The card is Justice. Scary, but honest: to overmaster the things that control us means controlling ourselves, and learning and loving the things that control us. It's so easy for Maryann to say we should just let it go, say fuck it and do what we like. She's God, she doesn't give a fuck. It's that easy for her. And it's important, I think, to remember that there's nobody watching. Nobody's taking score. But if you start thinking that's significant, you start looking for the next line to cross, and the one after that. Once you realize every cage is inside another cage, and think that the point is breaking out, you can go out into the dark places. Once you realize nobody's in charge, it's easy to forget you always already were.

That's the Devil card: thinking that the darkness you're running toward is any more honest than the light. They are both dishonest, and honest -- and scary -- to the same degree. I keep saying that Maryann is a good thing in theory, because she's the Lovers card, constrained by human thought to the Devil. That's half the story, that it's okay: to lust, to fear, to feel rage and to dance, to fuck, to eat, as if nobody's watching. But it's only half the story. Ask Jason, whose Maryann was Amy, who taught him he was essentially okay, and to do what he willed, just like Maryann with Tara this year, until it went too far. Justice is the reminder, from sources beyond you, that you're being an idiot once you go too far that way: that there are limits. The human body, the human soul, the human mind: they have limits -- and a natural calling toward wholeness -- that gods will never comprehend.

All three of them are scared: Eggs, because he's lost time, and Tara because Eggs is scared, and Lafayette because he knows bad juju when he sees it and the cards have just redoubled his convictions. He all but laid down the Justice card for Jason, before he went missing. He takes off, to "clean a grill or something," and Eggs sits down where he just was, shaking. Tears stand in her eyes -- he's family, his concerns are hers, that's the thing Maryann has taught her through him -- and she's terrified. "What time is it?" he asks. He gets angry, he's so scared, and she tells him finally it's 12:10, because apparently Merlotte's closes at midnight? Eggs explains that he just lost like two hours, and he's scared to death. He woke up by the lake, freezing. She gathers him into her arms, and Lafayette stares, listening, as she fairly carries Eggs out of the restaurant, toward home.