley is starting to get excited; clearly something's gone wrong, here, and for once he might be able to fix it before anything bad happened. Thank you Missus Emery, he thinks, for showing me this. I'll patrol that damn graveyard every day in your honor.

He circles back around. Takes another look at the kid, tries to casually put himself between him and the door. He looks tired, Radley thinks. Tired, and too skinny. But he doesn't act tired, does he. Mark down another point in the "drugs" column. And his accent is weird, you'd never guess he grew up here. Trying to hide? Should have dyed your hair, he thinks, but he's real glad he didn't. To think he almost missed this!

Radley thinks a second more, picks an angle. "That makes sense to me," he says easily. "My boys don't fight with my wife much, but they're just five and nine, and anyway she's their real mother. It makes a difference. Everyone says it gets bad when they're teenagers, and then it gets better. You're, what, seventeen? I remember seventeen. Everything big, everything urgent, world fulla disasters and opportunities. I did some dumb stuff, I don't mind telling you, but seventeen's a good age for that."

How is this landing?

Nick Tempesta can be seventeen, sure. Nico's not really giving the speech his full attention, he's too busy trying to figure out what could have drawn the cop here in the first place. It's belatedly occuring to Nico that Samuel the wizard might have had mundane henchmen, just like Nico does, and set them to guard his house while he was up at the lake. That would be pretty paranoid, Nico's almost sure his ambush was a total surprise, but what if Officer Friendly here is a delaying action, meant to hold him in place for a counterattack?

He has to think of a way to get rid of this guy, without drawing any more mundane attention. Would the basement be enough of a distraction?

So, not landing. Fine, let's get direct.

"Look. I know your name's not Nick. You're Kyle Merrill, Abe's kid, Beth and Barney's grandson. You had to know someone might recognize you, if you came back. You didn't even dye your hair, for Chrissake. I think deep down you wanted some help. I want to help you, Kyle. But you have to tell me what's going on."

...is his body's name Kyle? It might be! But, like. He grabbed this kid in Boston. Why would his hometown be in New Hampshire? Why would it be this exact tiny town? WHAT ARE THE ODDS?

That's an interesting point, actually, "random coincidences" in alchemy often aren't. But he can't think about it now. There's zero chance the cop will let him out of sight, not now that he's solved a kidnapping, or whatever he thinks happened to Nico's borrowed body. Can he invent a story so good that the cop will have to go charging after it immediately, and give Nico a chance to slip away?

Nothing's coming to mind. Nico doesn't have time for this; his checklist just has three more items but they're big, and now he's thinking he wants to have everything wrapped up on Sunday morning, before too many more things have a chance to go wrong. Let's get this done and clear out. He'll have to ditch the car just in case, but he knows where he can get another...

He looks down. "You're right. And it's kinda complicated, but if you look at this you'll mostly get it. Then I'll answer your questions if you want." He reaches into his pocket, slowly and carefully, and pulls out the Tower.

It's a little annoying how careful the kid's being.  What does he think, that Radley's going to shoot him?  But whatever.  Probably he's about to see a photograph, maybe of something too unpleasant to talk about.  He takes a step closer and leans in to get a good look at whatever Kyle's trying to show him.

The Tower card traditionally depicts an isolated tower, struck by lightning and decapitated.  To either side we see falling figures, jumping out of or being flung from what was once a place of safety.  Nico's depiction shows the tower slightly tilted, and not quite centered in the frame, hinting that the foundation is unstable and that the whole building, and everyone in it, will soon come tumbling down.

Drawn in a spread, the Tower represents sudden, destabilizing change.  At its most hopeful it can presage freedom from a confining or oppressive structure (prison, a bad marriage, or the like), but to those who are satisfied -- or think they are -- it's very threatening.  The Tower is made of safety proven false, lies revealed, material wealth made useless, and weak foundations overthrown.  Whoever wrote that "Anything that can be destroyed by the truth should be" was standing very close to the essence of the card.

Radley's mind absorbs that image, and the Entity behind it.