The novel deals with divination and intuition, and explores the contrast between fate and free will, or destiny and personal agency. Several of the characters take different stances, and Katy Hays uses their conflicting perspectives to deepen these characters further. The prologue, told by Ann Stilwell in retrospect, reveals the perspective she arrives at following the plot’s events:

It was easy, at first, to miss the omens that haunted The Cloisters that summer. […] An inescapable future that found us, not the other way around. An unlucky throw. One that I could have foreseen, if only I—like the Greeks and the Romans—had known what to look for (2).

Despite the mystical connotations of the tarot cards, Ann initially sees them only as a historical artifact. Any symbolism they hold for her relates to what doors they may open in her career. She believes that the world is one of unstructured chaos, and that fortune telling is a construct that people through all ages have clung to as a way of navigating that chaos. Ann herself becomes a symbol of free will juxtaposed against the destiny represented by tarot cards.