The blonde’s hair fell in her face as she looked at her strappy sandals. Her pedicure matched her manicure, those chalky ends with the pink base. The elevator dinged up a couple of floors.
“Yeah. It was kind of a fucked up night, or morning I should say. I’ve been seeing their bass player for a few years now. We hook up when they come to town or nearby, but there’s more to what we have than sex. He met my mom last year.”
The woman referred to Thom James, Fyre’s notorious playboy bassist. Hm. If the dejected groupie had been backstage or on the buses, she might have seen or heard something related to Joe or the hex. “Fucked up how?”
Thom’s lover snorted and flipped long locks to one side. Silver hoops and barbells competed for limited real estate on her ear.
“I really thought we were moving toward exclusivity, you know? He went down on me until I came, which the other girls say he never does. After we had sex, he got out some weed, and we smoked while I read him a few poems I’d written. But in the morning? Poof. He goes all cold and distant, telling me he doesn’t think we’re compatible anymore. Bullshit, you know? Like he’d studied Sex and the City for lame breakup lines. I’d rather he said ‘your voice is ugly and your vagina stinks.’”
Helen laughed. She liked this chick and her salty attitude. “Can I ask you a weird question?”
The blonde sliced Helen a sly look. “Ask whatever you want. I’ve got the gossip on everything from dick sizes to drug preferences.”
Bubbles blinked from white to pale yellow in numeric succession, the elevator moving up floors. She didn’t have the luxury of easing in, not when she couldn’t be sure if she’d see this person again.
“Did you or Thom see or hear anything strange? People acting off, this manager guy named Joe doing weird stuff? Or even ghostly whispers, clouds of white smoke?”
The young woman dropped her stare to Helen’s forearm. “Are those prayer beads? You mediate?”
Helen ran a finger along the pearlescent strand of mala beads circling her wrist. “Yeah. I teach yoga, meditation, and chakra and energetic cleansing in Uptown. And I think there might be some bad energy following Fyre. Brian in particular.”
The blonde swayed back and forth and made a wailing sound fit for a wandering haunt. “You’re a trip, dude. And no. All I saw that night was an aging rock star with an ego the size of Antarctica. Sorry.”
Blind alley, dead end. “Never mind.”
“Naw, naw, it’s cool. I like that kind of stuff. The Secret knocked me on my ass. Law of attraction. You think I’d like yoga?” The elevator door opened, and the blonde pushed the button to hold it. The squeaky and girlish way she asked the yoga question changed the game.
A gentle sister of sadness nudged Helen. The blonde sounded lost, like she lacked a sense of self and a toehold on her personality. And damn, had Helen been in a similar place. She rummaged in her bag and gave out a card for one free class.
Brian situation not withstanding, she had a life to lead and a business to save. And attracting new students served that goal. Plus, this woman might remember helpful details about the fair down the line, so it made sense to stir her into the mix.
“Yeah. I think you’d love yoga. You should come sometime. Light & Enlightened is on Calhoun Street, between that organic ice cream shop for dogs and the haberdashery.”
Thom’s ex-conquest read the card and slipped it into her bra. “Cool. I’ll see you around hipster central, Helen. I’m Stacy, by the way.”
“Nice to meet you.”
Stacy exited the metal box, and the elevator continued to Helen’s floor.
Helen unlocked her condo with a tinkle of keys and swung open the front door to a dark living room. She walked to the floor-to-ceiling window and looked out over the view that had sold her on the place four years ago.
Near the border of the sculpture garden, where grass met sidewalk, a pond reflected glinting winks of starlight. The famous cherry spoon statue stretched across the water in an illusion of flotation, garnet dollop poised at the oval tip of an outsized piece of cutlery.
On the wall perpendicular to the window hung the magazine she’d framed, featuring her and Lisa on the cover of their special issue about local women entrepreneurs under thirty. Nostalgia threaded a needle through her heart.
Four years ago, Helen was high on herself. Her business was gangbusters. She’d finally achieved success. Come a helluva long way from the bitter, anxious, unloved little bitch who’d aged out of the foster care system with zero life skills and owning nothing except the pieces of meat almost any woman can sell.
L&E had thrived in a squished, ultra-competitive market, no less. Though her ego had ballooned to bloated proportions, the largess of arrogance never managed to fix the low self-esteem underneath.
Enough reflection. She had work to do.
After a shower and change of clothes, Helen turned on every light in the house. She tugged the grimoire free from a bookshelf, sat on the floor, and leafed through the tome.
God, where to even begin. Translucent, whisper-thin page after page brushed by, making soft flutters. Drawings, runes, and script inked in Latin and German, as well as arcane languages she didn’t recognize, filled ancient parchment. Too much foreign writing for Google Translate to handle in a timely manner, and her high school Spanish would not offer jack.
So much esoteric, pagan symbolism. Helen’s neck hairs stood at attention. A creak in the building’s foundation prompted her to look over her shoulder before returning to squinting at symbols for which she lacked a frame of reference.
The occult material was overwhelming, charged with a frightening, unpredictable obscurity. This stuff was real. Why did Nerissa think Helen would be qualified?
She glimpsed at her phone. No