Chapter 3
Khalee
The computer screen finally changes in front of me, and I exhale in relief.
I close Whats-app, where I’ve just spent two hours on a video call with a client, and immediately put on a space-clearing mantra, rushing to light some white sage incense.
The familiar, earthy scent fills the room, grounding me as I take a deep breath, trying to dispel the lingering heaviness of my client’s energy.
I’ve been doing this for years, but some clients never stop being difficult to help. Some, like this one, are so energetically drained — so weighed down by their own lives — that I feel my life force being siphoned away every time I open my mouth to guide them.
The cards were relentless during the session, signs of entrapment, uncertainty looming over the reading like clouds before the storm.
I did my best to deliver the message gently to my client, balancing truth with hope, but the energy on the other end of the call remained thick with despair.
Even after the session ended, I can still feel it clinging to me, a weight I can’t quite shake yet.
With the incense burning and silence settling around me, I lie back on my bed, trying to recharge.
My parents used to think I was lazy, that I took too many breaks during the day—but the depletion is real.
It’s a reality only other witches understand.
And my mom, bless her, is not one of those witches.
She’s a fantastic woman, but her faith belongs to God alone, while mine extends beyond it: to the energies, the planets, the universe itself.
It’s not that I don’t believe in God. I do.
I just pray to Him differently—in a way that feels as natural to me as breathing.
Since before I can remember, my connection has been to something larger, something woven into the fabric of human existence.
My parents have always supported me, always loved me, but I know, deep down, they’re still waiting for me to “outgrow” this witch/tarot reader/astrologer phase.
Some days, I wish they were right.
But the moment I stepped onto this path, I knew there was no turning back. This isn’t a hobby. It’s not just a career. It’s me. My cards, my rituals, my faith—they’re as much a part of me as the color of my eyes.
People often ask how I started, who had inspired me, and where I learned to do what I do.
They expect a story with a clear beginning, a wise mentor, and a defining moment.
I have those. But what matters, and most people fail to understand, is that my path was never a choice; it was always a calling.
When my parents picked me up from the orphanage, I already knew the Major Arcana of the Rider-Waite deck by heart.
The caretakers told them I used to read to the other children.
At first, they thought it was a game, a child’s imagination at play, until my readings began striking nerves when I’d say true things, even if there was no other way for me to know it, and left them pale and quiet, though.
But I don’t remember much of it now.
The origins of my first deck had always been a mystery to those around me. I had kept it that way. But the truth? I had found it tucked inside a used book in the orphanage library. I never returned it. And from the moment I shuffled those cards, they had felt like an extension of me.
Over the years, my connection to them only deepened.
I studied them as much as I studied astrology, and I immersed myself in rituals while honing my intuition.
The knowledge I gained became a tool, not just to help others, but to navigate my own life.
The cards don’t solve everything. No tool can.
And I had learned that the hard way. There had been moments of failure, times I doubted my abilities.
But I never gave up on them. Hopefully, they will never give up on me either.
My most significant leap in understanding came when I met Miss Joana.
It was at a fair, one of those sprawling markets with booths selling everything from handmade jewelry to herbal remedies.
Her booth had been a world of its own, draped in rich fabrics, thick with the scent of incense.
I had lingered at the edge, studying her intricate card spreads, and she looked up, catching my gaze.
“You have the gift,” she said after just a few minutes. “Do you feel it?” She asked, her voice steady and confident, as though she had known me all her life.
At first, I thought she was joking. Honestly, it felt a little weird to admit something like that to a stranger. But after a beat, I nodded.
“Let me teach you.” She offered. And even though I was nervous, I couldn’t say no. It just made sense, like it was meant to happen.
As we kept talking, something clicked, and all my doubts quietly disappeared.
So I said yes to her teaching me. And kept saying it as long as she felt like sharing her knowledge with me.
For a year, she did just that: she taught me everything she could, and eventually she became more than a mentor. She became a guide, a friend.
She walked me through the complexities of tarot, the deeper layers of intuition, and energy work. I practiced my readings on her, and she did the same with me.
But her guidance always came with a price—the weight of knowledge, and the responsibility of carrying it.
Once, she had hinted at something bigger for me, a purpose.
“You’re here for a reason, Khalee,” she had told me. “We all are. Mine was to prepare you.”
“And what’s mine?” I had asked, confused and curious at the same time.
She only smiled, enigmatic as ever. “That’s for you to unravel, sweet girl.”
A year after I left Stormhaven, she passed away. Natural causes, my parents said.
It was sudden, but still devastating. Not just because she was my friend and my teacher, but because she was also my confidant. The only person in the world who knew almost everything about me, besides myself. She was the only one I still spoke to after everything fell apart, apart from my family.
She never learned the whole truth. I never told her. Or maybe she did, and chose silence out of kindness. Either way, she never pressed me for answers even noticing how much I changed. She never judged me, only listened, offering quiet support when I needed it most.
Five years later, I still feel the weight of her words pressing against me like a reminder of something left unfinished, something that has been waiting for me all this time.
I still don’t know what my mission is, besides the work I already do.
Despite helping others find themselves, I’ve never fully found my answer. But for a while now, I’ve felt something shifting, pulling me back here.
Maybe the answer is waiting for me in Stormhaven, I think. But immediately push the thought aside and let my focus drift to my surroundings.
Unlike my old room in my parents’ house, where the ceiling still holds the memories of all the nights my heart nearly gave out in my chest, here, the stars I painted, my stars, remind me of my connection to something greater. A vast, infinite force that grounds me even as it urges me forward.
And I need to move forward.
My phone rings, shattering the fragile peace I had been clinging to. I don’t need to look to know who it is.
“Don’t tell me I interrupted you doing… whatever the hell it is you do with your days,” Mada’s voice chirps through the speaker, immediately followed by her signature laugh. She enjoys this far too much, breaking into my solitude, forcing herself into my space.
“Soon you’ll be telling me I don’t need to relax so much, just like Mom,” I reply, rubbing my temples.
She still stays here sometimes, arguing that she feels bad that I’m living alone. But most of the time, she’s gone back to the normality of her life, and I just get a call here and there, little interruptions, like this one, always on her terms.
“I wouldn’t say you don’t need to relax,” she counters smoothly. “But you definitely need to have more fun.”
In the background, I hear her chatting, laughing, her voice alive with movement, her world full of people, full of light, full of noise. She’s a sunbeam bursting into every room she enters, while I am the quiet cloud drifting just outside, watching from a distance.
“What do you want, Mada? Company until you get home?”
“Actually, no. I have a proposition.”
A prickle of unease runs through me. “And I already know I’m going to hate it,” I mutter, suspicion curling into my tone.
Then I hear it.
A voice.
A male voice, faint but unmistakable, cutting through the background chatter with a casual, “Tell her to come.”
My stomach twists.
It can’t be.
“Mada?” My voice sharpens. “Who was that?”
There’s the smallest pause before she answers, and it’s all I need to know.
“Oh, no one important,” she says, too quickly, too casually. “Just a friend… Anyway, I want you to come with me to a house party!”
“No.”
“Oh, come on. You’re gonna love it.”
I already know I won’t.
“I don’t want to go. Go yourself.”
“Jesus, Khal. You’re rotting in that old house. What does it cost you to go out for one night? Have fun with your sister like old times?”
The old times.
I swallow hard. The old times were never fun for me. The old times were a younger version of me playing babysitter, keeping her from going too far, from getting in too deep.
It was never fun. It was always exhausting.
“In the old days, you had fun while I looked after you. That’s not fun, Mada.”
“Oh, you’re right,” she says, faux-sweet, “but it’s not like that now, is it? We’ve grown up. Come on, it’s only a few hours. Trust me.”
“Whose party?”
“Some friends. It’s cool. Believe me, you’ll enjoy yourself, and we can have a bit of fun together.”
Fun.
I haven’t had fun in years. Not the way she means it.
Being out has been a challenge for me. I’ve tried, I’ve really tried, but I still haven’t found the courage to just… be again in the places that once made me happy. Which is stupid, because I came back because I missed it. Because I needed to be near it.
But I don’t tell her that.
“You know I don’t do well in environments like that,” I say, keeping my voice level. It’s not an excuse. It’s the truth. Parties make me sick, literally sick. They bring back memories I have no desire to revisit.
Mada clicks her tongue, exasperated. “It’s not even a real party. Just a get-together. It’ll be smooth.”
There’s nothing smooth about parties for Mada.
Nothing smooth about her friends.
Memories surge forward.
Their smug grins. The way they always seemed to be in control, pulling strings that left me feeling like a puppet.
Their laughter, too loud, too knowing, pretending not to notice when things went too far.
And then… the way they took it further anyway.
The way their presence swallowed the room, turned the air heavy, made my skin crawl.
“You don’t do smooth,” I reply, my voice flat now, laced with something bitter.
She sighs dramatically, the weight of her disappointment pressing through the phone. “Will you do this for me? Please?”
I close my eyes. Here it comes.
“Is it that important to you?” I ask, hating the way my voice cracks just slightly.
“Yes, it is.” Her tone changes, sharp, serious, final.
I hesitate.
It’s Mada. She knows exactly how to push me, exactly when to soften, exactly when to press.
“Who’ll be there?” I ask. Because I have to know. Because I won’t… I can’t be stuck in the same room with them. Not again.
“I don’t know for sure,” she says breezily. “I just got invited. And it’s not relevant. You’re coming to be with me. That’s all that matters.”
And there it is.
That little twist, that little hook she always plants so carefully in my ribs.
You’re doing this for me. You owe me this. You’re the worst if you say no.
I grip the phone tightly.
I shouldn’t go.
I don’t want to go.
But I already know I will.
Memories flash through my mind again: laughter that turned sour, words that cut deeper than they should have, the way I used to shrink under their gaze. The drugs, the alcohol, the mess. And Mark, the way his eyes followed me, the way his words lingered long after he’d spoken them.
I’ve spent years building walls against that part of my life, the part where I tried to shield Mada from them. However, it was in vain, as we ultimately found ourselves entangled in their mess every time.
“I’ll think about it,” I finally say, the words bitter on my tongue.
“That’s all I’m asking,” she replies, her smile audible. But I can still hear the thread of doubt in her voice. She knows I’m lying.
When the call ends, I stare at the screen for a long time, my stomach churning. Cosmos jumps onto the bed, his soft white fur brushing against my arm. He lets out a small, questioning meow, and I stroke his head absentmindedly, grounding myself in the simplicity of his presence.
The stars on my ceiling glow faintly in the dim light, but even as I stare at them, I can’t shake the feeling that the walls I’ve so carefully constructed are going to eventually start cracking, and with that, so will my life.