The concept of soul mates had been collateral damage, dismissed and derided as a prime example of the stupid nonsense concocted by the patriarchy to make women into docile sex objects. More capitalist malfeasance, an ideological arm of the wedding-industrial complex deploying flowery rhetoric to dupe needy girls into embracing their own submission and buying shit they didn’t need.
See? Look at that profound socio-critical analysis.
But this was before she’d met someone who got her, who saw a truth so real yet so atrophied she’d succeeded in neglecting its existence. Before meeting Brian, Helen would have never entertained the notion that she had a male counterpart. Someone with whom she shared a rapport that testified to synergy being an actual thing. Someone with whom she could simply be, drop any and all pretenses, airs, and general fake bullshit.
Stretched on her couch while an inane reality show played on the television, she pulled a fleece blanket over her head and tried for another half-hour snatch of sleep. Soon beaten, she stood on stiff legs, scuzzy and piqued from insomnia and anxiety.
Brian’s gifts to her—a bejeweled dream journal and a black gown complete with witchy bell sleeves—peeked out from a nest of white tissue paper in their opened box. She couldn’t look at the present or she’d start crying.
She should not have gone back to Minneapolis like a spineless coward. The chiding criticism knocked around her brain on repeat.
But what was she supposed to do? She went to her kitchen and prepped the coffee maker. Wait around and chance it that she would kill Brian while under the possession of the hex-cloud? Hell no.
An oppressive blast of white sunlight spilled through her window as the pot belched and hissed. The time on her microwave read eight-fifty-six. Not too early to call Nerissa.
She and Brian might be broken up, but she hadn’t given up on saving his life. Helen called the old witch.
“My poor child.”
Helen rubbed morning crud out of her eyes and sent a silent prayer of thanks to the universe that, at least, she didn’t need to endure Nerissa yelling at her about the spell. “I’m glad you aren’t angry.”
“Why would I be?”
“Because I didn’t listen to you and I cast another Left Hand spell. And, lo and behold, it caused huge problems.”
“You’ve learned, though.”
Helen sloshed coffee into her travel mug and topped it with almond milk. “Too late, though.”
“No, not too late. Come by my house. Bring everything relevant.”
Was that hope she heard in Nerissa’s voice? One way to find out. She gathered up the crystals and book, shoved them into her bag, and hustled out the door.
Clinging to the words “not too late,” thin as dental floss but nonetheless material, she ran a red light on her way to the witch’s home.
A cat, scraggly with mismatched eyes, jumped into Helen’s lap. As she petted its matted coat, it occurred to her that she and Nerissa sat in the exact same spots as they had during their first meeting. Though now, with Helen on the saggy sofa and Nerissa in the recliner across the coffee table, Helen was overcome with an acute sense of how she faced the witch as a different person.
She was humbled before magic, stripped bare. She’d done fantastical things, sure, proven her might to herself.
Helen fought for her home and won it—L&E was solvent. But the sacrifice had been mighty and come at a price.
She fell in love. Not desperation, grasping, clinging, or begging. Not what she’d felt when wheedling foster families. No, she’d felt true love. A bond with another person that touched the goodness she spoke of in her closing class meditation, the best of her seeing the best of him and vice versa. She’d felt it and lost it.
Not too late. Not too late. Helen fiddled with a stubby dreadlock on the cat’s coat, a hard stump of hair rolling between her thumb and forefinger. “I’m sorry, Nerissa.”
The elder looked on with gentle eyes. “For?”
“For not listening to you. For getting carried away.”
A knowing grunt slipped from Nerissa’s closed lips. “Lay all of your supplies between us.”
Helen eased the cat off her and hauled her bag up from the floor. She set the grimoire on the surface of Nerissa’s coffee table, followed by her stones. Crystals clattered onto scuffed wood stained a dramatic shade of ebony.
Chanting and muttering, Nerissa waved her hands over the assortment. “It’s here.”
Helen flinched and gulped a swig of java. Caffeine was required to deal with curses.
The old witch laughed. “Not that. Look at your talismans.”
She scanned the cluttered table top, mouth opening as she spotted both clear crystals side by side. “Someone returned the other one to me on the sly.”
“No, no. It made its way back to you.”
Flush with a strange sense of gratitude, Helen picked up the see-through hunk and looked at it like an old friend. The crystal seemed to wink at her, self-aware and jaunty. “Why?”
Nerissa leaned back in her recliner, a faraway look crossing her lined face. “Crystals are sentient, dear. You know this. You’ve been in communication since the very beginning. So don’t ask me. Tune in and query the stone yourself.”
Helen clutched the piece of mineral in her palm, warming it with her body heat. Subtle vibrations traveled from the rock and into the creases underneath her knuckles. And yes, it communicated with her, through a subtle language that registered as imperceptible emotional adjustments in her body.
Like a slow, chill counterpoint to a wake-up call, the crystal talked in an intuitive pre-language a bit like telepathy. Not wanting to live in Joe’s shrine, the stone came back to her in a series of tiny motions, drops and rolls and slips from a pocket.
“I’m thankful, but I’m not sure I understand.”
“You understand your chakras, how they move up from the lowest levels to the seat of enlightenment. You’ve mastered the first six, so the
