His Temporary Assistant

/> Nope. That starry and hopeful sky behind the trees and shadowed swords definitely was the six of swords. New beginnings and transitions. Most decks used a woman escaping on a boat for the imagery. Not this deck. As an artist, I appreciated the differences in interpretation for tarot.

But if this deck was talking to me, it wasn’t speaking of escape. Unless I was running out of the forest. And I really didn’t want to think about that right now. Especially since I’d be running to a lawyer’s office and a man with a sphincter so tight he could probably create diamonds out of shit.

At least that was what I’d gotten from our email and text interactions so far.

The shadow side of the King of Pentacles could either represent my reluctance to head back into the corporate world or that I was walking into a shitstorm of a job.

Guess I’d find out.

I should be happy to have semi-positive cards as a little looksee into what was coming my way. It wasn’t like I had a ton going on. I mean, I always had fifteen projects going, but nothing that couldn’t be pushed back for a week to help out a friend.

April, the one person in my life who didn’t have a witchy or divinatory bone in her body. If anyone was the epitome of Queen of Swords energy, it was April. All logic with a side of benevolence for those who were in her very close circle.

As far as I was concerned, it was handy to have all different types of people in my personal toolbox, and they didn’t need to know that I had a significator card for most of them. It was something I’d used to learn cards back in the dark ages—when I was seventeen—to figure out how to give readings to other people.

That was also how I’d made friends in high school. Every teenage girl wanted answers from the universe, especially about her love life.

I’d become the witchy goth kid in high school to cover up for the fact that I usually had to make due with thrift store clothing. And it was easier to dye things black or find black items in the donation piles. Not to mention that it gave me a healthy appreciation for vintage music T-shirts. Add some cheap jewelry and black lipstick and I didn’t look like a poor kid.

Weird kid was far easier to deal with. With a mother named Rainbow Moon, I didn’t have far to travel down that twisty road.

Add in ten years and I hadn’t really grown out of the black clothes. Now it was more of an aesthetic thing. That and it made me look damn good due to my dark hair and golden skin. I was vain enough to enjoy that part of the deal too. Plus, since I was always working with multiple mediums for my artwork, black was way better when it came to stains and the endless messes I tended to make.

I preferred wine red lips these days though. And the wine to go with it.

I lifted my Drink Up Witches tumbler and took a fortifying sip. I wasn’t really in the mood for the merlot, but I needed to go to the store and that wasn’t happening right now.

This would do.

I pushed my cards to the side of my drawing table and out of my mind. Learning and growth, my ass. It remained to be seen if my intuition was steering me into crashing waves or safety.

I scooped my hair up into a high ponytail then plopped into my drafting chair. Saturday was my day to work on my weekly web comic. I still hadn’t shared it with anyone. Hoarding all the watercolor drawings in a drawer wasn’t exactly what I’d had in mind when I started drawing the little fox. But I wasn’t quite sure how to share her either. I’d been inspired by a rescue fox account on Facebook, but over the last six months, Sylvia had taken on more and more of my personality.

As was my ritual, I pulled my tiger’s eye and citrine chain off my lamp and slipped it over my head. I needed all the help I could get when it came to my sacral chakra. Well, maybe only half of it. If I got any more of my sexuality side in alignment, I would be crawling up the walls.

Instead, I focused inward and breathed through the short meditation I used to open myself up. I focused on my hips and sinking into the chair. I flattened my feet on the floor and sat up straight, slowly picturing all of my chakras blooming.

As I meditated, I paid special attention to the moon flower I associated with my art, focusing on the silky fragile white flower slowly unfurling and allowing me to share some of its magic. I cupped my fingers around the crystals wound in silver then slowly opened my eyes and reached for a sheet of my watercolor paper.

I came alive in the evening.

I’d tried like hell to train myself to be a morning person, but it just wasn’t to be. The higher the moon in the sky, the more my creativity sparked.

The longer summer days allowed me some extra daylight, like now with the last rays of the day streaming over my drawing table. I took inspiration from the pale yellow slashes and incorporated them into my drawing.

I sketched Sylvia curled into a little shrimp formation and fluffed out her tail to rest over her nose. As the rest of the room in the comic took shape, I stood to stretch out my muscles.

Ouch.

I reached around to the hand crank that changed the angle of my desk. I needed a little more height when I was standing. The heavy iron base had been a bitch to get into my studio, but I loved its antique design.

The scarred teak tabletop suited my earthy side. The antique desk had been a rusted heap headed to the landfill when I’d found it. It had taken a lot of TLC and a healthy bit of bribery for a metal worker friend of mine to get it back to working order. Even more bribes had been necessary—one of which required me to do readings at a bachelorette party for free—to get it up to the second floor of my apartment building.

My sanctuary.

I lived in a small studio in a converted Victorian just outside Kensington Square’s business district on the outskirts of Syracuse, which was one more reason I’d said yes to April. I could literally walk to work.

As I drew the bit of reflection on the window beside Sylvia’s sleeping form, one of the blobs sort of looked like the sleek, triangular shape of a cat’s face. Before I knew what I was doing, I started enhancing the image and a gray cat came out of my damn fingertips.