Pers began barking and whining, tail wagging, struggling to get out of her arms and go to the figure.
The electricity came back on before the emergency generator could kick in.
The stairwell above her was empty.
“Julie?” Mandaline called out, carefully advancing. It had looked like Julie.
Shivering, she immediately dialed Julie’s cell but it went straight to voice mail. “Hey, call me and check in, okay? Please?” She even walked into the bedroom and checked the bathroom, but Mandaline was alone in the apartment.
Struggling with her growing apprehension, she quickly made herself a sandwich, grabbed a zippy bag full of washed grapes and her The Quest Tarot deck, and headed back downstairs again with Pers. She made herself a cup of hot chai tea behind the counter and sat on a stool by the register where she could easily see the TV screen.
Shuffling the deck, she took a deep breath and tried to quiet her mind. She had another copy of The Quest Tarot that she used to read for customers sometimes, but this was her personal deck, one she never used to read for anyone but herself.
Quieting her mind proved no easy feat considering the storm and her worry over Julie’s safety.
She didn’t even know what or how to ask. She finally settled on, Show me this evening, please.
She cut the deck, shuffled once more, and quickly pulled the top three cards. She laid them out faceup before staring at them.
The Tower. Three of Swords. Nine of Swords.
She gasped. Every deck had slightly different variations in meaning.
This deck, in addition to beautiful images, runes, I Ching hexagrams, and other symbols on each card, included brief statements summarizing the card’s meaning.
Demolition. Mourning. Cruelty.
With trembling hands she gathered the cards and returned them to the deck. She’d started reshuffling and prepared to cut the deck again when another loud crack of thunder split the air.
She screamed and flinched. The deck slipped from her hand, scattering across the tile floor behind the counter.
“Dammit!” She started to retrieve them when she realized only three cards lay faceup amongst the cards on the floor.
The Tower. Three of Swords. Nine of Swords.
“No.” She quickly gathered the cards, shuffled them, and returned them to the black velvet drawstring bag she kept them in. She left it on the counter and stepped back, afraid to touch it again right then.
I need to sage it. Sage it good. Leave it in the windowsill in a bowl of sea salt under next weekend’s full moon. I haven’t cleansed it lately, and it’s mad at me.
She forced herself to eat even though her appetite had fled.
Around three thirty the power blinked off yet again. She held her breath and counted, but by the time she’d hit ten, the power hadn’t come on and the generator out back hadn’t kicked in yet.
Dammit.
She grabbed a flashlight from next to the register and headed toward the back door. When Julie had the emergency generator installed a couple of years earlier, she’d made sure all the employees knew how to operate it, but Mandaline had yet to be there when it was actually in use. Just as she went to unlock the door, she heard the generator kick on and the power flickered back to life in the store.
She glanced at the ceiling. “Thank you, Hecate,” she said. She returned to the front of the store. The TV showed the cable box boot-up sequence in progress.
At least I still have TV. For now. No telling how long the cable signal would hold out in the storm.
Then she noticed the little zen garden on the counter. The rake lay on the counter next to it, when she knew that was not where she’d left it.
She glanced out to the front of the store where Damiago lay curled up, asleep in a chair. She looked down at Pers, who’d followed her to the back of the store.
Walking closer, she realized there was now a message written in the sand, as if someone had taken their finger and spelled it out.
IT’S NOT HIS FAULT
She reached for the rake but paused. Grabbing her iPhone, she snapped a couple of pictures and checked them to make sure the message was visible before she raked the zen garden out again with a shiver.
“This is just too frakking weird.”
She tried calling Julie again.
Straight to voice mail.
“Listen, sister, please call me. Okay? I’m really, really worried. Maybe the storm has me wigged out, but I need to talk to you.”
The power came back on a few minutes later. The lights flickered for a moment as the generator kicked off and the crossover circuit made the switch back.
At 5:21, the power went off again. She’d been seated on the floor in the front of the store, on a large pillow next to a low table, several candles lit as she tried to meditate.
She opened her eyes when she heard the TV go off. Directly across from her, the candlelight flickering on her face, sat Julie.
“What—”
“Keep your heart open,” Julie said. “Believe.”
Mandaline rolled to her knees to reach across the table when Julie disappeared.
The lights came back on.
Pers ran around the table, to where Julie had been sitting. He barked and whined, tail wagging furiously as he searched for her.
With a stunned cry Mandaline lost her balance and fell backward. She scrabbled away from the table, tears pouring down her face.
Something was really, really wrong.
She half crawled, half ran to where she’d left her cell phone by the register. With hands shaking so badly she could barely hold the phone, she dialed Julie’s number. “Call me. Right now! Dammit, you have to call me. Something bad’s happening.”
She just prayed Julie called her back.
Mandaline ran to the office and fired up the computer. Julie compulsively wrote everything down, including customers’ information and appointments, and always backed it up into the computer.
“Come on, come on, dammit!” she yelled when it seemingly took forever to boot.
Finally, the password screen appeared. Mandaline logged in and drummed her fingers on the desk as she waited for the desktop to appear.
She opened Julie’s Gmail account, the one she used for the business, and then the contacts list. Scrolling through it, Mandaline located Samantha Corey’s home phone number. When Mandaline dialed the number, however, she received the fast-busy tone of a line out of order.
“Dammit!” She struggled to hold back tears. Julie hadn’t written down the woman’s cell phone number.
All she could do was wait.
And pray.
Mandaline kept Damiago and Pers close. Outside, the storm raged and the skies darkened until it almost looked like night despite it barely being six o’clock and official sunset still a couple of hours away. She repeatedly tried Julie’s cell but it went straight to voice mail every time. Either she was busy with the cleansing ritual, or…
She didn’t want to think about the or.
Not at all.
By seven o’clock, Mandaline was seriously considering calling the sheriff’s office and asking them to go out and check on Julie. The property was smack in the middle of a state forest. Maybe a tree had blown down across the driveway and they were trapped there. Maybe the wind or trees had knocked out cell service in addition to the landlines.
Maybe they’re all dead.
She immediately banished that thought from her mind.
With her stomach too knotted to eat, she kept all the lights on and the TV turned up loud enough she could hear it from anywhere in the shop, even upstairs in the apartment. She kept it tuned to the Weather Channel, preferring the relentless storm coverage to anything else. At least it made her feel connected, like she wasn’t alone.