Chapter 32
Transiting Mercury Trine Lauren and Zephyr’s Composite Uranus in Synastry
I’m nowhere in finding out the chaos witch’s real identity. Nowhere.
“What are you doing back here at the Thai place, doodlebug?”
Jan’s voice jerks me out of my daydream as I stare down at my chicken and fried rice dish with spring rolls on the side. I’ve ordered my lunch “American-hot” this time, which is enough to clear my sinuses. Jesse always ordered his Thai food “Thai-hot,” which meant he sweated through his meals. My gastric system was never quite as adventurous as his.
Jan plops down in the chair across the table from me. She’s got that Mama Jan vibe going on, the one that makes me feel like I’m in trouble, even though she’s my friend and not my parent.
“It’s lunchtime. I’m hungry.”
Jan rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I can tell how absolutely starving you are by how you’ve picked over your food and barely taken a bite. I know what you’re doing here, and you’re on dangerous ground.”
“I’m just trying to—”
“No, kiddo. Stop it. Don’t play that game with me. I’m your oldest and best friend, and I know you too well. You’re thinking about Jesse again, and you’re here hoping to see a stranger that bears a passing resemblance to Jesse Matthews, and that you can bandage your wounds with some fantasy that you know isn’t real. It’s just a mirage. Something that’s too good to be true.”
My jaws clench even though they are full of food. The spiciness makes my eyes water.
Across the table, Jan’s face softens. She places her hands on the table in front of her and intertwines her fingers in thought. “Any luck finding who’s doing this to you?”
I shake my head. “So far, I know it’s definitely not Dragon and definitely not the Elders. I’m pretty sure I know who it is, but I can’t identify her, and I don’t have her real name. I have an address, but that’s fake, too.”
“What’s the address?”
“It’s 666 Circle Lake Circle.”
Jan’s brows arch. “But that’s—”
“Here. Or more accurately, that clump of woods just beyond that window.” I tilt my head in the direction of three sets of double windows along the northernmost wall of the restaurant.
“There’s a house there?”
“Not exactly. I’ve already walked around over there. There’s a trail wide enough for a truck, maybe with a boat behind it, all the way down to Circle Lake. Several old RVs, probably from the 1960s, are parked near the water’s edge. I can’t tell if they’re inhabited. No other vehicles there, so whoever they belong to didn’t leave any evidence that they’re in use.”
“Not uncommon.” Jan folds and unfolds her hands, then smooths out the tablecloth. “One of Steve’s buddies owns a couple fish camps on Circle Lake. It’s cheap to put up old RVs and rent them out to people looking for nature getaways. Mostly fishermen. Occasionally, a writer or two. Sometimes hunters. If you look hard, you can see some of the fish camps across the lake from your healing center.”
I blink across the table at Jan and set down my fork. If I follow the streets of this small town, the clinic is probably five miles from here, but anyone could walk from one side of the lake to the other in fifteen to twenty minutes if they go along the path by the water’s edge.
For a witch, the land next to the lake is sacred, specifically because this lake is in a perfect circle and believed to have been the landing spot of some ancient meteor. For the healing center, part of the reason that Jesse and I chose the location for his clinic and the concentric circles of booths and businesses was that the land borders on the opposite side of the lake from the fish camps. The only thing standing between the Center of Light and the lake is a field where we hold bonfire rituals at the Solstices, Equinoxes, and pagan fire festivals.
On the other side of the window are woods and a trail to the lake. There’s some connection here to the chaos witch, but I don’t know what it is. Not yet.
A shadow passes outside the window. A man. Pacing back and forth. Tousled hair. Phone to his ear. White T-shirt, but dirty. Jeans.
Jesse?
A whimper escapes my lips.
No. No, no, no.
He moves like Jesse, but this man is much older. Haggard. The same man I glimpsed here in the restaurant yesterday.
“Sweet Cheeks? Lauren!” Jan waves her hands in front of my face. My eyelashes flutter. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” She follows my gaze out the window and frowns. “Lauren, stop this. You’re tormenting yourself.”
As I have for months now. If I’d been better, if I’d been more powerful, if I’d been more… something, then none of this pain—neither mine nor that of anyone I love—would have happened. But Jan is right: I need to stop tormenting myself by looking for Jesse in every face, every shadow.
My phone chimes, announcing a text. I dig it out of my purse. Lady Zephyr.
“Your friend from the dragon lady’s group?”
“Nope. I mean, that’s where I know her from, but she left Dragon the day after we met, and I’ve never seen or heard from her since.”
Jan’s folding of hands turns to wringing of hands. “Eh, I don’t know. If she was affiliated with the dragon lady, I don’t know that you can trust her. What did you ask her?”
Without moving, I stare at the tiny screen, then meet Jan’s gaze.
“I asked her help.”
“Yeah? Was she helpful?”
“Maybe? I asked her to help me identify my stalker.” I glance up at one of the servers pointing me out to another. I lower my voice and read the text aloud.
Jan rolls her eyes. “What does that even mean? And eat, please.” She points at my plate of chicken and rice. “You need to eat.”
“Yes, Mom,” I joke. But I don’t pick up my fork. Instead, I type a response to Zephyr’s text.
I’ve more to ask, but this is a start. My phone chimes again but rather than a text message, I receive a warning.
“The number’s no longer in use? What?” I stare at the phone, try again, fail again.
“Well, that was rude.” Jan makes a face. She never hides the fact that she doesn’t trust anyone who practices witchcraft—except for me. “I guess that’s all the help she wants to give you.”
“How do I walk around in my memories? It doesn’t make sense.”
Jan laughs. “Have you ever tried?”
“Hey, I need some time alone. If I don’t come back, let Christabel know where I am.”
I push back from my plate and drop enough cash on the table to cover both lunch and a decent tip. Ignoring the gossipy employees across the nearly empty dining room who keep looking at me like I’m batshit crazy, I head for the door.
Gingerly, I pick my way down the narrow dirt road toward the lake. Little more than a path, the grass and weeds grow high in the middle and on the banks of the road. In the tracks, the grass is bruised from an occasional passing. I can barely discern fresher footsteps through the grass where the blades bend and darken. A fish camp and lake may be at the end of the trail, but it’s seldom used. The main road behind me leads to better access to the lake. This route is downright obscure.
My pre-lunch investigation of the land next door to the restaurant had been a quick skim of the destination ahead. I hadn’t ventured far enough to stand by the lake, only to see it from a distance. This time, I’ll walk past the old RVs for a better look while I try to piece together the puzzle of memories and make sense of the cards Christabel cast for me.
Was this what Lady Zephyr meant by walking around in my memories?
“Ritually releasing” is an obvious reference to the ho’oponopono-like ritual. Zephyr could see the future, so she must know about the rituals I’ve performed for Dragon and for the Elders. The “him” to be released must be Jesse. I’m not positive, but I feel it in my gut. Plus, everyone seems to be pushing me to let go of him, even if I’m not ready to. If I perform the ritual for Jesse, maybe I’ll stop seeing him in the faces of strangers.
But walking around in my memories? How the hell?
The trail leads me past three RVs that are older than I am and have probably been on their concrete parking pads for the last decade or more. The three spaces are within sight of each other but nestled in the woods, each with a small garden, a generator, and fishing gear in open sheds. Fire pits. Outdoor grills.
Fairly cheap way of living off the land—and off the grid.
Breathing deeply, I open my senses to the energy around me. It’s a hodgepodge of energetic signatures, most focused on nature and relaxation, but a few whose paths I have crossed, literally. Maybe locals I knew from the grocery store or schools, or maybe visitors to the healing center who had walked our labyrinth and then meandered around the entire lake.
Still, no discernible life force of anyone I know. I pause to soak in the ambience. Frogs croaking, calling for rain. Sunlight trickling down through ancient oaks dripping with beards of Spanish moss. The dappled shade leaving geometric shapes in the sand between the RV lots. A stirring of breeze off the lake and a crosscurrent of human energies.
The freshest energy signature is vibrant and vaguely familiar. Young. Or maybe immature, or both. Someone I’ve met or passed on the sidewalk? But not someone I’ve ever touched.
Out of the corner of my eye, something moves. Dingy white, bright white.
I jerk my head up in time to see the haggard man in the distance, still in his dirty T-shirt, carrying a fishing pole and white plastic bucket. He doesn’t see me as he arranges the bucket upside down near the lake’s western edge and uses it as a seat.
Not safe.
I hear the words not in my head but in my gut. This area is too secluded for me to be alone. I may be at home among Nature, but so are people who might do me harm. Worse, I may be in my own protective bubble, but I can feel the past presence of the servitor here. For the moment, the thought-form is still back at my house, circling my defenses, dismantling them one revolution at a time as it grows in strength.
Turning to take one last look at the healing center on the opposite side of the lake, I freeze. The wind on the lake pushes the water hypnotically toward me in small but even waves. Everything around me seems to fall away.
A memory bubble. I’m in the clinic again, the hot pizza boxes in my arms, walking the corridor toward Jesse, who stands at the door of the exam room, backing away from a patient I cannot see, a woman with scarlet fingernails to match her blouse, bracelets dangling, fingers clutching at Jesse’s forearm.
I try to shake off the memory to head back to my car in the Thai restaurant’s parking lot, but I can’t move. This isn’t a new memory bubble. I’ve been here before. This is the bubble that shows me the drama queen but still hides her face from me. Unlike the previous blip of memory, this time everything slows down long enough for me to not only separate the different audio tracks—Petra gushing over the pizzas and Jesse telling his patient to leave—but for the memory itself to stand still.
Petra stands frozen in front of me, mouth open in mid-sentence. I take a step toward her but nothing moves with me.
Ohhhhh.
I take another step and another until I stand beside her. Petra is still frozen in time, looking at where I stood as I walk around her. Her long gray hair is pulled back in a coiled braid, held in place by black bobby pins.
I blink at the back of her head. I never saw those hair pins in my memory. They were there, behind the scenes, but not a part of my memory.
After I circle Petra, I turn to the corridor behind me. The pass-through window between the corridor and the back of the reception area allows office assistants to hand off patient files to Petra. On the other side of the window, one of the younger assistants hovers over a clipboard with her pen. At the far end of the corridor, a janitor mops the tiled floor behind a yellow safety cone.
And Jesse, frozen at the door of the exam room, grimaces at the woman’s touch on his sleeve.
I stalk toward them, pop up at Jesse’s right side, and peer around his shoulder at the woman inside the exam room.
I don’t know her. I’ve seen her, but I don’t know her or her real name. She may be the same woman who tried to scam our vendors and harass Jesse back at the turn of the year, but I’m not certain. If I imagine her in a headscarf and sunglasses, she could be the woman I caught on the security cameras when they were still working. I’m not certain enough to pick her out of a line-up but damned close.
The drama queen. The Queen of Cups, reversed. A woman ruled by her emotions and ruling others by their emotions.
She gazes up at Jesse with rapt attention. Pale skin. Long, curly black hair. Scarlet lipstick stained across a full pout. Thin and petite. Long, black eyelashes, heavy and false. Artfully applied eye makeup. Large, gold hoop earrings, but delicate, like her bracelets. Bright red blouse with a neckline that plunges to show the inner third of both breasts. She’s beautiful, half my age, bold—and Jesse is telling her to leave.
She’s not part of my memory, but by walking around in my memories, I can now see what was present in that memory if only I had shifted my point of view enough to explore it then.
The corridor in my memory fades to gray and then to gentle ripples on the lake. The bubble has burst, and I’m back in the present, staring at the hypnotic waters.
The breeze stills to nothing. The frogs stop croaking. No bird calls. Nothing in Nature moving.
I glance over my shoulder.
The drama queen stands a hundred feet behind me on the narrow road through the woods.
Like a deer, caught in headlights.
Then she bolts.
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