Grave Mistake Read online

  “Where am I going?” I asked, then dangled the pendulum over the tabletop.

  It swung idly back and forth, moving from the letter “A” to the letter “Z.” And kept swinging, much longer than it should have. A to Z, Z to A.

  Flummoxed, I could only stare at it. “Somewhere between A and Z?” I asked aloud. “Could you be a little more specific?”

  It described one more arc between the A and the Z, and then moved, picking out a series of letters.

  G-L-O-B-E.

  The pendulum stopped then, hanging still above the printed mat I used for divinations.

  Globe. Was that another way of saying “the World”? Was it referencing the Greater Arcana card I had pulled a few minutes earlier?

  In which case, I’d come full circle and still hadn’t learned a damn thing of any use.

  For a few seconds, I stood there, the pendulum dangling from my hand. Should I try asking again?

  Like that had done any good when I was pulling Tarot cards.

  A sudden thought popped into my mind. On a shelf in the second bedroom, the one I’d turned into an office, sat the globe I’d used when I was in grade school. Why I’d hung onto it through all those years and multiple moves, I had no idea, but maybe the universe was telling me I needed to use the globe to find the place where I’d be traveling. The theory made just about as much sense as anything else.

  I set the pendulum down on the tabletop, then hurried back to my office. Yes, there was the globe, pushed all the way into the back corner, nearly obscured by a file box. Going on my tiptoes, I reached up for the globe and wrapped my fingers around the base. It teetered precipitously as I pulled it toward me, and I had to grab for it with both hands to avoid getting smacked in the head as it slipped off the edge of the shelf.

  Careful, I scolded myself, or your next “journey” is going to be to the emergency room.

  But since I hadn’t gotten hit on the head by the thing, I carried it over to the desk where my laptop sat. I pushed the computer out of the way to give myself more room, then set down the globe and regarded it warily for a moment. What happened next could decide my future. And yes, I knew that some people would think it was crazy to make huge, life-changing decisions based on a flip of a card or the swing of a pendulum…or a rotation of a child’s globe…but I actually thought it was crazier to ignore such things. The universe was always sending us messages; the big problem was that most people tended to ignore those signals.

  I pulled in a breath and then spun the globe lightly with my hand. The old kid’s game — spin the globe and see where you’re going to go. Only in this case, it really wasn’t a game.

  Still holding my breath, I placed the tip of my index finger against the globe’s surface, feeling the little bumps and flat areas pass by. The globe spun, then slowed.

  Came to a stop.

  The breath escaped my lips as I leaned in close, eyes taking in the familiar outlines of the place where my finger had landed.

  Arizona.

  A to Z.

  I wanted to laugh. The pendulum had been as literal as it could be, and I still hadn’t gotten its message.

  Okay, Arizona. That wasn’t so bad. No, I wasn’t big on heat, but from what I could tell, the place where the globe had stopped wasn’t in Phoenix. I narrowed my eyes, trying to figure out exactly where I was supposed to go. As far as I could tell, there wasn’t anything in that particular spot, just mountains and desert.

  What, was I supposed to go live like a hermit in a cave or something?

  Obviously, a little more research would be required.

  I picked up the globe and set it on the floor, then opened my laptop and logged in. My plan was to look at a map of Arizona online, something that would provide a lot more detail than the major cities called out on the toy globe’s surface.

  With a map displayed on my laptop’s screen, I zoomed in on Phoenix and started moving slowly to the east and north, since that seemed to be roughly the direction where my finger had landed. Slowly…slowly….

  And then I stopped, an unwilling laugh escaping my lips.

  Talk about literal. Once again, I’d completely missed the point my pendulum was trying to get across.

  Because there it was, staring up at me from the screen.

  Globe, Arizona.

  2

  Online Shopping

  I’d never heard of Globe, Arizona. A few minutes of research told me the reason why. It was a tiny place, just a little more than seven thousand people. Hell, my high school had been bigger than that.

  What was I supposed to do in an isolated former mining town tucked away in the mountains east of Phoenix?

  Hide, of course. It did seem like just about the last place where Lucien Dumond would think to look for me.

  I did a quick image search on Globe, just to know what I was getting into, and what I found relieved some of my anxiety. Sure, the town was small, but the downtown area looked very cute, like something out of a Hallmark Channel movie, and many of the houses were restored Victorian and Craftsman homes, darling and brightly painted as they stood on Globe’s narrow, hilly streets. Over the years — mostly when watching holiday movies on Netflix — I’d sometimes harbored idle dreams of getting out of the L.A. rat race and relocating to such a place, but that’s all they’d ever been…daydreams and nothing more.

  Well, until today.

  Looking at the houses made me realize I needed to research the housing market there. A few minutes on Zillow told me that renting wasn’t really an option, since the only things currently available were a junky studio apartment and a very expensive ranch retreat on the edge of town.

  No, I’d have to buy something.

  That actually wasn’t as big an issue as it could have been, since I’d won the lottery a year earlier, thanks to a prosperity spell that had turned out extremely well.

  Okay, it wasn’t as if I’d won a huge Powerball lottery. I wasn’t sitting on millions or anything. No, I’d won one of the low-end lotteries, the kind that still left me with a little over three-quarters of a million dollars after taxes. And that, I realized, would buy a heck of a lot of real estate in a place like Globe.

  Only…what did I really want to buy? If I was going to sink my not-so-hard-won winnings into a place, I needed to make it count. After all, what was the point in starting over again if I wasn’t really starting over? If I got something I didn’t love, then I knew I wouldn’t be emotionally invested enough to make it work.

  At first glance, there wasn’t a lot to love. A few of the houses looked as though they had potential, but did I want to spend the next six months or more with my bathrooms and kitchens torn up while they were brought into the twenty-first century? My star chart had me pinned as a Gemini, but I was right on the cusp of Cancer, and that meant I tended to be a homebody. Throw in both a moon and ascendant in Libra, and that made me even more averse to any kind of chaos in my environment.

  So…I needed something basically turn-key. And there didn’t seem to be much like that in Globe. Well, not for someone as picky as I was. Sure, you could argue that a woman on the run didn’t have the luxury of being too choosy, but I knew my limitations, and that was definitely one of them. My Libra moon had me making Pinterest boards of all sorts of interior decorating schemes, and I already had in my head what I thought of as my “dream” house, even though I’d never seriously thought about buying a place. Those Lotto winnings would have gotten me a small condo on the Westside of Los Angeles…most likely a fixer-upper. I just couldn’t see myself blowing all that money on something that wouldn’t make me happy, which was why I’d stayed in my rent-controlled duplex despite having a chunk of change in the bank.

  But at least I already had a good idea of what I thought would make me happy.

  I went back to Zillow and selected “all” housing types rather than just houses, townhouses, and condos. And boom, there it was.

  “Unique live-work space” read the ad. From what I could tell, the
place was a storefront with a loft space above it. Everything looked as though it had been recently rehabbed and refurbished. And although I wasn’t sure whether living on Globe’s main drag was really my first choice, I had to admit that the busiest street in that small town was probably quieter than my own neighborhood in West L.A.

  Also, even though I’d never admitted my desire to anyone, thinking it had to be forever out of reach, I’d always secretly wanted to have my own New Age/witchy store, similar to Mazey’s Crescent City. Every time I walked in that shop, I had a smile on my face, and I thought it would be amazing to have a place of my own like that.

  True, my only retail experience was a disastrous two months working at the local Kohl’s when I was a senior in high school, but I figured it would be different if I were running my own store.

  Whether or not there was even a market for a New Age shop in sleepy little Globe remained to be seen. After all, a brief Wikipedia search wasn’t enough to give me much of a feel for the place. But it was definitely the best prospect I’d seen, and while I usually took a long time to make a major decision like this one, weighing the various pros and cons until I felt comfortable with my choice, I knew I didn’t have the luxury of reflection in this particular instance. Not because I was too worried about someone snapping up the property before I could get to it — from what I could tell, the place had been on the market for almost six months — but because I had no idea when Lucien Dumond might decide to make his grudge very up close and personal.

  Before I could start to hedge, I filled out the contact form on the listing and sent it. There. I’d done all I could. For all I knew, the shop/loft wasn’t even available anymore, and the real estate agency had just neglected to take down the ad.

  But even as I got up to fetch my neglected cup of tea, my phone rang from inside my purse. I hurried over to grab it and noticed right away that the area code was an unfamiliar one, definitely not anything in the L.A. area.

  Again, I made myself answer rather than letting it roll over to voicemail. Trying to sound cheery and brisk, I said, “Hi, this is Selena Marx.”

  “Oh, hello, Selena!” exclaimed a woman’s voice, gushing, almost theatrical. “This is Josie Woodrow, the listing agent for the property on Broad Street in Globe. I just got your email. When would you like to look at the property?”

  “Well….” I hesitated, wondering if there was some way to say I wanted to buy it sight unseen without sounding like a lunatic.

  Probably not.

  Obviously sensing my hesitation, Josie sailed right in before I had a chance to say anything more. “Oh, I understand that you’d be coming from out of state. My schedule is very flexible.”

  “Thanks,” I replied, although the flexibility of Josie Woodrow’s schedule really wasn’t the point. “No, I actually wanted to know if you had a video walk-through of the place. If I like it, I’ll take it.”

  A long pause on the other end of the line. Then she said, “Well, I don’t have one at the moment, but I can pop down there and film a virtual tour on my phone and send it to you. Would that work?”

  “It would be great,” I replied, hoping I hadn’t just shot myself in the foot. What if the walk-through revealed flaws that the still images on the Zillow listing hadn’t revealed? Then I’d have to decline and feel guilty for making Josie go to all that extra effort….

  But apparently, she wasn’t too concerned about the property’s possible shortcomings, because she said, “I can go do it right now. Just give me a half hour or so.”

  “Oh, there’s no hurry,” I said automatically, even though there sort of was. However, since I couldn’t really tell her that I needed to get out of L.A. as quickly as possible because a rabid necromancer had decided he didn’t want me operating in the same town — well, without her thinking I was a complete loon — I only added, “But thanks. I really appreciate it.”

  “No problem at all. I’ll send you the video when it’s ready. ’Bye!”

  She hung up then, and I was left standing there as I stared down at the phone in my hand and wondered if I might have taken leave of my senses.

  The die was cast, though, and so there wasn’t much I could do except pour myself another cup of tea and try to look around and take a quick inventory of my possessions. The situation seemed to require stealth, and so it wasn’t as though I could have a moving pod deposited in front of the house so I could pack my things at my leisure.

  And really, I wasn’t so attached to my stuff that I couldn’t leave most of it behind. Obviously, I’d take my books and my crystals and favorite pieces of art, along with the items on my altar, as well as my clothes and jewelry. But most of the furniture was thrift store and garage sale finds. I didn’t need to take it with me. A few discreet ads on Craigslist, and I could probably get rid of most of it without much of a problem.

  As for my clients…well, if I told them I was moving out of state, I’d be tipping my hand, and word might get back to Lucien. Probably better just to say I’d decided to get out of the psychic business, and then give them referrals to other witches in the area that I knew could take them on as clients and provide the kind of readings they expected.

  And family?

  Well, my mother and I weren’t very close. It wasn’t that we had an acrimonious relationship, more like, since I’d proved to her that I was able to support myself from the time I was nineteen, she didn’t see a huge reason to be intimately involved in my life. My choice of vocation had bemused her more than anything else, although I knew that when she spoke about me to her husband’s friends, she always referred to me as a “life coach.” I guessed that “hedgewitch” wouldn’t go over too well at cocktail parties. Yes, L.A. had its share of New Age types, but most people didn’t think magic was real.

  I knew better, however.

  Anyway, if I told my mother that I’d decided to move to Arizona, she would probably take the news calmly in stride just like she did just about everything else in life. Even an unexpected pregnancy at twenty-three hadn’t really thrown her for a loop. No, Elizabeth Marx just kept on keeping on.

  In a way, I wished I could be more like her. Nothing ever seemed to rattle her cage.

  Whereas I was seriously planning on upheaving my life because of a rumor.

  No, it was more than that. If Mazey had only been telling tales out of school — which really wasn’t her style — then the cards and the pendulum would have shown me it was safe to disregard her warnings. Instead, they’d pointed me toward a new beginning in a new place. And that meant I was probably doing the right thing, even if it might have seemed crazy to an outside observer.

  My phone beeped, signaling that I had a text. I unlocked the screen and went to my messages, then opened up the attached video Josie had sent. It was a little jerky, probably because she’d been hurrying, but it showed me pretty much everything I’d wanted to see.

  The place was beautiful. Old wood floors sanded to a soft gloss, high ceilings with probably the original plaster moldings. Exposed brick on one wall framing a real fireplace with a honey-oak mantel. The kitchen was small but had granite counters and new-looking stainless appliances. Both bathrooms were likewise updated and gorgeous. Two bedrooms with high ceilings and surprisingly ample closet space — a lot more than I had in my current duplex.

  And the storefront downstairs was equally nice. The walls had been faux-finished in a warm reddish umber, and there were more of the same moldings and exposed brick. No display fixtures, but I could order all that stuff once I’d determined what kind of stock I’d be selling.

  All in all, I probably couldn’t have found a better place to land if I’d chosen everything myself. If this wasn’t the universe telling me that Globe was the place I was meant to go, I didn’t know what else it could possibly be. The nervous churn in my stomach subsided a little, and I took a breath. I knew what I needed to do.

  Love it, I texted Josie. I’ll take it. I’m paying cash; what’s the next step?

  For
some reason, I’d expected another flabbergasted pause. This time, however, she seemed to be ready for me, because she came back immediately.

  You’ll need a ready cash deposit to hold the place, she responded. Then an inspection and a title search. I can set all that up. Once it’s done, you’ll need to send a cashier’s check or wire the funds. I can walk you through all that.

  Great, I told her. Go ahead and let me know where to send the deposit.

  She texted over the information, and I told her I’d get it to her as quickly as possible. In fact, as soon as I was done messaging her, I called my bank and requested the wire transfer for the deposit. Not too long after that, I got another text from Josie, letting me know the wire transfer had gone through and she was in the process of reaching out to the house inspector.

  The place will be yours in less than a week, she messaged. Start packing!

  When I saw that text, my hands started to shake. I’d done some crazy, impulsive things in my life, but buying a live/work space in Globe, Arizona, sight unseen probably had to sit at the top of that list.

  To reassure myself, I pulled out my Tarot deck again and gave it a good shuffle. I didn’t know what I’d do if the damn thing turned up another Tower card, but I needed to know.

  The Ace of Pentacles. Probably one of the most fortuitous cards to turn up in the deck, it generally symbolized wealth and opportunity. I didn’t know if I was going to strike it rich selling pagan paraphernalia in small-town Arizona, but it seemed I wouldn’t have to worry too much about taking a financial bath.

  Just to be sure, though….

  I pulled another card.

  The Lovers. Hmm.

  Other than Lucien’s completely unwanted physical interest in me, I hadn’t had much of what you could call luck in the romantic sense. I was always upfront with the guys I dated, telling them how I earned a living and how my metaphysical practices were a huge part of my life, but they tended to bail out as soon as I told them I couldn’t go to the movies that night because I had to stay home and recharge my crystals under the light of a full moon.