1: The Referral
A normal day at the job turns interesting for Zoe.
“Uh, Zoe?”
I looked up from my desk, freshly shuffled tarot deck between my hands. “Yeah?”
Marisol Alvarez gave me a weak smile. “Are you… do you have a minute?”
Her discomfort piqued my curiosity. Another tarot reader at Another Perspective, Marisol was easily my polar opposite. A bright ray of sunshine, she was the peppy extrovert to my jaded introvert. So why did she look so conflicted right now?
I laid the deck down on its cloth and slid it to my left. “Everything okay?”
She glanced over her shoulder before turning back to me. “Can we come in?”
We? I nodded.
She pushed the door open and ushered a pale-faced couple into my office. “David, Clarissa, this is Zoe Delante. I think she’s better equipped to help with your issue.”
I stood up and gestured towards the chairs across from me, as Marisol slipped back into the hallway. “How can I help you?”
The couple shared a worried glance before David cleared his throat. “You probably won’t believe us.”
I sat back down, hands in my laps. “You’d be surprised.”
“This is going to sound crazy.” Clarissa’s eyes darted around the room, looking everywhere but at me.
“This is going to sound crazy,” she repeated. Her fingers danced against the arms of the chair. “But Marisol said you could help us.”
Something about her agitation screamed danger in a way that sparked a chill down my spine. I reached across the desk. “I can at least listen. Tell me what’s going on.”
They shared another look and she met my eyes. “We… we have a poltergeist in our house. And we’re pretty sure it’s trying to kill us.”
“At first, we just heard noises, but we chalked it up to being in a new house, you know?” She reached out to David, and he wrapped her hand in his. “But then I’d wake up in the middle of the night to the cabinets and drawers in the kitchen being opened. A little creepy, sure, but I’ve had experience with ghosts before, so we kind of just laughed it off.
“But then more stuff started moving. And not small things, but like the dining room table and couches shoved against the wall.”
Tears filled her eyes, and she sat there, her other arm wrapped around her waist, her fear palpable.
I placed my teacup on the table. “Who did it attack?”
“My husband.” She exhaled one shuddering breath. “It pushed him sometimes when he walked through the house. Sometimes just a nudge, but a couple of times, it shoved hard enough to throw him to the ground. But that’s not even the worst part.”
I raised a brow. “Oh?”
“Last Saturday, I woke up to him screaming as he floated three feet off the mattress! And then it slammed him against the far wall! I…
“We have kids, little kids, and we’re really scared that they’ll be next. So we packed them up and have been in a motel since then. We can’t move out. We don’t have family we can live with, and when we talked to the Church, the priest just offered to pray with us.”
Anger seeped into her voice. “We don’t need prayers. We need a damn exorcism.”
“How’d you find out about me?”
Sarah nodded. “I ran into Marisol at the grocery store. We’re high school friends, and I told her everything. She said that you deal with the dead, that you’ve helped her.”
“Yes, but I’m not a priest.”
“I know, you’re a witch, but can you help us?”