Their voice was guarded, and Harper gulped. She had the unshakable feeling the future of their odd relationship depended mightily on the rest of this conversation.
“What’s there to be afraid of?” she asked finally. “Some shadows?”
“Most beings, I have learned, are afraid of what they do not know.”
“I’m a witch,” she countered steadily. “I must learn what the darkness discovers. And you are not unknown to me. You can practice your physical form with me anytime. But — I still don’t know what to call you.”
“Azathé is the only name I have ever chosen,” they mused, “this tea shop is the only thing I have ever named.”
“Isthatwhat you want to be your name?“ she asked dubiously.
“What?!” they huffed. “I think it’s rather clever.”
Harper threw up her hands in defense. She had no idea what it was that made the name allegedly clever, assuming it was an inside joke based on their own language and culture. “It’s perfect then. Azathé it is.”
The shadows rippled, and Harper imagined it was a show of pleasure.
“Is there no one else who talks to you?”
Once again, they took their time in answering. Harper wondered if they were uncomfortable being on the receiving end of questions about themselves. It was a reversal of roles, for they had been asking her pointed questions and teasing out the rest through tarot readings for months, and while she had never seen them talk to another patron during her visits, she thought they probably overheard plenty.Between tarot draws and listening to conversations, they probably know the secrets of everyone in town.
“I do not make a habit of making myself known,” they answered carefully. “It dispels the mystique of the tearoom, for starters. As much I’m loath to admit it—“
“You’re a gimmick,” she finished, grinning hugely as they grumbled their assent.
“It’s only rarely that I will speak to a guest, and only if I sense they require immediate intervention. Otherwise, I remain an invisible presence, and the vast majority of them are quite insensible to me.”
She bit her lip, feeling rather sad for her shadowy friend. “That must be lonely for you. But wait, you talk to me.”
“I do,” they agreed, and she could sense the shadows shifting as the little cat brought in a new patron. “And you are enough.”
“I’m not good company most of the time,” she argued, but they cut her off, their voice right at her ear, and the nearness made her shiver in desire.
“You arealwaysenough.”
As she walked through the neighborhood that evening, she wondered what sort of form they would take before her — if they would have wings or arms, hooves like a beast, or if they would be a tentacled blob, like the creature in her book.And does it matter?It didn’t, she decided. Arms and wings had pulled from their shape before they retrieved the book, but what they would settle on was anyone’s guess.
When Morgan slapped on her back door that evening, Harper had a second spoon ready.
“Did you get into it with Ilea? I hope so. Please tell me you did. They have been spitting nails forweeks. I overheard them today, mumbling about you conspiring withsuppressive persons.Did you join Scientology? Are you, like, a government double agent? Please tell me you’re having them deported to wherever it is familiars come from.”
Harper laughed with her whole throat, the second time she had done so that day. It had been a good week.
“I’m not a double agent, and I’m not rich enough for Scientology. I did meet another familiar, though. He was over here, and he and Ilea got into it in the driveway. It sounds like Ilea is in the wrong with some paperwork and the other cat was going to snitch on them.”
Morgan hooted. “That is the pettiest shit I’ve ever heard. It’s giving big The Familiars of Cambric Creek vibes. I love it. 10 out of 10, would recommend to a friend.”
They shared the pint of ice cream and companionable silence, watching the trashy reality show Harper had queued up on her laptop. It was nice. It was comfortable. It almost felt like home, she realized, understanding for the first time in that moment the full weight of the six of cups. Nothing would ever behomeagain, her childhood home. Even if they were still in the same house, her father was gone. He was never coming back, and his absence meant that home would never be home in the same way.
Grief is a gift.Perhaps this is what the familiar had meant when he said her heart would begin to heal around her grief. Perhaps, eventually, this place would feel like home. A new home with her sister and her books and her tea house crush. It wasn’t such a bad future to contemplate, Harper thought, remembering what Azathé had said about the seven of cups. Being a dreamer was well and good, but she would need to put in the work to bring her dreams to fruition.
She had always been a hard worker, despite her depressive episodes, and the thought of this future — a new home, her heart healed around the tender bruise of grief, her sister there to share a kind of full-fat ice cream, at least for another year or two, and her shadowy friend perhaps becoming more — was a future for which she was more than willing to put in the work.And if nothing else, we always have the Fall Festival.
OOTD:Floor-lengthlaceduster,collared mini dress. Domino tights and batwing backpack.
The book had looked completely innocent and inoffensive when they had placed it before her.The Devotion of the Volantines. A leather-bound volume from the nineteenth century, showing substantial wear, the plain cover gave her no hint as to what the pages held. The pages themselves were thin and the lettering small, forcing her to pay close attention as she read, which was not a hard chore.
Harper was certain her body was pulled as taut as a bowstring, her lip trapped between her teeth, and her hips canting invisibly beneath the table. She could pay attention to nothing but the book, and if the building caught fire while she was reading, that was how fire rescue would find her — tensely concentrating.
