skitter away from what he’s done to me.
I’m nowhere near that certain.
But I was in that moment, in that timeless instant when we all knew that our lives had changed and we’d reached the end of our beginnings—and a stranger was somehow there to capture it. A very talented stranger who’s looking at me with complicated things in his eyes.
I definitely need a look at his chart.
I square my shoulders and take a deep breath. Charts will have to wait. I need tea and pastries and time to sink into the very interesting conversation with Jeannie that started in the coffee shop, and then I need to trudge up the stairs to the apartments over our heads so my Cancer moon can see where she’ll be living.
I squint at the man who’s still watching us—and who sketched a drawing that could only have been done from the second-story windows across the street. “Got a ladder, by any chance?”
His eyes flash with humor. “A short one. It might be covered in wet paint, though.”
Blue snorts. “You’re supposed to get the paint on the walls.”
He grins, clearly at ease with her snark. “On the canvas, in my case, but I’m pretty messy when I paint walls, too.”
She smiles faintly. “Noted.”
He chuckles, and it moves the air around me. “You don’t look like you’ll be needing much help. That’s a really competent tool belt you’re wearing.”
Sometimes people don’t see Blue. He’s doing it effortlessly. I take a sip of my tea and swallow. Interacting with people in real life is going to be weird.
Violet holds up his sketch to the light. Touches it like it’s treasure, which I suppose it is. “Can we keep this?”
She almost always knows the answers before she asks, but she asks anyhow. Something about not taking oars and reins and walking sticks out of peoples’ hands. Which sounds like a load of mystical bullshit until you’re the one squirming because you don’t want to say something out loud.
Drew sticks his free hand in his pocket and looks uncomfortable for the first time since I arrived. “Sure.” He holds up his tea. “I was suffering from a severe lack of caffeine, so we’ll consider it a fair trade.”
Violet snickers and pats his hand. “You keep telling yourself that story, right up until you get upstairs and Mabel sets you straight.”
He stares at her, his eyes wide and shocked.
Blue, who’s had plenty of experience with strangers that Violet has rendered silent, raises an eyebrow and waits to see if he’s going to recover without assistance.
Her hand is moving toward her tool belt when he finally finds his words. “You’ve met Mabel?”
Violet shakes her head. “Not until now, no. She seems lovely.”
A weirdly strangled sound comes out of Drew’s throat.
Blue isn’t the only one who has lots of experience with the chaos that Violet leaves in her wake. I take a bracing sip of tea. “Who’s Mabel?”
He huffs out a sigh that carries the weight of the world and a couple of spare asteroids, too. “She’s a friend. One who likes to interfere in my life and has opinions on absolutely everything.”
Blue shoots me a wry look. “I don’t know anyone like that.”
I only interfere when people aren’t paying attention to the headline-news items in their charts. Which Blue does every chance that she gets.
Violet flashes Drew the kind of grin that no one ever expects from an ethereal priestess. “Mabel says that you should have put on a nicer shirt and combed your hair.”
Drew shoots her a look that’s a little panicked and a lot resigned.
She mimes her fingers zipping her lips closed, which doesn’t dim the glee in her eyes at all.
Jeannie chuckles and takes Violet’s arm. “I see that you’ll fit in just fine around here, dear. Why don’t you come inside and I’ll show you how I’ve organized the stock. You’ll want to change it up, of course, but it will let you begin to feel your way around.”
She glances at Blue over her shoulder. “There’s a fire escape out back of the middle apartment that will get you onto the roof. The key’s under the welcome mat, but I don’t think the door’s locked. You’ll want to take a good look at the skylights. The one furthest north sprung a leak last winter and Gracie wasn’t sure if her repair would hold.”
I watch, bemused, as she herds both of my friends through the door of the shop, casually granting them their hearts’ desires as she goes.