Chapter 8
Khalee
Present
White sage in three places in the room, a glass of water at one end of the reading mat, the dagger facing the door, a lit white candle, and a black tourmaline for protection.
These amulets and this preparation don’t exist by chance, and, after a lot of study into various other methods of protection, these are the ones that I feel comfortable with and that I notice help me in my appointments.
Skeptics would say it’s called the placebo effect, but if I listened to skeptics, I wouldn’t work the way I do and wouldn’t be who I am.
I take the deck of cards I’ve been using the most lately - the one in which all the images of the major arcana are cats - out of the personalized wooden box where I usually keep it.
The box has my name carefully engraved on it, surrounded by little symbols of protection.
As I prepare to lay the cards out on the carpet, one of them slips through my fingers and falls face up.
I remain motionless for a moment, my heart beating a little faster because for us human witches, there’s no such thing as coincidences, and when the universe gives a signal like this, it shouldn’t be ignored.
The card I see in front of me is The Moon.
In the image, a majestic cat is sitting in a field illuminated by the pale glow of a full moon that dominates the night sky.
Around the cat, the landscape is bathed in a silvery light that distorts reality, creating long, undulating shadows that seem to take on a life of their own.
Behind the cat, two ancient towers stand like silent guardians, while a winding path stretches beyond the horizon, disappearing into the darkness of the night.
The cat’s gaze is hypnotic and mysterious, and its eyes reflect the moon itself, like two mirrors hiding deep secrets.
Beside it, a river meanders, representing the flow of emotions and intuitions, but also the current of fears which, under the light of the moon, become more intense and challenging to distinguish from reality.
This major arcana, The Moon, is a powerful symbol as it represents the unconscious, dreams, and illusions that arise in the darkness of the mind.
It speaks of the hidden truths, the feelings that cannot be ignored, and the fears that tend to emerge when logic fails.
However, at the same time, it is a card of mystery and magic, suggesting that, in the shadows, there is wisdom to be found if we are brave enough to face it.
I feel a chill and immediately remember my dream last night and the proximity I’ve felt with that man in the shadows of my mind. The man who was once mine.
The moon didn’t appear just because.
There’s something about him, and the card is calling me to look deeper into it, to listen to the whispers of intuition that are usually lost in the noise of everyday life.
My trance is interrupted by a soft knock on the door. My sister opens it slowly and enters quietly, holding my cat in her arms. She gives a small smile, about to say something, but before the words even leave her lips, I feel the change in the air.
The cat suddenly tenses up.
Its fur stands up in an instant as if a current of fear runs through it.
In one swift movement, he jumps out of her arms and lands on the ground, his body arched, his tail erect, and his eyes fixed on me as if I had something in me that only he seems to see.
His demeanor changes completely from one moment to the next. He stands motionless, his eyes wide, his ears glued to his head, as if something terrible, something invisible and threatening were inside my room.
“Christ, Cosmos,” I say, frightened and still heavy with the fatigue of not having rested as much as I would have liked and needed the night before. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
The cat looks at me as if my voice has pulled him back to reality.
It’s almost as if he’s sensed something in my room that I can’t identify.
But damn it, I’ve got three white sage incense burning and an open window. If there are other ways to have a clean space, I don’t know them.
“I came to tell you that I thought he was better, calmer, and that maybe I didn’t need to take him anymore, but I’ve seen that I was wrong,” my sister reveals, laughing nervously.
“Yes, you’d better take him,” I agree, and hurry out of the bedroom and down the small wooden stairs to the kitchen.
After having breakfast, both my sister and I sweated to get the cat into the carrier; it’s never been easy to get him in before, but this time it was almost impossible.
She promised me that she would drop him off at the vet and pick him up, assuring me that I didn’t have to worry about anything, and before long, they were gone.
In the hours that followed, I ate, bathed, and gave my last appointment of the morning.
Since I wasn’t hungry to have lunch, I decided to do what I like to do most when I’m alone: clean the house and dance.
I tied my hair up in a bun, slipped my headphones on, and shrugged off my sweatshirt—I knew I’d be sweating soon. Then I hit play.
“La Gozadera” by Gente de Zona featuring Marc Anthony exploded in my ears, all lively horns and a pulsing Latin beat that made it impossible to stand still. Energized, I threw open every window, rolled up the carpets in each room, and grabbed the vacuum cleaner.
After a while, I find myself dancing with the vacuum cleaner, shaking my hips, tight in my satin pajama pants while screaming the lyrics at the top of my lungs until I run out of voice. The sound resonates through the walls of the house, echoing as if I were at a concert of my own.
God, I love doing this.
It’s therapeutic.
If I lived in an apartment, I’d probably have been evicted by now, because one thing’s for sure: I wasn’t blessed with a beautiful voice. But that doesn’t matter to me. Singing while cleaning the house is my way of cleaning my soul, too.
There was a time in my life when I thought I could become a singer.
I even bought a guitar, which is now gathering dust on one of the walls in my bedroom.
This was at a time when I was obsessed with High School Musical and, later, Hannah Montana.
I dreamed of stages and crowds, but the fever wore off quickly, and the guitar was forgotten.
There was also a time when he promised to teach me how to play. Well… he didn’t.
I never learned to play, and my dream of being a singer fell apart before it even began. Now, the guitar is just a piece of decoration and also a memory, another one, actually, of what never happened.
Suddenly, my throat feels dry, and I decide to go into the kitchen and avoid the cloud of hurt that seems to be reaching me.
I have to let fucking go.
Still holding the vacuum cleaner, I move around the house as if I were a rock star who had just given a concert. I put the unplugged vacuum cleaner on the counter and filled a glass with water. I sip slowly, feeling the coolness of the water soothe my throat.
But suddenly something stops me.
It’s a strange sensation as if the air around me has changed.
A shiver runs down my spine, and I feel a presence, something behind me, even if it’s far away. I turn sharply, my heart racing.
And there, at the kitchen door, he is.
K.
The same expression, the same deep green eyes, but now just a few meters away from me, with the door closed behind him.
He tries to sneak up on me, but his own fear is palpable. He looks like a rat caught raiding the fridge at 3 a.m.
“What the fuck?” I manage to say, but then I scream, the sound coming out uncontrollably. He screams too, his voice higher-pitched than I expected, as if my scream has scared him just as much as I’m scared.
In an instinctive gesture, I throw the glass of water at him with all my might. To my horror (and let’s be honest, slight annoyance), I see the glass pass through him like he’s a bad special effect from a low-budget movie.
My mind can’t process what’s happening.
I shout louder, and he recoils, waving his hands like he’s trying to direct air traffic. His lips are moving, but the sound is muffled and distorted, like we’re both underwater.
Ah, the headphones!
I yank them off in one swift motion and chuck them at him, too. It’s not my best decision, but I’m panicking. The headphones pass through him as well, landing with a sad thud on the floor behind him.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” he keeps yelling, his hands now raised like he’s being held at gunpoint. His tone is almost pleading, and honestly, it’s kind of pathetic.
I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to see it. I’m terrified, my mind racing in all directions, looking for a way out.
I flee to the bedroom, the only place where I feel I can be safe. But of course, he’s faster. Because why wouldn’t he be?
In an instant, he’s floating ahead of me, blocking my path with an expression that’s equal parts apologetic and exasperated.
“Seriously?” I gasp, jerking into the bedroom and shoving the door closed with a bang.
I grip the handle tightly as if that could stop the impossible. My heart is pounding so hard it feels like it’s auditioning for a drum solo.
But before I can think of my next move, he walks through the door. Literally through the door. His body merges with the wood as if he’s in a haunted house attraction, and I let out a sound that can only be described as a mix between a gasp and a squeak.
His hands are up again, palms out, in a universal “please don’t kill me” gesture.
“I’m sorry,” he says again, his voice calmer now, but he’s squinting with one eye open, like he’s afraid I’m about to throw something else at him. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he continues, lowering his hands slowly, like he’s trying not to spook a wild animal. Honestly, it’s a little insulting.
“I swear I intend no harm,” he says, his tone soothing in a way that makes me pause. For a moment, I feel like I can breathe again, but only for a moment.
“This can’t be real,” I whisper to myself, shaking my head as if that’s going to fix whatever cosmic glitch is happening in my life. “This CAN’T be real.”
He looks at me with an awkward half-smile, scratching the back of his head like a kid caught sneaking out after curfew.
“Yeah, so… about that,” he starts, his voice trailing off as he glances at me. “That… wasn’t my best entrance.”
I blink at him, my brain too fried to come up with a response.
My mouth opens to speak, but before I can, my vision blurs.
The world tilts, and the edges of my awareness dissolve into darkness.
My knees buckle, and the last thing I hear is his panicked voice calling out, “Wait! Don’t, ” before everything goes completely black.