Chapter 15

Chapter 15 of 56 · 8-minute read

Lisa answers on the first ring. “Oh, finally got your attention, didn’t I? Since you’ve been avoiding me and all.”

I press the phone into my cheek and cover my mouth so she can hear me and not the thrum of restaurant conversation around me. “I’m not avoiding you, Lisa.” What I don’t tell her is that not once have I even thought about her since leaving the town we both lived in for the last two decades. “I don’t know what the picture is you sent me.”

“You ought to. That was your house.”

I pulled the phone away from my face to look at the photo on the screen again. Yes, definitely my mailbox. But the rest of it?

“I-I don’t understand.”

“What’s not to understand? That’s your house at the bottom of the sinkhole.”

I study the photo. The bricks are the same color as my bricks were. The painted wood is the same color. The mailbox, the same. A wall of oversized pink blooming azaleas I left behind when I exited our town, all started from baby azaleas my mom had dug up years ago from underneath the ones in her front yard.

But I just can’t grasp that this is the place I called home, the home I had shared with Quent and later with Jesse and where I’d raised my daughters. There’s nothing in the picture but rubble.

“The moon has been full the last couple of days. Lots of extra power for people like you and me.”

“Yeah. So?”

“What I want to know,” Lisa continues in her standard accusatory tone, “is did you do this?”

“What? What do you mean, did I do this?”

My voice is a little too loud so I cup my palm even closer to my mouth. “Lisa, what are you talking about? And when did this happen? Was anybody hurt?” I can think of another dozen questions to ask.

“You know what I mean. Did you know that was going to happen?”

“Did I know what was going to happen? I’m not even sure what I’m looking at.”

“Did you know that the earth was going to open up and swallow your house? Or maybe you caused that to happen.”

I stare at Dixon in the doorway of the next dining room. I’m suddenly thankful that his attention is on his “friend” and not on me. Had I known that my house would be swallowed whole? What the actual hell kind of question is that? Sinkholes in Florida aren’t uncommon, but I hadn’t known. Or maybe I had. Just not consciously. I’d had dreams of sleeping in my bed and being swallowed up. I had diagnosed my dreams metaphorically, though. That if I continued to stay there, I would be consumed by the past. I never considered them to be a warning.

I’ve had increasing anxiety since before Daddy died. For months, I felt a sense of fingernails on chalkboard, but that particular anxiety dissipated as soon as I hit the Georgia-Florida line. I may not have listened to my intuition for most of my life, but since breaking free of the Dragon Hart Grand Coven and then the Elders’ Coven and coming into my own power, almost losing it, and then regaining it, I no longer ignore my instincts, even when logic dictates that my intuition is wrong. It never is. The thought of staying in the house I had loved and been loved in had suddenly set my teeth on edge, and I knew I had to pack my things, sell it, and get out.

At least now I know why.

“No, Lisa, I didn’t know I was living over a sinkhole, nor did I make it happen. But what about the couple who moved in? The people I sold it to?”

I had never even met them until three days ago at the title company’s main office for the closing. Until then, all of our communications had been through our respective real estate agents. Two weeks ago, they had signed the contract to buy the house contingent on being able to take possession three days ago. Getting everything done in two weeks, including all the final packing and storing, had been pure hell for me. I’d slept no more than four hours a night in those two weeks. I’d been exhausted when I arrived at the title company to sign off on all the paperwork at noon, but I arrived with a hotel reservation for that night and just enough room left in my packed car for my altar stone and the pot of curcumin bulbs I had left on the back porch.

I had always loved sitting between the altar stone and the fire pit. No way was I leaving it behind.

All parties had already agreed through our real estate agents that I didn’t have to vacate until six o’clock that evening, and that would give me time to pack my last few items and, though I didn’t explain this part, one last chance to walk the property line in a counterclockwise circle to say goodbye to the land spirits there. The buyers had honored that agreement—and hadn’t.

When I arrived at the closing, the buyers and their agent weren’t there. I had been under the impression that we would sign off on everything at one time with all of us present, but apparently that wasn’t legally necessary. They had already signed before I arrived and were on their way to their new house already. By the time I finished signing all the papers in triplicate and waited for copies and then arrived back at the house, I had only two hours left to pick up the last of my belongings. I had been surprised by their absence but still enthusiastic about meeting them for the first time so I could give them a few helpful tips about things like which direction the trees lean when hurricanes come through or to be careful of the poison ivy that grows at the edge of the wooded lot next door.

I was surprised to find the couple and a dozen of their closest friends standing on the front lawn, in and out of the house, and wandering around the backyard—right through the circle I’d built in the backyard for my own private rituals. I’d found one of their half-drunk buddies grilling steaks over my sacred firepit, with my altar stone desecrated at the base of the fire and the pot of curcumin thrown aside and trampled on. The couple and their friends invited me to stay for dinner and beverages, all the while blocking my entrance to their circle that used to be my circle. I tried to make small talk while I figured out what to do next and if there was a possibility of salvaging my altar stone, if not the curcumin.

“So where are you two deploying to? If you can say, that is.”

The woman who had signed her name to buy my house tilted her head quizzically. “What—oh!” She laughed loudly. “Yeah, um, we’re not deploying.” She laughed again, this time loud enough that her friends overheard and laughed too. “We’re not actually military.”

“But my agent said that⁠—”

She waved her hand dismissively. “Yeah, your agent said you had a soft spot for military families and a brother somewhere overseas, so we just told him that we were deploying this weekend to make sure that we could get into the house before we all go on a group cruise.”

If I’d wanted to use magick to make them drop through the lawn and to the fires of the planet’s core, I would have done it then with no extra effort.

They had taken advantage of my good nature, caused a lot of exhausting grief that will take me another week to recover from, and had caused me to leave my land spirits behind without saying goodbye. I couldn’t very well walk the perimeter in one last quiet ritual that would include speaking aloud to the spirits that had supported me in my growth. I would leave my circle of protection broken and leave an energetic hole in the hearts of my unseen allies.

Lisa’s still yammering in my ear. “No, nobody was hurt. But only because they were all out of town on some kind of college reunion cruise. But that couple not only lost the house. They lost every stick of furniture and every stitch of clothing they owned.”

“Lisa, I swear to you I did not cause that sinkhole.”

My phone pings in my ear.

“Really? Look at the picture I just sent you. It was taken from overhead by a drone. Now you look at that picture, and you tell me that you didn’t have anything to do with that sinkhole.”

I open the latest text from Lisa and skim a photo that looks like a donut in reverse. I flick my fingers over the screen to zoom in. I blink at what I see and zoom in again.

The house is gone. The back gardens are gone. Everything has sunk and crumbled except for one small patch of land that now sits at least twenty feet above the jagged edge of a roof and wall. I zoom in again. The photo isn’t as clear at this magnification, but it doesn’t have to be. I know exactly the only thing that still stands at the property that I sold three days ago: my fire pit with the altar stone at the base of the ashes.

Maybe this destruction wasn’t anything I’d done myself or done intentionally, but I’d bet my distraught land spirits, feeling my absence, had a hand in it.

“Still not my handiwork, Lisa. Besides, aren’t you the one who’s always telling me how inept I am at magick? Now, if you don’t mind, I think you and I are done.”

“Wait! If you really are that good, then teach me.”

I hold the phone away from my face, stop myself from sticking out my tongue, and press the button to disconnect. Thumbing through the settings, I block her number. I drop my phone on the table in front of me, next to the Lane Cake, and exhale my frustration.

This date is not going as planned.

Wait. Where’s Dixon?

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