“SO, UH, WHERE’S the crystal ball then, huh?”
Fin restrained her eye roll and merely gave the man a polite smile. These were the sorts of questions that all nervous, quasi-skeptical first-time clients asked her. It was people’s natural reaction to try to figure out exactly how real her abilities really were. Fin had found it was best to just let people tire out their nervous energy and take the opportunity to observe them.
The man in front of her, Enzo, was an odd duck. Handsome in a rough way, a bit of a beer gut, a tough-guy swagger but nervous as a cat. She knew, at a glance, that he was the kind of person who made fun of other people’s superstitions but had spent more than a night or two listening for ghosts in his own house.
“And I thought there’d be more tarot cards and stuff. Or, like, black candles. Skulls. Velvet tablecloths.”
They were in a small office that Fin rented for first-time clients, until she got to know them well enough to decide whether or not she was willing to do house calls for them. The office was unadorned; nothing about the decor suggesting anything out of the ordinary.
She cleared her throat and Enzo stopped pacing and turned to give her a glancing perusal, as if looking directly at her could be dangerous.
“I’m wearing velvet pants,” Fin said in her Louisiana accent, intentionally making her voice drawlier and deeper and calmer than normal. “If that helps ease your mind at all.”
Enzo’s eyes dropped to her legs, and Fin detected a flash of suspicion that gave way to humor. His first reaction to her upon entry to the office had been intense attraction. But it had faded almost as quickly as it had bloomed. He was more nervous than he was turned on, completely unsure what to make of this supposed psychic.
“Wanna talk about why you’re here?” she prompted.
“You can’t guess? Thought you were a psychic.”
It infinitely irritated her when skeptics tested her as if they and they alone were the end-all judgment of what she was or wasn’t capable of. Especially when those skeptics, like the man in front of her, weren’t actually skeptical at all. But rather they were scared about what they might actually end up believing.
“Enzo, you’re not paying me so that I can convince you I am what I say I am. I’m here to help you. If you don’t want help, this is a waste of your money and my time.”
Enzo stood stiffly for another few seconds before he sagged backward against the wall. He let out a deep breath, and Fin saw that his beer gut was actually a bit bigger than she’d originally assessed. Apparently he’d been sucking in.
“I’m here ’cuz of Rachel. She thought it would be a good idea.”
Rachel Giulietta was one of her best and favorite clients. Fin, who rarely, if ever, took on male clients, was seeing Enzo as a personal favor to Rachel.
“She, uh, thought it would be a good idea if I talked to you.”
Enzo shrugged and started pacing again, but it wasn’t the agitated pacing of before. Fin recognized it as a thoughtful pacing, still a bit nervous, but also the tick of a man searching for the right way to explain something.
For the first time since he’d walked in the door, Fin relaxed a bit.
An hour later, Enzo left the office, and Fin stared thoughtfully at nothing. They hadn’t made much progress, except for the fact that Enzo had ceased his skeptical posturing. She’d only promised Rachel that she’d see Enzo the once. It was up to her to decide if it would be worth anyone’s time or money for her to see him again.
Already leaning toward a no, Fin paused. She had few male clients. Generally, it was her inclination to boot them out the door. As fast and as far as her boots could boot.
For just a second, Tyler’s face flashed across her mind’s eye. His flayed expression at the ball game. It bothered her that it was still sticking.
“Damn” was all Tyler had said as he’d stepped back from her. Emotionally, she’d stripped him down like corn off a cob and his navy blue eyes had asked her why even as he’d taken two more steps away, disappearing into the crowd. Damn was the last word he’d spoken to her, and she’d had to convince herself that it didn’t sit heavy on her shoulders like a curse.
Sure, he’d been pushy. Unappealing in his quest to get what he wanted. But she’d been cruel. It bothered her.
She heard a conversation start up on the other side of the wall and it jolted her out of her reverie. She packed up her things and decided to walk home, the air finally crisply chilly in a very satisfying early-autumn sort of way.
As she turned the corner onto Ocean Avenue a man called out to her from the corner, jogging to catch up.
“Where you headed, beautiful?” he asked, as if it were any of his business.
Mars. A funeral home. To my freaking living room where I can get some peace.
Fin wondered, for the countless time, if her answer, were she to give him one, would even matter. All he wanted was a way to ask if he could come with her. Didn’t strange men on the street have anything more pressing to tend to than chasing pretty women down the block? Who had the time for that?
She knew better than to indulge him with a reply and instead shook her head at him, frowning. She picked up the pace, left him in her dust, and was practically panting with exertion by the time she made it to up to her apartment ten blocks later.
Fin didn’t even have to step inside to feel the vibes peacefully spiraling out toward her. Her foster sister had an extremely recognizable energy. Calm, a little worried, openhearted, homebody energy. There wasn’t a more comforting flavor that Fin had ever encountered. Via often used her key to drop in on Fin.
Fin pushed through her front door and into the welcome embrace of her private space. She closed New York out and flipped the lock.
“I love you, Fin,” Via said, not even bothering with a hello as she came to stand in the doorway between Fin’s kitchen and living room. “But your kitchen makes me cringe.”
Fin laughed, hung up her coat and came to stand shoulder to shoulder with Via, surveying the mess.
Even she could admit that things were a little more tornadoish than usual today. Herb trimmings were on the floor beneath where Fin had hung them up to dry the night before. A rather pungent new poultice recipe was simmering in her slow cooker, the steam from the pot humidifying the air and making her eyes sting. On the far countertop sat the remnants of yesterday’s geode excavation. A gorgeous amethyst geode sat broken into three pieces, its craggy, dinosaur-like exterior belying the sparkling purple crystal on the inside. The hammer that Serafine had used to crack it open still laid haphazardly on the counter and a fine coating of rock dust stubbornly covered everything within a two-foot radius.
Two years ago, the two women had shared this kitchen and this apartment. Two years ago, this kitchen would have been startlingly spick-and-span and there would have been chili percolating in the slow cooker, not a fresh batch of burn poultice. When Via had lived here, she’d firmly limited the amount of non-food-related interests Fin was allowed to pursue in the kitchen.
But now, Fin lived alone and she was living her life in pursuit of mindfulness and magic.
“If it makes you feel better, sister, don’t think of this as my kitchen. Think of it as my laboratory.”
“There’s a fridge,” Via pointed out stubbornly. “Ergo, a kitchen.” Via picked her way around the fallen herbs and poked her head into said fridge. “Have you used this kitchen to, I don’t know, prepare any food today?”
Fin restrained a smile. If Fin spoke the language of magic, then Violetta DeRosa spoke the language of food. Food was the way in which Via measured her days, her weeks. Food was her way of telling someone she loved them. The woman was a true artist when it came to the kitchen. Nothing extremely fancy or gourmet, but everything was fresh and made with love and care. There was simply no other magic like a Via meal.
“I had lunch at that very kitchen table not three hours ago, I’ll have you know.”
Via closed the fridge and raised an eyebrow. It was like staring down a cross little cat. “Microwave popcorn and turkey roll-ups does not a lunch make.” She raised a stern finger. “Even if you took a multivitamin with it.”
Serafine laughed and marveled how it could feel equally gratifying and annoying to be so well-known by another.
“You’re gonna need to take some serious cooking classes before you become a foster parent,” Via said, settling herself at the kitchen table.
Fin felt her smile freeze in place. How to tell Via that her unflagging optimism sometimes hurt more than negativity might have?
“I’ve...decided to take a break from that. For now.”
It was a miracle Via didn’t strain an eyelid with how round her deep brown eyes became all at once. “What? You’re—Wow. What do you mean ‘a break’?”
She understood why this news was hard for Via to reconcile. It was no secret between them that practically since the day she was born, Fin had longed to belong to a unit. She had Via, of course. The two women had known and loved one another since they were preteens. Via had been shuffled into Fin’s aunt’s house as a foster kid. Fin had been shuffled into her aunt’s house as a lost kid whose mother no longer was able to take care of her.
They’d become sisters before they’d become friends. Even as they aged and changed, they seemed to do so as halves of one organism, developing and altering in relation to one another.
And now Seb and Matty were becoming part of that relationship little by little. But Fin wanted a unit in her daily life.
The thing you want the most in the world...
Fin sighed. She felt prickly and vulnerable and sad but there was no way she would have folded herself into a kitchen chair and plopped her chin on one hand if it were any other person on the entire earth. But this was Via. So, she did just that.
“I’ve been trying and trying for a few years now, and always the answer from the state is the same. I’ve changed my house to suit them, revamped my business, prepped for weeks for the interviews, had countless people look over my applications and still, it’s nothing but no, no, no.” Fin dropped her eyes and fiddled with her rings for a moment. “I don’t understand why there’s this wall up between me and the foster system. But maybe it’s time that I listened.”
For better or worse, the universe had bricked off access to the foster system for Fin. She figured it might be time for her to stop beating her head against the bricks, trying to get to the other side. Brute force had never been her style, and she worried that the rejection and disappointment was warping her.
For the second time that day, she got a flash of Tyler’s face from the baseball game.
“A break means that you’ll try again, though, right?” Via asked, her eyes still round. “You’re not giving up?”
Fin sighed. “No. I just need...to try something else. Whatever energy I’ve been bringing hasn’t been working. I can’t walk the same road a hundred times and expect it to bring me someplace new, you know?”
“That makes sense,” Via agreed slowly.
Via was going to continue, Fin could tell. Optimistic, unbridled love and support were about to spew all over the conversation. Fin didn’t think her heart could take it right now. She straightened up in her chair and interrupted.
“You wanna tell me why you’re here?”
Via’s lips quirked. “You mean to tell me that you don’t already know?”
“You’re here to drag me over for dinner, of course.”
“Glad to see you’re not slipping in your clairvoyance.”
Is Tyler going to be there? Fin didn’t ask it aloud.
In the past, it had been a fifty-fifty chance as to whether he’d be there or not. But this would make it five Fridays in a row that Serafine had attended dinner at Seb and Via’s and five Fridays in a row that Tyler wasn’t there. “Sounds like a smash.”
Tyler had been MIA recently. Fin could feel Via’s worry over him. It had Fin leaning forward, searching for a trace of him in Via’s energy.
Via’s familiar form filled Fin’s vision. She slightly blurred her eyes until her best friend was merely a silhouette. And there was Via’s energy, mixed with and illuminated by the natural light surrounding her. Fin read the happiness there, the relaxed, eased love that Via felt on the daily. Like the tartness or sweetness of the first sip of wine, she could read, first and foremost Sebastian and Matty mixed into Via’s energy. They were always prominent these days. The very first page in Via’s book. The oak trees planted firmly in her heart.
With just a moment more of looking, Fin located Tyler. He was as distant as he’d been for months. Still bright, like a far star, but distant.
Almost the second she’d located him, Fin dropped her reading and turned away. “Let me just change my clothes, sister.”
Via wandered out to the living room to wait. Fin closed herself in the bedroom and shed her clothing.
She always felt chilled after she went digging around after Tyler. She could liken the sensation to prodding at a paper cut that she already knew was sore. So she kept doing it, because frankly, she felt guilty as hell.
She pursed her lips. “I’m not the only reason the man is lost,” she reminded herself. “Hell. I’m not even the main reason.”
But she was part of the reason. Her words to him at the ballpark had been as cruel as they’d been necessary.
Him asking her out that day had been the equivalent of suddenly finding a stray dog sitting in her kitchen. She’d known the pup had been lurking around the yard, but to actually see him sitting there, blinking up at her like an expectant mongrel, waiting for some belly scratches...
The last time she’d seen him had been at Seb’s end-of-summer barbecue. She’d stepped out into the backyard to see Tyler gunned down in a blaze of freezing water-gun water as Matty and Joy had cackled like maniacs. She’d smiled at the scene but ended up frowning when Tyler had looked up and seen her. You didn’t need to be a psychic to sense the ice that had immediately formed around him.
Apparently she’d not only kicked the puppy out of her kitchen—she’d made an enemy.
She shivered and dressed herself against the chill. She didn’t want Tyler as an enemy. She just didn’t want to screw up her life over a man.
Fin pulled on leg warmers up to her hips, and over top of that, she donned a long, swishy dress that fell to her ankles. It was a deep red in color, bolstering and passionate. She took a few minutes to braid her long, dark hair. And finally, finally, her jewelry.
She traded out a peridot ring for a silver garnet one. Amethyst earrings and finally, a hideous necklace with large wooden beads that Matty had made for her. She’d sensed, immediately, how much love he’d put into making it, and she considered it one of her strongest and most potent forms of magic.
Dressed and ready, they made their way from Fin’s Lefferts Gardens apartment to Seb and Via’s home in Bensonhurst.
“Auntie Fin!” Matty shouted from inside the house the second Via’s key hit the outer lock. Still on the porch, Via laughed and stepped back and let him scrabble with the locks from the inside. He flung open the door, one hand firmly on the collar of his exuberant dog, Crabby.
Boy and dog broke the threshold of the house and immediately got tangled in her long red skirt.
“Crap!” Matty yelled, dragged to his knees as he attempted to keep his dog from escaping into the dimming Brooklyn evening.
Fin laughed and held still, knowing that if she moved she’d trip over the pile of excited mammals at her feet.
Fin grinned when somehow Crabby ended up under her skirt. She lifted the hem, grateful for the intuition that’d told her to wear the long leg warmers. She lowered a calm hand to the top of the dog’s curly white-and-brown head. “Shh,” Fin murmured, concentrating hard.
The dog stopped yanking Matty’s tightfisted hand and plunked his butt down. He still sat between Fin’s legs and his tail bongo-ed a mile a minute, but he was no longer attempting to escape.
“Crabby, come!” Sebastian called, appearing in the hallway with a dish towel over his shoulder. The dog sprinted back inside, leaping over Matty and into the house. Sebastian strode forward and lifted Matty from the ground, dusting off his son’s trousers. “I swear Crabby is somehow gaining energy as he gets older. Hi, Fin.” He bussed her on the cheek and then pulled Via into a hug. “Hi, baby.”
“Auntie Fin?” Matty asked a few minutes later as he sat on the steps to his upstairs and watched Fin unlace her boots. Via and Seb had disappeared into the kitchen to fix dinner.
“Nephew Matty?” she replied, using the same questioning tone that he had, knowing it would make him smile.
It worked. He smiled for a moment and then went back to tugging at the loose white strings at the bottom of his jeans.
“How come Crabby is always trying to escape? He’s always trying to get off the leash in Prospect Park or get out the front door.” Matty tug-tug-tugged at his pants. “Am I doing something wrong?”
Fin’s already tender heart went ahead and shoved itself through the meat tenderizer known as Matty Dorner.
Fin tossed her boots into the shoe closet and turned to survey the scene in front of her with her physical eyes. Matty looked a little flushed and a little sad, one of his cheeks inched up the wall that he leaned his face against, his hands still tangled in the hem of his jeans.
His sadness, like all children, was so bright it hurt Fin to see it, like biting down on a sour candy. Most children she knew didn’t tangle up their emotions the way adults did, they painted them in the broad, bright strokes of undiluted paint, and Matty was the most undiluted person that Fin had ever met. His feelings were large and intense, and thus, usually dealt with quite quickly. But this feeling was different.
She answered the question at hand, because he hadn’t asked her, “Auntie Fin, why am I so sad right now?”
If he had, she might have told him. But that wasn’t the way Matty’s brain worked.
“Crabby wants fun, Matty. And the most fun he ever has is with you in the park. So, in his mind, any hour of the day, he wants to pull you out of the house and to the park. Even if that means he might accidentally get off leash and get away from you.”
Matty picked a string clean off the bottom of his jeans and twisted it around his finger. “He’s not trying to get away from me?”
“Definitely not,” Serafine answered truthfully. “He loves you more than anything. But it’s kind of like when you eat a really big slice of confetti cake at someone’s birthday party and you already ate three slices of pepperoni pizza.”
Matty looked up with a knowing smile on his face.
“And you get a stomach ache?”
“Exactly,” she nodded. “He wants it all. Even if it means getting lost in the dark, Crabby still wants to drag you out to the park.” The dog in question was suddenly back from the kitchen, tongue hanging out one side of his mouth and pushing the crown of his head against Fin’s knees. She laughed as Crabby looked up, saw his boy sitting on the stairs, and bounded forward, knocking Matty backward. “The poor guy can’t even help himself.”
Matty didn’t answer, and Fin knew that it was because he was already lost in the world that only he and Crabby knew how to enter. Gone through some magical door halfway between reality and make-believe.
A moment later, Fin was standing in the doorway of Seb and Via’s kitchen watching quietly as Sebastian scrubbed at some crayon that had accidentally found its way to his countertops. Via was serving something from a slow cooker into bowls and slicing bread.
“He misses Tyler,” Fin said quietly.
Seb and Via both froze, exchanging eye contact so personal that Fin averted her eyes. Sebastian sighed and straightened, towering over the countertop and tossing the dishrag over his shoulder again. He scrubbed a hand over his face, his dry palm making a loud sound against his stubble.
Wow. Fin nearly took a step back from the powerful emotion that emanated off of him.
“We all miss Tyler,” Sebastian responded gruffly, “but he’s MIA.”
Fin bit her lip. “You haven’t seen him at all this summer?”
“No. He’s been in and out a little bit. It’s just that he used to stick to us like glue. And now, all of a sudden, he’s ducking my phone calls. Can’t really figure it out.”
Fin, on the other hand, could see it all quite clearly. She’d accused Tyler of clinging to Seb and Matty instead of living a life on his own and he’d taken it to heart. And now he was in the process of hurting the people who loved him best. She frowned at her own shortsightedness. She’d carried that rejection letter with her to the ball game thinking that it would fortify her. But it had been bad magic. Dangerous.
Fin’s eyes clashed with Via’s. She’d told Via that Tyler had asked her out at the ball game, but she hadn’t given her the details on exactly what had been said. She knew she’d have to tell her the rest of the story tonight. She couldn’t keep this a secret any longer.
Via cleared her throat and crossed the kitchen to link her arms around her boyfriend, burying herself in his chest. His big arms came around her easily and anyone, even the non-psychics of the world, could have seen just how much she melted him, like he was a stick of butter and her cheek against his sternum was a beam of heat.
“He’s gonna be there tomorrow,” Via reminded Seb. “He promised he’d be at Matty’s first basketball game,” she informed Fin. “And Matty’s been nervous about it, so Ty said that he’d report on the game and that he’d even write a little article about it for Matty’s personal use. And that no matter what happened in the game, he’d make sure that Matty sounded really cool in the article.”
Dimly, Fin remembered that Tyler was a sports writer; he reported on the Brooklyn Nets for one of the daily New York papers.
A pit of something cold was yawning in her gut and she wanted to fill it up with good food and the love that emanated from this little family.
“Salad?” Fin asked, changing the subject. “Want me to toss together a salad?”
Wary of Fin’s cooking skills, Via bounded between her fridge and her best friend, her arms tossed out like she was protecting a baby carriage from a runaway horse. “How about you set the table, Fin dear?”
Fin’s face instantly matched Via’s. Two wide, genuine smiles. She rolled her eyes and deviated to the kitchen table, the pit in her gut temporarily filling up.