Chapter 1

Chapter 1 of 10 · 23-minute read

Early August

Thursday – Full Moon in Aries, Newly Waning

“The Gods love you so much that They’re willing to strip away from you everything that is illusion and replace it with something that’s real.”

I sit in the dark and try to meditate, but Leo’s words still echo in my ears, even now—especially now—as my Elevation ceremony to a Third Degree High Priestess of the Dragon Hart Grand Coven approaches. Lady Dragon, my tradition’s spiritual leader, warned me three years ago before I committed to a five-year course of study to become pagan clergy. I was already a practicing witch, but if I’d known then how hard it would be to become a High Priestess, I’m not sure I would have agreed to my Initiation. I especially did not think I would be ready in a mere three years, but the changes have come hard and catastrophically, like the legendary Tower Card of any Tarot deck.

This past year, deep within the inversion of my Second Degree abyss, has changed me in ways I can’t describe. And it’s been hell, sheer hell. Saying goodbye to people I’d always thought would be in my life. Facing my codependency issues. Realizing I’d spent the past two decades in an abusive relationship and didn’t know. Leaving my handsome and charismatic husband to start my life over at age forty-two with my teen and pre-teen daughters and absolutely no intentions of ever being involved with another goddamned man.

“The clouds will part for you at last,” Leo had predicted, “and what you’re going to see will be really ugly, but you’ll see it clearly for the first time.”

He was right. My divorce from Quentin is in the works, and I’m ascending from the depths. Not shattered, but not untouched, either. I’ve faced my shadow side, beamed the light on it, and dispelled my fears. Sick to death of illusions, I’m ready to reclaim my life now. I’m ready for something real.

But I’m not steady on my feet yet, and I’m nervous about whether I can make it on my own. Most people don’t understand. I’m a suit-wearing professional with a high-powered career where I’m absolutely, totally confident and in-charge—the opposite of how I’ve felt in my home life. In my job as a consultant, I earn a better-than-average base salary plus grand bonuses, yet amazingly, I have no idea if I can keep a roof over my head or keep my kids from starving. I’ve made mistakes, and I no longer trust myself. I was so busy being a mom and a busy entrepreneur that I stopped tracking my finances and let my less-busy husband take on the one task he relished—handling our money.

I honestly don’t know what I’m worth, and I’m scared I’m worth nothing. I’ve been beaten down emotionally, and I’ve lost my confidence when it comes to my personal life. I still don’t know how it happened. I’m terrified I’ll leap and fall, mainly because that’s what I’ve heard all my life from my husband and from my dad before him. Never mind my salary. I’ve always been told I was a financial burden on the family and should do better because my income-earning potential was my only real value to the man I loved. I see that now, but the damage has been done.

The doubts set in again, here in the dark, and I repeat to myself Leo’s words: “The Gods love you so much that They’re willing to strip away from you everything that is illusion and replace it with something that’s real.”

Yes, Leo was right. But then, Leo’s Tarot readings are usually accurate. About 98 percent in my case. The 2 percent discrepancies are easy to understand.

Sometimes he’s not so perfect when it comes to exact timing. He sees things as already having happened when they’re still slightly into the future, but his guides in the Ether may be to blame for that. Their time passes differently from ours, and they can be in the past, present, and future all at once. For example, when I was Initiated into the Dragon Hart priesthood, Leo gave me my first reading and told me some specific time periods. Toward the end, he said he’d noticed I hadn’t asked about the future of my job. Didn’t I have any questions?

“Sure.”

I didn’t, really. I was already reeling from his advice not to kill myself, no matter how bad things got. What the hell?

Leo is definitely not one of those warm-and-fuzzy types who sugar-coats his prophecies in hopes you’ll send him a huge love offering and ask for a repeat performance. He’d looked a year down the road and told me he didn’t see a divorce, but he did see misery. Then he told me exactly what my husband had been up to. In excruciating, clairvoyant detail, and that I should remember that it wasn’t my fault, that it had nothing to do with me, but I would suffer from it all the same.

Another psychic read for me immediately afterward—Lady Zephyr—and she’d been even scarier, though now I can’t remember why. Both had been adamant that my long marriage was over.

Me? I didn’t believe it, not until a few months later when every word turned out to be true. In heartbreaking detail that I could never have imagined.

And then, just as Leo had said, I wanted to die.

“Oh, sweetness, your husband is a very, very manipulative man,” Leo had told me during that first Tarot reading at a Grand Coven gathering the night of my Initiation.

Shivering, we sat under a tent canopy in the Maryland woods with only a pillar candle to cast a flickering light across the two decks of cards he threw down simultaneously on the picnic table between us. Newly elevated Third Degrees chatted with our Grand High Priestess, Lady Dragon. They sang Goddess songs all around us and danced around the campfires in the State Park, yet I barely noticed. I was too focused on Leo’s words, which seemed so far-fetched back then.

“He’s a gas-lighter, honey.”

I shook my head. My husband? Manipulative? But I was the one who was always wrong. At least, that’s what I’d been told so many times that I believed it. Brainwashed, somehow, over the years by a verbally and emotionally abusive mate who hated my Goddess spirituality, hated my dreams of a writing and teaching career beyond my prosperous consulting business, and—it seemed—hated me. Sure, he was pissed that I’d taken a week’s vacation to attend this spiritual retreat that he’d declined to accompany me on, and I knew it would be hell to pay when I got home, but…

“Quent’s not manipulative,” I protested to Leo. “Really. And he’s not a gas-lighter. When I get home, I’ll ask him!”

“Oh, sweetheart.” Leo pressed his lips together in a grimace and shook his head, his long black hair tumbling wildly on his shoulders. “A few years from now, when you’re a Third Degree, you’re not even going to recognize yourself.”

When Leo had asked if I had any other questions, specifically ones that were job-oriented, I couldn’t think. My husband had finally agreed to let me quit the consulting job I’d hated for years—the one that paid so well but not nearly as much as his job—and stay home to be a full-time mom and writer when the new school year started. Then he’d become sullen and hateful until I reneged, giving up a lifelong dream because I thought it was the only way I could save my troubled marriage. Little did I know what he’d been up to! But I was back at the job I hated, back to making sure I brought in a good paycheck—the only trait of mine that my husband clearly admired—back to trying to smile through every day while my heart was breaking and knowing I’d given up a dream to save my marriage.

The last thing I thought to question Leo about was the job I hated. But clearly, Leo had something he was dying to tell me.

“Okay.” I gave in. “What’s going on with my career? I just put my name on the list for a promotion⁠—”

“Oh, honey, you’re outta there!” Leo announced gleefully. He scratched at his goatee, which had a tiny splotch of blue dye in it to match the highlights in his hair. “You’re already gone!”

I stared across the wooden table at him in confusion and watched the candlelight play off his features. Leo could be a great, big, ol’ teddy bear of a gay High Priest, and this was one of those times when his energy was all cuddly and loving toward me. It seemed to rush out of his heart chakra like a warm breeze.

“No, that can’t be right,” I told him, my voice cracking. “I’m staying put. So that my husband wouldn’t think I was selfish in following a dream, I already decided not to resign. I’ve been writing all these courses on witchcraft but stopped⁠—”

Leo shrugged and grinned. “They’re telling me you’re already gone.”

“I can’t be. I’m almost guaranteed this promotion. I’m already doing the job in my office now, and I’d be supervising the other consultants instead of working so many hours myself. It would be far less work for the same pay.”

“Oh, sweetness, you’re out of that office. Your time there is done. The next place you work will be better to you.”

“B-but when?”

“It’s a done deal. You’re already gone.”

To me, it wasn’t a done deal. But two months later, I interviewed for a promotion for the job I was already doing, plus interviewed for another job just for practice. My boss told me I’d nailed it. My long-deserved promotion was a “done deal,” she’d said, echoing Leo’s prophecy. Just a matter of stamping the paperwork. She discreetly told me the job was mine but not to say anything yet. I’d have the formal title to go with the work I’d been doing for the past two years, and I could officially move into a supervisory role rather than being both task manager and worker bee.

Except that someone else—someone with no experience with this type of work, let alone as a manager of it—got the job. Worse. I was told I would have to train my new supervisor, continue to do my job, and possibly continue doing her job until she felt comfortable with the workload.

A scant four months after Leo had told me I was already gone from my then-current office, I was promoted unexpectedly into a job in another organization. My practice interview had landed me a good job with far fewer hours and the same pay. That was a godsend because it was a nurturing place that would be safe for me during the hell that was to come.

Leo’s guides saw an event four months into my future as the present, maybe even already passed.

That wasn’t the only way Leo miscalled the future. Not only was his timing sometimes a little off, but the way he saw death was downright distressing.

“You will soon lose someone close to you,” Leo told me. “It’s a parental energy.”

My heart skipped a beat. I felt ill. My verbally, emotionally, and physically abusive father had been ailing for years, using every sickness to manipulate his loved ones into doing his bidding while hiding his recoveries. My sweet, codependent mother? Well, I loved her beyond words.

“Not your parents,” Leo corrected quickly. He must have seen the look on my face. “Your husband’s. His mother, I think. You’ll lose her within the turn of a year. Has she been ill, perhaps?”

I shook my head. “Just minor stuff, but his father’s been extremely sick. Could it be him?”

“Hmmm, maybe. No. No, definitely a maternal energy associated with him. This is his mother. Definitely his mother.”

For the next year, I fretted over her impending death. Her health wasn’t great, and she didn’t take care of herself properly, especially for a woman in her late sixties. Unlike many wives, I genuinely liked my mother-in-law. I was the lone family member she could confide in about her near-death experience long ago or regular visitations from the spirit world. Too often, she braved a 113-degree summer heatwave to build a stone wall and fountains in her garden, alone, with no drinking water and no one nearby in case of emergency. I worried about her and got into a quick habit of dropping by to visit her on my lunch hour three times a week, bringing lunch with me and a chance for her to unload her stresses. I dreaded the day when I would drive up, sweet tea in hand and chicken salad croissants in a bag, and find her keeled over in the broiling sun.

It didn’t happen like that.

She didn’t die physically, yet almost a year after that reading, she was indeed dead to me. I visited her when her façades were down and saw the real woman and not the illusion. The illusion had been a lovely and polite Southern lady, but I saw firsthand that day how she would turn against me once she learned her son and I were having marital problems. She told me of her neighbor’s husband and how she’d sweetly and faux-compassionately persuaded him to confide in her the ugly details of his marriage because she’d never tell anyone. Then she told me how he’d broken down and cried like a lost toddler, how she planned to deliver every detail she got out of him to his wife to be used against him in divorce court. The trauma next door was only one of the dramas unveiled that day, but I saw her as she really was for the first time, with her shields down and her manipulation meter up.

I realized I never really knew her at all. Just the façade of politeness and concern.

Not long after, Donna, the High Priestess and Elder who’d trained me, mentioned that Leo sometimes sees death metaphorically rather than physically. I wished I’d known that a long time ago, but even if I had, I would have been less likely to believe a time would ever come when my beloved mother-in-law would be emotionally dead to me.

But even with Leo’s little idiosyncrasies in his readings, I really can’t complain. Other than his timing being a little off and his maybe-literal-maybe-not view of death, he’s always been right on target with his predictions for me and his insights into my life. I’ve met plenty of psychics over the years, mostly bad ones, but the Dragon Hart Grand Coven has a habit of attracting some of the best talent in North America.

Here in the dark, I make a mental note to ask Leo for another reading, preferably right after my Third Degree Elevation ritual. He’ll be a part of the ceremony. He’ll stand and vouch for me, and I couldn’t be more honored. I wish that Lady Zephyr—probably her magickal name, magick with a k to reflect witchcraft—were still a part of the Grand Coven instead of off on some new adventure so that she could stand for me as well. I’m told that as soon as the ritual is over, I’ll be buzzing for the next month because I’ll be so infused with the power that will be passed on to me—all the way back to Wiccan pioneer Gerald Gardner—that I’ll believe I can walk on water. So even if Leo has bad news for me in his next reading, I either won’t care, or I’ll tell myself that I can change everything.

It’s been almost a year since my most recent reading from Leo. That one shocked me, even more than the previous year when he’d extracted a promise that I wouldn’t commit suicide if things got really bad.

We’d been at another Grand Coven meeting, at the same Maryland campground but in a different spot. This time, the weather was warmer. A dozen kerosene lanterns and solar-panel garden lights around the tent gave plenty of light for the double deck of Tarot cards Leo tossed onto the tarp-covered picnic table between us. Leo had just come from consecutive rituals for Third Degree candidates, and it was already well after midnight. New Third Degrees laughed and sang in the distance while others munched on chips and cookies after a day of fasting. Excitement buzzed through the night air. Leo was stoked on the energies of the rituals and was very attuned to the spirit world as he began.

“Oh.” Leo went still and seemed to listen for a moment. “You’re divorced?”

I stopped twisting the wedding band on my finger. “No. No, but I’m seriously considering leaving him. I think I’ll probably see a good lawyer as soon as I get back home from this retreat. A divorce has been iffy for almost a year, but Quentin keeps talking me into giving him another chance. He’s charismatic that way. We’re trying to work things out, and he keeps saying he’s given up the porn addiction and the webcam girls and the escort services, but… but I just don’t know. My gut instinct is that he hasn’t.”

Leo threw down a card—Manipulation—and then listened to voices I couldn’t hear. “You’d be right. As we speak, he is at it right now. He hasn’t given up anything. He’s just hiding it better. The minute you get home, before he knows you’re home, go right then and check the browser history on his computer. You’ll see where he’s been and who with.”

I sighed and looked across the series of picnic tables at then thirteen-year-old, Rhiannon, who’d accompanied me on the trip and was serenely listening to crickets in the woods and smiling to herself for the first time in years. My other daughter, ten-year-old Sonnet, had had to stay behind with her dad, much to her disappointment. If she was home with him, and he was up to his old tricks⁠—

“When you get home,” Leo warned me, “your husband is going to be all sweetness and light. His public face. But it’ll all be a lie. All an illusion. None of it will be real. He’ll tell you whatever it takes to make you stay.”

I played with the wedding band on my finger and wondered how much longer I’d be able to wear it. My husband and I were no longer sharing a bed, and only once every few months, when he seemed to be trying—really trying—to be supportive and loving, did we have sex. There was no lovemaking to it. No passion. Just a biological function that left me cold because I couldn’t forget that I was nothing more to him than a hole in the mattress. I’d been on anti-depressants for months just to live with him, but I’d given them up when I’d discovered I was codependent. The drugs only made me more compliant, and what I needed, according to my best friend Jan, was to kick his ass.

“You know,” Leo continued, “I’m reading you as divorced. You’re emotionally divorced already. It’s all over but the legalities.”

He was right again. I’d known the night I’d confronted my husband about his secrets, not long after Leo’s first reading after my Initiation, when he’d told me not to kill myself, no matter what. The marriage was over. I’d known it by the look in Quentin’s eyes. No regret. No remorse. Sheer hatred aimed at me for having found out, thanks to Leo. And then I’d run to the bathroom to throw up.

Leo plunked down two more cards, and then two more. He frowned at them and looked up at me. “I know it’s been difficult for you and will be for a little while longer, but it will work out on every level. All this pain is for a reason.” He smiled, a serenity veiling his eyes. “The Gods love you so much that They’re willing to strip away from you everything that is illusion and replace it with something that’s real.”

“What do you mean?” I glanced at Rhiannon to make sure she was occupied and not eavesdropping.

“In the last two months before your divorce is final, you’re going to meet someone new. Or, if you already know him, it’ll feel like you just met him. You’ll see him through new eyes.” Leo inhaled deeply, then let the breath escape. “And honey? He’s going to be worth every second of this pain. You have to endure all of this before you can get to him.”

My jaw must have hit the table. “You mean… a man?” I cringed. I didn’t want a new man. I just wanted my husband… and I wanted him to love me and cherish me and respect me and share with me and… and all the things he didn’t do.

“Not just any man, sweetness.” Leo’s eyes lit up. He was seeing this mystery man in the Ether between us. “Oh, honey, he’s gonna be a real treat for you! Really cute. And if he’s got a brother, I want him.”

I grinned back at Leo and promised myself I wouldn’t let Leo’s partner, Tyler, know about his amusing leer. Then my smile faded. “I’m not leaving my husband for another man.”

“No, of course not. This man comes into your life just as you’re finishing up all the paperwork. He’s like a yummy dessert at the end of a rotten meal. He’s everything your husband pretends to be, but it’s real with him. He’s… oh, you’re going to like this one! He’s really hot.”

“So, he’s like a boy-toy? A sex toy right after my divorce?”

Leo dodged my question. “He’s going to be a real treat for you. Very hot, very sexy. And honey—” Leo took a deep breath and sighed romantically—“he so gets you. He totally gets you.”

I swallowed. A man who got me? A man who understood me? Impossible. I’d never had that.

“He’s going to be a wonderful friend to you, and you two will have a long and fruitful relationship. You will love each other for the rest of your lives. Very distinguished, sorta like a young Clark Gable. Emotionally intelligent. Oh, you so deserve this! You’ll travel together—he’ll take you to Europe, maybe to Scotland. You’re going to have so much in common. He’ll be a twin flame to you, a soulmate. Everything you’ve been through with Quentin will be worth it to get to this man. Your marriage to Quentin will be nothing more than a bug splat on the windshield of your life. But this man? He’s going to be the real thing, sweetie.”

“Am I going to… marry this guy or will he be a fling or just a friend?”

“Hmmm, there’s romance, yes. I see him falling for you when the moon is in Leo—no pun intended—and I see him kissing you for the first time when the moon is in Scorpio. And the first time you sleep with him, the moon will be in Scorpio.”

I blinked. “Same night? Okay, so there’s sex and romance. Is this a… a lasting relationship?”

“I don’t know if there’s marriage or not. But he’s very special. A wonderful friend. He’s the whole package. He doesn’t have a lot of money, but he has access to a lot of money. He’s smart, articulate. He’s musical. Plays the guitar. And plays it exceptionally well. But no matter what you do, don’t sleep with him yet. You’re going to be tempted to when you first meet him, but wait until your divorce is final, or your soon-to-be-ex will ruin his career. There’s something hands-off about him, some reason you can’t sleep with him right away, other than your ex. Some kind of conflict with his job. Professional ethics? You’ll have to fire him to sleep with him. You can do lunch with him, but nothing more. Not yet. Just give it a little while.”

“Okay. Yes. I understand.” I had already decided I wouldn’t sleep with anyone until the divorce was final, and even then, not for a long time. I didn’t want to be accused of leaving my husband for another man. I wasn’t. If I left him, it would be for a woman—me.

“The guy, this treat,” I asked, “do I know him?” Despite Leo’s contrary description, I was thinking of an old flame, Scott, who’d called me recently to see if I was still married and to beg me to get out of my marriage while I still could. I didn’t have the same feelings for Scott, not anymore, but maybe they could be rekindled later when I was single. Still, I guess I wanted it to be Scott, so I kept trying to twist Leo’s words to apply where they didn’t readily.

“No, this is someone new.” Leo thought for a moment. “Or, like I said, you may know him, but you’ve definitely never thought of him this way.”

Okay, so that didn’t sound like Scott. Still, I had to ask one more time. “Can you give me a better physical description?” A young Clark Gable? Not my old flame.

“Athletic, great body, not too tall, brownish hair, bluish-grayish eyes.”

That might have described Scott, though I hadn’t seen him in a while except for a business lunch several years ago where we’d barely spoken more than a dozen words. No silver or gray in his hair? Maybe with a little dye? I was confused. “Is he about my age, maybe a year older?”

Leo grinned. “No, this guy’s younger. Much.”

That stunned me. Definitely not Scott. Unless Leo was seeing Scott the way he looked last time I saw him. “You’re sure he’s younger than I am?”

“Yeah. A lot younger. He’s passed his first Saturn return. I’d say he’s about thirty-one or thirty-two.”

I gasped, then laughed out loud. My daughter jerked her head up at the sound. She hadn’t heard me laugh in a long time. “You’re joking, right? I’m over forty. You’re saying I’m going to have a relationship with this hot, smart, musical man who gets me and is a decade younger than I am?” This didn’t sound real—it sounded like fantasy. One of those relationships that would be too good to be true.

“Yep. He’s a widower, too.” Leo paused. “Or maybe not. His wife is dead or dead to him. I’m not sure which. But you’ll have children and children in common. I hate to sound like a bad romance movie, but he’s going to be The One for you. Five years from now, Quentin will still be just as screwed up as he is now, but you’ll have a new man and a whole new life, and everything will work out perfectly on every level.”

“On every level,” I repeated under my breath. “But I don’t really want another man in my life.”

Leo nodded furiously. “I know. You’re going to look at this guy and be like, ‘What do you want, fucker?’ and he’s going to be like, ‘I just want to be with you.’”

No man had ever just wanted to be with me. I’d always had to earn love, often by being something I wasn’t. But someone would love me just for me?

I teared up. “When? This fall?”

“Within a year of your split, this new man will pop in.” Leo didn’t define what he meant by split—physical separation, the final divorce papers, or what. “And then when your husband comes crawling back to you, it’ll be ‘Quentin who?’”

I laughed again. Laughing felt good. Uncommon but good.

“That all sounds wonderful, Leo, even though I’m not exactly looking for this guy. But you know what? I don’t want another man who makes fun of my magick. Will he understand my Goddess spirituality? Is this guy pagan?”

“No, not exactly. He’s sorta a magician, but he’s not a witch. But he is spiritual.” Leo cocked his head to listen to the voices and squinted into the Ether. “He’s spiritual in a ‘cowabunga, dude,’ sort of way.”

“What?” I certainly didn’t know anyone like that. “Sure, Leo. Whatever. As long as he’s not like Quentin.”

“Oh, he’s nothing like your husband. Or any other man you’ve ever known. This man will adore you, and you’ll adore him, and this man, he’ll want you to thrive.”

I’ve spent most of the time since that reading trying to work things out with Quentin, discovering it was all just lies, finding more webcam activity and escort services listed in his browser history. I confronted him only to have him suggest he was innocent and that our little girl had been the culprit, but then I found out he’d left a browser history of bestiality and anal sex and fisting on the computer where our baby had found them. She had been too traumatized to look any man or boy in the eyes ever since. I had amazingly given him a dozen second chances before finally coming to realize that he’d been abusing and manipulating me for years, but it had happened so gradually over time, I hadn’t realized it. I’ve been like the frog that jumps out of hot water immediately, knowing the dangers, but slowly boils to death when the temperature’s turned up only one degree at a time. I’ve filed for divorce, almost reconciled twice, and finally gotten him to move out.

Have I looked for The Treat? Yes and no. I hope I’ll know for certain it’s him when I meet him. Now and then, I’ll be introduced to a guy at work who’s in his early thirties and attracts my interest for at least five minutes. Maybe even enough for me to think, Is that The Treat? But none of them have the appeal of the man Leo described. Besides, right now, I’ve had enough of men.

When I filed for divorce a few months ago, I did it expecting I’ll probably be alone for the rest of my life. I have no intention of dating. No plans ever to be with another man, either as a lover or partner and probably not even as a friend. My freedom is what I want. I want to be alone and free. I have no interest at all in men. Just in getting my life back. In reclaiming me.

Maybe Leo was wrong about meeting this man within two months before my divorce finalizes. Then again, Quentin’s contesting everything, right down to my middle name, still trying to control me while being his flattering, charming self to everyone else, especially the neighborhood gossips who are only one whisper short of calling me a hussy to my face. Who knows how many more months before this nightmare is over?

As for now, I don’t have time to think about a man called The Treat. I have an Elevation ritual to prepare for, and I have less than a week to be ready to start my life over as a new Third Degree High Priestess.

I have only days left before the powers of witches in my magickal lineage are passed down through a super-secret ceremony.

Chapter 2 →

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