The Reading Before He Died

The rapper was going to die on a Thursday.

Imani Reed knew this before she knew how, which was usually how the trouble started.

She sat frozen beneath the violet glow of her ring light, one hand resting on a deck of cards and the other hovering above her laptop. On the screen, the editing cursor blinked at the end of the title she had typed fifteen minutes earlier.

CARIO: CAREER, LOVE & WHAT HE’S HIDING | CELEBRITY TAROT

It was a good title. Searchable. Slightly messy without being legally adventurous. Exactly the kind of title that could pull twelve thousand views if the algorithm decided not to behave like a jealous relative.

But the video sitting beneath it was not a career reading.

Not anymore.

Imani looked down at the spread.

The Chariot reversed.

The Tower.

Six of Wands reversed.

Ten of Swords.

She had reshuffled twice after the Ten of Swords appeared. Then she switched decks, cleansed the table with smoke, opened the window, closed the window when Houston humidity slapped her in the face, and tried again.

The same message returned wearing different clothes.

A fast-moving vehicle.

A public fall.

An ending.

The second deck had given her the Coffin, the Crossroads, and the Rider reversed. Her oracle cards added one final insult: TIME IS SHORT.

“Absolutely not,” Imani whispered.

Her microphone caught it. The green sound bar jumped.

She leaned forward and paused the recording.

Cario smiled at her from the photograph propped beside the cards. Twenty-eight years old. Diamond teeth. Beautiful in the careless way of men who had survived enough to believe survival was a permanent condition. His latest album had gone platinum in three weeks. His face was on billboards, liquor ads, and at least two women’s forearms.

He had also spent the past month publicly unraveling.

There had been an arrest outside a nightclub in Atlanta, a fight with his former manager, and a cryptic livestream in which he said people close to him were “moving strange.” Celebrity blogs treated it like entertainment. His fans treated it like album promotion.

Imani had planned to treat it like rent.

She glanced at her channel dashboard. Forty-eight thousand subscribers and a monthly payout that looked like somebody had misplaced a zero. Her members loved her, but love did not negotiate with the electric company.

Two years earlier, she had been reading from a folding table wedged between her bed and the kitchen, filming on a phone that overheated every twenty minutes. Back then, one hundred views felt like a stadium. Now she understood the arithmetic of visibility: the platform could show her work to forty-eight thousand people and still pay her like it had been a private conversation. Celebrity readings kept the lights on because strangers cared more about famous people’s secrets than their own.

Imani had made peace with that. Mostly.

This reading was supposed to help.

Then she saw the chain.

It flashed behind her eyes: a thick silver chain hitting black pavement. A red EXIT sign flickering above a metal door. Rainwater running toward a storm drain.

And a digital clock.

2:17.

Imani jerked back so sharply that her chair struck the wall.

The vision vanished.

“No.” Her voice sounded smaller this time.

She rubbed both palms against her thighs. The room suddenly felt too warm, although the air conditioner rattled in the window like it was trying to leave the building.

She had seen things before.

Pregnancies. Breakups. Lawsuits. A secret marriage involving an actor whose public girlfriend learned about it three days after Imani uploaded the reading. She had predicted a reality star’s firing two weeks before the network announced it, and the clip still circulated whenever people wanted to call her gifted or demonic, depending on their mood.

But death was different.

Death turned intuition into accusation.

It made people ask whether you had seen something—or wanted it.

Imani reached for the Ten of Swords and flipped it face down.

“Cards reflect energy,” she told the empty room. “They do not dictate fixed outcomes.”

It was the responsible thing to say. It was also what readers said when a message scared the hell out of them.

Her phone buzzed.

Nia: You done? I can make the thumbnail tonight.

Imani typed, deleted, then typed again.

Imani: The reading got weird.

Three dots appeared immediately.

Nia: Weird like a secret baby, or weird like a federal indictment?

Imani: Worse.

The phone rang before Imani could put it down.

“What happened?” Nia asked.

Imani stared at Cario’s photograph. “I think something is going to happen to him.”

“Something always happens to him. That man wakes up inside a headline.”

“No. Something final.”

Silence settled between them.

Nia had been Imani’s best friend long enough to know when not to joke. She also knew that Imani softened frightening readings until they sounded like weather advisories.

“Did you see death?” she asked.

“I didn’t see him dead.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

Imani closed her eyes. The silver chain struck pavement again. In the vision, the pendant had landed faceup: a crowned serpent wrapped around the letter V.

Cario wore that chain everywhere.

“I saw something belonging to him,” Imani said. “On the ground. There was rain, a back exit, and a clock showing two seventeen.”

“Two seventeen in the morning?”

“I don’t know.”

“What day?”

Imani’s attention shifted to the calendar above her desk. She had circled Thursday because Cario was scheduled to headline the Meridian Music Awards that night.

Her stomach tightened.

“Thursday.”

Nia exhaled through her teeth. “Don’t post that.”

“I wasn’t planning to.”

“I mean any of it. People are crazy, Mani. If something happens, they’ll say you knew. If nothing happens, they’ll say you’re wishing death on him.”

“What if I’m supposed to warn him?”

“You and twelve million people can’t get close to Cario.”

“His manager has an email address.”

“And an assistant whose entire job is deleting emails from people who think God sent them.”

Imani frowned. “That was rude.”

“That was logistics.”

She knew Nia was right. Still, the room felt crowded now, charged by a presence she couldn’t name. Not a spirit exactly. More like pressure. A hand against the center of her back.

Do something.

“Send the warning privately,” Nia said, her voice gentler. “Keep it vague. Then scrap the video.”

Imani looked at the three hours of footage in her editing timeline. “All of it?”

“Yes.”

“You say that like my rent isn’t due.”

“Your landlord accepting blood money now?”

“If it clears.”

Nia laughed despite herself. “You’re going to hell.”

“Apparently I’ll have company.”

After they hung up, Imani opened Cario’s official website. The contact page listed booking, press, and management emails. She selected management.

For ten minutes, she stared at the blank message.

How did a sane person write this?

Hello, I read cards on YouTube and believe your internationally famous client may die near a wet loading dock?

She finally typed:

My name is Imani Reed. I am an intuitive reader who recently completed a private reading concerning Cario. I received a strong warning involving travel after an event, a rear or service exit, rain, and the time 2:17. Please encourage him and his security team to be especially cautious this Thursday following the Meridian Music Awards. I understand how unusual this sounds. I am not requesting money, access, or publicity.

She read it four times.

Then she added her phone number and pressed send.

The pressure in the room eased, but it did not disappear.

Imani returned to her editing software. She should have deleted the recording. Instead, she began cutting around the worst parts.

She removed the Ten of Swords. Removed the vision. Removed the moment she whispered, He doesn’t have as much time as he thinks.

What remained was twenty-six careful minutes about betrayal, unstable alliances, and the need for better security.

It was honest enough to satisfy her conscience and vague enough to protect her channel.

She changed the title.

CARIO NEEDS TO WATCH HIS INNER CIRCLE | URGENT TAROT READING

Her cursor hovered over Publish.

She heard Nia’s warning.

Don’t post that.

Imani clicked anyway.

The video went live at 11:43 p.m.

Within ten minutes, it had three hundred views. Within thirty, it had eleven hundred and a comment accusing her of recycling old gossip. Normal. Comfortingly normal.

Imani closed the laptop and carried the cards to the kitchen. She was halfway through filling a glass of water when her phone buzzed on the counter.

She expected Nia.

Instead, the notification came from Instagram.

New message request from @CarioOfficial

The blue verification badge glowed beside his name.

Imani’s hand went cold around the glass.

For one irrational second, she considered deleting her entire account and pretending the internet had confused her with another woman. There had to be at least one other Imani Reed with a ring light and poor judgment.

But the message remained.

So did the pressure at the center of her back.

She opened the message.

It contained six words.

What did you cut from the video?