wouldn’t be nearly the weirdest thing she’s made for a client over the years. “I’m more interested in the rumors you’ve been hearing. Just how haunted is this town?”
She carefully stitches what might be a foot onto the bear spacesuit. “It’s not haunted. Not any more than usual, anyhow. It’s just an attractor. It pulls in people who are sensitive to energy flows.”
That would be one of us. Blue and I just love Violet enough to go where she goes. It’s working out. Blue is making herself useful, and I’m having conversations with actual human beings. All good things. Even if there are unexpected soup dates involved.
The only people I usually eat dinner with are right here in this room.
Blue holds a finishing nail up to the wall. “Here, Vee?”
Violet considers that decision with the same solemn attention she was just giving to her spacefaring teddy bear. “Maybe. Or you could try putting the drawings up vertically and see how that feels.”
Blue keeps the nail where it is. “I like the sketches. I don’t care which way they hang on my wall.”
Violet smiles. “Yes, you do.”
Blue rolls her eyes and taps in the nail. “You just want me to have to spackle more holes.”
I spackle. Blue does something elegant that makes the wall look like it never had a hole in it. “I like the sketches. I think you should put the one of the naked guy at eye level.”
Violet snickers. “They’re abstracts of curves in the desert.”
Open vistas for a Capricorn. Perfection, but I grin at Violet anyhow. “Very manly curves.”
Her eyes flash with mischief. “I hear that soup bowls have some pretty interesting curves, too.”
Troublemaker. I look back down at my client’s chart. Ignoring her generally doesn’t work, but it rarely stops me from trying.
Blue hangs one of the small sketches that Violet came home with yesterday on the first nail. “Remind me again why I’m putting up art before I have a decent bed to sleep in?”
Violet keeps carefully stitching. “Because the wall is freshly painted and you’ll be able to look at it and know that you have one thing finished.”
That matters to a Capricorn sun with a Virgo moon. They need lists and the satisfaction of completing them. Which Violet knew long before I ever set eyes on Blue’s chart.
I shift attention to the single item on my to-do list for today. “Are we buying mattresses from the nice lady in Victoria or are we hoping a herd of geese moves in and shares their feathers?”
Blue taps in another nail. “Geese come in flocks, not herds.”
Virgo moons are also perfectionists. Especially when they love you. “We could buy bed frames from her, too. Until you have time to build us new ones.”
That gets me the dirty look I was expecting.
Violet glances at me, amused. “Order the mattresses. We can sleep on the floor for a while.”
We already are, and the really squishy camping pad I keep in my car for emergencies is getting old, fast. But apparently we can’t just load our Vancouver beds into the back of Blue’s truck and bring them across on the ferry. Something about the energies we need to leave behind so we can make space for new dreams to find us.
Yes, Violet is that kind of interior decorator.
I tap the order button on my phone that will acquire us three organic foam mattresses. “Done. Anything else I can be trusted not to screw up too badly?”
Nobody offers me a hammer or a sewing needle.
I roll my eyes and peer at the timer on the stove. Ten minutes. Blue can only cook three things, but all of them are worth waiting for. I push up to my feet with about as much grace as a penguin trying to climb an ice cliff and waddle into the kitchen. “Are we having noodles or salad with the meatloaf?”
Violet licks the end of a bright-red thread. “Garlic bread. I got a fresh baguette at the market.”
I can manage that. “Do we have garlic?”
She shrugs her shoulders. “Maybe?”
Violet gets the right things. She rarely worries about getting all the things.
Blue mutters something pithy under her breath as she taps in another nail. “Third cupboard to the left of the fridge, second shelf, small square jar. It’s not labeled yet. I can’t find my label maker.”
I head to the third cupboard left of the fridge. “It’s down in the storeroom. I was using it on the scented-candle bins. I brought up a couple for us