Hannah parked next to the bank, fed the meter, and walked the block and a half. When she pushed open the heavy wooden door, she was met with a curtain of beads, which she moved aside.
“Jinny!” Hannah called, but the store was silent. Jinny owned a spiritual store: tarot cards and crystals, herbs for burning, plants and succulents that all had medicinal purposes, candles and beads and incense. “Jinny!” Hannah called again.
“I’m coming!” she yelled from the back, and when she emerged, she was fidgeting with a black velvet turban on her head, tied in a front knot, her hair poking out like straw. She looked electrified. Her lipstick was bright red, smeared across her top front teeth.
“HANNAH!” she shouted, her excitement contagious as Hannah laughed and hugged her. She smelled like lavender and something earthy, musky. She jingled when she moved, all her rings, the bells on the fringe of her shawl, her silver and pewter bangle bracelets. “I’m so happy you’re back. Will you live here now? Fae didn’t bring you around much, but when she did, you girls were always a bright spot in my day. Then you got moody and teenagery, but we all do, I suppose. Hell, I used to sneak smokes from Billy Crawler’s pack, and he was at least ten years older than me. I was a bad kid, though—you guys were never bad kids. Come in; sit down. SIT DOWN!”
She pulled a chair out from the round table in the center of the store and got busy, wrapping a bundle of herbs: lavender, sage, and sweetgrass. She lit it on fire and danced gracefully around the room, her arm bowing in a swooping arc. She turned down half the lights and hummed as she worked. “Your aura is like death, child. What is so heavy? Is someone dying? Well, that’s an insensitive question, I suppose, given the circumstances. We’re all dying, at any rate.” She stopped and peered right at Hannah, and again Hannah felt overwhelmed at the volume of chatter. “No, that’s not it. You’re not upset about Stuart. He’s been dying for years. Waiting to die! Ridiculous. We treat animals better than humans. Who waits to die? Now he’s alone. A burden. That would kill him, you know. No, it’s not Stuart.” She leaned closer still, scrutinizing Hannah’s face. “It’s not Fae either.”
“I came with a question.” Hannah picked at her fingernail, uncertain how it would be received. “Who was Warren Turnbull?”
Jinny stopped moving, stared at Hannah, her mouth gaping in shock. “Where the HELL did you hear that name?” She threw the bundle of herbs on the ground and stomped the embers out with her Doc Martens (oh God, Hannah had just noticed she was wearing Doc Martens). She flung open the cabinet doors and started pulling out dried bales of green, stacking them on the checkout counter. She wrapped a new gathering and rambled as she worked: “Cedar, sage, I think. We need a smudge.”
“Jinny, who was he?”
Jinny lit the end and blew gently across the embers. She began her dancing anew, slower, her eyes closed, her lips moving without sound. Hannah watched with amusement and awe, but the smoke was starting to give her a headache. Jinny carried the bundle over to a milk glass bowl and set it down, and a curl of smoke lifted, swayed toward the ceiling.
Jinny pulled the chair out opposite Hannah and sat down abruptly. “Warren Turnbull is a terrible human being.” She slammed her hands flat against the table. “He’s abusive and a drunk, and he’s evil, pure evil. He’s the worst person I’ve ever known, and believe me, I’ve known an awful lot of completely devoid human beings. People with no soul. The man has no soul. He’s still alive, goddamn it, because even the Lord don’t want him. He lives over in the brown house next to the old railroad station. It looks like it’s made of kindling, and I do sometimes wish it would burn to the ground with him in it. I wouldn’t say I pray for that, but I say my ‘incantations,’ we’ll say.” Jinny bunny eared her fingers around the word incantations. “You leave him alone. I don’t want to hear of you going anywhere near him, y’hear?”
Hannah had trouble imagining her aunt married to a man who was “devoid of soul,” and curiosity pricked her. “I understand, Jinny. I won’t. But why is he so bad? What did he do?”
“He has no moral conscience. He’ll do whatever it takes to get what he wants. He’s a lowlife; he’ll steal from you. I know he’s killed people. Bar fights, he claimed, and whatnot, but you don’t bring a knife to a bar unless you’re itching to fight and fightin’ to kill, right? Moral people don’t do that. He doesn’t care who he hurts. He’s a bad egg. A bad apple.”
“But who is he? To Fae?”
“She found out about him the hard way. I always knew, but she never wanted to listen to me, see? He used to be good lookin’; that’s the problem. Your aunt always had a weak spot for those dashing men, personalities of boards, half of ’em. Well, not her Stuart—she finally found herself a good one.” Jinny wagged her finger in Hannah’s direction. “But if you’re asking, you already know. Warren is Fae’s husband.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Now
Hannah left Jinny’s with a promise to visit tomorrow, for a “proper reading,” she called it.
“I’m just too upset now to read you. You understand, right? Any mention of Warren sends my blood pressure skyrocketing. You can’t read under stress; that’s not how it works. You have to be calm, ready to receive. But you have to promise to come back. I loved your sister so much. You didn’t come around, but she did. You know she came in the shop, right?” Every sentence flowed into a new one, a new thought. “Well, she did. She and that little friend of hers. Sometimes nearly every day! I was teaching them how to scry and smudge. They wanted to do tarot, but I never had the patience for that. Anyway, you promise me you’ll come back, you hear?”
Hannah felt drained, her legs heavy as Jinny pushed her out the door. Everything she’d thought she knew about her aunt and uncle was a lie. Was Stuart even technically her uncle? No, now that she thought about it. He was just some random man who lived with her aunt. The thought was depressing. They’d had a child, for goodness’ sake!
“Jinny, why didn’t Fae and Warren divorce?” Hannah stopped in the doorway, turned back to a fretting Jinny, who was muttering and flitting around the shop.
“Divorce? Oh, he wouldn’t hear of it. Would never authorize anything. Fae tried to get him to sign divorce paperwork. Woulda cost her a fortune in court. He wouldn’t hear of it. Wouldn’t pay alimony, nothing.”
“Was Uncle Stuart Ruby’s father?”
“I always assumed so, but I guess no one but Fae knew for sure.” Jinny tugged a lock of black hair, twirling it around her finger. She didn’t seem to care who Ruby’s father was. “You’ll come back?”
“I promise.” Hannah meant it. As she pushed open the door, she felt the vibration of a phone in her pocket. When she retrieved it and read the display, she was dismayed to realize her hands had started to shake. Wyatt.
“Hey,” she said casually, with a slight wobble in her voice that she hoped was only detectable to her. Whether it was because there might be news about Julia or simply because it was Wyatt was impossible to tease apart.