Seer in Starlight

by Amanda Hartford

  ♦

  The next afternoon, Jack was excited, his face-off with Calvin forgotten. “I got the interview!”

  “Congratulations! For when?”

  Jack grinned. “Now. I have to be there in 20 minutes.”

  I wished him luck as he pulled out of the GPS lot.

  Moments later, a courtesy shuttle pulled in and dropped off a tall redhead about my age, wearing a short-skirted business suit that was worth more than my car. She scanned the GPS lot, looking disappointed.

  “Excuse me?” she called to me. “I was looking for Jack. I think his phone’s turned off and I can’t get ahold of him.”

  “Sorry, you just missed him.”

  She walked over to me, waving a $100 bill in the air. “I can’t wait for him. I need to be someplace in half an hour,” she said. “Can you take me?”

  She wasn’t being pushy or demanding, but she was clearly in a bind. Plus, she was offering half my car payment.

  “Do you have any luggage?” I asked as I opened the car door for her.

  ♦

  I’d never been to Jack’s condo, but the woman had the address and it was easy to find. The building was part of a complex of luxury condos and vacation homes, set on a golf course in North Scottsdale.

  “I really appreciate this,” she said. “I hope Jack’s okay.”

  It wasn’t often that I encountered somebody whose inner thoughts matched their outer persona, but this woman was exactly who she seemed to be: smart, generous, and, most of all, kind.

  “I think he’s fine — he’s just out-of-pocket,” I said, not wanting to give away too much since my passenger worked for Jack’s uncle. “He’ll turn up soon.”

  ♦

  “A woman was looking for you,” I told Jack when he pulled back into the GPS lot.

  His eyebrows went up. “Who?”

  “She didn’t give her name.” I described my passenger, and Jack let out a relieved breath.

  “Oh, that’s just Vonda, Uncle Ethan’s Girl Friday,” he said. “Did she say what she wanted?”

  “She tried to call you, but she couldn’t get through so she asked me for a ride. She seems nice.”

  “She is. Schneider thinks she wants to be a trophy wife when she grows up, but she’s just trying to do a good job.”

  “Schneider?” I asked.

  “Uncle Ethan’s CFO. They were roommates in college, and he’s been sewed tightly to Uncle Ethan’s coattails ever since.”

  “Sounds like you’re not a fan.”

  “The feeling is mutual. Schneider thinks he should be next in line to run the company.”

  “He must’ve been very disappointed when your uncle named you heir to the throne.”

  “Well, I’m about to make Schneider’s dreams come true.” Jack grinned. “I got the job.”

  ♦

  My rideshare app, pinned in the airport GPS lot, went dead after midnight. Most of the tourists were already settled someplace in town, either at their hotels or in the bars and restaurants. I’d already been driving for more than ten hours and I was in no mood for drunks, so I called it a night. I was ready for some “me” time.

  Maggie had said to use my doorknob in low white light, and I knew just the place. I checked online and discovered that there was a flashlight tour at the Desert Botanical Garden tonight, so security would never question one more car in the parking lot. Perfect! I headed for Papago Park.

  Back in college, I had lived on ramen and iced tea for two semesters so I could use a big chunk of my scholarship money to buy a really good telescope. It wasn’t professional quality, of course, but I could focus and point it with a phone app. It made me feel connected to my profession in ways that staring at a computer screen never did.

  My telescope lived in the back of the Prius now, in a special hardshell case. Just knowing it was there made me happy. I was even happier when I could find an hour or two to slip away and point it at the moon and planets.

  As an astronomer, I understand the value of dark skies. Light pollution is the enemy of big telescopes. Little ones, too, and during my first week in Phoenix, I’d scoped out a few nearby places right in town where my gear is sheltered from city lights.

  Papago Park, just north and east of Sky Harbor, straddles the border between the cities of Phoenix and Tempe. The park encompasses more than 1500 acres of open desert and weathered red sandstone buttes, bordered by dense urban development on all sides. The park’s buttes form a natural barrier against the city sprawl that besieges it.

  Fifteen minutes after I left the airport’s rideshare lot, I pulled into the parking lot of the botanical garden and parked at the far edge of the pavement. Patrons tonight would be clustered over by the entrance gate for the after-hours event, so I wasn’t likely to be disturbed.

  I checked my watch: moonrise was in 16 minutes. I set up the telescope with my moon filter to cut the glare and make the detail crisper. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular tonight, so I aimed the telescope a few degrees above the horizon and set my app to track the moon as it arced across the sky.

  If security did get curious, I knew how to handle them. I learned early that astronomers who are generous don't get hassled. Few people can resist a chance to look through my telescope, and I am always willing to show them the rings of Saturn or a close-up of the craters on the moon to build rapport. As long as I was gone by the time the event was over, I could buy myself a couple of uninterrupted hours of scope time.

  Or, tonight, scrying time. I looked around, but there was no one paying any attention to me, and the telescope was my cover story if anybody got curious as to why I was sitting by myself in a dark corner of the parking lot.

  I’d packed a peanut butter and banana sandwich, and I ate it while I waited for the moon to rise. When it did, I checked the tracking app to be sure the telescope was ready to entertain anybody who wandered over. Satisfied that everything was working, I was ready to get to work.

  I sat in the front passenger seat, my legs hanging out of the open door and the dark downslope of the open desert beyond the tarmac stretching out beneath my feet. I pulled the sandalwood box that held my doorknob from the glove compartment and took a small wooden cutting board out from under the seat. I turned off the cabin lights just as the moon rose in front of me.

  I balanced the cutting board on my lap and carefully placed my doorknob in the center of it. The crystal caught the light of the enormous moon, and for a few minutes, I just watched the light in the doorknob grow as the moon floated above the horizon.

  It’s now or never, I finally told myself.

  I framed my question in my mind and closed my eyes. Remembering what Maggie had taught me, I took three long, cleansing breaths, banishing the world from my thoughts. I asked my question as I opened my eyes.

  The rim of the crystal glowed with reflected moonlight, but the center was dark. I watched billowing smoke roil up inside. An invisible occlusion deep in the stone caught the white light and broke it into a rainbow.

  Stay in the moment, stay in the moment, I thought desperately, trying not to break the trance. I concentrated on the rainbow and got lost again in the wonder of it. The colors began to resolve into an image.

  A grey cat stared back at me. It blinked its enormous green eyes.

  I startled so hard that I nearly knocked the cutting board off of my lap. I grabbed my doorknob just as it went airborne.

  It was a full five minutes before my hands stopped shaking enough that I could get the key in the ignition. I headed for Pentacle Pawn.

  Chapter Four

  “If I may ask: what was your question?" Maggie asked once I was settled at the round table with a nice, calming cup of chamomile tea.

  I blushed. “Will I ever get the life I want?”

  “Well, there’s your problem,” Maggie snickered. “It’s not a fortune cookie, Stella. You need to be specific.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I treat scrying as a scientific
instrument,” Maggie explained. “State your hypothesis. I say what I believe to be true, and I allow my research in the gazing ball to prove it true or false.”

  “I didn’t ask for a cat.”

  “Maybe you did. Did you know this cat?”

  I shook my head. I could feel my ponytail flipping from side to side. “Never seen it before, at least I don’t think so.”

  “What did it look like?”

  I thought for a moment. I closed my eyes, picturing again what I’d seen. “I remember the eyes, mostly. They were this weird neon green. It felt like the cat was looking through me.”

  Maggie nodded. “Good. That’s a good start. What color was its fur?”

  I scrunched my closed eyes as if I could see the cat again. “Gray. No, silver. Maybe bluish silver, like pewter?”

  Maggie smiled. “Excellent. Did it say anything?”

  My eyes flew open to see if she was kidding. “What? The cat?”

  “When you're scrying, information comes to you in three ways," Maggie said. "There is the obvious stuff, where you get impressions of real places, or people, or events. I believe that when you see those, you're reaching into the minds of the participants and seeing what they see."

  Maggie watched to be sure I was following along. “The second channel is a little harder to understand. You see things, but they couldn’t possibly have happened. What you’re getting are the emotions and intentions of those people. Their thoughts are often jumbled, especially if the situation hasn’t happened yet, or they’re stewing about a relationship. It’s up to you to figure out what’s going on.”

  I was studying Maggie’s face. “But you don’t think that’s what the cat was about.”

  “No,” Maggie said in a voice that I remembered from when Maggie was my physics professor, “I don’t. I think you may have made actual contact.”

  “With a cat.”

  Maggie smiled. “With a cat. So, tell me: what did the cat say?”

  “She didn’t say anything. She just stared at me and blinked.”

  “She?”

  “It was female.” I looked surprised. “I don’t know how I know that.”

  Maggie nodded. “Specific details help verify that this was a real connection, not something you need to interpret. What was the cat doing?”

  “Nothing. It was just staring at me.”

  “Think harder, Stella. What was the cat’s intent? Was it smiling, or was it hostile?”

  I closed my eyes again. The cat’s face was instantly in front of me. “Not hostile, for sure. Can cats really smile? I don’t think this one was. It wanted…” I opened my eyes. “I think it wanted to be friends.”

  Maggie sat back in her chair. “A foretelling, perhaps. When you asked whether you would ever get the life you wanted, what were you picturing in your head?”

  I sipped my tea. "Actually, I was thinking about astronomy. I was wondering if I was going to be driving for the rest of my life." I looked up at Maggie, and I guess I blushed. Maggie was the one who had set me up in rideshare, with the special app that brought magical customers to Maggie's door. "Oh my gosh, Maggie, I'm sorry," I fumbled. "I don't want to sound ungrateful. It's just that…"

  Maggie was grinning. “I don’t think anybody with your talents considers rideshare a career path. I understand that you’re frustrated. It must be awful to lose a job you love so much. So how does the cat figure in?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?” I said.

  “Perhaps the cat is giving you the answer you need, instead of the one you want. Sometimes we ask the wrong questions. You might ask her about that next time you see her.”

  ♦

  I pretty much lived in the Prius for the rest of the week, getting a little money ahead so I could knock off early on Sunday. At 6 PM, I was finished driving for the day and it was time for my hard-earned reward: a night under the stars.

  I turned off my app, dumped the car in the long-term lot, and rode the Sky Train back to Terminal Four.

  Cody was waiting for me as the train doors opened. He’d changed out of his uniform into jeans, a soft navy sweater, and comfortably-worn cowboy boots. He kissed me lightly on the cheek as I stepped off the Sky Train, and he took my hand as we rode the escalator down to the concourse level. I hadn’t been on a date for so long, I wasn’t sure what one looked like, but this was a hopeful beginning.

  “Hungry?” Cody asked.

  I looked at my watch and shook my head. “We’d better get going, I think. It’s only an hour until sundown.”

  Cody grinned. “Everybody’s got to eat.” He led me to the Wildflower Bread Company in the food court, where the server handed him a big plastic bag and two steaming coffees to go.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “Picnic supper. Like I said: everybody's got to eat. I got a couple of sandwiches. Do you want to pick out a dessert?"

  Stupid question. I pointed at the Orchard Crumb streusels, filled with peaches, cherries, and apricots, and topped with toasted almonds. “Two to go, please,” I told the grinning server.

  Cody and I walked hand-in-hand through the concourse and back up the escalator. The Sky Train took us to the long-term lot.

  Cody must’ve had a little magic in him, himself, because he’d found a parking space for his gleaming SUV at the very front of the first row.

  “Aren’t you afraid you’re going to get your pretty toy all muddy?” I teased.

  “Mud is what it’s about,” Cody said with a grin.

  We drove over to the far back corner of the lot so I could get my stuff. Cody was smart enough not to tease me about having to park in the cheap seats.

  I looked up at the sky as Cody shifted my telescope and duffel bag to the back of the SUV. “Lucky night,” I said. “No clouds. This time of year, you never know whether you’re going to get a clear sky or a monsoon.”

  “Lucky night,” Cody said back. I was pretty sure he meant more than the weather.

  ♦

  We headed east. Cody drove with both hands on the wheel, so I enjoyed my coffee and kept my eyes on the mountains looming ahead as we left the city behind.

  “Watching meteor showers is all about the moon,” I explained. “If the moon is full, there’s too much light in the sky — it’s like trying to stargaze during the day. We’re really lucky tonight. Moonrise isn’t until 4 AM.”

  “So that’s what the big hurry was all about,” Cody said. “You’ve only got a certain window of time to see the meteors before the moon comes up.”

  “There are actually two deadlines,” I said. “You can’t see meteor showers all the time. Do you know what a meteor shower really is?”

  Cody shook his head.

  “It starts with a comet.” I switched my coffee cup to my left hand, then grabbed a stir stick off the dash and held it in my right. Cody was watching out of the corner of his eye as he drove.

  “A comet is a big, dirty snowball,” I said. “Comets orbit the sun, but their orbits aren’t circular. They go way out to the edge of the galaxy and then circle back in, like this.” I orbited the stir stick close to the coffee cup on the left side and then far away on the right. “They pick up a lot of stray rocks and space dust as they go around, and the junk gets frozen to the comet. But when the comet comes back to loop around the sun, some of the comet’s ice melts away and leaves those stray rocks traveling on their own.”

  Cody nodded that he understood, but he didn’t take his eyes off the road.

  I put the stir stick back on the dash and picked up a sugar packet. “So now, here comes Earth in its circular orbit. Well, not really circular, but close enough.” I flew the sugar packet through the orbit I had just drawn for the comet. “See? We cross right through the comet’s path. We hit the debris the comet left behind like gravel on a windshield.”

  I was lost in my explanation, but when I glanced at Cody, I could see dawning admiration on his face.

  “We know where the comets have been, at least for
the last couple hundred years. The Perseids are from a comet called Swift-Tuttle, and we can calculate exactly when we're going to cross its debris field."

  “So if the comet’s called Swift-Tuttle, why is the meteor shower called the Perseids?” Cody asked.

  “Good question!” I said, flashing him my best smile. “Because humans have been watching meteor showers long before they understood the comet connection. From the ground, it looks like the lights are coming from the constellation Perseus.”

  I squeezed his hand. “Should be quite a show tonight, if the weather holds.”

  ♦

  Less than an hour later, we were bumping along a graded road in the Superstition Mountains.

  The Valley of the Sun where Phoenix is located is ringed with rugged mountain ranges, but the Superstitions are the most famous. Tales of the Lost Dutchman gold mine brings visitors from around the world.

  It wasn't actually the Dutchman that was lost, of course; it was his mine. Jacob Waltz, the German miner who started it all, told a lot of tall tales over the years about the whereabouts of his fabled motherlode, which may — or may not — have existed back in the rugged mountains. Modern gold-seekers continue the search at Lost Dutchman State Park, despite rangers' cautions that they're not allowed to keep anything they find.

  Tonight, the park was open for people who wanted to look up, not down. Rangers directed traffic along the graded road to the base of towering cliffs silhouetted against the dark sky.

  A dozen cars and RVs were already parked around the trailhead. Cody shouldered my duffel bag and grabbed the picnic supper as I strapped on the backpack that contained my telescope. We headed upslope as the sun went down.

  The rangers had lit the trail with battery lanterns, and it was an easy walk up the gentle slope at the bottom of the cliffs. We followed the path as it curled around the back of the crags and found ourselves on a darkened desert plateau.

  The trail widened out into a sandy clearing ringed with more battery lamps. Around the edge, couples and families had set up clusters of folding chairs or spread blankets out on the ground. Strangers' faces were lit in the glow of lanterns as they chatted, ate, and tried to get the children settled.