Crystals and Criminals Read online

  “Your friend is right. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Besides, it’s clear that the stars aligned to bring you to me today and I already know you’ll agree, so let’s stop wasting each other’s time,” Madame Astra said as she dragged her fingertip across the top of her crystal ball. It illuminated and its contents swirled angrily like clouds before a thunderstorm. She pushed back from the table and stood to walk through the curtain hanging behind her, and the crystal ball floated through the air after her.

  Defiant and determined to prove her a fraud, I stomped around the table and followed into a pitch black room made by curtains hanging on all four sides. The crystal ball sat shining suspended in midair in the center of the room like a lonely planet in space. Madame Astra snapped her fingers in the darkness and the surrounding walls flashed to life in sparkling, moving constellations mimicking the night sky and revealed her sitting behind the crystal ball in a lavish leather high-backed chair.

  She gestured to a matching chair across from her on the other side of the ball. “Have a seat and we can get started.”

  Though my heart hammered and the little voice in the back of my head screamed at me to turn around and leave before this went any further, my morbid curiosity won out. I plopped down into the chair and locked eyes with Madame Astra, whose face swirled in the ghastly purple light from the crystal ball. A warm but no less unsettling smile split her face.

  “Very good. There are only three ground rules before we consult the stars. First, you may never touch my crystal ball under any circumstances. It’s dangerous for those who haven’t trained in the art of Divination.”

  I didn’t see how it could hurt me, but I wasn’t in a position to argue, so I nodded, and she continued.

  “Second, you must never interrupt me or speak when I haven’t spoken to you first. My connection to the cosmos is fragile and even a whispered word can break it.”

  “Got it.”

  “Good. Last, you might not like what the stars have to say, but they never lie. That said, if at any point you feel you can’t or don’t want to continue, you may leave.”

  I swallowed hard. “Understood.”

  “Then let’s pull back the Veil,” she said and gripped the sides of the crystal ball. On its surface, a bright, pulsing orb of light appeared under each of her fingertips, and her eyes turned as purple and milky as the ball’s contents. She stayed that way for several moments without saying a word, and just as I’d wondered if she’d fallen asleep, she let out a long, low sigh as if she’d expelled a spirit and her eyes returned to normal. A sad, pitying look appeared on her face.

  “There’s much pain and loss in your past, child. More than anyone your age should ever have had to endure,” she said. “Now I understand why your grandmother means so much to you. She’s all the family you have left.”

  My throat constricted, threatening to cut off all my ability to breathe. Still, it wasn’t exactly a secret that my parents weren’t in the picture anymore, a fact that she might very well have been aware of long before now.

  I nodded. “She is, other than—”

  “Your boyfriend, Beau Duncan,” Madame Astra interrupted. “Yes, I know. And the family you’ve made for yourself here in Moon Grove. Flora, Mallory, the Headmistress of Veilside, and many more.”

  I stared at her, speechless. While my relationships with the people she’d mentioned weren’t secrets either, as a traveling psychic who hadn’t spent over two days in Moon Grove it wasn’t likely she would’ve known that without some supernatural connection.

  “You still doubt me, I can sense it. Well then, let’s dig a little deeper,” she said and spun the crystal ball on its pedestal like a basketball on the tip of her finger. She let it spin for a few moments before slapping her palm down on the top. The swirling, smoky interior shifted and rolled until eventually it formed a dusty picture: it was me and what looked like Beau standing in each other’s arms, and Beau seemed to be crying but it didn’t look like it was because he was sad.

  “As much pain and loss as you’ve known, soon there will be so much joy and growth that it’ll overshadow everything you’ve been through. And when that happens, I suspect your grandmother won’t be able to stay away.”

  “What does that mean?” I really had no idea what she was on about.

  Madame Astra smiled, her eyes twinkling. “As you said, there are some things it’s better not to know ahead of time. You’ll realize what I mean when the time is right.”

  “So you’re just gonna leave me hanging?”

  Her smile widened. “Not for long. Now, I’m sensing that there’s something else you deeply want to ask me about. In fact, I’m sure that’s why you agreed to the reading.”

  “If you already know what it is, why don’t you just tell me and save me the trouble?”

  Madame Astra chuckled. “Suit yourself. You want to know if your parents are still alive, and if they are, where in this wide, wonderful world they might be — and why they haven’t returned to you and Moon Grove.”

  The room spun away from me and I gripped the edge of the table in front of me to keep from spiraling away with it.

  “You want to know, more than you’ve ever wanted to know anything else, but you’re too afraid to hear the truth, even now.”

  “No, I’m not,” I insisted, though she was right. “I can handle it. Prove you aren’t just pulling my wand.”

  “Very well, but as I warned you before, child: the stars don’t lie, and you may not like what they have to say.”

  “That’s life.”

  Madame Astra nodded and placed her fingertips on the crystal ball again. It turned as black and dark as the room around us for a few moments until the same stars and constellations on the curtains appeared inside it. They blended together in a cosmic soup and eventually straightened again to form a rough celestial sketch of a witch I didn’t recognize.

  “Your mother, Ember Clarke,” Madame Astra said. The stars in the ball swirled again and formed another image next to hers, this one of a man. “And your father, Robert Clarke.”

  I couldn’t take my eyes off them. They looked like the man and woman I remembered, enough that I couldn’t mistake them as anyone other than my parents, but they both wore tense, stressed expressions that said they’d seen and been through a lot since that fateful night when they’d dropped me off at Grandma Elle’s for the last time — and never come back.

  For years, Grandma told me they’d died in a car crash, but since moving to Moon Grove I’d learned it wasn’t true. They were hiding a magical artifact worth more than anyone could fathom for Heath and the Council, but someone had discovered them so they attempted to move the artifact and their follower attacked them. No one had seen either of them since.

  I shoved back from the table and jumped from my chair. “I can’t do this. I’m sorry,” I whispered as I wiped the wetness from my eyes and stole one last glance at the portraits of my parents — my mother with her wild red curls that looked just like mine, and my father with his timid smile. I couldn’t explain it, but I sensed there was something on the tips of their tongues they wanted to say that I didn’t think I could handle hearing.

  “That’s your prerogative, child,” Madame Astra said. “You can find me at my pop-up shop downtown should you change your mind.” She snapped her fingers again and the room switched from dark to light instantly as if she’d flipped a switch. The crystal ball’s liquid-like insides slid down the sides of the glass and settled in the bottom like sand in an hourglass.

  “I need to go,” I said and reached for the curtain to pull it back, but the feeling of Madame Astra’s hand on my free wrist stopped me. Though I would’ve rather run as far away from her as I could, instead I faced her.

  Her intense eyes bored into mine. “The answers are always written in the stars, child, even the uncomfortable ones. But hear me: learn to live for the present and the joy waiting for you and let go of your past. It can’t define you unless you allow it.”r />
  “Good luck with your app and your negotiations, Madame Astra. We won’t be seeing each other again,” I said as I tugged my arm free from her grip.

  “The stars say otherwise. It’s Ms. Norwood you won’t be seeing again,” she called after me as I fled through the curtain, but I paid her no attention.

  Mallory took one look at my reddened eyes and the tears pouring from their corners and dashed toward me with Heath on her heels. Gillian looked at me like I’d committed a grievous sin of etiquette, but I couldn’t have cared less about what she thought of me.

  “Oh, Lilith. I’m sorry, Zoe, was it that bad?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it. I’m going back to my office. I need to be alone for a while,” I said and hurried down the hall before she or Heath could argue.

  Chapter Four

  I lost track of time while I sat behind my desk in my office staring at the ceiling, unable to keep myself from thinking about what Madame Astra had come so close to saying.

  Even though I’d cut her off, I knew what she wanted to tell me long before we got to that point — but I didn’t know what to do with the information.

  For my entire adult life, I’d clung to the hope that my parents were still alive out there somewhere and trying to make their way back to me, despite all the years that passed since their disappearance. I’d never once stopped to consider that might not be the case, but now the realization crashed into me at full force.

  They were gone, and they weren’t coming back. Madame Astra hadn’t said it, but she didn’t need to; I hadn’t used my mind-reading abilities to glean it from her, but I might as well have. I saw the answer on her face as clear and bright as the stars she claimed she could read.

  How could she expect me to let go of the past when it was the biggest unsolved mystery I’d yet come across? Besides, letting go of things was never a strength of mine — it was part of what had made me such a good journalist when I was still practicing.

  Instead of assuaging my curiosity about what happened to my parents, the painful revelation of their deaths only raised more questions: If someone attacked them, who was it? Had they really gone after them because of a magical artifact — Merlin’s Heart, an immortality-granting necklace, as Heath had told me months ago, or was there more to the story? Heath also told me that the police found a wand in the glove box of the car my parents fled in, and it looked like my mother had escaped from the attack on her broomstick… So where had she gone, and what happened to her after?

  I couldn’t shake the possibility that Madame Astra was wrong, but I also couldn’t bring myself to believe it. She knew too many details, things no one besides Heath and I knew, and he would never have betrayed my trust by telling her himself.

  Which left me with no other conclusion to draw: Madame Astra was legit. I wasn’t sure whether the realization should comfort or terrify me. If she knew about the deepest, most secretive parts of my past, what else might she know — and how might she use it?

  Derwin Moriarty’s troubled face swam into my mind. Now I understood why he feared Madame Astra and her app, but for an entirely different reason. How could anyone compete with a psychic as powerful and all-knowing as her, and what might a corporate buyout of her technology mean for the things she knew about, well, everyone?

  I shuddered at the thought, and resolved to find some way to make sure it didn’t happen, at least not in Moon Grove. Despite what Gillian thought about keeping Madame Astra in-house, I wanted her as far away from my city as possible. Looking into her eyes every day and knowing what knowledge she possessed and what she could do with it if pushed the wrong way would ruin me bit by bit.

  A soft knock sounded on the door, thankfully pulling me out of my spiral. “Zoe? It’s Heath. Can we talk, or do you still need some time to yourself?”

  I lowered my feet from my desk, straightened my robes, and wiped my eyes. “I’m okay now, I think. Come on in.”

  The door swished open over the plush carpet, and Heath entered wearing a sympathetic smile. He gestured to the chair on the opposite side of my desk. “May I?”

  “Of course.”

  The chair groaned as he sat, and he steepled his fingers on the desk. “I know this is presumptuous of me, so forgive me in advance, but I have to ask: did what Madame Astra say to you in your reading have something to do with your parents?”

  There wasn’t any sense in lying, especially not to the one person in Moon Grove I trusted more than any other, so I nodded. “Yeah. It wasn’t good news.”

  “So I gathered. What did she say, if I can ask?”

  “Technically, she said nothing. She led me right up to the ledge, but I’m the one who jumped.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means they’re dead, Heath. My parents are dead.”

  Heath’s expression fell, making him look much older than his years. “I see. I’m sorry to hear that, Zoe. You know how much they meant to me.”

  “Does that mean you believe her too?”

  “I have no reason not to. It’s possible that your mother and father are still alive, but the odds are exceedingly rare after all this time.”

  I sighed. “Well, that’s that then.”

  Heath’s brows stitched together. “I’m sorry?”

  “I kept trying to convince myself that she’s a hack, but if you believe her, then I have to too.”

  “Again, Zoe, I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say.”

  I shrugged. “There really isn’t anything else to say.”

  “Did she give you any other insights?”

  “Oh boy, did she. After dropping that bomb on me, while I was trying to get out of her tent, she said I needed to embrace my future and let go of my past before it consumed me.”

  Heath smirked. “On that point at least, perhaps she’s right.”

  “Come again?”

  He straightened in his chair and reached across the desk for my hand. I didn’t resist. “What I’m trying to say, as elegantly as possible, is that what’s done is done, Zoe. We can’t change the past, no matter how much we’d like to. It’s easy to fall into the trap of playing ‘What if?’ — Lilith knows I’m no exception — but I’d wager it’s more productive to spend that energy contemplating ‘What now?’ instead. We can only move forward.”

  “Look, I understand where you’re coming from, and I’m not trying to be a bottomless well of negativity or anything, but forgive me for not being at that point yet. After sixteen years of hoping they weren’t, I just learned my parents are dead.”

  He nodded and patted the back of my hand with his. “I understand. We all need time to process and grieve a loss. I’m certainly not rushing you through that, but if I can offer you any solace, it’s this: sometimes we have to make our own families, and it seems to me you’ve done a fantastic job of that here in Moon Grove. You have Beau, Mallory, Flora, Raina, and so many more people in a surrogate family that loves and will support you no matter what, including me.”

  I brushed the fresh wave of tears away from my eyes. “Thanks, Heath. I needed this. You’re right.”

  “You’re welcome, and I mean all of it. I think of you as my granddaughter, and I couldn’t ask for a better one than you.”

  I chuckled. “Now you’re just trying to flatter me.”

  He shook his head and flashed me a warm, loving smile. “Never. Listen, Zoe, I know that losing one’s parents is a painful past to carry no matter the circumstances, but I think what Madame Astra was trying to relay to you was that our pasts, no matter how dark or painful they may be, don’t determine our destiny. You’ve proven that over and over since coming to Moon Grove. The truth is we make our own destiny through our words and actions, and so you have a choice to make: will you live fully in the present and realize your true self, or will you continue to let your past define and constrain you?”

  His words rang in my ears. “That’s not an easy question to answer.”

  “Nor should it be, but it’s
one you must answer. We may never know what happened to your parents, but learning to live with uncertainties as great and painful as that is one of the greatest, most beautiful challenges in life, and I know in my old man’s heart that you’ll rise to it. Despite all you’ve been through, you’ve persevered and succeeded — and it’s precisely that resilience that makes you the incredible witch and young woman you are. Don’t let this news about your parents take that or any of your accomplishments away from you. You’ve earned them in your own right.”

  Though I found it difficult to believe him, I knew he was right. While I’d had a lot of help over the few months I’d lived in Moon Grove from the same surrogate family he’d mentioned, it didn’t diminish my role nor my talents. I’d always stood on my own two feet against whatever came my way, and I couldn’t afford to let that stop now — especially since all of Moon Grove now looked to me to be a strong leader.

  I nodded and took Heath’s hand in both of mine. “Thank you. I don’t know what else to say. I’d be totally lost without you.”

  He beamed, his crows’ feet creasing. “The feeling is mutual. Whether you realize it, Zoe, you are the future of Moon Grove. Someday you’ll stand shoulder-to-shoulder with another Head Warlock, and I can’t wait to see what that Moon Grove looks like.”

  “Oh, I can give it another few years, at least.”

  Heath laughed. “No need to worry. I’m not going anywhere soon.”

  My cell phone rang in my desk drawer, pulling us both out of the moment. “Sorry,” I said with a grimace as I reached for the drawer and pulled out my phone. Beau’s name trailed across the screen. “It’s Beau. I should probably take this.”

  “Of course. I’ll give you some privacy,” Heath said and stood to head for the door.

  I slid the button across the screen to accept the call. “Hey, what’s going on?”

  “You won’t believe this,” Beau wheezed into the phone. The sound of phones ringing and people shouting across the offices of Channel 666 spilled over the line.