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“I’ll make a big order with her before I close,” I promised. “It’s not as if the candles are going to go bad sitting in the stock room for a few months. So that should help a little.”
Josie still didn’t look entirely convinced, but she must have decided it wasn’t fair to give me a guilt trip about the situation, not when I’d tried my best to find someone to manage the store for me. Instead, she gave a little sigh, one small enough that I could choose to ignore it, and said, “Well, I suppose that is something. Just let me know when you have some sale flyers made up — I can post one in the window of my office, and put another up on the bulletin board at City Hall.”
I told her that would be wonderful, and she said goodbye a moment later and hurried out. While I’d never be an artist like Hazel, I’d gotten fairly proficient at using Canva and knew I’d be able to produce a variety of eye-catching sales materials that I could print out on the color laser printer in my office. No point in trying to get them professionally done, not when I was working on such a tight deadline.
Now filled with purpose, I reached under the counter to the shelf where I stored my laptop — a simple movement that had gotten more and more difficult over the past month — and booted it up. Monday mornings at the shop were always slow, and I figured I might as well take advantage of this free time while I could.
With any luck, business would get downright brisk once word got out that I was having the witchy equivalent of a fire sale.
Sure enough, after Josie dropped by to pick up the flyers I’d made for her and Hazel came over as well to help spread the word, the store was crowded with far more people than I could have reasonably expected to see on an early Monday afternoon. In fact, it was busy enough that I kind of wished Hazel had been able to stick around, since Olivia wouldn’t be in for a few more hours.
“But I can’t stay,” Hazel told me after she came by to let me know she’d posted a flyer in the window of the Sundowner Gallery, a place down the street that sold a lot of her paintings, and added that she’d handed out the rest of them to people at Walmart when she stopped in to pick up a few things. Although I knew she was three months along, her pregnancy wasn’t showing at all yet, and she looked remarkably like the woman I’d met three years earlier when I first came to town, tall and slim, with light brown hair and eyes that matched her name. “I have a doctor’s appointment, and Chuck’s meeting me there.”
“It’s fine,” I assured her, even as I inwardly hoped it would be. So far, everyone had been very solicitous of my advanced pregnancy and hadn’t asked me to clamber down off the padded stool where I sat most of the time when I was at the store and waddle over to help them locate a particular book or crystal. Well, if someone needed my personal assistance, they were just going to have to wait for as long as it took. “The last thing I expect is for you to skip seeing your doctor because of me. It’ll be fine.”
She sent me a relieved smile and hurried out, even as she promised to stop by the next morning and help out for a few hours. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her that wasn’t necessary, but then I reminded myself I could probably use all the help I could get this week. Besides, she was positively blooming and had already informed me that she hadn’t experienced any morning sickness or anything that would prevent her from lending a hand for the next few days, so it wasn’t as if I was imposing too much.
And after the next few days, her assistance wouldn’t be necessary…not here at the shop, anyway. An only child, she didn’t have a lot of experience with infants, and she’d already said she’d love to help out when my baby came along.
“I can be Auntie Hazel,’ she’d said, and I’d been just fine with that idea. After all, I didn’t have any siblings, either — well, except my half-brother and sister back in California, whom I’d never even met — so I thought it would be a great idea for the two of us to learn together. I’d have Calvin’s mother Delia to lean on for advice…after raising five children and numerous grandchildren, there wasn’t much about tending to infants that she didn’t know…but still, I also really loved the idea of my best friend and I going on that kind of shared journey.
Despite how kind my customers were being about allowing me to remain seated on my stool, I couldn’t quite keep my gaze from straying to the clock whenever I had a spare second. It seemed to be ticking along more slowly than usual, making it feel as if three-thirty would never get here. True, sometimes Olivia could make it in by three-fifteen, but a lot depended on how fast she could get off the school grounds and over to the store. Some people thought it was silly for her to come in and work for only two hours — the shop closed at five, but she stayed that extra half hour to tidy up and do any restocking that might be required — but I was paying her twenty-five bucks an hour, making it definitely worth her while.
To my relief, there was a small ebb in foot traffic at the shop a little before three o’clock, probably because people had to leave to pick up their kids at school. I let out a little sigh of relief after the last person went on their way, hoping inwardly that it would remain quiet until Olivia got here. At that point, I could continue working at the cash register while she helped anyone who might need immediate assistance locating a book or a particular kind of incense, and my stress level would go down quite a bit.
At about ten after three — I knew the exact time because I’d just sent another glance at the clock mounted on the wall behind the counter — the door to the shop opened and a woman…not much more than a girl, really, maybe around twenty-one or twenty-two…entered. I’d never seen her before, so I guessed she must be someone passing through town. We got more than our fair share of tourists, mostly people heading to Phoenix from Payson or vice versa, so it wasn’t too unusual to spot a stranger in the shop, even though Monday afternoon wasn’t exactly prime time for tourists and spring break wouldn’t start for another few weeks at least, depending on the school involved.
“Can I help you?” I asked as she approached the counter.
Her gaze strayed to my obviously swollen midsection. No, I’d never gotten as big as some women did at this stage of their pregnancy, but it still must have been pretty obvious that I was about to pop any day now.
Then she looked back up at me. Her eyes were an unusual color, a pure dark gray without a hint of blue, and her long hair, just as sooty as mine, reached to the middle of her back. She wore a knee-length black dress and black boots, with a jean jacket over the ensemble as a nod to the weather outside, which was sunny but still a little chilly, hinting of spring but not quite there yet.
“Hi, Selena,” the strange girl said. “I’m your sister Chloe.”
Chapter 2
ALL THE WORLD
It was probably a good thing I was sitting on that stool, because I didn’t have to worry about my knees giving way and depositing all eight-plus-months-pregnant of me on the shop floor. About all I could do was blink at this apparition and say, “I beg your pardon?”
She grinned. I wouldn’t say we resembled one another too much despite the similarity in our hair color — my face was oval, while hers was heart-shaped, and she had the kind of skin that looked as if it tanned easily, while I was pale and tended to fry in the sun — but something about that flash of a smile did seem like mine, wide and friendly.
“I know it must be kind of a shock,” she said. “But I finally was able to figure out where you were living, and I really wanted to meet you.”
This time, I managed to reply, “How did you find me?”
Not even a blink. “I consulted the Tarot.”
Most other people might have responded to such an admission with scorn. However, since I regularly read Tarot cards to help me with major life decisions, I didn’t find anything too strange about her answer.
Or rather, it seemed natural enough to me that someone might use such a method for life guidance. What felt utterly crazy, though, was that this half-sister of mine might possess anything similar to my own gifts. While I’d never questioned where my intuition…or my ability to see auras, as unreliable as it often was…might have come from, now I had to wonder.
Was it possible that my talents had come from my absent father’s side of the family, rather than some long-ago great-great maternal grandmother?
“I didn’t think you would think that was weird,” Chloe went on. “I mean, considering your store and everything.”
She made a small wave toward the table that held what I called the “pocket crystals,” the less expensive rock specimens that were the perfect size to ride along in your purse or be tucked under a pillow…or sit on an altar, the way I had a bunch of them displayed at home.
