Delilah Devlin - Lost Souls

“Dat be no ritual,” Celeste said, disapproval stiffening her shoulders.

Cait threw back her head and closed her eyes. “All right. Take me to the circle.” When she glanced toward Celeste, she spotted her curvy figure halfway through the door of her tiny store.

“Hurry it up, gal,” she threw over her shoulder. “Time’s a-wastin’.”

“Finally, she gets it,” Cait muttered as she released her fists.

“I heard dat.”

Cait almost smiled. Celeste appeared fully recovered from her injuries following the wraith attack. Today, she was dressed as always in a long, red-and-gold print caftan that rippled around her pretty form. Cait followed her through her shop, past the shelves crammed with new-age and voodoo kitsch, past her counter with its display of crystals and wands.

Behind the counter, Celeste brushed aside strands of purple beads, entering the “reading room” where she read palms and tarot cards for paying customers.

A black cloth decorated with large pink cabbage roses covered the table. Celeste’s clear crystal ball sat in the center. Cait looked around quickly for the box that held her mother’s rose quartz ball but didn’t see it. Not that she had any intentions of using it herself. Not now. Maybe never again.

Celeste pulled back the chairs and gripped one side of the round table.

Cait grabbed the opposite side, and together they moved the table against one wall, exposing a circle painted in black on the planked floor. A crude pentagram sat at its center, dark oily stains inside each point.

“Begin takin’ off your clothes,” Celeste said as she strode to her cupboard.

“What if you get a customer?” Cait looked over her shoulder.

“I hear da bell. You hide. No more excuses.”

Cait opened her belt and unzipped her jeans. “Why does magic always require someone gettin’ naked?”

“Not always. Sometimes, da spirits like a little pomp. Den you wear a witch’s robes. But right now, gal, you have ta humble yourself.”

“I’m plenty humble.”

“You’re plenty mouthy. Strip! You da one wit’ da favor ta ask.”

Cait stripped off her tank top, toed off her boots, and shoved her pants down her legs.

Celeste gave her body a look, her gaze pointedly lingering on her bra and panties. “Ain’t got not’ing I ain’t seen before. Or dat Morin ain’t touched.”

With her cheeks burning, Cait removed her underwear, shivering a little in the air wafting from a small fan set atop the psychic’s counter.

“Stand in da circle.”

“Which way’s north?”

Celeste pointed, and Cait aligned her body to face that direction.

Celeste gathered short black candles from a shelf and placed one in each point of the pentagram. Then she placed the other items Cait would need in the north corner. She handed Cait a handmade broom made from the stiff silk of broomcorn and stepped back into a shadowy corner.

Remembering another time she’d prepared a magic circle with her mama while standing in their kitchen along with a child’s spell she’d written, Cait held the broom.

“ Sweep, sweep, ” she whispered, brushing from the center of the circle.

“Sweep away the dark. Brush away the bad.

With whisk and wish, I command thee.”

Under her breath, she repeated the incantation to cleanse the circle of any negativity, whether thoughts or spirits. As she worked, she felt her irritation calm.

When she’d finished brushing away imaginary cosmic dirt, she held out her hand for Celeste’s offering of a cone of incense, a small brass dish, and a lighter.

Cait lit the incense and blew on the tip until smoke wafted in the air. Then she walked clockwise around the edge of the circle, fanning the smoke, this time reciting her mother’s much more eloquent spell.

“In this circle, safely unbroken,

Hear my words, truly spoken.

With cleansing smoke and truest heart

Remnants of evil, I bid thee part.”

As she moved, the sweet smoke swept away the remnants of the scents of death and sulfur that clung to her skin, even the faint hint of burning hair that had filled her nostrils since she’d been buzzed.

After three turns and three recitations, Cait set the incense in the southeast point of the pentagram, and then accepted a bowl of water with sea-salt grains settled at the bottom.

Cait swirled her fingers in the water to help the salt crystals dissolve, and then faced the opposite direction. Holding the bowl in front of her she circled, her movements growing more fluid as she went.

“In this circle, safely unbroken,

Hear my words, truly spoken.

Waters open this mystic gate;

Worlds collided, entwined fate.”

After placing the bowl in the eastern point, she picked up a silver salt shaker. As she circumnavigated the pentagram, she sprinkled grains onto the floor.

“In this circle, safely unbroken,

Hear my words, truly spoken.

I call the elements, this circle bound;

Secure my path, while truth is found.”

With all the Elements called into play, save Spirit, Cait prepared to give them their due. Drawing in deep breaths, she cleared her mind, seeking the quiet place inside, the place where she connected with the spirits. Then she carefully erected a wall in her imagination, enclosing the circle with strands of spider’s silk until she stood inside a floor-to-ceiling web, noting only dimly when the black candles laid at every point lit themselves, one by one.

With a chirp from his siren, Sam pulled the unmarked sedan into a parking space in front of Celeste’s new-age shop.

The garish neon sign announcing PSYCHIC INSIDE had been repaired and the large glass window replaced. The last time he’d stood on the sidewalk looking in, a tornado of flying debris had circled inside like a cyclone. At the center had stood Cait, facing a wispy wraith that had trashed the shop and flapped Celeste against the ceiling as though she weighed nothing.

Ghostly wraiths didn’t appear to be their problem this time around. Still, he felt trepidation entering the shop. He’d never admit it, but he felt magic in the air every time he entered. A feeling that reminded him all too clearly of the part of Cait’s life he’d never truly understand or share.

He pushed open the door, only to have to duck suddenly.

Celeste stood to the side, holding up a long stick, the point thrust inside the bell above the door, muffling the chime while he closed it.

Lowering the stick, she pressed a finger to her lips and then motioned him to follow her back to the room where she did her readings. At the opening in the counter, she turned. “You may stand at da door and watch,” she whispered, “but you may not interfere.”

Sam nodded, then slipped past her, quietly parting the beads. The sight greeting him made his breath catch in his throat.

Cait stood at the center of a web-like curtain, candles flaring high and warm golden light playing against her naked skin.

His gaze flew back to Celeste, but she was gone.

Sounds, like chanting but more musical, drew his gaze again. They came from inside the circle where Cait stood swaying. Her eyes were closed. Droplets of water glistened on her skin. A breeze lifted her thick dark hair to send the tendrils dancing around her head. Flames from black candles surrounding her feet blazed, the tips flickering, painting her skin with shadow and light, moving upward like the strokes of a fiery paintbrush to skim her belly, the tips of her hardened breasts, and then her face. She turned slowly, her lips moving with words impossible to hear. Her eyelids drifted upward, and her gaze found him.