Chapter 19
Lisa’s Natal Mercury Opposite Natal Mars
“Hi, Lisa.”
I force a smile as she breezes around her Jeep to meet me. She doesn’t look intentionally confrontational or angry. Just her usual superior self. While there are many things I would love to say to Lisa’s face, I am well aware of the damage her mouth can do and has done.
She’s gained at least ten pounds or so since I saw her a few months ago and carries most of it in her face. Jan and I used to joke about our own weight gain, saying that Jupiter—the planet of expansion—had been good to us. Lisa hides her curves behind flowy palazzo pants, a flowy undershirt, and a long flowy vest with winged sleeves. She wears turquoise, purple, and pink, with silver stars and crescent moons that sparkle in the sunlight as she moves. The massive turquoise necklace hangs from her throat to her chest like an ancient priestess’ breastplate. Her earrings match.
For seven years, she’s regularly demanded that I Initiate her so that she can be the High Priestess she deserves to be as soon as possible. All on her own terms, of course. She doesn’t think she needs to actually learn anything. I always tread carefully with her because she talks too much to the wrong people, and I’m stuck with damage control. In general, I try to get along because I’m a little afraid of what trouble she might cause. She’s testified against me in family court twice at Justine’s request, but Lisa still somehow thinks she did me a favor by being overly descriptive of witchcraft practices she’s witnessed in my presence and information I’ve shared about my former covens’ internal politics. She claims she’s just normalizing witchcraft for the courts and can’t see that Quent is using her. I’ve refused thus far to Initiate her, and she resents me for not giving her the power and rank she feels entitled to.
Could it be Lisa who sent the servitor? Is it possible that she was behind all the frustration and pain of the last few months?
Nah, I tell myself. In spite of claiming to be a psychic and an energy healer, Lisa only thinks she has power. She’s never demonstrated any real magick.
Or has she? And I didn’t know it?
Lisa rushes to throw her arms around me. I stiffen in her embrace, slow to respond with a loose hug of my own.
“Hey, girl! Merry meet! I wasn’t expecting to see you here! Are you reopening?”
“Um, hey, Lisa. Merry meet to you—”
“Because if you are, we need to talk about my rent. You owe me some back from when you closed down.”
I shake my head slowly. Did I hear her right? “Lisa, you were already two weeks late with rent and hadn’t shown up in three weeks when I closed the doors.”
Careful, careful, I tell myself. She’ll be running to Quent to ask for money and testifying that I’m a deadbeat.
Lisa seems to consider my words. Then, “Be that as it may, we all knew you were closing down. Being psychics and all. So why would I pay for the April when I knew in March that you were shutting down? Anyway, I’d like to get reimbursed for the last two weeks of March while you were still open, after I pulled out.”
“Reimburse you for money you owed but never paid? Lisa, that’s not the way contracts work.” Plus, her clients paid her directly, so it wasn’t as if I was withholding money that belonged to her.
“I’d be willing to let it go if you would go ahead and Initiate me like you’ve promised for years.”
I’ve promised her nothing. As a High Priestess, it’s my decision which student I choose to Initiate and which student I choose to teach.
Instead of answering, I head for the tiny home I now use as storage. Lisa follows.
I absolutely hate that I have to walk on eggshells with people like Lisa, but her gossip over the years has been damaging enough, and her wagging tongue was one of the main reasons I decided to go ahead and shut down the Center of Light. Her speculation had convinced many of my regular customers to steer clear of us, so by the middle of March, hardly anyone—vendor or customer—showed up at my beloved healing center.
Had I not been so distressed this season, I would have done a little spell with cloves to stop her gossip. Or maybe I would have dropped a blank sheet of paper on her front doorstep with nothing but a single line to discreetly represent the rune Isa so her tongue would stand still.
Behind me, Lisa stops yammering as my tiny home door swings open wide. She sees all the crates inside, but I’m not hiding them.
“Ooh!” Lisa steps in front of me, cutting me off. “Or you could just pay me in oils and tinctures.”
She flits around the tiny space, peeks into boxes that have been closed but not taped, and lifts amber glass bottles from each crate.
“Lisa, I’m not refunding your rent. Read your contract.”
“Fine. I’ll just have to let everyone know that you wouldn’t reimburse my rent after you shut down.”
“That’s not true, and you know it.”
Lisa pretends not to hear me. She empties one box and begins filling it with bottles from different crates.
“You’re not going to need any of these anyway, are you? You’re closed. It’s not like you’re going to be selling them, so why not give them to your friends?”
“Lisa, stop. Those are already spoken for. They’re orders I have to fill that I didn’t get to yesterday.” What I don’t tell her is that I’m counting on that income to pay my legal bills this month.
“Oh, so the bank didn’t confiscate these?”
“Confiscate what?” a voice behind me asks. I spin to find one of the loan officers standing behind me in the doorway. His name is Patrick, and he has been a regular at yoga classes for the past two years. He’s not my loan officer or Jesse’s, but he’ll do.
Lisa laughs. “Well, I can guess what this is all about.” She laughs again. “When a loan officer shows up with a camera in hand to take pictures and a file under his arm? You know you’re done.” Lisa pushes past me, then sidesteps Patrick.
“Wait,” I call after her. I pick up a bottle of crushed cloves and thrust it at her. I haven’t put the Stop Gossip in its Tracks label on it yet. “A gift from me to you. Sprinkle a little of this on the threshold of your home every time you leave it for one full moon cycle. It will bring peace.”
For me.
“Hey, Miss Lauren. Good to see you again. Even under these circumstances.” Patrick grins at me. A dollop of blond hair dangles in the center of his forehead.
I cringe. I wish he wouldn’t call me Miss Lauren. It makes me sound like I am elderly or something. Technically, Patrick could still be in my dating pool. He’s in his mid-thirties, just slightly younger than Jesse.
He adjusts the camera around his neck, tucks his electronic tablet under his arm, and then sinks both hands into his pockets. Today he wears the apparel of a man who wants to inspire customers to trust him with their money—a dark navy suit with a white shirt and conservatively patterned navy tie. Normally, he works in a big, heavy, square building that is equally conservative and meant to inspire customers to entrust their money with a stable, boring financial institution. From conversations I’ve overheard at Friday morning sunrise yoga, I know that Patrick catches hell for his haircut.
“So, Miss Lauren! Mr. Tom said someone from the bank needed to come around here and meet you, and since I’m training with Mr. Frank to be a loan officer, Mr. Frank sent me around here to see what you needed and go ahead and take a few photos.”
“Photos?”
“Yes, ma’am. Mr. Frank said that we’re going to see if we maybe can sell the clinic to one of the other doctors in town, and then maybe bulldoze the rest of the healing center and turn it into office buildings. He says that’s a lot of extra work for the bank, though. Personally, I think it’s just easier for the bank to sell it at whatever price we can get for it, but you’re still on the hook to pay what’s due on the loan.”
Patrick is blurry through my tears. He sees before I can turn away and hide them and touches my shoulder gingerly.
“Miss Lauren, I can’t tell you how sorry I am about all of this, and about Jesse. He was a good friend, and a great doctor. I wish that maybe I’d paid more attention. Maybe I could’ve helped him. I miss him.”
“Me, too.” I nod. The small space is suddenly stuffy. I step around Patrick quickly and into the shade outside so I can get a breath of fresh air.
“It’s such a shame that you’re losing this place. It’s meant a lot to me.”
“Thanks, Patrick.” I tap the top of his knuckles with my fingers to acknowledge his kindness.
Patrick clears his throat, looks away, and then gazes into my eyes. I read the genuine sympathy there. Some anxiety, too. He hates this part of his job.
“It’ll be such a shame, too, if you end up losing your house. It’s just so unfair. You’ve lost so much.” He starts to say something else but grimaces. Then finally, he adds, “Do you mind if I ask you something personal, Miss Lauren?”
I sigh. What now? At least he’s not like Lisa. Or a few dozen other townspeople who can’t seem to mind their own business. I know Patrick personally though, and well enough to consider him a friend.
“Shoot.”
“Um, I don’t understand why you took out a loan against your house. I mean, you had it completely paid off when you and Mr. Quent divorced, and the deed was in your name. You didn’t have any debts whatsoever—completely debt-free—and then out of the blue right after Jesse stops paying on the loan for his clinic, you take out a massive home equity loan against your house. I just don’t understand how you could put everything at risk like that. What did Jesse say to convince you?”
I squint at Patrick as if to make sure I’ve heard his words correctly. Then I shake my head. “What?”
“Ma’am, I know you loved him more than the world—”
Still do, I add in my head.
“—but that’s hundreds of thousands of dollars that are, um, just gone. Mr. Frank thought the loan was to pay off the clinic loan and other bills. That’s the only thing that made sense to us. I know we’re not supposed to talk about our customers, but hell yeah, you know we do. We thought if Jesse was able to get back on his feet again and pay off the clinic loan, well, the two of you were a married couple. Under those circumstances, it did kind of make sense that you’d put your assets on the line for him.”
I feel dizzy. I sway unexpectedly, and Patrick catches me before I fall. He helps me back into my little office to a comfortable chair in the corner.
I stare at the walls, all my stuff boxed up. My vision blurs again with tears. Blinking them away, I notice the block letters on a small box on the top shelf opposite my chair.
ELDERS
The word comes into focus more clearly. The servitor is still out there—I can feel it. I severed the energetic connection with Dragon. The servitor wasn’t anything she’d sent. But the Elders? I had little to nothing left physically of them except what was in that box.
“Miss Lauren? Are you okay? I’m so sorry.” He kneels on one knee in front of me, almost exactly as Jesse had almost six years ago when he asked me to marry him. Jesse claimed it would make him the happiest man alive, but it also made me the happiest woman alive. For five years at least.
“I don’t understand, Patrick. You’re saying I took out a loan against my house?”
Several particularly upsetting conversations with Tom now make sense. I asked how it was possible that I could be in danger of losing my home. I’d owned it outright before Jesse and I married and would never put the deed in his name as well. There was never any need. Head over heels in love, we trusted each other completely. We lived off of his income as a physician, but we lived in my house, mainly to give both my daughters a sense of stability in an otherwise turbulent time in their lives. We were Team Lauren-and-Jesse, or Laur-see as the kids called us. We also signed a prenup. That was Jesse’s idea, and I agreed without a second thought. We both had financial responsibilities to people in our past as well as me to my own children. We separated out everything that we brought into the marriage and agreed that any profits we made together would be split down the middle because we were, after all, a team now.
I breathe slowly while I clutch Patrick’s arm. Tom had talked several times to me about how the house was collateral and how I might lose it if I couldn’t come up with the funds to pay off it all. I’d been in such a funk about Jesse that I let Tom take care of everything while I tried to take one breath after another. I thought he was confused initially, and Tom obviously thought I was confused. Or maybe even lying.
“Patrick? I never took out a loan against my house. Not a home equity loan, not a second mortgage, nothing. Jesse’s loans predate our marriage, and my name isn’t on them. My house is in my name, free and clear. I don’t understand how my home can be taken away from me in this state, and I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
Patrick pulls his digital tablet out from under one arm. His fingertips glide over several colorful screens before he stops at one. “Here it is. This is a scan of the document you signed in Mr. Frank’s office.”
I take the tablet from Patrick and hold it closer and closer to my face until my nose is almost touching the screen. I squint at the name. Lauren Matthews. At least that’s what I think it says.
“Patrick? That’s not my signature.”
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