by Gary Jonas
“Oppression,” she said.
“Imagine that,” I said. “She’s been abducted, so now she’s being oppressed.”
“More concerning is the unyielding cruelty associated with the card. Think of the abductors as you shuffle and cut again.”
“Here goes nothing,” I said as I shuffled. I cut the deck.
The Magus.
“The Magician,” Lakesha said. “Power. These guys are skillful.”
“Guys and gal,” I said.
“True. There was a woman.” Lakesha pointed to the deck. “Think about the woman and draw.”
I grinned. “I’m always thinking about hot chicks.” I drew a card. “Jackpot!”
The card showed a naked woman riding a messed-up lion or something. She leaned back like she was really enjoying the ride, if you know what I mean.
“Lust,” Lakesha said. “Why am I not surprised?”
“I told you.”
“It could be a reflection on your general state of mind. It can also mean a great love affair is headed your way.”
“I once dated a chick for two whole months. Even added her favorite song to the band’s rotation. Damn, she was a hot little thing.”
“What happened?”
I shrugged. “She wanted more, I didn’t. End of story.”
Lakesha shook her head. “Try again. This time, try to focus on the woman as a person, not an object.”
I drew a card. Another naked woman with a big, gorgeous ass. She had on a weird headdress as she flew through flames or fumes, it was hard to tell. A tiger wrapped its tail around her neck, and it was like she was pulling the thing with her though the air. The Princess of Wands.
Lakesha smiled. “Now we’re getting somewhere. This is a woman who is passionate. See the fire burning next to her? That passion can turn to violence quickly. She has the tiger by the tail, so to speak, but that can change at any moment.”
“You think the tiger is significant?”
“Not sure. It can represent how she captured Regina, but Regina could also slip back.”
“We’ll see if Regina shows up tonight to hang herself.”
Lakesha nodded, deep in thought. “Did you feel the energy in the house?”
“What energy?”
“What did you feel?”
“Cold,” I said.
She nodded. “What’s the temperature outside right now?”
“How should I know? It’s hot.”
“Check the weather on your phone. What’s the temperature?”
I checked my phone. “Ninety-two degrees.”
“And inside the house?”
I shrugged. “No clue.”
“Sixties?”
“Sure, sounds about right.”
“Without air conditioning?”
“Ghosts leave cold spots, right?”
“Throughout the house?”
“I’m not really geared up for a test right now.”
“These are basic things you should know.”
“Well, I don’t, okay?”
“Then study.”
I laughed. “You know when the last time I studied was?”
“Never?”
“Got it in one,” I said.
“The house shouldn’t be that cold.”
“Well, yeah, but it was.”
She sighed. “We need to be proactive here. The spirit world is in flux, so we’d best make some plans. Think about what we might be able to do to influence the outcome of Regina’s plight.”
“That was a lot of words. I didn’t follow all of that. Six words or less, please.”
“How can we help Regina?”
I kept that question in mind as I shuffled and cut the deck.
Dark clouds over a dank ocean. Another weird-ass plant, growing cups this time. Water poured into two of the cups and overflowed into two more. Eight of Cups.
“Indolence,” Lakesha said, looking at the card.
“Which means?”
“Lazy. Somehow, I think that describes you.”
“Yeah, yeah, but what does the card mean?”
“It means you weren’t concentrating. It’s a card about moving on because things didn’t work out.”
“Maybe that means there’s nothing we can do, so we should just go take a nap or get a drink. Works for me.”
“Tells me you were thinking of a way to avoid having to do anything.”
“I play to my strengths. In fact, I’m about ready for a nap.”
“Oh no, honey, you’re here for the duration.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your father is paying me to help train you. Sabrina will teach you what she knows from the blood magic side of things, and I will teach you what I know from my side of things.”
“So I’m going to be a warlock wizard dude?”
“You’re going to concentrate on what we can do for Regina as you shuffle and draw another card.”
“I don’t want to play cards. I have cards at home.” My very own Tarot deck, bound to me with the full blood price already paid. They’d nearly gotten me killed the week before.
“I’m well aware of that. And why you aren’t using them is something I simply can’t understand.”
“What do you mean?”
“That deck was specifically designed for your family, so you can use them to help guide you.”
“Can they guide me to a bed so I can take a nap?”
My phone rang. I glanced at the name. Teddy. He played rhythm guitar for our band.
“I have to take this,” I said.
“No, you don’t, but go ahead. I need a break from your sorry ass anyway.”
I got up, and stepped through the bead curtain as I answered the phone. “Hey, Teddy,” I said.
“You stood me up last night.”
“Sorry, dude, I forgot.”
“That makes me feel so much better.”
Isis still perched on the counter. She growled at me as I neared.
“I’ll make it up to you. I’ll buy you a drink tonight and I’ll help you get a chick’s phone number. How about that?”
Teddy sighed. “Nine o’clock at the Hideaway?”
“I’ll be there.” I held the phone between my cheek and shoulder so I could put both hands out. I moved my hands on either side of the cat, just out of striking range. Isis looked at one hand, then the other, and she thumped her tail on the counter. Thump thump thump.
“Before you go,” Teddy said, “when’s band practice?”
“Sabrina will be back by Monday, so maybe Thursday?” As Isis looked at my left hand, I darted in with my right to give her a quick pet. Her head spun toward my right hand and she slashed at it, but I was too fast for her.
“Thursday? It will have to be early. I have an overnight, so I have to be at work at ten.”
“Then why did you ask?”
“Because I figured you’d say Tuesday or Wednesday, in which case I’d be good to go since work wouldn’t interfere.”
“No worries. I’ll tell Michael to be there Thursday at six.”
“Good. We need to be ready for the gig on Saturday night.”
“The beach thing Chuck booked. Yeah.”
I waved my hands around Isis and she looked from one to the other, keeping one paw up, ready to strike as she growled low in her chest like a siren winding down. “What’s that noise?” Teddy asked.
“Nothing. Have you seen Michael?”
I darted in to pet Isis again, and successfully retreated as she swiped the air my hand had just vacated.
“I haven’t seen anyone since you screwed up our last gig. Chuck is meeting me for lunch tomorrow, though.”
“Cool. See you tonight, Teddy.”
“Don’t forget this time.”
“How can I forget? It’s tonight at ten.”
“Nine!”
“I know, Teddy, I’m just messing with you. See you at nine.”
I disconnected, slipped the phone in my pocket, a
nd did a feint one way then shot in to pat Isis on the head.
She hissed at me, but again, I was too fast, and got away unscathed.
I laughed.
“Aren’t you a sweetheart, Isis?”
From the backroom, Lakesha said, “Don’t tease the cat!”
“I’m not.”
I returned to the backroom. The beads clacked as I passed through, then clacked again. I sat down across from Lakesha.
“Where were we?” I asked as I leaned back in the chair.
Sharp pain shot into my back and I jerked forward.
“Ow!” I yelled and spun around to see Isis race through the curtain to the main store. The damn cat followed me, waited until I leaned back, then scratched me through the open back of the chair. “Little shit,” I said.
Lakesha laughed. “Told you not to tease the cat.”
CHAPTER FOUR
The Hideaway was packed that night. A country band played on the small stage performing a Keith Urban song about falling in love in a cop car. After all, you meet the best people when you get arrested. I once dated a girl who had a thing for Keith Urban. She was hot, so we always worked one of Urban’s songs into our set during the two months I slept with her. For me, that was a long-term relationship.
Teddy sat at the bar and sipped a mug of beer. He nodded to me as I approached. I caught the bartender’s attention, pointed at Teddy’s beer, and held up two fingers. The bartender delivered our drinks and I tossed some cash on the counter.
Teddy and I didn’t speak because the music was too loud to carry on a conversation. Instead, we turned around on our bar stools and scanned the crowd, looking for a couple of women without any dudes. Teddy wasn’t particular, so if I spotted a pair of lovely ladies, I’d have first pick.
After a few more songs, the band took a break.
“How about those two?” I asked, pointing at a blonde and a brunette.
“I’d rather talk about Sabrina.”
“She’s hooking up with Michael.”
Teddy frowned. “You don’t think he’ll get tired of her?”
“Ask him.”
“I mean, he’s like you. He never settles on one chick. Sabrina deserves someone who’ll appreciate her.”
“You’ve got it bad for her, eh?”
“She’s smart, talented, and kind. What’s not to like?”
“She’s bossy, thinks she knows it all, and she eats kale.”
“Kale? What does that have to do with anything.”
“It’s a garnish. She cooks it up and eats it. That’s nasty.”
“It’s healthy. She takes care of herself.”
“Dude, you could just ask her out.”
“She’ll turn me down. She’ll be nice about it, but she won’t go out with someone like me.”
“A second ago you were all hopeful Michael would step aside, and now you’re convinced she’d shoot you down in flames?”
“Not in flames. But what do I have to offer a girl like her?”
“You could write poetry about her, give her your undying devotion, kiss the ground that she walks on, lay down in a puddle so she can trample you without getting her shoes wet.”
“What’s your secret with women?”
“The secret is confidence, Teddy. You’re a good guy. You’ve got a job, which puts you ahead of most of the clowns in here. You play guitar. You actually give a shit what chicks think.”
“Confidence. That’s what you use?”
I grinned. “I’m more of an asshole, but fortunately for me, drunk women can’t tell the difference. How about those redheads in the corner? They might be sisters.”
“They’re with those two cowboys.”
“All right. Here’s the plan. You distract the cowboys, and I’ll take the sisters back to my place.”
He stared at me. “Your cousin doesn’t even know I exist.”
“Sure she does.”
“Has she said anything about me?”
“No, but you’re in the band, so she does know you exist.”
He sighed. “I’m not into any of these women. Sabrina is magical.”
“In more ways than you know.”
He looked a question at me, but the band took the stage again, so I didn’t have to answer. Teddy might be my bandmate, but only Michael knew my family’s secret. That’s because Michael had a secret of his own.
I ordered another beer and stopped checking out the crowd because I realized I wasn’t going to get laid tonight.
My phone buzzed at midnight with a text message.
I pulled it from my pocket. The text was from Lakesha, and it read, Regina a no show. Come to the store at ten am.
I texted her back with, I’m not in my body until noon.
Ten am or I tell your father you’re not cooperating.
Shit. Bitch, I sent.
Witch, she corrected.
CHAPTER FIVE
When I woke up at noon, I had a bunch of angry texts on my phone. I ignored them.
I got to the bookstore at a quarter past one.
Lakesha sat in a rocking chair outside the shop with Isis in her lap. She stroked the cat, and Isis purred.
“You’re late,” she said.
“Get over it.”
“You’re the one who’s going to pay for it.”
“How so?”
“Every day you’re late, your father docks your allowance by a hundred bucks and gives it to me, so I’m thinking we might have to start meeting at six in the morning.”
“I’m here on a Sunday. Doesn’t that count for anything?”
“Are you religious?”
“No.”
“Then it’s just another day to you, so zip those lips and let’s go back to Regina’s place.”
She rose and the cat jumped to the ground. She let Isis back into the shop, grabbed her purse off the counter, then came back outside where she closed and locked the door.
We headed back to the ghost house.
“No sign of Regina last night?”
“None.”
“So why are we going back there?”
“To get a lead on the folks who took her, of course.”
“You talked to the neighbors already.”
“Mmm hmm.”
“We already talked to Demetrius, and checked the house, so what else can we do?”
“Magic.”
“So you’re going to pull a rabbit out of your ass and follow it down the bunny trail to the ghost prison in the sky?”
“Have you been smoking that ganja again?”
“Not today.”
“Could have fooled me.”
We reached the house, and Demetrius waved to us from the porch. “Hi, Auntie Lakesha! Hi, Brat!”
Lakesha grinned.
“You taught him that,” I said.
“So what if I did?” She climbed the steps to the house. “How are you feeling today, Demetrius?”
“Scared and alone. Will Auntie Regina ever come home?”
The way he said it made my heart hurt. I’d spent a lot of time scared and alone as a kid, but Demetrius was dead and still felt that way.
“Hey there, little man,” I said as I hopped onto the porch.
“Will you read me a comic book later?”
“I don’t have any comic books.”
“Oh,” he said and stared at the ground.
“I’ll try to get over to the comic shop tomorrow,” I said.
He brightened. “Really?”
I nodded. “Really.”
We entered the house, and Lakesha set her purse on the window sill so she could open it and dig around inside. She pulled out what looked like two cardboard coasters.
“You bring us some drinks?” I asked.
She looked at me like I was an idiot. “What are you talking about, boy?”
Boy was better than brat, I guess.
“What’s with the coasters?”
“They’re not coasters,” she said with a grin. �
�I was up all night preparing these. Stand back and watch a master at work.”
She held one cardboard circle in each hand. There were symbols in the center and strange writing all around the edges. She waved them around, moving in a semicircle around the front entrance.
“They entered and exited through the door, so if I can rewind the impressions, maybe we can get a look at them.”
“You can do that?”
“Depends.”
“On?”
“The emotional state of the people and spirits involved, whether or not magic was employed, whether I got the spell right, how many people moved through the space, and other factors too esoteric to explain to you.”
“You lost me at spirits.”
“I’m not surprised.”
As she moved around, aiming the coasters at the door, I caught flashes of images, but it looked like blurred lights. She concentrated, and kept moving in an arc from one side of the door to the other.
More flashes of light.
Blurs.
“Gotta go further back,” she whispered and shook her head.
Flash.
Blur.
Flash.
Darkness, light flash as the door opened, only the door was still closed. An image of the door opening. Lights. A man in a sleeveless T-shirt with a heavyset woman, but their faces were impossible to make out because they were blurred out by what had to be a magic spell to hide their identities. Another man entered with them wearing a nice suite, and he was older because he had age spots on his hands. The two younger people had tattoos on their forearms.
“Chunky chick, old guy in a suit, dude in a wife beater,” I said. “Too bad you don’t see many of those types around.”
“Hush, child.”
She moved the coasters up and down, back and forth, trying to get the faces to focus. The image of a screaming black woman popped up, then blurred out and disappeared. There was no sound.
“Was that Regina?”
Demetrius nodded.
The guy in the wife beater stepped forward and raised his hands. His forearms were tattooed as well, but instead of triangles, his ink featured pentagrams, but they shifted to a snake eating its tail, then to a triangle with a circle inside it, but I couldn’t make out the symbols in the corners and the circle turned black and swirled before disappearing.
She tried moving through the image to get a view of the man’s face, but his features were blurred.
