The girl looks at the door and then back at the woman and shrugs.
“Come have a cup of coffee,” the woman says and turns and walks down the alley and around the corner without waiting for an answer.
The girl hesitates, but then she sticks her paintbrush in her ponytail with the rest and collects her bag and follows.
Around the corner is a store. A neon sign in the shape of an upraised palm with an eye in the middle rests unlit in the center of the large window, surrounded by velvet curtains obscuring the inside. The woman stands in the doorway, holding the door open for the girl.
A bell chimes as it closes behind them. The inside of the store is not like any store the girl has seen before, filled with candles and mismatched furniture. Bundles of dried sage tied with colorful strings hang from the ceiling, surrounded by twinkling lights on strings and paper lanterns. On a table there is a crystal ball and a pack of clove cigarettes. A statue of an ibis-headed god peers over the girl’s shoulder as she tries to find a place to stand out of the way.
“Sit,” the woman says, waving her at a velvet couch covered in scarves. The girl knocks into a fringed lampshade on her way toward the couch, the fringe continuing to dance after she is seated, holding her bag in her lap.
The woman returns with two mugs, the new one emblazoned with a five-point star inside a circle.
“Thank you,” the girl says quietly as she takes the mug. It is warm in her cold hands.
“You can speak,” the woman says, settling herself into an ancient Chesterfield chair that sighs and creaks as she sits. “What’s your name?”
The girl says nothing. She sips the too-hot coffee.
“Do you need someplace to stay?” the woman asks.
The girl shakes her head.
“You sure about that?”
The girl nods this time.
“I didn’t mean to startle you out there,” the woman continues. “Have to be a little wary of teenagers outside at odd hours.” She takes a sip of her coffee. “Your door is very nice. Sometimes they paint not so nice things on that wall, because people say a witch lives here.”
The girl frowns and then points at the woman, who laughs.
“What gave it away?” she asks and though the question does not sound serious the girl points at the coffee mug anyway. Real Witch.
The woman laughs harder and the girl smiles. Making a witch laugh feels like a lucky sort of thing.
“Not trying to hide it, obviously,” the woman says, chuckling. “But
some of those kids talk a lot of nonsense about curses and devils and some of the more easily swayed ones believe it. Someone threw a rock through the window not that long ago.”
The girl looks over at the window, covered by the velvet curtains, then down at her hands. She is not certain she understands people sometimes. There is paint underneath her fingernails.
“Mostly I read,” the woman continues, “like a book about a person, only I read it through an object they’ve handled. I’ve read car keys and wedding rings. I read one of my son’s video-game controllers once, he didn’t appreciate that but I read him all the time anyway, he’s written all over the floors and the wallpaper and the laundry. I could probably read your paintbrushes.”
The girl’s hand flies up to the fan of brushes in her hair protectively.
“Only if you want to know, honeychild.”
The girl’s expression changes at the endearment, she translates it a number of times in her head and thinks that this woman must be a witch to know such things, but she says nothing.
The girl puts her mug down on the table and stands up. She looks toward the door, holding her bag.
“Time to go already?” the woman remarks but does not protest. She puts down her own coffee and walks the girl to the door. “If you need anything you come back here, anytime. Okay?”
The girl looks as though she might say something but doesn’t. Instead she glances at the sign on the door, a hand-painted piece of wood on a ribbon that says Spiritual Adviser, with little stars painted around the edges.
“Maybe you can paint me a new sign next time,” the woman adds. “And here, take these.” Impulsively she plucks a pack of cards from a shelf, high enough to discourage shoplifters, and hands them to the girl. She reads cards only rarely herself but she enjoys giving them as unexpected gifts when the moment feels right, as this moment does. “They’re cards with stories on them,” she explains as the girl looks curiously at the cards in her hand. “You shuffle the pictures and they tell you the story.”
The girl smiles, first at the woman and then down at the cards which she holds gently, like a small living thing. She turns to walk away but stops suddenly after a few steps and turns back before the door has closed behind her.