I crept through our cluttered but organized living room, my feet sinking into the soft, patterned rug before entering the kitchen.
My grandmother was sitting at our white chalk-painted table with a three-card spread laid out before her and Sköll resting quietly at her feet. The giant, black German Shepherd rolled his eyes up to acknowledge me but didn’t bother raising his head off his massive paws.
“Hey, grandma.” I smiled, leaning down to drop a kiss on the ancient woman’s cheek.
Her grey hair was tucked under a navy and gold bandana, and her arthritic hands were encrusted in rings.
She smiled quietly up at me and winked. Grandma didn’t talk much, but we understood each other well enough.
“Harper, could you set the table? Dinner is ready,” my mother said as she began ladling out what smelled like beef and rosemary stew into our mismatched, handmade bowls.
Fenrir was sitting next to her, watching each scoop of stew move from her kitchen cauldron to the bowls with his pink tongue lolling out the side of his great maw, and I chuckled.
My mother tutted her tongue at her familiar, shaking her head ruefully.
“You’ve had your dinner; stop trying to get extras,” my mother chided, resting her hand on her swollen belly.
She was about eight months pregnant, and we were all getting anxious for my new brother or sister to arrive. It felt like she’d been pregnant forever.
Neither my brothers nor I had bothered to ask her who the father was. We didn’t know our fathers either, and Astrid had vowed long ago never to take a husband.
As the head of the Bishop line, she said she had a responsibility to keep the name Bishop led by a matriarch, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t still‘have a little fun,’as she put it.
Both Astrid and my grandmother didn’t trust men as far as they could throw them. My brothers were really the only exception, and my mother always said, ‘If I haven’t raised the man myself, how am I to know their intentions are pure?’
After my interaction with Axel today, I wasn’t sure I disagreed.
Pulling up a chair next to Sköll, I tucked in as Astrid dropped a bowl of stew in front of me.
“Rosemary for protection, salt to cleanse your aura, and a spritz of citrus for health, baby girl. Eat up.”
I grinned and dug in, enjoying the way the hearty stew seemed to melt away in my mouth.
“Tell us about your day,” Astrid said, sitting across from me.
“Well, some asshole came to the shop asking me to give my blessing to open some new church he’s bringing to town,” I explained, and my mother and grandmother looked at me with concern.
“What do you mean?” Astrid prodded, and I recounted the encounter between bites of stew.
“And weirdly enough, a black cat found me and has been following me around. Luna thinks he might be my familiar, but it turns out he belongs to George’s nephew.”
Astrid’s frown deepened, and Fenrir let out an uncharacteristically unfriendly growl.
“I didn’t know George had a nephew,” Astrid said, her tone thoughtful.
I shrugged. “Yeah, I just met him before I came in. He said poor George has fallen ill, and he and his partner will be watching his house while he’s in the hospital.”
My mother and grandmother exchanged a tense look, and I raised an eyebrow.
“What?” I asked, and Astrid pursed her lips.
“That is quite a bit of change for one day.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“I wonder what the cards say?” Astrid asked, glancing at my grandmother expectantly. Grandma gathered up her tarot cards and placed thedeck face down next to me, tapping the top of the cards firmly with a knobbled finger.
I picked them up and shuffled them roughly until a single card flew out.
