Chapter 13
Ingrid woke to Litha’s paws gently kneading her shoulder. The room was washed in light, the lace curtains breaking into dancing dots. Ingrid looked over at the marble fireplace mantel. Rill Loeffler’s red-and-gold pen and his wife’s curved orange peel sat there. Tokens from a magical night.
She stretched, warmed by Litha’s purring.
Everything was different now. She was Sailor Loeffler’s psychic.
Her friend. She was going to be picked up in the family car for appointments.
Do readings for the richest, most influential people in town.
It was a new life. She just hoped it started soon.
There were still bills to pay, and she didn’t have a single appointment on the books until next weekend.
Last night, when she’d arrived home, the house had been quiet, save the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway.
There was only one lamp on in the sitting room.
Miles had apparently gone to sleep and left it on for her.
Ingrid had climbed the creaky staircase, and in her room, changed out of Edie’s dress and into a nightgown, then crawled into her bed, instantly falling asleep.
Miles would probably be up now, though, expecting to be filled in on every detail about Sailor’s party. She would have to step carefully. Try not to sound too excited about her new position. He was on the sensitive side, kind of possessive at times. She didn’t want to trigger any jealousy.
She really and truly did value their friendship above all else.
It had started in such a stars-and-planets-aligning way when she had found his ghost tour flyer stuck in her door—with a picture of Miles (cute enough, but not her type) and Boney (seriously hot)—and decided to take the tour.
She had been feeling especially down about Edie back then.
Missing her more than usual. And, besides that, she desperately needed to drum up new business.
A ghost tour would be full of potential new clients.
She arrived early to the meeting spot at Madison Square, a bit before nine that night, right by the William Jasper Monument.
Boney checked the QR code on her phone while Miles, standing with a few other tourists and looking like a street urchin out of a Dickens novel, grinned shyly over at her.
Later, in the historic Lucas Theatre, when Boney was telling everyone about the ghostly applause a worker had heard once only to find the auditorium empty, Miles showed her something special he’d discovered.
A little hidden compartment under the stage, about the size of a shoebox, camouflaged by the molding and gold leaf trim.
He opened it for her with a quick push inward.
It had been created, he told her, by the builders of the theater as a hiding place for the theater owner’s firearms. A gun that could be easily retrieved in the event of a riot if the movie was considered scandalous or immoral. They’d both giggled at that.
“I’ve seen you around town,” Miles said, as he clicked the secret compartment back into place. “I’ve always wanted a reading, but I was too chicken. Probably raised too Baptist.”
“Oh yeah, no,” Ingrid said. “We’re not too popular with the Baptists.”
“You look pretty harmless to me,” he said with a laugh.
“I’m a totally ineffectual witch. You have no idea.”
The truth came pouring out of her. She told him about the overall decline of her house, including the most recent disaster, a leak in her kitchen sink.
That even though the readings she did were fairly accurate—and even though she regularly did abundance spells—she just couldn’t seem to get enough momentum going to stay ahead of the repairs.
She also told him about her mother who had dumped her, then died, and about the classmates who’d called her a devil worshipper. She described Edie’s sickness and how, in those last hours, she had given Ingrid a mission that she didn’t understand—that she’d almost given up believing in.
It had been such a relief to confess all of it to someone. To admit that, though she still had faith in the Goddess and in Edie’s light, things just weren’t coming together. That she was alone and confused. That, really, she always had been.
But Miles didn’t judge her in the least. He had a difficult childhood, too, he said.
His adoptive parents weren’t the ideal family either—the shrimper father who was a drinker, the mother, a server at The Olde Pink House, who died too early of a heart attack.
When the tour was over, he offered to accompany her home so he could fix her sink, and she agreed. After that night, he never left.
Now she picked up Litha and scooched back against the pillows. Eyes still closed, she rubbed the cat on the spot between her ears and let the polka-dotted morning light wash over her.
The light down here on the Georgia coast was soft and thick—a shy, sticky, secretive mystery.
Savannah light rode the tides, changeable, cyclical, and capricious.
Savannah light was a trickster. That was probably why she had not quite gotten the hang of it.
Why she couldn’t seem to get the light to bend her way like Edie could.
Now she chanted softly, into Litha’s soft, white fur.
Gather strength,
As the clock waxes.
Gather courage,
As the day wanes.
I gather, you gather,
And what we gather shall grow,
So in the bloom of night, we shine forth …
As for Rill Loeffler’s pen and Scoot’s orange peel, Ingrid hadn’t decided yet how she was going to use them.
The orange peel would definitely serve a purpose—Scoot was a force to be reckoned with—and although she’d originally thought that she would give the pen to Miles as a peace offering, now she wasn’t sure.
Something told her she should keep it to herself a little longer.
Maybe the memory of Rill’s first parting glance.
The finger against his lips, meaning she should not tell Sailor what they’d discussed.
She thought about it now, fixing his face in her mind, but it kept melding into Cas’s face. Sailor’s brother possessed that same magnetic quality. A way of focusing on you and making you feel special. And he’d seemed genuinely interested in how her psychic abilities worked.
The clear, sharp bells of St. John’s Episcopal Church chimed seven o’clock. She should get going. Edie’s was technically supposed to open at eleven, even though it wasn’t like anyone would care if she wasn’t on time. It was more about not disappointing Edie, whom she knew was always watching.
Ingrid made her bed, then showered and dressed. She put on a red sundress with pintucks on the bodice, arranging her hair in braids that crisscrossed her head. She pocketed Scoot’s orange peel, a vague idea forming in her head.
A way to help Sailor.
Downstairs was as flooded with light as her bedroom, as if the Goddess was laying a double benediction on her.
Litha trotted alongside her through the messy space, cluttered with Edie’s dusty furniture, crookedly hanging art and plants on every available surface.
Ingrid made a face. She really needed to get this place in order.
Get it looking like the home of a successful, in-demand psychic-witch.
In the dining room, Miles and Boney sat on rattan chairs around the old, scarred pine table.
The surface was covered with watermarks, burns, and gouges that were filled with petrified crumbs from decades before Edie.
A lavender orchid boasting a row of blooms sat in the center on a straw mat.
Ingrid noticed, for the first time, how the flamingo wallpaper was bubbled from rainwater that had seeped through the stucco and porous Savannah brick into the wall.
She sat and Miles jumped up to get her coffee. Boney smirked at her.
“Morning, princess. How was the party of the century?” He was still wearing his tuxedo T-shirt from last night and his top hat sat upside down on Edie’s buffet. Had he slept over?
“It was great,” Ingrid said noncommittally.
She didn’t love it when Boney hung around the house.
She liked to keep what she and he did together—the occasional sex—private.
And strictly at his dingy apartment which overlooked the river.
It only happened maybe once or twice a month, but Boney was always making comments full of innuendo and pretending like he was going to tell Miles.
It infuriated her. She wasn’t sure how Miles would take it if he found out his two best friends occasionally hooked up, but she was pretty sure his feelings would be hurt.
Miles came back in with a mug of coffee and set it before Ingrid.
His hair was sticking up on one side, his blue eyes bright, making him look boyish and vulnerable.
He sat in the chair beside her, quivering with energy.
Ingrid smiled at him. She could tell he was dying for a rundown about the night, but she wasn’t about to divulge anything with Boney sitting here.
It felt like her own secret, one only Miles would understand.
She cradled her coffee between two hands. “The party was crazy. So much food.” This was a safe topic. The boys loved food.
Miles and Boney exchanged a guilty look.
“What?” Ingrid demanded, eyes darting between the two.
“We sorta hung around the back last night,” confessed Miles.
“The back?” Ingrid jutted her chin in confusion.
“Of the Loefflers’ house,” Miles said.
“Around midnight, while the caterers were cleaning up,” Boney explained. “We fucking scored. Mini burritos and shrimp and grits …”
“… jambalaya, pulled pork, lobster ravioli,” Miles added.
That’s why she hadn’t seen him last night. They’d come in after she had. Ingrid gritted her teeth. “Where did you put it?”
“The fridge,” Miles chirped.
“Did they see you?”
Miles looked confused. “The caterers?”
“The Loefflers.” Idiots.
“Hell, no,” Boney said. “You think those people stick around to help clean up after their parties?”