Part 10

Change.  It’s inevitable.

I think that is what Old Jenny was trying to tell me with the Wheel of Fortune.  Or maybe that it was coming and I needed to stop it?  If so, what was the change?  Everything I read said the change should be good, unless the card was reversed.  I try to remember how Mouse was holding it when he handed it to me. I can not.  Or maybe the card meant nothing…

I stand up and stretch, pull my Sigil Sphere from my pocket and begin to roll it around in the palm of my hand.  Absently, I bring the cup to my lips, downing the last few drops of the now luke-warm liquid. 

I leave the coffee shop and duck into the next alley, the book again under my coat, despite the fact that the rain has stopped.  In the little streetlamp light that reaches me, I locate my destination within the sphere and blink.

The sign in the store’s window says ‘closed’ but I knock anyway.  It takes four minutes, but finally I see a light come on in the back of the store.

“Coming.  I’m coming,” A man in his late forties hobbles into view, the lettering on the glass window partially obscuring him.  I can hear the thunk of his cane as it strikes the wooden floor with his every step.  His face lights up when he sees me through the glass door.  He turns the lock and lets me in.

“Charles!”  He says, wrapping both of his arms around me, his cane hitting my shoulder.

“How are you Jason?”  I ask.

“Fine, fine.”  He releases me and takes a step back to look me over.  “You look good,” he adds.

“Thanks,” I smile.  “How’s mom?”  I ask, and he looks at me shaking his head.

“You know, she’s fine.  Dad too.”

“Have you told her?”

He sighs, “No.”  He walks further into his store, past a row of oddly sized jars with labels such as eglantine, fennel, and jasmine.  “If you’re not going to tell her you’re homeless, you could at least come stay with me.  We can put a cot in my office, you can sleep there.”

“Look, Jason, we’ve been over this before, you can barely afford to support yourself as it is.  If you take me in we’ll both be living on the streets in months.”

“We’d make do…”  Thunk, thunk, creak, he walks across the floor, the floorboards groaning with age.  “Would you like some tea?”  He offers shaking his head at my refusal. 

“Sure.”  I follow him across the store, bumping into a shelf and catching a glass skull before it crashes to the floor.  I reseat it upon the small marble pedestal it had previously occupied.

“Nice catch, that.”  He says, smiling.  We pass through a doorway and follow a flight of stairs up to the loft he keeps above his shop.

“So, hows business?”  I ask him as he sets the tea kettle to boil. 

“It’s been pretty steady recently.  I’ve already got next months rent and utilities covered.”

I nod as he pulls an airtight container from his cupboard.  “Look, I should have been up front with you when you opened the door for me.”  He opens the container, the smell of the tea with a hint of mint and lavender, wafting from within.  He pulls two small pieces of cloth from a drawer and spoons some of the dried spices onto them.  He folds each one up and ties them off with small piece of ribbon before dropping each into a mug.

“Look, Charles.  My homeless brother shows up on my doorstep after disappearing almost a year ago.  I know you want something, you’re not in trouble or anything are you?  Are you on drugs again?”

I shudder at the thought of what the heroine had done to my body, thinking back to the wreck I had been then.  “No, nothing like that.”  I pull the tarot card from my pocket.  “What do you make of this?”

He takes the card, flips it over, stares at the black back, and then flips it again.  “Where’d you get this?”

The kettle whistles but he ignores it, still staring at the card.  I get up and pour the hot water into the mugs.  I try to hand him one, note the slack-jawed expression on his face and set his mug down next to him.  I take the other and tell him that it had been given to me earlier in the night.  “What do you make of it?”  I ask.

”Where’d you get this?”  He asks again, more forcefully.

“I told you, it was given to me earlier.  What’s the big deal?”

“I drew this nearly twenty years ago.  It’s from the first deck I made.”