“Daisy, do you have a moment?”
Daisy had just put her purse over her shoulder and was about to leave Lady’s Mantle for the night, but Aggie’s soft voice stopped her. Soraya and Nora had just left, and she’d stayed an extra hour doing the books and making up for the other nights she’d left early for rehearsal.
She almost wondered if she was in trouble for not doing the spell earlier. It was silly, maybe, but Aggie had gone to all that trouble, and then Daisy had rejected it.
“Of course.” Daisy turned toward the older woman.
“I wanted to give you something.”
“Oh, Aggie, you’ve given me plenty.”
Aggie shook her head. “No, I haven’t given you quite what you need yet.” She reached beneath the counter, took out a box of cards, and passed it to Daisy. Daisy looked at the box, cream colored with holographic beams of light surrounding art deco–style imagery.
“This is beautiful,” she said.
“You have very deep intuition, but I think it is best served with the framework of the cards to help give it shape.”
Daisy laughed. “Are you saying even my intuition needs to be organized?”
“There’s nothing wrong with that. It can make it easier to latch on to. Soraya’s power is in what she makes—in the herbs, the flour, the magic she puts into her food. Nora’s is big, profound, creative energy. Angry, sometimes, and pulls from the moon itself. Yours ...” Aggie tapped the cards. “You already know, don’t you? You’re the one who’s been reading most from the grimoire.”
“I like to learn everything I can learn,” Daisy said. “Not very magical.”
“It’s extremely magical. It just informs the elements you work with best.” Aggie looked at her. “Go ahead, open the deck.”
Daisy slipped the lid off the box and picked up the deck, going through the cards and looking at the artwork.
“Every reader works with cards differently. Some feel the energy in the cards. Some look for symbolism in the art and read intuitively. Others extrapolate the meaning more closely to the traditional. Some read reversals, others don’t. Some see reversals as opposite energy to the upright, and others see it as a shadow side, or blocked energy. There might be rules and a framework, but it’s your own intuition that brings it to life.”
Daisy shuffled the cards in her hand. “I’m not sure I can trust myself. I feel ... like I don’t know who I am. I know who I am when it comes to other people. I’m a mom, and a daughter, a granddaughter, a soon-to-be ex-wife who wasn’t enough for her husband.”
“That is not who you are, Daisy. You are all the magic that’s existed inside you since you were a little girl. You used to spin in wild circles and howl at the moon. When did you stop? That girl, that’s who you are.”
She swallowed hard, trying to hold back tears. She hadn’t been that girl for a long, long time.
“What bothers you most right now?” Aggie asked.
An image of Jonathan came to mind, and Daisy pulled a card from the center of the deck, then flipped it over on the counter.
She laughed. “The Fool. My own personal fool is giving me lots of problems.”
“There are layers to that,” Aggie said. “As the Fool is clearly a person. Also the new beginning you’ve been forced into.”
“Hmm.” Daisy picked the cards up and put them back into the box, the Fool on top. She watched him vanish as she closed the lid over him. “Thank you, Aggie. I’ll work with these.”
“You have it all, my dear. It’s just learning to see it.”
The words sat heavy in her chest as she drove home.
She stuck her key in the lock of her front door and turned it, laughing gently. Learning magic. She really wasn’t sure how she felt about any of it. Sure, she liked the idea. Not enough to go out and howl at the moon. Not enough to try to curse the father of her children.
Though it had been tempting. Even as she’d balked at it even being a possibility.
If pressed, she supposed she would say she was someone ofalittle faith, if notlittlefaith. When she thought about what would happen when her grandmother finally slipped past life, she couldn’t believe there was absolutely nothing waiting for her. But she also wasn’t sure what form any of that took.
Soraya believed inallof it, that much was clear. She seemed genuinely afraid of witchcraft, like it had the ability to take control of her life and her eternal soul and send her straight to hell.
But once her husband had threatened to kick her out of the house ...
