“Summer,” he says, gazing into the distance. “And she’s only fourteen.”
I bite back the “aww” that’s on the tip of my tongue. “Are you going home over the break?”
“For a little while. But I have to help Robin with something first.”
More demands from his mysterious roommate.
Avery is tipsy enough to pry. “Help her with what?”
He shifts in the armchair like it’s made of rocks. “We’re hunting down a ley line.”
A what?
“Really?” Avery sits straighter. “Why? Where?”
“Asheville,” Leo replies. “Supposedly, there’s one right in the middle of town. Where the old Vance monument used to be.”
Aaron and I exchange quizzical glances.
Avery asks, “There’s one that close?”
“We’ll find out.”
“Are you going for the solstice?”
Leo nods and rubs the back of his neck. “Liminal space at a liminal time.”
“Okay,” Aaron interrupts. “What in the hell are you two talking about?”
It’s Avery who explains, and what she says is fascinating. A ley line is a straight path of earth energy. For millennia, people have felt nature pulsing along these invisible routes and considered them sources of power or doors to other worlds. Of course, there’s all sorts of cockamamie stories about them, like that they’re faerie paths or the sites of alien landings. But when Avery shows us a website where someone has mapped a ley line from Africa to the UK, I’m floored. The perfectly straight line connects the dots right through the Pyramids, Rome, and Stonehenge.
While Avery talks, I study Leo. He’s a plant-healer, a psychic-collector, and he’s looking for a ley line. Is he some kind of witch, too? And who or what the hell is Robin? None of us have met her or been to her and Leo’s apartment. He says he lives in Breakridge, but he could be a shaman living in a yurt for all I know.
He nods in agreement with Avery’s explanation, but otherwise keeps silent. When she’s through, he goes to the kitchen for more cider. I glance at Avery and Aaron, but they’re still talking about Stonehenge. I guess I’m the only one who notices how evasive he’s being.
He returns to us a minute or two later, wearing a smile. “Anyone game for an experiment?”
An experiment or a test? Or, to put it even more accurately, training?
It’s so hard to tell with Leo.
He settles back into his chair while, at his request, Avery jumps up to get her Tarot cards and a pen and paper. Resting his elbows on his knees, he clasps his hands. “Let’s see what three psychics can do when they work together.”
Avery and Aaron are all eagerness, but me? Not so much. I bite my lip and toy with my amethyst.They’re just cards; they can’t hurt me. They didn’t the last time we used them.
Aaron asks, “You in, Betts?”
“Um—” I return his bright smile with a shaky one of my own. “Sure.”
“Let’s do it. Teamwork.” Avery winks at me. “Like the Three of Pentacles.”
“Exactly.” Leo scoots to the edge of his seat so he can shuffle the cards on the coffee table, and so his knee makes contact with mine. He pulls a card at random and lays it face down in front of us. “Let’s see if the three of you can figure out which card this is.”
Aaron slides it closer to himself. “Lemme guess. We each take a turn with it and see what it tells us?”
“Yeah, but don’t say it out loud. Write it down.”
Presumably to avoid influencing what the next person senses.
