Chapter 27

Chapter 27 of 48 · 8-minute read

The Chaos Witch’s Natal Pluto Conjunct Jesse’s Natal Venus in Synastry

The bubbles of memory have surfaced in the past. That part isn’t unusual. Always on a onesie-twosie basis for my entire life, but in the last two days they’ve been popping to the surface of my consciousness like air bubbles in water coming to a boil.

Clad in pale blue pajamas, Christabel settles onto the living room rug. She crosses her legs, her heels on top of her thighs, and rocks back and forth. She smooths a purple velvet scarf on top of the rug, then shuffles the Tarot deck seven times. She cuts the deck twice and drops the cards into three distinct stacks.

Feeling better, I prop on one elbow to watch. She’s been a good student—she’s copying my own style of casting Tarot cards.

Immediately above the three columns of cards, she waves her left hand, which is her receptive hand, or non-dominant hand. She’s feeling for tingles in her palm, just as my friend Belinda taught me years ago and I explained to Christabel. She passes her hand over the stacks several times, then zeroes in on the middle stack. Nodding to herself, Christabel moves the middle stack to the top of the right stack and then tops the left stack with it.

She hunches over the velvet scarf and pauses. “How many of those memory bubbles have you had pop up? Five? Six? Let’s make a picture.”

“Six. Yes.”

She drops seven cards, face down, onto the velvet cloth. “Tell me about—wait. Let me tell you about the last one.” She flips the seventh card.

“But I said six⁠—”

“You did. But there’s a seventh coming.” Her head jerks up. “Now.”

The memory doesn’t just bubble up out of nowhere. Instead, it bursts into my mind with the force of a geyser. I fall back onto the sofa and squeeze my eyes shut.

“What was it? What do you remember?”

The Center of Light. I’m walking into Jesse’s clinic at its center. Boxes of hot pizza in my arms. It’s cold outside, even in Florida, so the heat feels good. Even now, I can smell the tomato sauce and pepperoni. I’m there to surprise Jesse and his staff with lunch. I can feel the warmth of the bottom box in my hands, not quite burning but not comfortable either. It’s all an excuse to see him during his workday and hide how upset I am.

“Well?” Christabel waits for an answer while she hides the card behind her palm. Six cards, face down, and one, face up but hidden from me. For now.

This memory is full of many emotions, but thinly disguised fear most of all. I had received a call from Sondra’s lab an hour before, letting me know one of my delayed pathology reports said the margins hadn’t been clear after a biopsy. They’d made a mistake in calling me—such bad news was supposed to go through my doctor. I’d kept my worries hidden from everyone because it seemed like self-sabotage to talk about my doubts when I was trying to manifest healing. Any time that fear takes over, it’s so much harder to manifest the positive.

Yet I needed the comfort of a moment with Jesse. I needed to feel his love for me. In his arms, I would manage anything.

I didn’t want to pull Jesse out of his appointments for me to cry on his shoulder, however. That would set our small town on fire with gossip, for they would undoubtedly assume another miscarriage and pity us to death with their toxic positivity. I’d decided to bolster my feelings by spending a few minutes over a slice of his favorite pizza with him. Once I felt more in control of my uneasiness over the medical news, we would have a long talk about what the pathologist had written in her report—which we’d done for hours later that night with Jesse holding me and offering solace. But I needed an excuse to see him that wouldn’t have his office busybodies speculating, and they were accustomed to me showing up with treats when I wasn’t working as a part-time office manager. My presence had grown less and less in January and February because neither of us wanted to dodge unsolicited questions about my reproductive health.

I walked through the clinic’s back door and down the short corridor to his office. The fumes of antiseptic and floor cleaner stung my nostrils as usual, but on this day, the pizza smell overpowered them. I could hear the usual clinic sounds—the receptionist chattering with a patient about a future appointment, Jesse’s nurse arguing on the phone with an insurance company, ambient music over the speakers. And Jesse. Not in his office but across the hall in the doorway of an exam room.

“I think you should find a physician who’s better suited to your needs,” he said sternly as he retreated into the corridor, his lab-coat-clad back to me. “I’m married. Happily. Super-duper happily.”

Unseen, his patient said something to him in a low, melodic voice, and he took another step backward. I saw her hand, only her hand. She reached for his shirt sleeve. Long, scarlet fingernails. Delicate gold chains dangling from her wrist. Her slender fingers curling around his forearm and squeezing.

Jesse jerked away from her touch. “Look, you’ve misunderstood.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. The way you’re smiling at me every time I come here? I can tell that you feel it, too. You can’t tell me you don’t.”

“I can tell you and I am telling you, I don’t. I’m friendly to all my patients.”

That much was true. This wasn’t even an uncommon scenario for me to stumble upon. At least a couple times a week, one of his patients would turn brazenly flirtatious or maybe coquettish in his presence. They ranged from teens to women in their nineties.

When I wasn’t freaking out over health issues and not at the clinic as often, I managed the office part-time. The usual deal was for me to follow up with any patient who tried to get too familiar with Jesse. Sometimes it was Petra, his nurse, who made the phone call or the other office manager, Kimberly. If the aggressor didn’t de-escalate immediately, either Petra or I would offer to help the patient locate a new doctor. If they still didn’t take the hint, I would send them a letter telling them Jesse could no longer see them and we’d send their medical records to the physician of their choice, in effect firing patients who couldn’t respect his boundaries. Of course, I’d stepped back from those duties to focus on my health, though no one else but Jesse knew that was the reason, something that probably fueled even more gossip.

Jesse was rarely this firm with a patient, mainly because Petra and I played bad cop to Jesse’s good cop. We kept his reputation in the community easygoing and friendly to maintain “Doctor Jesse’s” five-star rating on all the review sites. Occasionally, his reviews lost a star due to his “bitchy” office manager and nurse, but Jesse was the star here and the cornerstone of the Center of Light. Without him at the hub of our wheel, the healing center wasn’t self-supporting, even with rent and community events. Fortunately, most women backed off once they got a call from me introducing myself as the “bitchy” office manager—and Jesse’s wife. They could overlook his obvious wedding band to pursue their prize, but I wouldn’t allow them to overlook me.

But this woman? I have no idea who she was, and I was too distracted with my own woes to pay more attention.

I’m lost in that moment with Jesse, with walking down the corridor, with seeing him backing away from a patient whose identity is still hidden behind the door.

Focus, focus.

“Lauren!”

In the bubble of memory, Petra called me from behind. I whirled to face her.

“What a sweetheart you are, bringing us lunch!” Petra was smiling through her lined face but hiding something darker. Her gaze wasn’t on me but on the lingering patient. Anger. Motherly protection. Fatigue.

In the present, Christabel is saying something, but I can’t discern her words from the sounds in this fragment of the past.

I still myself and concentrate on the memory. Most memories are just highlights, but if I focus, I can see the finer details in my mind’s eye. And I can hear the whispers.

“You’re confused, Dr. Jesse. You should see our composite chart. Astrology says were meant for each other. It’s in our stars. My Pluto is conjunct your Venus, and our progressed composite chart has Venus and Mars in conjunction. We just can’t help ourselves.”

Well, this is different.

Somehow, I’m able to dissect the layers of audio in my memory, so that Petra’s greeting is now distinct from the conversation between Jesse and his patient. I’ve never explored this gift of layer separation within a memory until now.

Jesse’s voice is low, guttural. “You need to leave. Now.”

I hadn’t noticed at the time, owing to my worries over my pathology report or Petra’s welcome or both. When I turned back to Jesse, his patient was already around the corner and out of sight.

I can’t even describe her. I barely remember the entire exchange because I’d simply been trying to get through a bad day and couldn’t imagine much worse than the health nightmare I feared. Another starry-eyed patient wasn’t enough at the time to make a dent in my own anxieties.

“Well?” Christabel drags me back to the present. “You saw her, didn’t you? The witch behind who created the servitor. You know who she is?

I nod, then shake my head. “I know she was a patient with long red fingernails. I know she’d been in the clinic before. And I also know one date that she saw Jesse and the general time of the appointment.”

Because it was the day I’d gotten test results from the lab before Sondra could interpret them for me. Initially, the lab had lost the results, which only raised my anxiety levels. Then to finally hear from them that the test results had been located but the news wasn’t good? I’m not likely to forget that day.

“I know she’s heavy into astrology. I know—” I squint into the memory— “I only saw her arm, but she was wearing a long-sleeved blouse. Bright red. Almost orange-red. Her fingernails matched it. Her bracelets… gold, dainty, but one was a charm bracelet with zodiac symbols and planets.”

“You didn’t see her face?”

“No. She was just inside the door. I couldn’t see her from that angle.”

Christabel lifts her hand to show me the Tarot card in the seventh position. “Queen of Cups, reversed. She’s hella emotional and not in a good way. Think of her as a drama queen. She gets what she wants, but always through emotional manipulation, whether it’s tears or carefully calculated words. She’s dangerous, Miss Lauren. She’s not used to anyone saying no to her, and when they do, she makes them pay. Definitely a witch, and definitely focused on you.”

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