The Good Witch, Mercedes’s occult shop, was located in the Irish Channel, on the corner of Tchoupitoulas and 7th. Even after three years, Nora was still struggling to pronounce the city’s street names like a local. Tchoupitoulas, though, she had in the bag: “Chop-a-Two-Liss.” Just as long as no one asked her to spell it.
Nora drove a block past the shop and parked on a side-street. On the off-chance dogs were allowed in The Good Witch, she leashed Gmork and took him with her. Otherwise, she’d have to leave him tied outside the store. Not a problem, really. Wasn’t like anyone was going to try to steal a huge black German Shepherd wearing a spiked dog collar.
The storefront of The Good Witch was painted lavender with a creamy white trim. The display window was brightly-colored with stained-glass hangings of harvest scenes, owls and ravens and deer, triple-phase moons, and the strange faces of men grinning through green foliage. On the door, a sign declared the shop Open. A brass plaque next to the door was engraved with the words Familiars Welcome.
“I guess that’s you, boy,” Nora said to Gmork.
She pushed open the door and heard a gentle tinkling of bells. A string of silver bells on a golden cord hung on the back of the doorknob. Nora spotted Mercedes behind a counter, on the opposite side of the store. A customer—a well-heeled white woman of about fifty—was chatting to her. Nora only caught a few words, something about arthritis inflammation. Mercedes was recommending spearmint tea in addition to whatever compound she was preparing for the woman.
Mercedes glanced Nora’s way, and nodded her head in recognition and greeting. She didn’t seem too surprised to see Nora. Maybe a little pleased? Or was Nora imagining that?
As she waited for Mercedes to wrap things up with her customer, Nora wandered the store, Gmork at her side on a very short leash. “You break it,” she whispered to Gmork, “you buy it.”
The shop was a good size, about twice Nora’s living room. A converted cottage, she decided. The main front room had been a living room at one point. The back room, hidden behind a curtain, had likely been a bedroom. A sign beside the curtain said it was now the Reading Room. That was where the private tarot and palm readings happened.
Nora found the store welcoming. Nothing strange or scary here. No eyes of newt or voodoo dolls. She found a wall of scented candles that had apparently been “charged” with magical properties. A green candle worked a money spell. A yellow candle stoked creativity. A pale blue candle promised to help with anxiety. A red candle promised love.
Another wall was replete with books of magic and spells. Journals, too, with embossed leather covers and thick with heavy cotton paper. From the ceiling of the shop hung Mardi Gras beads, mostly silver, and draped in elegant loops. The sunlight through the stained-glass panels in the shop window reflected off the beads and tossed rainbows throughout the entire store. And the whole place smelled of blooming flowers, potent but not over-powering. Nora felt better just inhaling the air in there.
While Mercedes rang up her customer’s purchase at another counter, Nora examined the decks of tarot cards. There were dozens of different decks, dozens of different sets of artwork. Some she recognized. Everyone had seen the Rider-Waite decks. Others were stranger, lovelier, sillier. She found tarot decks for cat-lovers, for witches, for medievalists. There were vampire decks, angel decks, African decks, and Italian Renaissance decks. Nora fell in love at first sight with the Aquarian deck and its eerie Art Deco illustrations.
Nora moved away from the decks before she bought all of them simply to stare at the artwork for hours on end. She wandered to a table of jewelry, but it wasn’t the gems and beads that caught her eye.
A newspaper article had been cut out, framed, and hung on the wall in a back corner. Time had yellowed the paper, which was dated November 1984. Nora skimmed the article about a woman named Doreen Goode, a local New Orleans witch, who had helped the police recover a missing child. Though the image was grainy, Nora could spot the resemblance to Mercedes in Ms. Goode’s face.
“My mother,” Mercedes said.
Nora glanced over her shoulder and found Mercedes standing behind her at a respectable distance.
“She rescued a little girl?” Nora asked.
“She helped the police whenever they asked her.” Mercedes held out her hand and Gmork strained against his leash to reach those extended fingers. Nora loosened her grip so Gmork could reach Mercedes and get petted.
“Do you?” Nora asked.
“I would if they asked me. City’s not what it once was. But nowhere is.” Mercedes had gone down into a squat to meet Gmork eye to eye. She stroked his head, his long ears. If Gmork had been a cat, he would have purred.
“What do you mean ‘nowhere is’?”
“Ah, cities are self-aware now. New Orleans used to be a little strange and wild because it was strange and wild. Now it’s strange and wild because tourists expect it of us. Internet makes it hard, too. In ’84, a missing child in New Orleans wasn’t national news. No Facebook or Twitter to make it national news. Nobody around here batted an eye at the police asking a witch for help. Now you don’t want to be the police chief that’s made a laughingstock on the world’s stage by admitting you believe in the occult.”
“Guess not,” Nora said. “How did your mother find the girl? Did she, ah, ‘see’ where she was?”
“She would chew moonflower to put herself into a trance,” Mercedes said. “She said it took her ‘into the deep.’ Where the ‘deep’ really was, I don’t know, but she never went into the deep without bringing something or someone out with her. She went in and saw the girl through a little window lying on a bed of bare wood, sunlight streaming in, beams like a church roof.”
“An attic,” Nora said. The girl had been found in her own home, the newspaper article had said. Found half-dead from hitting her head while hiding.
“She’d thought she was in trouble,” Mercedes said, rising up from her squat but still keeping her fingertips on Gmork’s dark head. “She’d broken the grandfather clock in the house by playing with it. So she’d hid. Tripped over a box or a beam, knocked herself out. Couldn’t hear everyone screaming her name. She was up there over twenty-four hours in the attic heat, passed out and dying of thirst. If Mama hadn’t found her, she would have died in a couple hours. Now she’s thirty years old. Two kids. One girl named Doreen for my mother.”
“You have a daughter, right?”
“Just the one girl,” she said. “Got it right the first time. Had her at eighteen. She’s a freshman in college now.”
Nora did quick math. Eighteen plus eighteen meant Mercedes was thirty-six years old. Maybe thirty-seven. About Nora’s age.
“Around here?” Nora asked.
Mercedes shook her head. “In Boston.”
“Boston? She’s at Harvard?”
“We’re not supposed to brag about that,” Mercedes said. “So Rosemary tells me. But we do. My mother used to wear peasant blouses every day. Now she wears Harvard t-shirts.”
“So your mom’s still alive?”
“Oh yes, the Goode women are long-lived. But she’s in Savannah, taking care of my grandmother.”
“How did you know my mother was dying?” Nora asked.
Mercedes lifted her hands. “I just saw it.”
“Did you see me coming to see you today?”
“I can’t see my own future,” Mercedes said. “It’s like trying to read a book pressed to your face. Too close to make anything out.”
“Well, that’s a bitch, isn’t it?”
They laughed companionably. Hard to believe she’d been terrified of this woman only last night.
“My grandmother always said that our gifts came from the Goddess, but the Goddess was far off. We shouldn’t be surprised when our gifts arrived banged up and battered. Like getting a package from Siberia, it’ll be a little worse for the wear. But better than nothing.”
Mercedes beckoned Nora to follow her with a wave of her hand. She pushed the curtain to the reading room aside and switched on an antique lamp with a green shade.
The floral scent in the shop had been coming from this room. Instead of Mardi Gras beads dangling from the ceiling, bundles of herbs were tied to crossbeams to dry.
Gmork seemed unusually alert in the reading room. He didn’t want to sit or lay down. He stood, sniffing, his ears straight up.
“Gmork? What’s wrong?”
“He smells Hestia.”
“Is that some kind of herb?”
Mercedes smiled. “She’s my cat. She’s supposed to stay upstairs, but somehow she always manages to come down here and sleep on my reading table.”
Nora noticed little black hairs on the lacy white tablecloth, where a dozen tarot decks lay in a neat row.
“You aren’t in the market for a black cat, are you?” Mercedes asked. “I have a spare. People dump them on my doorstep. Either a joke or they really think all witches have black cats as familiars.” She shook her head and clicked her tongue, tut-tutting the ways of fools.
“I’m not sure I could handle a weird dog and a weird cat. But if I change my mind, I’ll let you know.”
“Please. Hestia is much happier as an only child.”
Mercedes pulled a chair out for Nora. She sat, still studying the reading room. Shelves were stacked with books stuffed with loose papers. Impressionistic paintings of hares and harts hung on the walls.
“I like it here,” Nora said, not meaning to. The words just came out. Mercedes nodded like she wasn’t at all surprised to hear that. She took a seat opposite Nora.
“Every four days I charge the whole place, stem to stern, with good energy. I just did it yesterday, focusing on welcoming. The Goddess must have known I’d have a special guest.”
“How do you do that?”
“How does your pope bless rosaries?” Mercedes said. “Same way I imagine. You hold it, you speak words of power over it, sometimes you sprinkle it with water. I don’t know if your pope puts magical herbs in the water, but the Church used to sprinkle holy water with bunches of rue.”
Nora couldn’t deny it. She’d seen Søren himself using flowers to sprinkle holy water.
“My priest used basil,” Nora said.
“Basil’s good,” Mercedes said. “I use it in love spells. Maybe your priest wanted his people to love God more.”
“I think he just liked the scent of it.”
“Would your priest approve of you being here?” Mercedes sat back in the chair and crossed her legs. She wore an ankle-length floral-print skirt, sandals, and a white blouse embroidered with flowers at the low neckline.
“No,” Nora said. “He definitely wouldn’t. But maybe not for the reason you think. None of the men in my life would approve of me being here right now.”
“Is that why you’re here?”
“Probably.”
Mercedes said nothing. Nora folded her hands in her lap, crossed her legs and patted her thigh. Gmork rested his head against her leg. Nora took comfort in his presence.
“They’re all scared of you,” Nora said.
“I believe I would be, too, if I were them. It’s not often I get this involved in a situation that’s out of my control. I just…I didn’t know what else to do. When something’s boiling, you can’t but watch the pot.”
“They think you’re a crazy stalker,” Nora continued.
“Stalker? No. Crazy? Ah. Who’s to say?’
Nora smiled. “You’ve been putting cursed Mardi Gras beads on my house for three years. Hard to explain that away as harmless.”
“Blessed,” Mercedes said, her voice sharp. “Blessed beads. Not cursed. Charged with power, good power. Nothing evil. I don’t curse anyone. Unless you cut me off in traffic. And those are just the usual curses.”
“Charged Mardi Gras beads?”
“Something my mother used to do,” Mercedes said. “A lot of women got hurt around here during Mardi Gras. It’s a prime hunting time for male predators. She would charge beads with protection spells every year on Fat Tuesday, hoping to protect some of those girls from rapists. That’s all I was doing with those beads in your tree. Trying to protect you from bad influences.”
“Bad influences? Like what? R-rated movies? Violent video games?”
“Men who don’t know what they’re talking about,” Mercedes said. “Men who don’t know anything about anything. In other words…men.”
Mercedes pointed at the silver bracelet she wore around her wrist.
“Silver,” she explained, “is feminine. Female energy. Female wisdom and intuition. That’s why I put up the silver beads. The black beads are straight-up wards against evil. Red for courage and blue for opening your mind. No curses in there at all.”
Nora stroked Gmork’s long back as she considered how much to tell Mercedes, how much to keep to herself.
“One of the men in my life tried to call a tree-trimmer this morning to cut all the beads down. I wouldn’t let him.”
“Good.”
“He’s scared.”
“Of me?”
“Of everything. His girlfriend’s about to have a baby. He’s seeing danger everywhere.”
“Potent days, right before a baby is born. The veil thins between the other world and this one. Has to thin so the soul can break through. Tell him to burn some sage incense and sleep with an agate under his pillow.”
“Got anything that’ll just knock him out until the baby’s born? He’s turning into a control freak.”
“Fear will do that to a man, make him into a tyrant. You can’t let him rule you.”
Nora smiled to herself.
“What is it?” Mercedes asked, her head tilted like a curious cat.
“His name is King,” Nora said. “Just funny, you called him a tyrant, said he shouldn’t rule me.”
“Is he family?”
“Sort of. Like common law family. I’ve known him since I was sixteen. His oldest son is one of my two lovers.”
Mercedes picked up one of her tarot decks and found a card with quick fingers. The Knight of Cups.
“Yes, that’s him,” Nora said. “Nico. He owns a winery in the south of France.”
“He’s good,” Mercedes said. “Good for you. Protects you. Respects you. Serves you. A wine-maker…he’ll believe in earth magic, whether he’s ever said it aloud or not. His love for you is simple and powerful, like a sword. But not a sword for battle. He uses it to cut through the thorny vines in your heart. He’s where you go when you want to be safe.”
“All that’s true.”
“That one I don’t worry about,” Mercedes said as she flipped through the deck. “If it was just him, you’d never have to lose a wink of sleep in your life. It’s this one that worries me.”
She flipped through the deck again and pulled out another card, The Hierophant, otherwise known as The High Priest, and set it on the table between them.
Nora stared at the card and said nothing.
“What is this card to you?” Mercedes asked.
“You tell me.”
“The cards aren’t books full of answers,” Mercedes said. “They’re doors. They tell us what doors we need to open in our lives. But only you can open that door and walk through. All I can say is that this card, it’s male. Male power. Male energy. Male power and men in power. I would guess you have a male authority in your life who has great power over you. Too much power. Power that influences you and leads you astray.”
“I can’t believe that. Not of him.”
“Him?”
“Him,” Nora said. “My him.”
“Might not be a him. Might be an it. The cards have people on them but they don’t always represent actual people. This could be a force in your life, not necessarily a person.”
“The High Priest,” Nora said, “is a person to me.”
“Who is he then?”
“Someone I will never leave.” Nora met Mercedes’s eyes.
“Someone you love.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me, Mistress Nora. I can’t help you if you don’t let me.”
“I don’t believe in any of this.” Nora waved her hand, as if to knock it all aside.
“You believe in all of it,” Mercedes said sharply. “You’re Catholic. You believe in prayers, which we call spells. You believe in blessing, which we call charging. You believe in God. We call that force the Goddess. You believe in magic, except you don’t call it that. But it is magic, all the same. Magic words, magic songs, magic spells. Light a candle, whisper a name, summon him home to your bed. That’s a love spell. You cast one and it came to pass.”
“I decorate for Christmas, too. I don’t believe in Santa Claus.”
“But you believe in Jesus.”
Nora couldn’t look at Mercedes and her dark waiting eyes anymore. She glanced away, stared at a painting on the wall, a painting of a white stag in a field of snow.
“What is it? What are you afraid of?”
Nora swallowed a lump in her throat.
“I’m not leaving the man I love. I’m not. I won’t.”
“I would never tell you to.”
“You already did.” She reached out, picked up the card of The High Priest.
“Your lover is a priest, isn’t he?” Mercedes asked. Nora nodded slowly. “You’re the mistress of a warlock. No wonder there’s so much power around you. You’re sleeping with a warlock.”
Nora laughed out loud. Rude? Yes. Unbelievably rude. But she couldn’t stop herself. It was all too ridiculous. Søren. A warlock.
“Laugh all you want,” Mercedes said. “Laugh all you can. I know you think I’m crazy. It’s all right. I’m not the one sleeping with a priest. Even I know better than that.”
“What’s wrong with sleeping with a priest? Other than I’m not supposed to do that and neither is he.”
“Priests have power. Too much of it. You can’t go around sticking your fingers into light sockets and not expecting to get shocked. But be the Fool if you like. There’s a place for them in this world, too.” She held up another card—The Fool.
“You’re not going to make me leave the man I’ve loved my entire life. The only reason I came here was to make sure I didn’t need to be afraid of you. I can tell I don’t have to be, so I won’t be. Although if I were you, I’d stay away from my house from now on. We’re installing a security system.”
“I’ll stay away.”
Nora stood up though she didn’t want to. The shop felt as comfortable as a soft warm bed and leaving it just as hard. Mercedes stayed at her table, staring at the cards before her.
“Nora,” Mercedes said. Nora turned back. “Just so you know, I’m more scared of you than you are of me.”