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"Don't go blindly through life! Let me use the power of the tarot to show you the way. Call me now for your free reading!" implored a light-skinned black woman with a mediocre Jamaican accent, cards spread before her on the table.
Bonnie took two long strides across the room and flipped the TV switch to OFF before the announcer could insist she "Call 1-800-355-3765." She rolled her eyes and grumbled, then took a deep breath. It was a shame really – "Cleo" could have done so much more with her life, and karma... well, karma would have her way.
Her new client would be here any minute, so she lowered the lights, lit a few candles and a stick of incense, pulled shut the accordion-style door that hid her kitchen, and stepped into her shoes. For some reason unpolished toenails struck a note of inauthenticity with the public. So odd. She wondered momentarily what color Cleo had her toenails painted, then let it go.
The knock on her front door was firm, almost aggressive. She peeked around the curtain and noted the large, two-tone Ford pickup directly in the center of her driveway. It was getting dark, and the neon OPEN sign toward the front of her shaggy lawn was flickering a bit. She'd have to check into that.
Before he could knock again, Bonnie opened the front door with a bright welcoming smile on her face. "Mr. Walters? Such a pleasure to meet you. Please come in." He did, a mix of caution and menace in his aura. She took charge immediately, to make sure he didn't get the idea that he could.
"Sit." She indicated the chair directly across from hers – smaller and less plushly comfortable, but that wouldn't do him any harm. "Tell me why you are here."
"Don't you already know? You're supposed to be the psychic! Har har!" He brayed with laughter, but the insincerity in it made her wince.
"I have mystical skills and knowledge of the arcane, but only God knows all. What is it you seek here?"
"I heard...they say you can do stuff. Magic stuff." The man paused uncomfortably, as though realizing he was still not answering her question, and not wanting to irritate her so much she'd throw him out, because there was something he wanted that possibly only she could provide. If even she could.
Bonnie sat regally in her chair, back straight, holding his gaze but saying nothing. She nodded almost imperceptibly.
"I want... I need something to keep my kids with me. Like the... you know how the Mormons over in Utah marry a bunch of women and have a big bunch of kids and they're supposed to still be together when they get to heaven? They call it sealed. They're sealed to each other like glue."
"I have heard of this. You could become a Mormon."
"Well," he drawled, "that there's the problem. I'm pretty sure heaven's not where I'm going. And I don't know what the other place is like but I don't wanna be hanging out with a bunch of druggies and criminals and creepers for all eternity. I wanna be with my family. I want them sealed to me like glue. They're mine. I created them. They came from me and I want them to stay with me forever."
Walters was sitting completely still, other than his eyes, which shifted their gaze back and forth between her and the room behind her. He'd given up trying to hide his anxiety. That was good.
"Mr. Walters, sir – of course you wish your family to stay close to you! But what you are asking... committing your sweet young children to following you into eternal damnation – is this really what you want?"
She felt as much as saw the anxiety leave him and a stubborn belligerence take its place. She'd unintentionally goaded him into digging in his heels, and cursed her own need to question him, to give him the chance to take back what he'd said.
What he was saying was outrageous. Apart from whether or not it was possible, just the thought – his desire – was horrific. Bonnie's mind spun, knowing she had to play along. She had to provide the answer he was looking for, because if she turned him away he might go to someone else. He might do something worse.
It was time for a tactic she had never had to resort to before – something she kept in her back pocket as a "just in case" plan. Were the circumstances less dire she would have felt guilty, but not today. Today she was going to pull a Cleo.
She stood. "Well then, Mr. Walters. That is a powerful spell you are requesting. I have never heard tale of such a thing being done – perhaps all those who tried before have failed."
"Maybe you just ain't in the loop," he muttered with a smirk. "Maybe I should find another witch."
"'Ain't in the loop,' you say? Sir, I come from one hundred generations of pure Romani blood. I know all. I see all." She hoped he was too rattled to remember the beginning of their conversation when she asked why he had come. "The magical world is a small, close family without secrets. But we are a proud people too, proud of our power and our abilities to assist those such as yourself. If someone had ever done what you ask, I would know."
She moved to the workbench and began to sort through boxes and jars and dozens of ingredients contained in the small built-in drawers below. "But you have come to the right place. Because all the power of my foremothers rests in my hands, and my own on top of that, and if anyone in the world can give you what you ask, it is I."
Walters' eyes had glazed over as he focused on her words, so she wrapped a pebble of rose quartz in a cloth and smashed it loudly with a mallet. He startled and she smiled slightly to herself. "When this concoction is done, you will take it home and place it under the bed of each family member for no less than twenty-four hours. You will then apply it to your third eye"—she touched the middle of her forehead as she said this—"your throat, your heart, and your solar plexus. You will do this for seven days."
As Bonnie spoke she gathered and mashed ingredients – the rose quartz powder, lavender, honey, cinnamon, lemon oil, dried garlic, and salt. She whisked them all together in a bowl and then poured the concoction into a blue glass bottle and stoppered the top with a cork. She returned to the table, where Walters was sitting quietly, gazing at her with anticipation and awe. She swirled the bottle, held it out toward him and then pulled it back.
"This here is powerful, powerful magic – you can change your mind any time before the seventh day of anointing."
He shook his head hard. "I won't." He wanted that bottle so badly he was practically drooling.
Bonnie reclaimed her chair, keeping the bottle on the table close to her, and wrote a very large number on a clean piece of note paper. She slid the paper to Walters with a meaningful look. He met her eyes for a moment, alarmed, then dug a worn leather wallet out of his back pocket. He peeled a few bills off the thick stack, returned them to the billfold, and handed the rest to her. She counted them, quickly but carefully, and slid the bottle across the table.
After Walters mumbled his thanks and skittered out the door, Bonnie kicked off her shoes, turned the TV back on, and settled into her recliner. "Darkness cannot drive out darkness," she spoke aloud to the empty room. "Only light can do that."
