Caroline threw the bug onto the tarmac, and smashed it with the heel of her boot. She’d taken to wearing cowboy boots the past couple of years. She never knew they’d come in so handy. Slamming the tire cover shut, she relocked it, then hurried back around and slid into the driver’s seat.
“Looks like we’re back on the road, Caroline,” she said. But where the hell was she going to go?
She had a friend in Portland, Oregon, who’d been asking her to visit for years. Caroline never had. Rafe had never wanted her to go. For some reason, the short business trips were okay. At least they used to be. But a visit to old friends? There was always some reason for why it shouldn’t happen. Never an outright refusal, just a litany of half-passable excuses.
She hadn’t even noticed until recently, and by then the pattern was set. It had all felt as if it were too late.
Well, Caroline was burning some bridges now, wasn’t she? Might as well see if she could build some new ones.
She backed out of her spot, swung back onto the highway, and headed north.
5
Brenda
She didn’t feel any better, but she wasn’t feeling any worse, either. Brenda blinked up at the goldenrod bedroom ceiling and took an inventory. Her head still ached. Her skin felt tight. She rotated her neck from side to side, and rotated her ankles and wrists.
Damn. Everything ached. It almost felt as though she had a fever, but not quite. She reached toward the bedside table and grabbed her phone. Eight in the morning. Long past her usual rising time. She should feel better after twelve hours sleep, even if they were fitful and plagued with strange dreams.
She really needed to get out of bed and get ready to open the shop. But what were those dreams? Brenda slowed her breathing down and tried to relax. Tried to cast her thoughts back to the hazy place between sleep and waking.
But no. The dreams were gone. All that remained was the slightly disturbing sense of them.
“Okay. If we’re getting up, we’d best do it now.” Groaning, she flipped off the purple-and-orange paisley comforter and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. Oh yeah. Sitting up. She remembered how to do that.
And there was her bedroom altar, with her favorite statue of Diana, hounds at her heels and bow and arrow pointed toward the sky. “Good morning, Huntress.”
Brenda paused for a moment, just to center herself. But centering didn’t come easily today. She breathed a quick prayer and grabbed her teal velveteen bathrobe from the foot of the bed.
No morning meditation today. No yoga, either. If she did any inversions, she might fall to the rug and never get up again.
“Whatever this illness is, I’m not in favor of it, and would like to lodge a complaint,” she said to the bedroom walls. Nothing answered, so she slipped her arms to her bathrobe, opened her bedroom door, and shuffled in her slippers down to the kitchen, tying her robe as she went.
Sun streamed in through the kitchen windows. She loved this room. She loved the antique-red cabinets, the marble-tiled floors, and the white marble countertops. She had spent a lot of money on it a few years ago, knowing it would last for a long time. And knowing that she loved nothing more than having friends over for dinner.
Funny, she hadn’t done that much lately. Things were so busy at the Inner Eye all of the time. She paused on her way to the electric kettle, and looked around. How had she let the winter get away without throwing her usual series of dinner parties and gatherings?
Other than Arrow and Crescent coven meetings, she’d barely seen any of her friends in recent months.
She resumed her walk to the tea preparation station on the counter. Filling the stainless steel electric kettle at the deep farmhouse sink, she looked out the window. The hydrangea bushes were blooming purple and blue. The vegetable beds needed some attention. A jay screamed at a squirrel from the Japanese Maple in the corner. The squirrel looked unconcerned.
She flipped the kettle on and got her favorite purple mug out from the cabinet. A black silhouette of a witch on a broomstick flew around the mug; it was thick and heavy, and the handle just fit her.
Brenda still had that queasy feeling. She wondered if she should forgo her usual English Breakfast tea and brew up some fresh spearmint instead. No, she shook her head. She wanted her morning ritual, and she wanted it now.
And then she remembered why she hadn’t thrown her usual round of dinner parties. The coven had extra meeting after extra meeting this year, with too many emergencies to deal with, magical and otherwise. First there were the ghosts and the fires, and then the fight with the Interfaith Council, and then, Holy Mother, facing down the police. She shook her head again.
Brenda had never expected ten years ago that she would’ve ended up embroiled in politics.
“My teachers always told me you never know where the spirit might lead. I guess they were right.”
A glimmer caught at the corner of her eyes. Brenda whipped her head towards the door. There was nothing there.
“I really need for whatever this weird stuff is that’s happening to go away.”
She looked at the clock over the stove. She really had to get a move on. The shop wasn’t going to open itself. But really? All she wanted to do was crawl back into bed.
The kettle pinged, indicating that the water had boiled. She poured some over a teabag and set it aside to steep.
Brenda really did wonder if she was coming down with something. The twelve hours of sleep had left her feeling achy and confused. Maybe some honey would ease her stomach. She stirred in half a teaspoon and then turned to get some milk from the refrigerator.
Then she stopped, dead cold, arrested by a shaft of light that shouldn’t have been there. She turned to the kitchen windows, and sure enough, the sun was slanting the opposite direction across the countertops.
She looked back. The shaft of light was still there. “No. Please. I just need a normal day.”
If she’d been feeling any better, she would’ve laughed at herself. What was a normal day for a psychic and a witch? She just wanted normal for her. Not whatever this new crop of manifestations were: the voice she didn’t recognize, the weird dreams, and now the shaft of light in her kitchen.
“Why me? And why now?”
Two days in a row and things were coming out of her mouth that she would’ve chastised any student or mentee for. She knew the answers. Well, not the answers. But she knew those were exactly the wrong questions to be asking. It was never “Why me, why now?” The question a witch would ask was always, “What do I need to pay attention to?”
“Okay Brenda. Get the milk out, make your tea, and get your ass into the shower. Then get dressed, and get to the shop. We can deal with all this weirdness later.”
She made her tea with a determination that was almost comical. She would turn the strange state ordinary by sheer dint of her will. And then she turned again, and between her and the doorway to her bedroom was still that shaft of light. She was going to have to pass through it in order to get her day started.
“I don’t know who you are, or what you want from me, but you’re not going to stop me from going about my day.”
Brenda spared a moment to take a deep breath and adjust her energy fields. She made sure that her ætheric body was solid and stable, and then checked the edges of her aura. “This is so strange. I seem fine. Except for feeling like garbage and the fact that there’s a shaft of light in my kitchen that shouldn’t be there.”
Oh well, shaft of light or no shaft of light, voices or no voices, she was going to her bedroom and she was going to take a shower. She took a few sips of tea, clutched her mug to her chest, and plunged through the light.
Then she ran straight to the bathroom and threw up.
“Oh my Goddess,” she said, when the heaving finally stopped. “What was that?”
A wash of milky tea spread across the black-and-white subway-tiled floor, inching its way toward the teal bathmat, her purple mug tipped on its side. At least it wasn�
��t broken.
She hoisted herself up to the sink to rinse her mouth and splash cold water on her face. Looking at her reflection in the mirror, she barely recognized herself. The face peering back at her wasn’t the witchy, early-middle-aged, yoga-going, psychic-reading-giving woman she was so familiar with. Not even a sick version of that person.
No. This person looked…luminous. God-touched. Slightly feverish, but radiant with it.
“I don’t understand,” she whispered. “What is happening to me?”
The reflection had no answer.
6
Caroline
After she left Reno, her phone had buzzed in her purse once every half hour.
Caroline ignored it. She cranked up some music and just kept driving. At one of her breaks, she phoned ahead to make sure her friend Sydney still wanted to see her after all these years, and to ask whether or not she had a place Caroline could sleep.
She’d slept very little, stopping for a couple of hours at a rest stop, and finally, when she just needed a bed, any bed, pulling in to a motel off the highway. She slept for six hours after turning her phone off. The sheets were scratchy and there were rust stains in the shower, but the sleep had been delicious. So had the food in the diner down the street.
After that, she had powered her phone down and just drove straight through. With no phone, she had no GPS, so she just followed what seemed like a sensible route, always adjusting her course north.
It was late afternoon by the time she reached Portland. She felt pretty good, considering the stress of the whole situation on top of the nine-hour drive from Reno. The forests were beautiful. She’d thought about stopping off to see Crater Lake, but had simply greeted the cinder cone as she drove on through.
The San Francisco Bay Area was a beautiful place, but it had nothing on this. Freeways surrounded by swathes of green. Mountains. Volcanoes. And amazingly, blue sky streaked with white clouds.
She had no idea what neighborhood Sydney lived in. She’d said it was in the Rose Park, or Rose City district, wherever that was. “Near the Hollywood Theater,” Sydney had said.
Northeast somewhere? But how far east? Might as well just drive through the city until there was a good place to stop for dinner. Sydney had been terribly apologetic. She had a meeting after work that was going to run late and wouldn’t be home until close to eight.
Two of the shops Caroline supplied regularly were in the same neighborhood as one another; at least, she thought so. She pulled over, checked her phone, saw the fifteen missed calls and a series of messages from Rafe, and immediately opened up a search engine.
Yes. There they were. The Inner Eye and…The Road Home.
She opened up maps and saw that both shops were within five blocks of each other, one on and one just off Hawthorne.
Perfect. She could eat something, wander around, maybe say hello and see if she could get some appointments to show her stock in person. For years, people had told her that in-person sales visits were the way to go, but she just couldn’t do it. The buying trips to gem shows were about all the time she could reasonably spend away from home.
Or, at least, that was what Rafe had said. “Online is the way to go, babe. Why would you want to schlep a bunch of rocks around the country yourself when you can just ship them?”
It all sounded so reasonable. Like everything he said.
She wound the Jeep around some residential blocks, window down, breathing in the jasmine- and coffee-scented air, admiring the old Craftsmen homes and the wild gardens, before finally spotting a parking place large enough for the SUV.
Once the car stopped moving, Caroline let out a breath she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding.
“Okay. We’re here. We’re safe. Let’s go get some food.”
She wasn’t sure whom exactly she was addressing, but if felt good to say those words out loud. She grabbed her big blue purse, swung her legs out of the car, and found herself standing on a Portland, Oregon, street for the first time in her life.
So why did it feel so much like home? She skirted around the Jeep to the sidewalk and looked up into a canopy of maple and elm. Every garden overflowed with a crazy quilt of color and scent. Roses. Hydrangeas. Daffodils. Early vegetables.
Caroline felt like weeping. There was something here that promised nourishment in a way the streets of Silicon Valley never did. Or maybe she was just exhausted.
She wiped the back of her hand across her face and headed to the main drag just up ahead, figuring she’d eat something and then explore the shops.
Turning the corner, she saw a riot of rainbow light. The sign above the shop windows read “The Inner Eye.”
“Well, I guess I’m stopping here first, then,” she murmured. No GPS, just serendipity and grace.
Bells jangled softly as she opened the door. The air was slightly sweet, but woodsy. It felt calm in here.
“Let me know if I can help you find anything,” a woman’s voice said.
“Oh!” Caroline startled, and realized she was still blocking the doorway. She stepped further in, looking around. Bookshelves. A reading nook. Tall shelves behind a long glass counter holding jars of what looked like dried flowers and herbs. Tarot cards. And there. A display of crystal orbs and amethyst clusters. Tourmaline. Jet. Raw ruby and opal. Chalcedony. Her fingers itched to touch the stones. She always responded that way.
A younger woman with a long fall of teal hair tucked behind one ear approached her.
“Feel free to pick them up.”
“Thank you.” She ran her hands over one of the rubies, then held it up to the sun coming in through one of the big plate glass windows. It caught, and a flash of deep, wine red showed itself through the mottled, rusty exterior. “Beautiful.”
Caroline liked this place a lot. It was the sort of place she had always wished for as a teen in sterile, stately Atherton. The closest places like it were all the way up in San Francisco, and her parents never liked her going up there with her friends.
Of course, they did it anyway, without telling anyone. But Caroline had the courage to only make that trip twice. Attracted as she was to the crystals, and the classes on auras and herbalism, the pull wasn’t as strong as her wish to stay remain in her parent’s good graces.
The young woman had gone back behind the counter and was pricing a variety of pendulums. Turned wood. Brass. Rose quartz…
“I’m actually one of your distributors,” Caroline said. “Some of these stones likely came from me.”
The woman looked up. “Oh? Which company?”
“Amethyst Gems.”
The woman’s face brightened. “That’s great. Your stuff is always high quality. Did you bring any stock with you?”
Caroline grinned for the first time since leaving Nevada. “I’ve got a whole car full. Just came from the Vegas show.”
The woman went to a navy curtain bordered with Celtic knot work. She poked her head through. “Hey, Brenda, Amethyst Gems is here!”
Caroline heard a voice respond, low and soothing.
“You should go on back. Brenda would love to meet you, but she’s in semi-quarantine. My name’s Tempest, by the way.”
Caroline held out her hand. “Caroline.” Then she stepped through the open wedge between the curtain and the doorframe that Tempest held open with her hand.
Sitting in the room was an angel.
Caroline gave a small gasp and blinked. Then she saw that the person sitting behind the long wooden table was just a woman with wavy, brown, shoulder-length hair, a flowing green knit tunic, and a gorgeous moonstone pendant nestled on her breastbone.
Caroline reached up and wrapped a hand around her amethyst point, then realized she hadn’t spoken yet, and was likely staring.
“Hi! I’m sorry, that moonstone is so beautiful, I think it caught me for a moment.”
The woman smiled, and Caroline wished she would smile at her forever. “It has that effect on people sometimes. It was my mother’s, and it�
��s one of my greatest treasures.”
She gestured to a chair. “Please, have a seat. I won’t shake your hand because I’m not sure if I’m contagious or not. But my name is Brenda, and I’m very glad to meet you.”
7
Brenda
Brenda’s life was about to change.
She was certain of it. All of her psychic senses were tingling and humming. It was as though this woman held a shard of Brenda’s destiny.
The woman herself was beautiful. She stood in the doorway, slender and uncertain, black hair pulled off her face in a loose tail behind her head. Her nose was small, and her lips? Her lips were the shade of that old Victorian color sometimes called ashes of roses, the top lip fuller than the bottom. Brenda could well imagine what those lips would feel like, covering her own.
Brenda jerked her gaze away from the woman’s mouth, to find the woman staring back at her.
Her deep brown eyes were sad. So very, very sad.
:She traveled far to reach you,: the Voice said.
“Please, sit down. Can I offer you any tea?”
“Tea would be great. Any kind is fine. Herbal or black. I’m sick of jasmine, though, so don’t try me.” The woman quirked her lips up in half a smile.
Brenda laughed. Then she noticed she didn’t feel quite so ill anymore. The slight tinge of nausea was still there, but some of the tension had fled her neck and shoulders.
“What brings you up to Portland?” she asked, as she filled the electric kettle and got out a teapot, cups, and a loose leaf Pu-erh tea. “I didn’t think you made in-person visits.”
She heard a sigh come from behind her, and felt the fear-tinged weariness roll off the woman and out into the room. When Brenda turned, the woman was clutching a gemstone pendant that hung on a silver chain around her neck.
By Wind Page 3
