Chapter 37

Chapter 37 of 56 · 10-minute read

I stiffen, both standing tall on my shadow farm and here cross-legged on the ground next to Virgil. “Oops! Um, no? and now I’m afraid to.” I try to make a joke of it, but on the shadow farm, I become uneasy.

Slowly, I turn to look behind me in my meditation.

“Tell me, Laurie.”

On both planes, I shrug. “Nothing too crazy. Some of the locals. Behind me maybe thirty feet or more. Curious, but friendly. They seem to like me well enough.”

“Good. More potential friends for you. What else?”

“Uh… you. Several cousins of mine in the far back left corner, still just shadows, really. Crouched down and hiding. But they’re not coming close enough.”

“They’re afraid of you. I sense it.”

“I see a few others in town, too. A few of the women who were mean girls in middle school and just became mean women instead. Everett. His father and brother. A few people in town who have whispered behind my back that I’m a witch just as they whispered any number of things when I was younger. In the far back, almost directly behind me stands Lisa, my wanna be student. Or rather, my wannabe Initiate but without the studying. She crosses her arms over her chest and clucks at me from a distance. She has no real power of her own, and I’m not worried about her. Just… your average gossip. People who could hurt me, but I’ve experienced far worse in my life than any of them could lob at me now.”

“Okay then. Let’s talk about some of the people that you don’t see or at least you don’t notice being there. Enemies past and present.”

On both planes, I shiver.

“We don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Virgil offers.

“No. No, I have to figure this out.”

“Okay, then. I’m right here beside you if you need me. Remember that whoever it is can’t hurt you in this space. Think of it as a metaphorical model for all the supporters and naysayers around you. This is a way of discovering who you’re most focused on, and who is most focused on you.”

In my meditation, I know I should be looking behind me, but instead I scan the sunlit hill in front of me. My mom and daughters. The Caine brothers on either side of me. Virgil’s right that nothing can hurt me here. I sense complete power in myself. The shades that move around me are simply avatars. Representative, but powerless at this venue. I interpret the mix of supporters and naysayers as nothing more than warnings of what to watch out for on the physical plane.

“Laurie? Who is it that you fear most might be stalking you? Tell me, and let’s work through it.”

Inhaling deeply, I begin my list. I immediately begin ticking off names on my list, going all the way back to my teen years. Who knows whether I may have stirred up some old rivalry here in my hometown simply by virtue of making an appearance here after all these years.

“Oh, Virgil. I’m not even sure where to start.”

“Start with the ones who had the most power over you or you would consider the most dangerous.”

“I don’t know. I guess I could start with the leader of the Dragon Hart Grand Coven, Lady Dragon. I left her group almost a decade ago, within hours after receiving my Third Degree Elevation. I was naïve, Virgil. I was just for the first time in my life understanding what abuse looked like. I was leaving behind an awful marriage, coming to terms with the abusive way I grew up, and then I saw the same traits in my coven’s leader. I just wanted to be free of the abuse. I didn’t mean to start a witch war with someone who was far more powerful than I was. At least, more powerful than I was then.”

“Look around,” Virgil urges. “Any sign of her? Maybe hiding? Behind a tree? Under a rock?”

Under a rock. Virgil’s description makes me smile. Try as I may though, I see nothing of Dragon anywhere in this fear around me. I suppose she could be under the earth, but I don’t feel her nearby.

“No. Dragon’s not here. She’s not focused on me.”

“That’s good news then. Who’s next on the list?”

“I suppose that would be Donna, my former High Priestess and founder of the Elders’ Coven that I was with after I left Dragon’s Grand Coven. I left under not-so-good terms with them as well. “

“Sheesh,” Virgil jokes. “Can’t you get along with anybody?”

“Shush. You’ll make me lose my meditation focus.” I scan the shadow farm, but no sign of Donna or any of the Elders. “Nothing. I guess the Elders’ Coven is no longer trying to do magick against me to control me and convince me to relocate so I can give up everything to be with them. “

Beside me, Virgil inhales sharply. Then he sighs. “I think I’m beginning to understand why you’ve not rejoined any covens or priesthoods. Forgive me if I came across as being a little too pushy about that.”

On both planes, I shrug. “You’re forgiven. Donna and the Elders are no longer focused on me.”

“Alrighty. Next?”

“There was this… chaos witch… who, um, her and Jesse—” I still can’t go there in my head. Even after three years and more. There are some things that are just easier if you bury them. And let them be. There’s no making any of it better.

“It’s okay, Laurie. Just check to see if she’s there, and we can move on.”

He lays one warm palm over my kneecap on the physical plane, and I feel my body relaxing again.

On the shadow farm, I whirl to one side, and then to the other, looking for anything hiding behind me, whether it be the chaos witch or her servitor sent to destroy me.

“She’s not here either.” I let out a long sigh. If my magick still holds, she’s in a jail cell somewhere, tormented by the same supernatural creature she sent to end me.

“You know, Laurie, a witch is a hundred times worse because they bring other powers to what would otherwise be a mundane fight, but that doesn’t mean that non-magickal people can’t be focused on you with an intention of doing harm. What about your first husband?”

I shake my head. I didn’t even have to look around the shadow farm for evidence that he’s been there either now or anytime in the last two years. “Quent’s no longer focused on me. He’s finally happy, and making someone else happy for a change.” Two years ago, he divorced Candy, his second wife, moved to Vermont with his boyfriend, and now lives the life he always wanted to, the one he suppressed while making both me and his second wife totally miserable trying to live up to his families’ expectations and secretly ashamed of who he was. Some small part of me is happy that he finally found his true self, but the truth is, I don’t think much about him anymore or the misery that was our marriage.

Just for good measure, I do take a quick look around to see if I might spot Candy. She never blamed me for what happened with Quent and her façade of a marriage to him. He’d made her sign a prenup, so she’d walked away with almost nothing.

For a while, she tried to contact me to figure out if he had gone back to me, which is pretty much the most ridiculous assumption in the world. I would be the absolute last woman on the planet interested in being with him. She’d even tried to cozy up to Sonnet, reminding her of how she’d been there for her stepdaughter, but Sonnet wouldn’t have anything of it. Nor would Rhiannon. Quent would like to mend his relationship with both his daughters, but either he hasn’t figured out quite how yet or he’s too focused on his new relationship. It really doesn’t seem to matter if he’s interested in men, women, or both—he’s always the same in any new relationship.

I don’t really perceive Candy as being much of a threat. A nuisance perhaps. During her marriage to Quent, I tolerated Candy, I suppose mainly because I understood what it was like to marry such a charismatic man and to discover too late that it had nothing to do with love. Nevertheless, the last time I saw Candy, I’d yelled at her.

I’d yelled at her for harassing Sonnet and guilt tripping my daughter about giving her money as well as asking for the key to my house so she could see if Quent might be hiding out there. I found her parked in my driveway, unable to get past my wards, but still annoyingly waiting there for me as if she had some right to be the gatekeeper of my property. While I can sympathize with her despair over going from brunch with her wealthy husband to being served divorce papers with no explanation, I had no patience at all with her parking just off of my property and sitting for hours to see if her ex-husband-to-be’s luxury car either arrived or departed from my home. She’d insisted to Sonnet that if I didn’t have anything to hide, I wouldn’t mind her sitting there and watching. In turn, I insisted a few things to Candy and probably confirmed all the speeches Quent had given her about me being a harpy.

But Candy isn’t here on the shadow farm. I don’t see her, and I don’t feel her. However she’s moved on or whatever is going on in her life currently, I’m not her focus at the moment.

On both planes, I shake my head. “Sorry, Virgil, but I’m not sensing my stalker, or even anyone who would do me serious harm on the shadow farm. I don’t get it. My visions are always so accurate. I always feel like I know who they are, not well, but they’re only around intermittently. Maybe that’s it. They’re only here occasionally, and that’s why I don’t feel them focused on me right now.”

“Maybe, but even if they’re not physically close by all the time, I would still expect them to show up on the shadow farm because energetically they’re focused on you. “

“I don’t know what to say, Virgil. I’ve gone through my list of every magickal and mundane enemy I can think of.”

“What about your second husband?”

I gasp. “No. It can’t be.”

“Are you sure? You told me he wasn’t who he used to be. Maybe you don’t recognize his energy anymore.”

Could Virgil be right? Jesse’s energy had changed when he’d lost his mind. I would recognize that energy again, even now after three more years without him, but maybe his energy has changed yet again. I can’t imagine that Jesse would ever intentionally hurt me, but he’d certainly hurt me enough unintentionally. Still, I don’t sense him here either physically or energetically. The Jesse I knew, as well as the Jesse I last saw right before he fled town, isn’t here anymore.

“He’s not here. It’s not him. I’m not even sure that Jesse is still alive, and I have no idea where he is, but I’ve known for a long time now—” my voice cracks— “that I’ll never see him again.”

“I’m so sorry, Laurie. I didn’t mean to open old wounds. I know that I still have my days too when I think about my late wife. But I know that I’ll have better days ahead, even as I get older. The best really is yet to come, and when I think about the good things I’ve lost, then what’s ahead for me?—and no doubt for you as well—must be really special. If you’d like to stay on the shadow farm a bit longer, I’ll sit here with you and if you’re done, you can always go back in your own meditation. That place is yours, and yours alone.”

I take one last look around the shadow farm, and Virgil at my side, and Dixon at my knees. And my beautiful daughters and their partners and all their happiness that I worried over and wished for. At my mom, peaceful at the moment. And my brother, the war hero, playing sentry not just for me, but for the entire world. And friends and neighbors here, some I’ve long forgotten and some new in my life, but each face filled with opportunity of making a good life here, should I choose it. But nothing and no one here stalking me through nursing homes and fields and threatening my life. In fact, if I can make peace with my past, this could be a peaceful place.

“I think I’m done,” I whisper as I open my eyes. I blink into the small campfire and then up at Virgil’s gentle face.

“Did that help?”

“I didn’t find my stalker, but strangely enough, yes. That helped a lot. Things are much clearer now.”

“Good.” Virgil checks his watch. “Right on time, too. We need to leave in about ten minutes.”

“Leave for where?”

“The ICU. I pulled some strings. We’re moving your mom tonight before your two least favorite deputies know. It’s not a permanent solution, but I’m buying her another two weeks out of their reach.”

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