The Divination Project

chapter 3

After my shower I went upstairs to pick something to wear. Always an issue with my mom. I usually choose comfort over style, and my sense of style appalls my mom, so there’s no way I can pick something that makes both of us happy. Given that it’s cool and rainy, I select a vintage dress, watermelon pink sleeveless A-line, and a zip up hoodie to go on top. Sandals, too of course. I look closely at my feet. Potatoes- my toes look like tiny potatoes. Oh well. Nothing I can do about it- they’re clean, just calloused. I put my hair in a single braid down my back and set off for my mom’s house on my bike.

My mom was, is I guess, in real estate, and back before the world fell apart she did really well financially. Still does, I guess. The house she had custom built by the lake is still a showplace, it’s just that the rest of the neighborhood has gone downhill. The rest of the world has as well, of course.

I coast to a stop in our driveway, seeing my Jeep parked there still. It’s a little annoying that Gary’s boat can be parked in the garage, but the Jeep has to be parked outside. It doesn’t matter, because I don’t drive it anyway, but it was my dad’s. He gave it to me.

Mom always keeps the door locked, even when she’s home, and she’s almost always home now. I ring the bell, then knock on the door. I don’t know if they have electricity- sometimes they do when my side of Preston doesn’t. I hear the dogs barking, then she comes to the door, looking at me through the leaded glass sidelights.

“Willow!” She set her coffee cup down on the oak library table next to the door and unlocked it. “What a surprise! Don’t you look bedraggled in your cute little dress!”

See, the dress is cute, I am bedraggled. “Hi mom!” I go in for a hug, then remember. We keep our distance.

I leave my sandals on the front porch, and immediately go to the powder room next to the front door and wash my hands. My mom is very concerned about germs still. Hygiene has kept her safe this far, and she intends to keep it up.

“To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“I wanted to come over and get a book or two.”

“Ooh, take them all, and I can turn your room into a craft room.”

“Haha, you already have a craft room.” Mom does elaborate paper crafts- scrapbooks with a detailed history of my entire childhood- stopping at about age 12.

“I can always use more storage space for paper.” She grabbed her coffee cup off the table. “You can take some of your books- your Nancy Drews, your Agatha Christies.”

“Yeah, my apartment is pretty full of books as it is.” I catch her looking at my feet. She doesn’t say anything about my toes. Good. “And other stuff- I keep my inventory there too.”

We head up the stairs to my old room, lined with bookshelves, big mullioned windows trimmed with white, shiny enamel painted wood. I go straight to the bookshelf over my old desk, and find what I’m looking for immediately.

“Yearbook?” mom is surprised.

“Yeah, did you hear about Kaisa?”

“I saw the search and rescue boats, I didn’t know who it was they'd found. Oh, that’s terrible. You knew her, right?”

“We were in student government together- she was a year ahead of me.” I flipped to her class, and found her photo. She had scrawled a signature over her picture. I couldn’t remember if she had signed the back also. I flipped to the blank pages in back- no. Not very many people had signed. It was the last normal year. Wish I’d gotten more signatures. Although I don’t know what difference it would have made.

My mom is over by the window, looking out. “Whatever happened with the neighbor guy I set you up with?”

“Oh, he’s not out there, is he?”

“He’s working on the lawn.”

“Oh, no.”

“Was he so terrible?”

I sighed. “No. He wasn’t that bad. It’s hard, to go out with a police officer.”

“I don’t see why.”

“I know.” there's so much she doesn’t see because she doesn’t want to. “I think he thought I was, I just...there wasn’t a spark, you know. I think there has to be a spark between people.”

“Ok, I guess.”

“Anyway, if we had gotten together, the poor man would have had to move, there’s no way I would spend the night with him next door to you.”

“It would be nice to see more of you.”

I pulled the plush letter P off the bulletin board behind my desk, with the single pin for the single activity I had been involved in during my short high school career- a golden goblet, the Grail for the Preston High School Knights Round Table Club.

The same pin I had found in the pocket of the pale blue sweater that had made me pass out at The Curiosity Shop.



We head downstairs, “Hey mom, I was wondering, do you have any extra coffee?”

“Oh, I have...some…”

“Can I have a bag, if you don’t mind?”
“Well, I can’t always find it at the store.”


“I know- but you are hoarding it like a dragon.” I said, “And I quit smoking weed, so without coffee, I don’t have a reason to get up in the morning.”

“I guess I can spare a bag.. She looked at me appraisingly.” Quit marijuana, huh. Well that’s good. Would you like some coffee right now?”

“How old is it?”

“I can make a fresh batch.”

“Then I’ll drink it with you.”

“Cookies?”

“Of course.”

We head into the kitchen, and I sit at a tall stool at the island, resting my palms on the cool granite counter, swinging from side to side. I look out the back window at the lake- the water is lower than I’ve seen it in years- until today there hasn’t been rain all summer. Greeley has lowered the level of the lake by so much that all I can see is sandy beach for hundreds of yards. They do own the water rights.

I think of my stepdad, and his boat. “How’s Gary doing these days?”

“Not bad. He played 9 holes yesterday. He’s wiped out now, of course- he still isn’t back up to 100 percent yet.”

She’d been saying that for years- he had been hit pretty badly by the red flu, and it had damaged his lungs. But then many years of drinking had damaged his liver. He had survived, but as Mom said, wasn’t 100%.

“He doesn’t want to let go of his boat- of course he hasn’t had it out on the lake all summer, because there’s no water.”

“Yeah- I hadn’t realized how terrible it had gotten. It’s super low.”

“Especially for this time of year.” She poured coffee into a mug for me, and refilled her own cup. I hopped off the stool and went over to the fridge, opening it quickly to get out the cream. Then I reached up to the cabinet over the fridge to see what cookies she had. “Sugar free fat free? What’s in them?”

“Those are Gary’s- they’re not worth eating. There should be almond cookies up there.”

I found the box and brought it over to the island.

“I can’t believe that poor girl took her own life.”

“Wait, who? Kaisa?”

“Well, yes, didn’t she drown herself?”

“Who told you that?”

“Well, I put two and two together- on my walk this morning, I spoke with your old science teacher, Mrs Peterson.”

“Ms.”

“What? Right, Ms, and she said she had heard that they body they found was a suicide, that she must have drowned herself. So sad. MIZ peterson was coming back from a jog- her knees are in better shape than mine.”

“Yeah. Kaisa didn’t seem the type.. ” I flipped to the page I had been looking for- the clubs, and there was the photo for The Round Table, the high school government club. I was there next to Kaisa, and another girl- what was her name? Behind us were three boys, arms over each other’s shoulders, and next to us, coincidentally, Mr. Peterson, government teacher and husband of science teacher, and Mom’s neighbor. “To kill herself, I mean.”

As I left, she not only loaded me up with coffee, but with a fresh bag of almond cookies of my own. She also offered me cheese, but I didn’ think it would do well as I biked home uphill.

Mom walked me to the door, but just stayed inside, watching as I stowed my stuff on my bike’s back rack.


As I was putting my sandals back on, Bobby looked up from pulling weeds in his yard and smiled at me.
I smile back, “Hey, Bobby. How’s it going?” At least this time I remembered his name.

He stands up and arches his back, then tosses a thistle into the trash bin. In the bright sunlight, there is no halo visible. I am both relieved and disappointed.

“Wow- you got most of the root with that one.”

“Yeah.” he looks at me as if he can’t decide whether I’m teasing him or not. As it happens I’m not- pulling weeds sucks, but there is something so satisfying about getting a big long root, when the soil is moist. “So, visiting your mom, huh?”

“Yeah, I needed to get some stuff. Coffee, mostly.” I walk my bike over to the property line.

“What’s the book?” he looks at the yearbook bungeed to my rack. “Expect the Unexpected,” Preston Knights Yearbook?

“Yeah- I wanted to check some things- about Kaisa Tagliaferro. We were friends, in high school. I wanted to look at some pictures, I guess.”

“Oh. I didn’t know you knew her.”

“It’s kind of a small town. Although, not that small, I guess. I was surprised she came back- all through school, she was like “I’ve got to get out of this place” and so I was shocked that she came back to kill herself.” Why was I babbling?

“To what?”

“Wasn’t it suicide?”

“Ummm...I’m not supposed to...they did an autopsy. It’s an ongoing investigation, but not about suicide.”

“Oh.” well that’s interesting. Also, Bobby is not very good at keeping secrets.

“Can I see her photo?”

“Sure.” I un-bungee the cookies and coffee, and wind up handing them to him to hold while I flip through the book. I showed him the picture I had shown my mom earlier. “She was a grade ahead of me.”

“Wow, she was pretty.”

“Yeah. Yeah, she was. I guess everyone is pretty when they’re 16. And not being brought up out of the lake.” i cringed a little when I said it.

“Who said it was suicide?”

“My mom mentioned she had heard it from somebody- a neighbor.”

“Which neighbor?” he looked around.

“Umm, one of our old teachers actually-” I flipped to the staff page, and showed him the shot of Ms. Axton-Peterson and Mr. Peterson. “And they live around the corner. I actually helped them get the house- it was one I had cleaned out after the owners had died, and they were able to get it so cheap.” sometimes I can’t help talking real estate. It’s in the blood, maybe.
Ms. A-Peterson and Mr. Peterson had planned the photo out in advance, that their pictures would be next to each other in the year book. They were facing each other and making finger guns. It was cute. They had been a cute couple.

That’s what I thought at the time.

“If she was in a different grade, how did you know her?”

“Well, before the world fell apart, I did student government stuff.” I took the coffee and cookies back from him, balanced them on the rack of my bike, then flipped to the page with the Round Table picture.

“Round table, I get it, like King Arthur.”

“Yeah. Cheesey. The P-town Knights were all about the cheese. At least we weren’t the Savages, or the Warriors, and had to change our mascot because it was offensive.”
I pointed to the folks around the table, “Mr. Peterson, your neighbor, Michael and Alex seniors, Theo and Angelica, juniors, Kaisa and Ricardo, Sophomores, Dakota and me. Freshman. We didn’t have any power. I don’t know if there are places where student government does have power, but we really didn’t.

“I know at my school, there was no power- it was a popularity contest.”

“Yeah.” I began pointing again, outlining the web of “popularity” between all the members of the group. “Kaisa dated Alex, then he broke up with her to go out with Angelica, then Kaisa and Angelica had an experimental thing, then Alex went out with Dakota, who broke up with him, then he asked me out. I said no.” That was almost true.

Bobby reached out for the book, and I was disconcerted to see the green halo around his hands. Why just him, why not Rossi, or my mom, or any of the other people I saw? “Can I borrow this?”

“Umm…” I was reluctant to let it go.

“I just want to copy some info, I know it’s 10 years out of date. I think it might be able to help with the investigation.”

“I guess so.”

“Tell you what, how about I buy you dinner, and I can give it back. Friday?”

“I guess so,” why am I polite? Why can’t I just say, ‘no, I want to keep my book, and no, I will not eat in public with you.’

“I’ll pick you up.”

At this point, I woke up from my politeness. “Ooh, actually, can we meet somewhere? Christina’s Tacos, on 4th street?” I did not need a cop car coming to my door to pick me up on Friday night.

“Sure. I love tacos. 7:30?”

“Sounds good.” I secured the stuff on my rack, swung my leg over and biked off, thinking hard.

I needed to talk to Michael and Alex and Theo and Angelica, and everyone else who Kaisa dated, who was still in town. Why would she come back here?

Other than to get murdered.

The Divination Project (Queen of Cups- book 1)

Prologue

After he gets off work, he likes to go out on the lake, just with the paddle board, drifting around. It’s been hot, and the fires over on the west slope make the sky red. They make it hard to breathe, too, but the sunsets sure are pretty.
He casts out his line and waits. He wouldn’t mind catching something, but it’s also nice just to enjoy the water. Even though it’s supposed to be a “stand up paddle board”, he doesn’t usually stand- he’ll kneel when he first gets going, but usually he just treats it like a canoe, fishing off of it. Before she died, Molly liked to sit on the end, jump in the water then try to scramble back up. He misses that dog.
He stretches his neck, side to side, dangles his bare feet in the water off either side of the board, then notices a tug on his line- nice- he doesn’t usually get a bite this soon. Nice to have some fish for supper. Unless it’s a branch- the water is pretty low, farmers using their shares early in the summer. It’s been so dry.
He begins to play the line, reeling, then letting go...soon he realizes its just a snag, so he reels and prepares to untangle the hook.
That’s weird. He’s never seen this before- he reaches out to touch it, then when he realizes it isn’t leaves or weeds, but long blond hair, he almost drops his pole.
He checks his location, noticing where the cottonwoods are on the bank, tucks his fishing pole under the bungees on the board, gets up on his knees and begins paddling to shore. Someone should know about this before it gets too dark.

Chapter 1

I was delivering some consignment stuff to Jenna at the Curiosity Shop when I first heard. Someone was over on the coffee shop side, ordering a latte, and said, “Did you hear about Dan- he was out fishing at the reservoir and found a dead body.”

Jake, who is Jenna’s husband and runs the coffee side of the shop, said “Huh.Do they know who it was?”

“Haven’t heard,” he said, “I did see the search and rescue boats and the dive team out there last night. I guess he found hair on his fishhook, then came back to shore. By the time he had cell service, the sun was going down. If they find anyone, it’ll be today, I think.”

Jenna’s voice brings me back to our conversation- “woohoo- hello? I have money for you, from some sales last week. If you find any more copper ware,get it- I can’t keep it in stock. People found out it kills germs, so they want it for everything.”
“I nodded. “I have an estate to check out today. The woman passed months ago, but her son didn’t decide to do anything until recently. Now, it all has to be done right away.”

“Maybe he wants to sell before real estate taxes are due again?”

“Maybe, or maybe he has time off now, and didn’t before. What about silver, like pitchers and what not?”

“Not as good...if you can find more fondue pots, people like those for cooking when the power’s down. “ she sorted through the duffle bag I had brought in. “Now, I know you like these silk scarves, but they just aren’t moving.”

“I know. People should like them more...they don’t take up any space, they add warmth and color, I just have so many of them, but I can’t resist more.”

“This one... it’s collectible.” She held up a bright green geometric one.

“I know, it’s Vera.” I smiled, it gave me a good feeling when I had picked it up. “That one came from the thrift shop. “I feel like the woman who owned it felt bright and beautiful when she put it on. I have this weird image in my head of a woman with short gray hair tying it around her neck as she was getting ready to go to work, swiping on some bright lipstick, then smiling at herself and turning to go out the door.”

“I have a few people who collect just to collect these days, who have the money and want to come support us. It should sell.” Jenna said, she flipped through the others, shaking her head, though.

We got to the bottom of the duffel, and I pulled out my favorite piece from this batch. I had found it at the thrift store, a pale blue silk sweater, almost new. I shook it gently and held it up. “See how pretty?”

“Oh, that is nice” Jenna took it from me, “Cardigan with pockets… once the weather gets cold, someone will love this.” She checked the label, “Made in Slovenia. 100% silk. Oh, there’s something in the pocket.” She reached in and pulled out something shiny. “It’s a pin, like a lapel pin, or a varsity letter pin. Can’t tell what sport.” She handed it to me.

I felt a wave of emotion, like the image about the gray haired lipstick woman, but many times stronger. I felt like I was going to puke. I looked at the pin in my hand, shaped like a chalice, or grail, exactly like one I used to own, likely in a box at my mom’s house, pinned to a gold and blue letter P, the only high school activity I had done, the student government club. I didn’t see things, like I had with the green scarf woman, I just felt this enormous rush of anger, and betrayal and fear. My eyes started to tunnel, and the world went black.


I opened my eyes to see Jenna’s worried face over me. “I don’t know, she just fainted.” Jenna was saying.
“Have you eaten yet today, kiddo?” Jake asked.

“Willow, are you alright? Get her some water, will you?” Jenna helped me sit up and lean against the counter. Jake went through the dutch door to the other side of the shop, filled a cup from the filter and brought it over.

“What happened?” I asked. My head was killing me, and my hands were shaking as I took the cup.

“You fainted. Did you eat today?”

“Um, yeah. Well, coffee. I was going to get a sandwich or something from Jake after we met.”

“Mmmhmmm. You have to take care of yourself.” She helped me up, and opened the dutch door into the coffee side, then walked me over to a table to sit down. “Also, you shouldn’t spend all your money with us- treating us like a company store- I feel bad.”

“Where’d the pin go?” I knew I didn’t have it anymore, because I didn’t feel so rotten anymore- the wave of emotion was ebbing.
.
“I think it rolled under a shelf. I’ll get it. Don’t worry.” She got her little card file box off the desk and brought it over to the table. “Here’s the stuff that sold last week, sign and I’ll get your money. Jake, bring her some soup- it’s on the house.” She got a new card from the back of the box and started writing down the things from the duffle bag that she was taking to sell.

“What kind of soup?” I asked.

“Choosey beggar- chicken vegetable.” Jake laughed.

“Oh, I’m...I haven’t been eating meat…” I didn’t want to say I was vegetarian, I don’t like labels, but I had decided to go off meat last week.

Jenna looked at me carefully. “I thought something seemed different. When you said all that about the green scarf lady, how did you know that?”

“I don’t know. I guess I was just making up stories. I just imagined who had it before.”

“You haven’t imagined stories before, on the things you bring? Or had you, but you didn’t say anything?”

“No.” I thought about it. “No, I guess not. Sometimes when I see things in the thrift store, I feel like they’re gross, or … sad, or happy, but I never see the person, I mean, imagining a person.”

“With that pin, did you...see anything?””

Jake had brought over a cup of soup, and a rye roll with a chunk of cheese. “I...didn’t see anything, I just felt...angry, and also, this feeling of surprise, and maybe betrayal. I don’t know. It was weird. It was just so strong.

“Let me think about it. And eat the soup...if you don’t want the chunks of chicken, eat around it, but, eat the soup…” She took the box over to the counter in the Curiosity Shop side of the store. The bell rang and someone came in. She greeted whoever it was, then bent over to look for the pin where it had dropped and bounced under a shelf. I heard a triumphant grunt when she found it.

I cautiously ate the soup, it was good. Sometimes I am so nauseated because I’m hungry that I can’t eat, which just makes the problem worse, but the soup worked its magic and made me feel better. At first I did eat around the chunks of chicken, but in the end I ate them. It would have been wasteful not to. I felt better. The flighty, agitated feeling I had had all day, all week, really, started to settle down. I felt more grounded. I ripped the bread roll in half, placed the cheese in the middle, and started eating it like a sandwich.

The bell on the coffee shop door jingled and I looked to see who was coming in. Oh, yikes. What was his name? He was that cop that I had gone on one date with when he first moved to town.

It hadn’t gone well.

What was his name- old fashioned name, hillbilly, was it Billy? I ducked a little, took another bite of my improvised sandwich and turned away a little. He ordered, and tried to chat with Jake for a little. Jake was cold toward him, he’s not crazy about cops. Who can blame him? I don’t even know why I went out with him in the first place- it was back when I was trying to make my mom happy, or at least get her off my back.

I looked at him out of the corner of my eye- silhouetted in the window- he isn’t bad looking, but he was just so boring. Stolid is the word, very rooted to the ground, slow talking, slow moving.

He turns and catches me looking, smiles in recognition, “Hey, Willow, right?”

I’m caught. “He-ey...you! How are you?” the name is still not coming to me, Jerry Lee? Lee Harvey? Jimbo? What is his name? Billy Bob?

“I’m doing good… I’m Bobby, remember?” his smile fades a little. With the light behind him he looks like he’s got a halo.

Bobby. Dammit. That was it. So close. “Bobby, yeah, of course I remember you. I just...couldn’t come up with the name.”
“Yeah. Mind if I sit with you?” He moves toward me, away from the window so I’m not squinting into the light, and somehow...the halo comes with him.

“Not at all.” I blink. The halo fades, then returns. I stare at him a little, the light is swirling, greenish gold.

“You ok?” he asks. He might be re-thinking his desire to sit with me.

”Ummm… I...I’m fine. Please, join me.” I pick up my spoon and take a bite of soup.

He looks into my bowl. “I guess you don’t like carrots.”

“Actually, I like them the best, so I save them for the very end.” Yikes. I thought he was boring, but he thinks I’m weird. Maybe I am weird.

Jake announces, “Officer Miller.” he holds up a sandwich wrapped in butcher paper, instead of on a plate. “Your sandwich is ready. To go.” Jake hates to have cops eating here- bad for the atmosphere, it keeps other customers out. Plus, principle.

“Ok,” Bobby stands up, “I guess I need to get back to the reservoir anyway.” he adjusts his gun belt.

“Wait, have you been looking for the body?”

“We found her. Lake’s a crime scene now.”

“Her, who?”

“Can’t tell that until we’ve notified the next of kin. The family.” He takes the sandwich out of Jake’s outstretched hand and puts some cash in the tip jar. He puts his hand on the doorknob, turns back and says, “Good to see you again, Willow.”

“Yeah. You too.” I blink, the halo is gone again, and he walks out the door.

“That guy, saying family like we don’t know what next of kin means.” Jake shakes his head.

“I can’t believe you went out with that guy.”

“Me too.” I said.

Jenna leans over the dutch door and says, “You should come back over here, Willow sweetie, before the lunch rush starts. You’re done eating? You don’t have anywhere else you need to be?”

I pick up my bowl, slurp down the last of the carrots and broth and stack my dishes. I bring them over to the bus tub at the end of the counter. “What do I owe you?”
“Everything, and nothing- it’s on the house today.”

“Thanks Jake.”

When I get over to the Curiosity Shop side, I see that Jenna has pulled out a book “How to read the Aura and practice…” a ridiculously long title for a very slim volume. Next to it on the counter there is a tray of things- jewelry, a pencil, just random items from the cases and shelves around the shop.

“What I think is happening with you today is called psychometry.” she looked at me, “have you heard of it?”

I shook my head, picked up the book, a softcover from the 60’s. W.E. Butler- that name was familiar.

“So, one of the most common things, ways of, I guess psychic powers, is psychometry, and it’s getting a feeling, or a memory or a sense from an object.”

“OK…”

“So, when ...I think you’ve had this all your life, or at least a gift for it, but something has changed recently. You haven’t eaten meat, have you changed anything else?”

I blushed. “I haven’t been smoking as much weed lately. At all. I guess I quit smoking weed, at about the same time I stopped eating meat.”

“Why? What made you change?”

“I felt...clogged, congested? Not physically, but that was part of it too, with the smoke from the fires on the western slope. I just needed to change some things, to clean up my life.”
“That might explain it then. Cheese, dairy?”
“I still eat cheese, but there’s no ice in my icebox, so I haven’t had cheese for a while. I was going to get groceries today after I left here.”

She takes a deep breath, then her words come out in a rush, like she is racing against my disbelief. “Meat and cheese, and other dairy products have a grounding effect, and when someone, like you, gets too, you, know, airy, floaty,” she waves her hands around in the air, “like you do, the meat anchors you, it works like ballast, so you don’t float away.”

“Float away?” I asked “I’m a balloon now?” It was a little funny.

“Like I said, I think you’ve been able to do this for a long time, you either have a gift, or it runs in your family, or maybe in a past life you had trained your 6th sense, and now it’s coming out more. Did you ever, as a child, see things?” She was talking so fast, it was hard to follow.

I remembered a conversation with my dad, when I was little. I had a pet cat that was invisible. Everyone else thought, how cute, an imaginary friend that’s a cat, but she wasn’t imaginary. She was real. Just not everyone could see her.

My dad had told me that things like that happened to him, too, and it was totally normal, but that sometimes other people don’t understand. So he had told me not to tell other people, especially at school, when I saw things. I didn’t explain all this to Jenna, I just nodded slowly. Because I was remembering something else now, that halo around Bobby- I had seen that before, too.

“The marijuana might have been clouding your sight, helping you...not see… a lot of people self-medicate that way. But your third eye has opened up, somehow, this week.”

“What’s all this?” I gestured at the tray.

“A test, kind of. I know, no one likes tests, but I just grabbed some things, and I’d like to see what you know, or feel, about them. Did you eat the chicken, in the soup?”

“Yeah.” I said. “Sorry.”

“Fine, that’s fine. We’ll see how much the meat affects it.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Well, all of these things on the tray are old, they have belonged to people in the past, so, let’s see if you can sense anything about them- a story, like the lady with the green scarf, or ...something else. Anything, really.”

I blinked. I didn’t want to pass out again, but I didn’t think Jenna would set me up for that.

“What first?.”

“It doesn’t matter- pick whatever speaks to you. Or just be random.”

I stared at the tray- a pocket knife, a mug, a pencil, a hat, a ring. The ring looked too personal. Too close to whoever owned it. All of them, actually, too close to the person who owned them, I imagined the mug being lifted to lips, the knife in a pant pocket. I swallowed, straightened my back and reached out for the mug.

I held the white curved handle in my right hand, closed my eyes and...waited. I imagined reaching out a little with my senses. Nothing. Except, coolness, and a citrus smell. And sandalwood? That was weird. It wasn’t a smell in my nose. I actually sniffed the cup itself, nothing. It was a smell in my brain. I set it back down without saying anything.

I picked up the knife, and got a feeling of comfort, love. That was a little unexpected. Masculine. That was it.
I picked up the hat- a vintage lady-bowler, navy blue, midnight blue velveteen, with a little veil in front. I could guess too much from the style, the age, this one wasn’t fair. I gave it a little spin, and made as if to put it on, then felt very sad, suddenly. “Martin Luther King?” I said. “Was this...someone wore this...when Dr King died.” I set it down again. I swallowed.

The pencil next- it felt dirty, muddled. Too many people had touched it for it to have an impression that was clear. “Nothing- or, too much. It doesn’t have anything that I can feel specifically. It’s just a pencil.”

Finally the ring. A gold ring, old fashioned, with an emerald solitaire. “Disappointment.’
Jake was watching us through the dutch door- he laughed, then turned away and closed the top half of the door.

“That was my engagement ring for my first marriage. It was pretty disappointing. I like the ring, though. I like emeralds.” she took the hat from the tray and showed me the label from inside- it was from a department store in Memphis, “This would have been the right time period, but I don’t know for sure that it would have been worn to Dr. King’s funeral...maybe just at that time…What about the knife? Was it like the pencil?”
I picked it up again, licked my lips and rubbed my thumb along the handle. “It belonged to a man, but I could have guessed that.” I shrugged, “ I just get this feeling of love, and comfort. Safety, not like ‘I’ve got a knife,’ safety, but that, he was someone who would take care of you.”

“It was my grandfather’s. He was someone who would take care of you.”

“The mug was weird. I got a scent- like sandalwood, and something citrus.”

“Hmmm. It’s a shaving mug, does it still…” Jenna picked it up and sniffed, as I had done. “I don’t smell anything.”

“What’s a shaving mug?”

“Before canned shaving cream was a thing, men used to put shaving soap in a mug like this, use a wet brush to lather it up and spread it on their faces.”

“Oh. So, I smelled a ghost smell?” I leaned toward her and sniffed again.”Who did it belong to?”

“No idea. The ring was mine. Is mine. The knife was my grandfather’s, the pencil was just out of the drawer, the hat and the mug were just here in the store.”

“So, how does it work? Why can I do this?”

Jenna took a deep breath and just looked at me. “I don’t know.”

Jenna wound up sending me home with the book, telling me to read it for “homework” and a deck of Tarot cards, but not before confusing the hell out of me all afternoon.

Customers came into the shop every once in a while, and she would help them, but mostly, she was teaching me about divination that afternoon.

“So, for whatever reason, you can tap into planes of the universe that are beyond the physical material plane.”

I looked at her blankly.

“So, imagine like a russian doll- are you with me, one of those nesting dolls?”

“Yeah. I’ve seen those.”

“So the innermost doll, the smallest one is the material plane- the water, the iron in the blood, the calcium in the bones, the cells, just the matter that makes up the body.”

“Gotcha.”

“Rocks have material bodies, dogs have material bodies, people have material bodies..”

“Then the next level out is the etheric level.”

“Is this like, yoga?”

“Yes, well, yoga and martial arts and traditional chinese medicine and lots of cultures have this idea, in our culture we don’t really have a word for it. We borrow prana, or chi, in Star Wars they talk about the Force, but most people don’t talk about this aspect of life. Unless they talk about being low energy, or a place having a bad vibe…” she stopped and took a deep breath, reigning herself back in. “I’m getting off track. Let’s keep it simple. The etheric level goes all through the material, and comes outside of it a little, like a halo.”

“Halo?”

‘Yes, that’s the aura- there’s a section in the book about it. Why?”

“Nothing. Go on.”

Rocks have material bodies, but as far as we know, they don’t have etheric ones, they aren’t alive...dogs do, people do...if something disrupts the energy in the etheric body, that causes illness, if the disruption is serious enough, that causes death.”

“Right.” that tracked actually.

“The next level is the astral. It is the level of thought and imagination. When we have ideas that may not be our own, that’s the astral level. We have dreams, we tell stories, we…”

“We smell ghost smells.”

“Yeah. Sometimes people are empathic, and so in tune with others ideas that you can share them, and space and time don’t matter much. Rocks don’t have an astral level, and neither do dogs”

“Dogs don’t have an imagination?”

“So they say.”

“So what are the cards for?”

“Imagine that your pyschometry...”

“My what?” I interrupted.
“
Oh- one of the things this book has is psychometry, what you have been doing- touching something and sensing ...something. Imagine that what is happening is like static on the radio- you can’t tune it in- sometimes it’s very clear, like with the hat or the ring. Sometimes its vague or dirty like with the pencil. A lot of the time you don’t sense anything at all, the world just seems muddy, and you want to make it go away, so you smoke some weed.”

“Fair enough.” I grinned. It seemed like a charitable way to excuse a lot of marijuana use.

“Sometimes the signal might be so clear and powerful that it knocks you out.” She opened the box of cards and began to shuffle them, cutting the deck and interleaving one half into the other. The cards were larger than normal cards, almost too big for her hands to hold comfortably. “I wonder if these cards can help you tune in more comfortably, with more control, to what is going on around you in the astral plane. All of these cards have images and meanings that signify something, often many things, and they’ll help you hone your intuition, and interpret what you see and feel.”

“And tell the future.”

“I think you’re better off figuring out the present,” she cut the deck into three piles. “So, the little white book that comes with the deck has some meanings, explaining in 25 words or less what each card means. You’ll figure out some other ways to think of them too.” She dealt out a card- it showed a little man giving a flower to a littler woman. “ this is the ____ of cups. Love, generosity, innocence, since it’s two children being kind to each other.”

“Oh, I thought they were adults…”

“The art is old fashioned- meant to look medieval, when children dressed like little adults. Look at how the old man is walking away.” she picked up the little white book and flipped through it. [read the description]

“So what is that supposed to mean? Should it apply to me? To today?” I asked. I couldn’t see how the description and the cute little people on the card were related to me.

“what I think you should do, and of course you don’t have to, is every day shuffle, draw three cards, and interpret them. Then, at the end of the day, check your interpretation against what happened during the day. Write it in a notebook so you don’t forget.”

“These are your cards, how do we know that what I see isn’t connected to your ...connection with the cards themselves?” Dang, no wonder there were all these made up words like psychometry, since it’s so hard to talk about this thing.

“Ooh, good question! Very good question! Leave them out in the sun this afternoon- the sun will help cleanse them. It cleanses most things of wayward energy.

Is there another Russian doll?”

“What?” she looked at me blankly. “Oh, yes. Every culture divides it up differently, yogis one way, witches another, but the next level is mental, thought, rather than imagination and emotion. Just like Rocks have material, but not etheric, and dogs have material and etheric but not astral, people have material, etheric and astral, but only a mental sheath. We’re beginning to think, but we need a lot of incarnations to grow into it.”

“Honestly, I don’t know how much of this I believe.”
“You don’t have to believe any of it.” she put the cars back into the box, placed it on top of the book and pushed the stack across the counter toward me. But it’s happening whether you believe it or not. You might as well learn to deal with it.”