they’ve been doing with Jeannie for years.
The answer seems to depend on whether Violet or Blue is closest to the door.
It isn’t either of them, this time.
Indigo looks up from behind a small desk that looks like the bridge of a starship. I count three monitors, including one tilting precariously on top of a plant stand, before my eyes jitter to the woman I’ve come to see. “Sorry. I’m clearly interrupting something.”
“Nothing earth shattering.” She extracts herself from her temporary work station, wry amusement in her eyes. “My weekly column is two days late and Venus has an interesting transit through Saturn tomorrow. If my Twitter mentions are reliable indicators, I need to get my post up or several dozen budding relationships are about to get kicked in the balls.”
I can’t decide whether she’s taking herself seriously or not. “That sounds painful.”
“You have no idea.” She gestures at her makeshift workspace. “I had a perfectly good office set up in the back room and then Blue decided it needed a new window. I got relocated.”
Jeannie’s been complaining about how dark that office is for as long as I’ve known her. “You sorted out a lease for the building, then?”
Indigo perches on a corner of her desk. “Nope. We bought it. Or we will have once Jeannie’s lawyer gets her signature on the last of the paperwork, anyhow. She headed to Victoria yesterday morning. The baby bump was making noises in the night, so she’s gone to be moral support.”
I barely know what a mother looks like, but I know that Jeannie will make a wonderful grandmother. And while I occasionally saw her standing in the street or the door of her shop these past few months with wistfulness in her eyes, I’ve never seen regret. She made this decision with her full heart—and the trio who showed up last week made it far easier for her to let go. “That’s a big commitment.”
A snort. “No kidding.”
My lips quirk. “Sorry. I suck at small talk.”
Indigo’s head tips to the side. “Not a Gemini then. Or a Libra. They’re almost always chatty.”
The bit she said earlier about Venus transiting Saturn comes into focus. “You’re an astrologer?” That seems strange, somehow, like it doesn’t fit with the fire that simmers just beneath her surface. Which probably says something uncomplimentary about the stereotypes that live in my head.
She chuckles. “You would have picked Violet for that job, huh?”
I hide a wince. “Honestly? No. She seems like she wouldn’t need to look at a chart to know everything she wants to know about someone’s insides.”
Indigo’s head tilts to the other side. “I’m going to ignore the general insult to astrologers and the possible one to me in particular.”
I wince where she can see it this time. I really shouldn’t be let out in public. “Sorry. That didn’t come out right.”
She smiles a little. “I know. Want to try again?”
Not even a little bit, but she deserves at least that much. “We all have our ways of discovering who other people are and how that relates to who we are. I do it with a paintbrush. Blue does it with a hammer. You apparently do it with more computer monitors than I’ve ever seen a person use at one time.”
Indigo chuckles. “The monitors make it easier to zoom in on several parts of someone’s chart at the same time. They’re kind of like the stepstools and ladders you use to reach the top corners of your paintings.”
Someone’s been looking in my windows. As an artist, I’ve never minded that, which is good, because window coverings are hell for good light. “Mabel says I look like a mad aerobics instructor when I really get going.”
Indigo looks vaguely amused that I’ve brought my resident ghost back into our conversation. Which passes some kind of weird test I didn’t realize I was administering until it was done. “She’s not wrong about that. Blue was cursing by the time you were finished working yesterday. You might consider asking her to build you some painting platforms that don’t skate halfway across the room when you leap onto them.”
Sometimes they don’t skate nearly far enough. “What would be the fun in that?”
Her grin flashes, hot and bright. “You’d keep your brains in your head, and Blue would keep her hands off of my office for a few days?”
Something smolders inside me where the grin landed. “Blue can’t possibly be short of work. The townspeople are already fighting over her at the coffee