by Lily Webb
“Have fun,” Morgan said sarcastically and went back to the register to ring up a young guy who’d just walked in. After she’d marked his cup and handed it to me, I tried to stay focused on making the drink, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Blair.
How on Earth did she know who I was, who my parents were, and that I’d dropped out of college and come to Denver? As crazy as it was, I couldn’t find any explanation for it other than she really knew someone in my family who’d been feeding her gossip about me — but who could that be? Grandma Carol, my mom’s mom, loved to talk about our entire family behind their backs, but I found it hard to believe a rumormonger like her could keep a disowned aunt a secret from me, unless Grandma hated her too.
I shook my head and queued up a couple espresso shots. I was being ridiculous… Wasn’t I? Could Blair really be my aunt? As far as I knew, there was no one named Blair in my entire family, but if there were, I surely would’ve heard something about her by now. Then again, after the way my mom and dad had ruthlessly cut me out of their life for disappointing them, maybe it wasn’t such a stretch to believe my mom could do the same thing to a sister who’d upset her somehow. But why?
As much as I didn’t want to believe what Blair told me, it nagged at me. While I waited for the shots to finish brewing, I pulled the business card out of my back pocket and stared at the name in the e-mail address. Blair Williams. She and my mom had the same last name, and now that I thought about it, in a certain light, Blair did kind of look like Mom.
If I believed even for a second that she’d pick up, I would’ve taken a break to call her and ask her about Blair, but I knew better. She’d probably assume I was calling begging for money and forgiveness again and let it go to voicemail, anyway. But even if she answered, if she’d really spent all these years pretending her sister didn’t exist, why would she suddenly be honest with me about her now?
Though I didn’t want to admit it, the more I thought about it, the less I believed Blair was lying.
Chapter Two
Jadis met me in the alley behind Sid and Nancy’s, the bar where her band would take the stage to play in less than an hour. She looked every bit like a rock star, from the skin-tight leather and spike-studded catsuit she wore to the mysterious black eyeshadow she’d layered around her hazel eyes.
She shook her curly, lavender-dyed hair out of her face and gave me a hug. She smelled like a mixture of sweat, sage, and stale smoke, even though the bars no longer allowed smoking indoors. “I’m surprised you came, but I’m glad.”
“You kidding? I wouldn’t have missed it,” I lied. Truthfully, I didn’t at all care for the music The Neoliberal Nukes made, but because she was my best friend and the project meant so much to her, I owed it to her to support her.
Besides, if it weren’t for Jadis, I wouldn’t have my job at Insight nor a roof over my head. I arrived in Denver several months ago with nothing but a few thousand dollars in my bank account and quickly started looking for a place to live, including on billboards at various coffee shops.
Jadis’ ad caught my attention right away, not least of all because it featured a request for “those who believe in the pure, transformative magic of life.” At that point in my own life, which was easily the lowest it’d ever been, I’d figured a dose of magic couldn’t hurt, and I was right. I called her and we met up at Insight, where Jadis already worked, and she introduced me to Morgan and Summer there. The rest was history.
“How was work?” Jadis asked, and I sighed. “I take it not well,” she laughed.
“Well, yes, and no. I spilled milk all over myself, so that was fun, but it was nothing compared to the conversation I had with this weird woman who came in claiming to be my aunt.”
Jadis’ thick, dark eyebrows furrowed. “What? But you don’t have an aunt, do you?”
“I didn’t think so, but honestly, now I’m not so sure.”
“What does that mean? What did she say?”
“Blair, the woman, came in and ordered the weirdest drink I’ve ever seen, so I asked her if it was really what she wanted before I started making it. She insisted it was and said she couldn’t believe I didn’t recognize her — but I’d never seen her in my life before today.”
“That sounds… Bizarre.”
“I know, and it gets weirder. She knew my parents’ names, she knew I’d dropped out of school in Seattle and moved here, and she offered me a position working at her bed-and-breakfast up in the mountains. She seemed invested in helping me turn things around.”
“Whoa, creepy.”
“You’re telling me! Anyway, I have to be honest, that’s part of the reason I came to the show tonight. I really wanted to talk to you about all this because I’m not sure Blair was lying.”
Jadis blew a raspberry. “Crap. I wish I had more time before the show to talk about all this, but I really need to warm up.”
“That’s fine, I understand. We can catch up afterward if you still have a voice.”
Jadis chuckled and hugged me again. “You know, it doesn’t hurt your throat if you do it correctly. Trust me, I took online lessons.”
“You paid someone to teach you how to scream like an infernal demon?”
Jadis shrugged. “Sometimes it’s the only way to get people’s attention.”
“Jadis! You out there?” someone interrupted, and a moment later, a woman our age poked her bright pink, mohawked head out the back door. It was Scarlet, lead guitarist for The Neoliberal Nukes. “There you are. So, listen, we’ve got a problem.”
Jadis scowled at her. “I don’t like the sound of that. What’s wrong?”
“Celeste just called. She quit the band. Without her, the show’s off and the management is not happy about it.”
Jadis sighed and rolled her eyes. “Go figure. The drummers are always the drama queens,” she muttered to me and I bit back a laugh. “Oh well, I can’t say I’m surprised. She’s been acting weird ever since we started getting gigs. It’s probably too much for her.”
“What do we do?”
Jadis shrugged. “Guess we give the bar their money back, apologize, pack our gear and call it a night.”
“Ugh, I could kill Celeste,” Scarlet snarled and disappeared back into the bar.
Jadis turned back to me with a smile on her face. “Well, I guess it’s your lucky night because now you’ve got me all to yourself. Wanna come inside while we pack up?”
“Sure,” I said, secretly relieved not to have to listen to Jadis howling about the systematic oppression of women over squealing guitars and thundering drums for an hour. She opened the back door for me and gestured for me to lead the way. “You know, I’m surprised you aren’t more upset about this,” I told her as I entered a long, dark, narrow hallway.
“I’ve been in enough failed bands now that I expect it. Punks are flaky, it’s just part of the territory. But I never expected this band to go anywhere anyway, so it’s whatever.”
There were many things I admired about Jadis, but her easygoing attitude toward, well, pretty much everything was the thing I admired most. Nothing seemed to shake her.
We continued down the hallway until we emerged into what looked like a makeshift lounge and combination dressing room. Gross, dingy furniture lined the walls, and I wouldn’t have dreamed of sitting on any of it. Raised voices drifted from down another hall opposite me, probably the bar’s management shouting at Scarlet for her band falling apart.
“This way,” Jadis said and led me around the corner to another, smaller room with a refrigerator and a small, rickety card table in the center. An overflowing ashtray sat in the middle of the table, which Jadis picked up and set on a nearby counter. “Have a seat,” Jadis ordered as she pulled her bag out from a dark corner of the room.
Though the equally shaky folding chairs looked no more comfortable or welcoming than the stain-covered furniture in the other room, I lowered myself down into one of the two. Jadis pulled her tarot deck out of her bag and wiped the surface
of the table off with her hands, sending ashes snowing to the floor.
“Somehow, I doubt a tarot reading is going to help me make sense of all this. You know I don’t believe in this stuff,” I said, eyeing her as she shuffled her deck. Though I appreciated her trying to help, I wasn’t really in the mood for a conversation with the spirits.
“You can’t know until you try. Tell me more about what happened today,” she said and sat down across from me while she continued to shuffle the cards.
“I’ve already shared pretty much everything there is to share. Oh, well, except for this, I guess,” I said and pulled my wallet out of my back pocket to retrieve the business card Blair had given me. I set it on the table in front of Jadis, and she stared at it with wide eyes.
“Kindred Spirits? Starfall Valley? I’ve never heard of either of these places. Are you sure they’re even real?” she asked as she set down the deck of cards and pulled her phone out of her bag.
I shrugged. “No clue. I mean, how would I know? I’m barely familiar with our neighborhood, let alone the entire city and the surrounding area.”
Glancing back and forth from the card to her phone, Jadis punched the address into the map app on her phone. “Do you think this is some elaborate prank or something?”
“I dunno. I guess it could be, but I doubt it. Blair knew way too much, and who in their right mind would go to such lengths to mess with my head like that?”
“Good point, though from what you’ve told me about her, she sounds like she might not be in her right mind,” she laughed, then her brows scrunched.
“What’s wrong?”
“Weird. I know I typed the address of the BNB right, but it’s not coming up on the map.”
“Well, it’s in the mountains, right? Maybe the app just doesn’t have the entire map for that area.”
“Maybe, but I even tried looking for a place called Starfall Valley and it didn’t come up either.”
I didn’t know what to make of that. Could Blair really have concocted all this, including a fake business and card, just to play games with me? I couldn’t see why she’d want to. “Maybe it’s new? Blair said that her business is suddenly booming.”
“I guess it could be,” Jadis said and tapped around on her phone some more. “Huh, looks like she’s not on any social media sites, or at least not under her name or the BNB’s. That seems weird for a business these days.”
“She’s my parents’ age, so she might not know how to use all that. Wouldn’t surprise me. I don’t know many people our age and younger who are staying at mountain bed-and-breakfasts.”
“True, but what’s with this weird phone number she has listed? Is it foreign or something? Anyway, let’s see what the cards have to say about all this,” Jadis said and set her phone on the table to hand me her deck. “Shuffle and think about what happened today and what you should do with it.”
“Okay, but I really don’t think this will help. Shouldn’t we, I dunno, look up more info about Blair instead?”
“We can after. Just shuffle.”
“Fine,” I said and struggled to mix the cards up with both hands. I’d never been good at it, and I hadn’t improved in the months since Jadis insisted I practice. After a few attempts, I tried to hand the deck back to her, but she shook her head.
“Cut it first,” she said and gestured what she wanted me to do, so I split the deck in half and rejoined it, then slid it across the table to her. With a satisfied smile, one by one she drew and laid out three cards face down next to each other. She flipped the first one over, a depiction of a crumbling, burning tower, and laughed. “Well, The Tower fits.”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “What does it mean?”
“The Tower is a symbol of the past foundations of your life falling apart around you. Given everything that’s happened to you recently, I’d say it’s spot on. But a crumbling suggests an opportunity for a new beginning, which you’ve gotten here in Denver. I guess it could also refer to Blair coming into your life.”
“Okay,” I said, unimpressed. It didn’t take a psychic to know I’d been through a lot in the last year.
Sensing my skepticism, Jadis flipped the next card, revealing a picture of a regal-looking woman sitting on what seemed to be a throne. “Ah, The Empress. This usually represents someone in your life with caregiving, motherly energy who wants to help you. I’d say this is me, but I wonder if it could be about Blair instead?”
“That’s so vague it could literally be anyone,” I said, and Jadis glared at me. “What? I’m serious! That doesn’t really tell me anything. Sure, it could be Blair, but you said yourself it could just as easily be you, or Jane, or any other woman in my life.”
“Fine, let’s keep going then,” Jadis said and flipped the last card. It depicted a young man with a knapsack flung over his shoulder, apparently about to step off the edge of a mountain to his doom. “The Fool. That makes perfect sense.”
“It does?”
“Yeah. This card is usually an encouragement to take a leap of faith, to trust in the process no matter how crazy it seems, because you’re at the start of a new journey,” Jadis said and looked me in the eye. “I think the cards are telling you to take a chance on Blair. They want you to make a big change in your life, that’s why you drew all Major Arcana.”
I burst out laughing. “I don’t know what that means, but I know this is crazy. You really expect me to make a huge decision like that based on a few cards? I just met Blair, and she seems a little too suspicious for me to run away into the mountains with her on a whim.”
“Really, what do you have to lose? I mean, we’ll miss you around here, but it’s not like there’s much left for you. We all know how much you hate working at Insight, not that I blame you.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m still not buying it.”
“Then let’s pull another card,” Jadis said and fanned the remaining cards in the deck out in front me. “Pick one, whichever speaks to you most.”
Resisting the urge to roll my eyes, I reached for a card toward the middle of the deck and flipped it over. The card, The Magician, showed a young, long-haired man in flowing robes with an infinity symbol above his head raising a wand high in one hand.
“Bingo,” Jadis laughed. “It couldn’t be any clearer. The Magician is a card of manifestation, and the first card after The Fool. The cards are definitely telling you to move forward with this. I can’t interpret it any other way.”
I leaned back in my chair and stared at her. “So, you’re really telling me that, because some cards said so, I should throw away everything I have here to disappear into the mountains with a weird woman I just met?”
“What if you didn’t go alone?”
“What?! Are you saying what I think you are?”
Jadis shrugged. “I could use a shakeup myself. I mean, it’s not like my band is going anywhere without a drummer, and honestly, I’m tired of trying to make it in music. Let’s have an adventure.”
“But what about Morgan and Summer? We can’t just leave them on the hook for our share of the rent. And what if this all goes terribly wrong? We won’t have jobs or a house to come back to here.”
“We’re paid up on the rent for the rest of the month, and I’m sure they can find a couple girls to sublet in the meantime. We’ll figure all that other stuff out if we get there. I always land on my feet,” Jadis said. Normally, I appreciated her laid back approach to life, but this seemed blase even for her.
Still, I had to admit that there was something tempting about Blair and her offer, and if Jadis came with me, at least I wouldn’t be alone if things went sideways. I wanted to know more about Blair, namely if she was telling me the truth about her relationship to my family, and what better way to do that than spend a few months working with her? Besides, Jadis was right; there really wasn’t anything left for me in Denver.
Jadis pushed Blair’s business card across the table to me. “Call her. See if she’s okay with
you bringing another pair of hands.”
“If she’s even half as busy as she claims she is, she won’t say no,” I said and, though I couldn’t believe what I was about to do, I pulled my phone out of my jeans pocket and dialed the number on the card. I put the phone on speaker so Jadis could hear too, and though the line remained silent for a few moments, eventually a weird clicking sound came across and the phone started ringing.
“I didn’t expect you to call so soon, love,” Blair answered, and Jadis locked eyes with me. How did she know it was me calling? “Selena? Are you there?”
“Y-yeah, I’m here. I just… How did you know it was me?”
“Oh, uh, caller ID,” Blair said, though I got the distinct sense that wasn’t really how she knew. “So, have you decided?”
“Not quite. I have some questions I’d like to ask you first.”
“I see. Well, go ahead, then. I’m an open book.”
“Is this all some sick joke?” I blurted out.
Blair laughed. “No, love, I promise you it isn’t. I understand how sudden and strange this must be for you, but it’s not a joke.”
“Okay, well, the thing is, a friend of mine and I looked up the information on the business card you gave me and didn’t come back with any results.”
“There’s a good reason for that.”
“Which is?”
Blair sighed. “Unfortunately, I can’t tell you. I’ll have to show you.”
Jadis and I exchanged confused looks, but she shrugged, so she must not have been too concerned. “Uh… Okay. What if I’m not happy there? Can I come back to Denver?”
“Of course. You can leave whenever you’d like. I’m not kidnapping you, love.”
“Okay, good. Would you, uh, mind terribly if I brought a friend of mine along with me, just to be safe? She’s willing to work too.”
“That would be lovely. She’s more than welcome, and Lilith knows I could use all the help I can get.”
“Who’s Lilith?”