Chapter 33

Chapter 33 of 48 · 10-minute read

Transiting Mars Conjunct Lauren’s Natal Ascendant

My heart is still pounding when I step into the bank. I take for granted that I am more powerful than most people who call themselves witches. I can hold my own against Dragon, Donna, the Elders.

But what if this chaos witch is more powerful than any of them? It’s already to my disadvantage when an adversary uses a magick I’m not familiar with. I may know where the drama queen lives, or at least where she spends some of her time—if I haven’t scared her away today—but I still don’t know her name. If her name is the same as that of the fictional witch in a well-known movie, that would be too much of a coincidence. I don’t believe it, and I don’t dare try using it, failing, and strengthening the servitor.

She’s hiding. She knows enough, either for mundane reasons or because she’s psychic enough to have seen into the future, to keep her identity hidden. Until I know her name and can speak it, I can’t send her servitor back to her, and I can’t defeat it.

Then again, if she is more powerful than I am, why did she flee? I’m generally the nice person in the background. Unobtrusive. The one who allows people to think that soft-spokeness equates to weakness. Donna had once told me that Dragon and the Elders fought over which group I aligned myself with because they knew that I talked softly but carried a big stick of magick. I am not a showoff, but I am a powerful manifester, particularly when I manifest incredibly good things like healing centers or when I manifest my own fears.

Still, I am closer this afternoon to discovering her identity than I was this morning.

“Miss Lauren!” Rushing toward me, Patrick adjusts his navy tie and checks that his suit jacket is buttoned.

I cringe yet again. Either he is not young enough or I am not old enough for him to refer to me as “Miss” anything. I like Patrick, so I force a smile.

“Thanks bunches, Miss Lauren, for coming down here this afternoon. Mr. Frank—my boss—he wants to see you in his office. We need to get to the bottom of this. Heads are about to roll.”

Funny, but they weren’t so concerned about heads rolling when the head was mine.

Patrick, with his long legs, quickly outpaces me, then slows down to escort me to an executive office on the second floor of the bank. The outer office walls are made of glass but with closed blinds and heavy gold curtains turning the transparency into a vault of secrets. Patrick holds the door open for me.

I’m familiar with the office, even though it’s been a long time since I’ve been in this one. Quent used to work at this bank as their charismatic, glad-handing senior loan officer, but when we divorced, I changed banks so that Quent wouldn’t have access to my checking account transactions or balance. Even though he started a new business as a financial advisor and left the bank with a hefty bonus, I bank with a different institution on the other side of town, mainly because he still has friends here. The newer people, like Frank, don’t really know me. This is and always has been Jesse’s bank, but I’ve not stepped foot in this building in the six years since my divorce from Quent.

My gaze flits around the room. I’m assessing, gauging my surroundings so I can detect any weapons to be used against me.

Frank’s office has been redecorated since Quent claimed it. The furniture has the same sense of heaviness and solidity, but now it’s walnut rather than cherry. The oversized desk. The credenza against the wall behind it. The long conference table jutting out from the middle of the desk and surrounded by seven overly comfortable chairs that match the floral wing chairs near the executive chair. Redecorated, yes, but it all still screams “Banker!” to me.

Men who appear to be either bankers or lawyers or both occupy the conference table chairs and speak in hushed tones. A plump woman in her thirties sits in the nearest wing chair with her head in her hands. The man behind the desk, with the name plate that reads, “FRANK ABBOTT, SENIOR LOAN OFFICER,” presses his flushed face into his fist and frowns at the papers in front of him. Perspiration gleams on his balding head. He wears the typical bank uniform of a suit and tie, but his yellow tie is darker at the neck where he’s sweated through his shirt.

I glance around for a friendly face, hoping to see some of the women who used to work here with Quent, but the bank has merged with another financial institution recently and apparently cleaned house in the process. The only one I know is Patrick, and only because he was a regular at morning yoga.

“Mrs. Matthews.” Frank rises from his seat to shake my hand. He keeps staring at me, confused.

I don’t want to feel compassion for the man who has treated me like an idiot in every phone conversation to date, but I do. He’s older than I am and is probably terrified of losing his job and not being able to find another this close to retirement. Another part of me feels vindicated. Frank has called me several times in the last month to tell me in an unkind tone how I was going to lose my house and insinuate that I was a deadbeat and a bad mother. When I’ve balked, not even raising my voice, he’s told me to “calm down.” He has no idea what an uncalm witch looks like. Still, I’ve been too numb to deal with it. I told him to run all his concerns through Tom and not contact me again.

He motions for me to sit in the empty chair closest to him. “As you know, there seems to be a problem with your loan.”

“I don’t have a loan with your bank.”

A hush falls over the room. Every eye is on me.

“I don’t have any accounts with your bank anymore. The day after my divorce was final six years ago, I closed my accounts here. Checking, savings, even the holiday fund account for the kids. I bank with your competitor. If I need a loan, I’ll go to them.”

“Mrs. Matthews⁠—”

“Hartford. Lauren Hartford. I never took Jesse’s name legally.”

Frank rolls his eyes in disapproval, then suddenly realizes what I’ve said. The loan Patrick showed me is signed as Lauren Matthews, not as Lauren Hartford.

“As you know, we are foreclosing on Jesse’s clinic and the surrounding property. It’s not immediate, but we’ve begun the process. I’ve discussed it with your attorney, as you, um, insisted, and I believe he’s kept you informed. We’re all sympathetic to what you’ve been through and the strain it’s put you under, but we also have a fully executed loan agreement with your house as collateral. A loan we expedited on the request of your husband because he was always one of our best customers and a pillar of this community. You could consider that a personal favor to Jesse on my part. Not the kind of banking service you’d get in a chain bank or a big city, and we’re proud of our customer service. That said, not only is the clinic’s finances now out of your hands unless you plan to pay off his debt with your new loan, but you are now forty-five days in arrears. If you can’t repay it, you’ll lose your home, too.”

“I can’t be in arrears. I told you, I don’t have any loans with your bank. As a matter of fact, other than my monthly credit card bills that I pay in full every month, I don’t owe any creditor anywhere.”

I’m lucky to be able to pay my bills, and I live within my means, but I’m psychologically driven not to owe anyone anything. Given the sudden downturn in business at the healing center and having to shut it down almost immediately after the clinic closed down, I’m in a far better financial situation than if I’d lived more extravagantly.

“My apologies, Mrs. Matthews⁠—”

“Hartford.”

“—But with all the stress of dealing with your husband’s finances, you probably forgot what you signed.”

My compassion for Frank’s situation fades. Now I’m pissed off. “Don’t you dare try to take my home. I’m here today as a courtesy to you. To Patrick, actually, who asked me to come in. You and I have no business relationship. None.”

Silence filling the room, Frank opens a dark blue folder and pushes a page of signatures at me. It’s the same signature page Patrick showed me on his tablet. I look up and shrug.

“Your signature, ma’am.”

“Not my signature, sir.” I push the signature page back at him. “It’s not my legal name, and it’s not my penmanship.”

“Nonsense. I watched you sign it. My assistant here”—he tilts his head toward the woman with her head in her hands— “checked your driver’s license. Just a formality since I knew Jesse and you but⁠—”

Knew me? Small town banks have their own way of doing things, but his good-old-boyisms don’t extend to me.

He pushes the page back at me and taps the block that shows my identity was verified, probably by the only woman in the room more upset than I am.

I shove the page back at him. “That’s not possible. All of my IDs—all of them—show my name as Lauren Hartford. And if you compare my signature on my license, you’ll see that it’s not a match.” I fish my license out of my purse and gently but firmly place it on the desk in front of him.

Frank shuffles papers in the folder and pulls out a photocopy of something that, from a distance, looks like a driver’s license. He visibly gulps.

I lean in for a closer look. Not a driver’s license or any kind of official identification. It looks more like an image of a poorly laminated drawing.

Frank whirls on the other woman. “Ouida? You want to explain this?”

She peers up at him through splayed fingers. “I can’t! That’s what I was trying to tell you. I distinctly remember Dr. Jesse and his wife coming in, and you asked me to notarize the document. I made a copy for the record, but what’s in the folder now doesn’t look anything at all like what I photocopied. Someone must have switched it out.”

“Not possible, Ouida. I watched her hand her license to you. I watched her sign the agreement.” Frank looks like he’s going to have a heart attack in front of me.

“Maybe someone’s playing a joke on us,” Ouida suggests, hopefully looking around as if expecting a hidden camera.

I know of one other possibility.

The drama queen is more talented than I’ve given her credit for. She’s using a glamour to make others think they’re seeing something they’re not. Seeing a phony ID as the real thing. Seeing her and thinking she’s me. A mirage not from the mind of the viewer but from the viewed. She’s powerful enough to fool others in the moment, but the glamour fades. What’s captured photographically, however, is what was real, not what was illusion.

This loan situation has her energy written all over it!

I close my eyes and breathe in the energy around me. Faintly, I can sense Jesse’s presence here, many times over the years. His energy is ground into the carpet, captured like smoke in the curtains, sticking to the walls like dust. More faintly, I can detect the chaos witch’s single visit to this office. I know her energy now that I’ve encountered her in the woods.

The room erupts in at least four separate conversations, all talking over each other. But it’s not bad news. Now I know what I’m up against—that means I can fight her.

“Frank?”

He doesn’t hear me.

“Excuse me? Frank? Everyone?”

They’re too busy arguing to notice me. I pick up the folder and slam it down on the table. Everyone goes quiet.

“Thank you. Frank, I know you have video cameras throughout the bank.” I don’t tell him I know this because of my long marriage to Quent, and that the lobby of the bank before Frank’s employment here was under constant surveillance. “Can you pull some stills of the people you met with?”

“Already did.” Patrick drops several black and white photos on the table in front of me.

I catch my breath. It’s her. The drama queen. The one stealing my identity via glamour.

Frank nearly chokes. “That’s not her. I mean, it was you, not her.” His voice trails off as he squints at the pictures. “I don’t understand.”

He’s not the only one doing his best not to hyperventilate. That’s the drama queen, and that’s Jesse beside her, clenching her hand, fingers intertwined. Over two months ago, according to the date stamp at the bottom of the photo.

I blink back tears. Long, dark curls. Bright lipstick. Twenty years younger and more. She looks nothing like me.

Except that she’s wearing my favorite dress.

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