10. Harper
T he house smelled like rosemary and sage, and I smiled as I stepped over the threshold, careful not to disturb the line of ground cinnamon I had laid before the door to invite abundance.
“I’m home!” I called into the warmly lit interior, and my mom’s voice sang back to me from the kitchen.
“Welcome back, baby!”
I dropped my JanSport and kicked off my pink boots before following the spicy scents of my mother’s kitchen witchery into the heart of the home.
My house was eclectic in design. It looked like it could have been a set for a nineties TV show, as most of our things had been thrifted.
We liked our belongings to come with a story, and if we didn’t know the story, we came up with them ourselves.
For example, the mermaid lamp by the deep plum couch in the living room had once belonged to a man who had been left at the altar.
He bought the lamp because it reminded him of his runaway bride, and he took comfort in the lamp’s warm light as he lay alone at night, missing his would-be bride’s comforting embrace .
One night, the lamp came to life and joined him, giving him the wedding night he had never had. Tragically, when he woke up the next day, the lamp had left him, too.
That’s how we came to find her, waiting for us at the local thrift shop.
Obviously, this was all completely insane and made up, but we had fun doing it. My mom had come up with the mermaid lamp story. Her stories were more tragic than mine and rarely had happy endings.
I crept through our cluttered but organized living room, my feet sinking into the soft, patterned rug before entering the kitchen.
My grandmother was sitting at our white chalk-painted table with a three-card spread laid out before her and Skoll resting quietly at her feet. The giant, black German Shepherd rolled his eyes up to acknowledge me but didn’t bother raising his head off his massive paws.
“Hey, grandma.” I smiled, leaning down to drop a kiss on the ancient woman’s cheek.
Her grey hair was tucked under a navy and gold bandana, and her arthritic hands were encrusted in rings.
She smiled quietly up at me and winked. Grandma didn’t talk much, but we understood each other well enough.
“Harper, could you set the table? Dinner is ready,” my mother said as she began ladling out what smelled like beef and rosemary stew into our mismatched, handmade bowls.
Fenrir was sitting next to her, watching each scoop of stew move from her kitchen cauldron to the bowls with his pink tongue lolling out the side of his great maw, and I chuckled.
My mother tutted her tongue at her familiar, shaking her head ruefully.
“You’ve had your dinner; stop trying to get extras,” my mother chided, resting her hand on her swollen belly.
She was about eight months pregnant, and we were all getting anxious for my new brother or sister to arrive. It felt like she’d been pregnant forever.
Neither my brothers nor I had bothered to ask her who the father was. We didn’t know our fathers either, and Astrid had vowed long ago never to take a husband .
As the head of the Bishop line, she said she had a responsibility to keep the name Bishop led by a matriarch, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t still ‘have a little fun,’ as she put it.
Both Astrid and my grandmother didn’t trust men as far as they could throw them. My brothers were really the only exception, and my mother always said, ‘ If I haven’t raised the man myself, how am I to know their intentions are pure?’
After my interaction with Axel today, I wasn’t sure I disagreed.
Pulling up a chair next to Skoll, I tucked in as Astrid dropped a bowl of stew in front of me.
“Rosemary for protection, salt to cleanse your aura, and a spritz of citrus for health, baby girl. Eat up.”
I grinned and dug in, enjoying the way the hearty stew seemed to melt away in my mouth.
“Tell us about your day,” Astrid said, sitting across from me.
“Well, some asshole came to the shop asking me to give my blessing to open some new church he’s bringing to town,” I explained, and my mother and grandmother looked at me with concern.
“What do you mean?” Astrid prodded, and I recounted the encounter between bites of stew.
“And weirdly enough, a black cat found me and has been following me around. Luna thinks he might be my familiar, but it turns out he belongs to George’s nephew.”
Astrid’s frown deepened, and Fenrir let out an uncharacteristically unfriendly growl.
“I didn’t know George had a nephew,” Astrid said, her tone thoughtful.
I shrugged. “Yeah, I just met him before I came in. He said poor George has fallen ill, and he and his partner will be watching his house while he’s in the hospital.”
My mother and grandmother exchanged a tense look, and I raised an eyebrow.
“What?” I asked, and Astrid pursed her lips.
“That is quite a bit of change for one day.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“I wonder what the cards say?” Astrid asked, glancing at my grandmother expectantly. Grandma gathered up her tarot cards and placed the deck face down next to me, tapping the top of the cards firmly with a knobbled finger.
I picked them up and shuffled them roughly until a single card flew out.
Every witch had their own way of doing readings. Me? I never ‘picked’ a card. I never even sat down with any intention of doing a specific spread. I simply shuffled until the deck spits out however many cards it felt I needed to see, and I would do my reading based on that.
Today, only one card showed itself to me, and a chill of apprehension rolled through me as I stared at the celestial design on the back of the card that had landed face down next to my stew.
“Pick it up, dear,” Astrid urged as she absently rubbed her swollen belly.
For some reason, a potent mix of excitement and dread rolled through me as I reached out with shaking fingers to pick up the card.
I flipped it over, and a ripple of anxiety shot through me as I stared down at the tower card.
I took in the violent bolt of lightning that struck the dark, ominous tower, disrupting the golden crown and sending its inhabitants tumbling to their deaths.
“Well, fuck.” I sighed to the deck, which seemed to be laughing at me quietly. All decks had their own personalities, and my grandmother’s deck was a little mischievous. However, it was always brutally honest and never shied away from telling readers the cold, hard truth.
My mother’s deck was a little more subtle and was often a bit gentler with readers, giving them the truth while spinning a more positive story.
Not grandma’s deck.
Nope.
Straight for the fucking throat.
“Shit.” I sighed, knowing in my heart of hearts that this was not good.
The tower card wasn’t always bad , but it was a harbinger of great and difficult change. It didn’t show up in a reading when you needed a new haircut or were about to go through menopause.
It showed up when someone was gonna fucking die or your life as you knew it was about to be tossed into the meat grinder.
The positive spin—if there was one—was that after times of great strife and loss, your life was usually open and ready to accept new growth.
However, it didn’t change the fact that pulling this card meant you were about to fucking go through it before you could get to the grassy green pastures on the other side.
The deck laughed at me again, and I scowled at it, flipping it off, before shoving the cards back to my grandma, who had a sympathetic smile on her face.
Astrid sat back in her chair, her lips a hard line.
“Well, I think it’s safe to say it might be a good idea to stay far away from the beings that introduced themselves to you today. Cat included.”
Fenrir snorted in agreement, and Skoll let out a low growl.
I rolled my eyes, staring at my half-finished stew.
Suddenly, I wasn’t feeling super hungry anymore.