For a moment, I want to poke her in the stomach. How can she let me dangle out here on this limb?
Pen arches a slim brow. “Enough with the face,” she scolds. “I’m not judging.”
“No,” I grouse, scowling. “You’re not judging. You’re making me self-reflect, and I don’t like it.”
Her grin is a mix of sassy and sympathetic. She reaches out and takes one of my clenched fists. “I’ll hold your hand to make it easier.”
I roll my eyes, but I don’t pull away. Instead, I wrap my fingers around hers and squeeze, and it’s just like her hug. Her hand is narrower than mine, her fingers longer and slenderer. Her skin is darker than mine. We don’t match up at all.
Except, we do.
I sigh, staring at our joined hands and thinking that maybe I can do this. Have this kind of radical honesty with myself that she’s pushing me to have.
“Brody was never going to be father material or husband material or life partner material.” I’m certain, for the first time. “I knew that all along without ever really acknowledging it.”
Pen is nodding but waiting.
I think back about those months with him, and they are as flat as a Cajun prairie. “He couldn’t possibly disappoint me,” I admit. “Because I had zero expectations.”
A thought occurs to me, and my laugh startles us both. “Hell, he gave me Maisy, the greatest love of my life. And in that, Brody Michot definitely exceeded my expectations.”
Pen’s amber eyes shine with her smile. “We do have him to thank for that little sprite.” Her smile softens, but her gaze never leaves me. I feel its not-so-patient intensity.
“What else do you want me to say?” I blurt. “That I do that on purpose? Only choose guys who can clear the lowest possible bar?”
Her lips purse to the side as her chin dips. “Is that what you do?”
“If I’m choosing anyone at all,” I say, referring to my long-running dry spells.
“True.” She angles her head to the side. “So you either play to lose or don’t play at all. What’s up with that?”
I shut my eyes. Even saying it—thinking it—feels like base-jumping. A total free fall.
I shrug. “It’s safer that way.” Behind my closed eyes, memories flash like a kaleidoscope. Dad packing his bags. Mom literally on her knees begging him not to go. Dad telling Tyler and me, at ten years old, about his plans to take us to False River for the weekend and teach us how to water ski—and then canceling that Friday morning. My sixteenth birthday and the tickets to Wicked that ended up in the trash. Mom practically collapsing when I told her I was pregnant, doubling the weight I already felt on my shoulders. Both of them hovering in the ICU doorway while I sat at Tyler’s bedside, as though if they got too close, they’d be stuck there.
“I learned the best way to keep from getting hurt is to expect nothing. And dammit—” My voice breaks on the curse. “It still hurts.”
When I open my eyes, I see pride in my best friend’s.
I sigh. “Why are you looking at me like that? This really sucks.”
Pen throws her head back with a laugh. “It be like that sometimes.”
“What?” I ask, glaring.
“Awakening.” Her smile is just promising enough that I don’t tit-punch her.
“Mmm hmm. So what’s the benefit of realizing that I’ve been sabotaging all of my romantic relationships my whole adult life?”
“Change.” She offers it like a lifeline. It’s a fucking tempting lifeline.
And it’s also as scary as if she offered me a cobra.
I blow out a breath. “I guess that means I need to let Lark go.” And, yeah, I’ll admit it. The disappointment is there. I feel it from my tear ducts down to my toes. Like I’m in a full-body vice.
Pen’s look of pride quick-changes to one of horror. “What?! Why?!”
Her one-eighty stuns me.
“I-I-I… I mean, doesn’t that make sense?”
“No.” She still looks horrified and more than a little confused.
I’m confused too. “B-b-b-but—If I’ve only been picking guys who are all wrong for me, who disqualify themselves from the word Go, who have zero staying power, wouldn’t Lark fall into that category?”
She shakes her head. “Stella, no.”
I side-eye her. “Pen, he’s five years younger than me.”
“So?”
I add a frown to the side-eye. “He’s still in college.”
“So?”
“He just got out of a long-term relationship.”
“S—” She holds up a hand to interrupt herself and nods as though the spirit guides are whispering in her ear. “Okay, that one’s more valid, but not a dealbreaker.”
I stare at her, dumbfounded. Then I shake my head. “You’re telling me… that letting things happen with Lark… is a good choice?”
Pen draws her palms together in a prayer position and perches her chin atop them. She stares and blinks. Stares and blinks. Then she full-on closes her eyes.
I wait.
And wait.
And wait.
“What the hell, Pen?!” I shout.
Her eyes fly open. They brim with irritation. “I’m trying to get centered,” she says through clenched teeth. “It’s hard when I’m so emotionally invested.”
It’s hard to get centered when she’s emotionally invested? “How do you think I feel?”
“Argh!” Pen yanks me by the wrists and drags me from the kitchen. “C’mon. We need to take out the big guns.”
“B-Big guns?”
“Tarot cards. They’ll help us cut through the interference.”
I follow her upstairs. With the way she’s still gripping my wrist, I don’t have much choice.
Nina’s at work. Livy’s at the library. Lark’s in his room.
Presumably hiding from me.
It’s the calm before the Samhain storm. Pen’s calling it a party to make sure everyone attends, but it doesn't sound like any Halloween party I’ve ever been to. After I take Maisy trick-or-treating, we’re having a ceremonial dinner with mulled wine, deer sausage, and acorn squash—all traditionally Pagan foods that date back centuries—and then we’ll light a bonfire in the front yard for some kind of releasing ceremony.
Everyone has agreed to attend, but now I’m having doubts about whether or not Lark will show.
We pass his shut door and turn up the steep stairs to Pen’s attic. Walking through her door is almost like entering the wardrobe in the Narnia books. The shift in environment is enough to induce vertigo.
The scent of woods and water hit me first, as though I’m stepping into the forest primeval, an enchanted wood where I might just as easily encounter a fairy as a fawn. It’s just her essential oil diffuser at work, but it’s disorienting.
The afternoon sun and breeze from her window unit make her hanging prisms splash rainbows along her walls and floor, heightening the sense of being thrown off balance.
And then there’s the music. Pen has her Bluetooth speaker and Spotify going at all hours. Right now it’s some kind of babbling-brook-crickets-and-birdsong playlist.
All of it gives me the feeling I’ve left the modern world—the muggle world—behind.
I sniff the moist air. “What are you diffusing?” I ask, unable to place it.
“A little arborvitae, a little lavender, a little this, a little that.” Pen shrugs coyly.
I eye her for a moment, hoping that she hasn’t discovered some way to use her diffuser to microdose magic mushrooms.
“Have a seat,” she says, gesturing to the sitting area she has assembled under the north-facing gable window. The one that gives an unobstructed view of St. John’s Cemetery. Four giant cushions, each covered with a navy fabric littered with gold symbols of the Zodiac, flank a low, square table.
At its center is a crystal ball—what Pen calls her orbuculum—and when I hesitate to sit, Pen tsks, picks up a flimsy scarf she’s discarded on the foot of her bed, and drapes it over th
e orb.
When I still don’t move, Pen’s eyes go heavenward, she lets out an enormous sigh, and then she carefully scoops up the crystal ball and relocates it on the bookshelf clear on the other side of the attic.
I might hear her whispering soothing words to it, but I’m not messing around. That thing freaks me out. It has ever since I flopped down in front of it one night at the Pen Pen and saw Nanna’s face staring back at me.
This was years ago. After Maisy was born but before Tyler’s accident, and seeing my grandmother’s reflection where mine should have been scared the crap out of me.
“Now, sit,” she orders, irritation leaking into her tone.
I stick my tongue out at her when she isn’t looking, but I still sit, sinking into the cushion. I cross my ankles and tuck my feet closer to my body, doing my best to ignore the thrum of nerves in my stomach. The Tarot cards don’t terrify me the same way the crystal ball does, but believe what you want to. There’s an energy in this space that is more than just Pen’s decorating choices and her essential oil diffuser.
I know the Tarot reading is going to give me some kind of truth. I just don’t know if it’s one I really want to deal with.
Pen doesn’t so much as sit on the cushion opposite me as float down onto it, her long orange and navy paisley skirt billowing out and spilling onto the floorboards. Her bangles jangle on her wrists as she rubs her palms together and breathes in and out so deeply, I think of one of those vintage fireplace bellows.
I jump when she produces a deck of Tarot cards. Where the hell was she stashing those?
One final deep exhale, and Pen’s amber eyes land on me.
I gulp.
She holds the deck out over the table. “Do you have a question?”
I lick my lips. “Um…”
She waits.
I dither.
“Do… Do I need to have a question?” I flap a hand at the deck she’s holding. “Couldn’t we just see what comes up?”
Pen arches a severe brow. “And not know if the cards relate to your fledgling business or Tyler’s recovery or Maisy’s growth or this house or your—”
“Okay, fine. Um…”
A question. What am I doing? Was it a mistake to let Lark into my pants? Why doesn’t he want to do it again? Should I avoid him too? Is this another case of me picking the wrong guy? Am I stupid to be asking a bunch of cards these questions?
Pen sighs in exasperation. “Tell you what. Let’s just keep it simple,” she says, her mouth in a flat, disapproving line. “Concentrate on your romantic life in general. I’ll turn over three cards. Past. Present. And future. And we’ll go from there. Okay?”
I perk up. “Just three cards? No questions.”
“Yep. Think you can handle that?”
I pull a face at her. “Yeth,” I mutter like a mouth-breather with a lisp.
Pen bats her false eyelashes at me in a way I know she’s fighting back a curse. The magic kind, not the swear-word kind.
I tuck my chin in contrition. “Sorry.”
“Close your eyes,” she seethes.
I’m tempted to be sassy and scrunch them up like Maisy whenever we play hide and seek, but maybe acting like my four-year-old isn’t the right play at the moment.
I close my eyes softly. And some of my tension leaves me.
“Now take three long, slow, cleansing breaths,” Pen says, her voice softening with these instructions.
I take one, two, three breaths. And I’ll be damned if I don’t feel lighter. Looser.
“Now…” I hear Pen shuffling the Tarot deck, “find the place in your body where your romantic energy dwells.”
Eyes still closed, I frown. “How do I know where that is?”
Another sigh. “No wonder this is so hard,” Pen mutters.
I crack an eye open and scowl at her.
“Close. Your. Eyes.” Pen says this in her scary voice.
I close them.
It’s Pen’s turn to take three long, slow, cleansing breaths. “Okay,” she says on an exhale. “In your mind’s eye, follow your breath on an inhale.”
I breathe in and feel my chest expand.
“Breathe out.”
I obey.
“Now, slow down the next inhale—” I start to fill my lungs when she throws me a curve ball. “And picture Lark.”
My breath stutters as a shock wave detonates inside me.
I gasp. “What the hell?” I open my eyes to find Pen raising her palm, eyes still closed.
“Just go with it, Stella. Eyes closed.”
I want to argue. I want to question, but I know Pen won’t answer me. I close my eyes, and I can still feel an echo of sensation in me.
“What did you sense?” she asks softly.
“I-I-I’m not sure. A feeling.”
“Where did it come from?”
I concentrate. The sensation is still there. I imagine that if someone looked at me with an infrared camera, they’d see a brighter spot glowing somewhere behind my breastbone.
“Like… my sternum. Only deeper in… and maybe lower?” I grasp for the place, but it’s as ephemeral as it is powerful. “I-I can’t pinpoint it.”
“Shh.” Pen soothes. “No, you won’t be able to. Don’t struggle. Just feel it.”
“Feeling it.”
The cards shuffle and flap and shuffle and flap.
“Okay.”
I open my eyes as Pen turns over the first card. My stomach muscles ease a little. It’s not a grim reaper or a hangman or something sinister.
The upside down card is actually kind of pretty.
Kneeling, a naked woman pours two pitchers into a pool. A ring of stars surround the sky behind her, one golden star at its center.
I grin in relief. “That doesn’t look too bad.”
Pen’s not grinning, but she also doesn’t look surprised. “The first card is meant to signify your romantic past,” she says.
I look at the pretty card and frown. “Oh.” My romantic past definitely isn’t decorated with stars and water nymphs. “That can’t be right.”
“This is the Inverse Star,” Pen says with confidence. “And if you’re asking me, it’s spot on.”
“The Inverse Star?”
Pen blinks at me like a disappointed teacher who has caught her student napping. “I’ve explained this to you half a dozen times. Every card has two aspects, like a positive charge and a negative charge. A yin and yang. Two sides of the same coin,” she huffs. “An upside down card is the inverse meaning.”
“The bad one?”
Her brow creases. “Not bad exactly. An inverse card might signal a need for a change or the end of an era for a person.” She shrugs. “Or a personal trait that needs balancing.”
“Like what?” I ask, confused.
“Like…” Pen searches her prism-dazzled ceiling for an example. “Like tolerance. Tolerance is a good thing, right? It helps you get along with people. It makes you open to new ideas and experiences.”
“Right—”
“But when someone is too tolerant, it might get them into trouble. Other people might take advantage of them or disrespect their boundaries. Get it?”
I nod. “Got it.” I look down at the star card—or the inverse star card—Pen has dealt me. “So what does this mean?”
“Well,” she says with a smug little look at me from under her eyelashes. “This one means that fear of failure has held you back.”
I cough and splutter, the wind knocked out of me. “Wait, what?”
Pen’s brow arches as that smug smile grows. “In your romantic life. Do you think fear of failure has gotten in your way?”
I press my lips together. “No comment.”
She wrinkles her nose. “Stella. C’mon, now.”
I lift my chin. “Okay, fine. Maybe?” My chin goes higher. “But it wasn’t like I was afraid of failing with Brody.”
Pen snorts. “Of course not. You didn’t care about succeeding with him. That’s
the whole point.”
“Huh?”
“You chose Brody because he was a non-starter. Not relationship material,” she says, describing Maisy’s father pretty perfectly. “You can’t fail at learning to drive a car when your means of transportation is a roller skate.”
I blink, letting her words sink in. “You’re saying that because I’m afraid of crashing and burning with a car, I’ve just been getting by with roller skates? Like kids stuff?”
“Roller skate, singular. You can’t go very far or fast with just the one.”
I roll my eyes.
She grins. “That is when you’ve even bothered to lace one up, which you’ve only done a handful of times.”
“Definitely not a car,” I mutter.
She snorts again. “You haven’t even taken a test drive.”
I think of Lark, and Prince’s “Little Red Corvette” leaps to mind. I shut my eyes and shake my head violently.
“Okay, I’m ready for the next card.”
“Right. Your romantic present,” but as she flips over the card, another sails from the deck and lands in my lap. Face down.
I freeze.
“Oh, Goddess!” Pen gasps. When I look at her, her eyes are wide, not so much afraid as mystified. I, on the other hand, am rattled.
“What—What—What does that mean?” I lean away from the card that’s resting on my thigh like it’s a bee about to sting.
Pen looks from the rogue card to the one she’s just placed on the table beside the first. “Eight of Wands,” she murmurs in awe. I can tell by looking at the picture that the card is not inverse. It’s pointing the right way.
Eight little sticks—which I guess are supposed to be wands—all point in one direction, and little green sprigs of leaves grow from each.
“What about this one—” I reach for the one in my lap.
“Don’t!” Pen scolds, making me jump. “Don’t turn that one over yet.”
“B-But it’s like a misdeal, right? Shouldn’t it go on the bottom of the deck?”
Pen’s chuckle is low and a little terrifying. “Grasshopper, this isn’t a game of Gin Rummy,” she purrs. “There are no misdeals. That card jumped right into your lap.”
I stare at the thing like it’s a live grenade.
“Would it make you feel more comfortable to place it gently on the table?” She sounds like a kindergarten teacher. I don’t even care. I just nod.
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