Past Lives

February 14th, 2015

Penelope Boyd hates the city. She hates the people and the noise and god, the smell. The smell of burning gas and busy lives and forgotten pasts.

That’s what she’s thinking about when she misses her train into the city that fateful morning in mid February (that heavy, putrid city smell awaiting her) because she hasn’t quite perfected a spell for catching the train on time. She realizes maybe, that’s what she should’ve been focusing on.

She isn’t sure how but she always seems to lose at least twenty minutes of time in her morning routine, sucked into a black hole somewhere never to be found. Whether she takes a shower the night before or doesn’t bother to do anything with her dark, collarbone length hair, she is perpetually late wherever she’s going. (She hopes maybe one day karma will bring all that lost time back to her and she’ll actually finish a paper on time or something.)

But she’s already had two strikes in a month and her boss, Maria, is sure to notice if she doesn’t make it through the door of the tiny psychic shop downtown on time, so still she waits impatiently, foot tapping.

She’d gotten the job by pure coincidence. It is ridiculous and stupid and cliche, a witch in a psychic shop, she’s fully aware. Except that she isn’t a psychic and she isn’t sure anyone in the shop actually is. She knows if there really is some higher power, they get a sick kick out of it every time she steps through the door, five minutes late.

She catches the next best train into the city, a little more crowded and a little too loud, and she has to stand and hold onto a grimy pole but she gets to watch the tunnels rush by and study her reflection in the cloudy windows. If witches were still a common concept, she’d stick out like a sore thumb in her tight black jeans and matching turtleneck, paired with clunky boots and silver rings. But witches are a thing of the past, so she’s learned.

It pisses her off a bit, witches have never gone away, not really. Not when they were burned at the stake or turned into children’s Halloween costumes. They were just good at hiding, at adapting, at honing their craft, at saving the world behind a thin veil of smoke.

But Penelope doesn’t feel much like she can save the world when a weird, little wannabe hipster boy is dragging his eyes up and down her legs from behind a brand new, Barnes and Noble copy of Bukowski. Instead she feels the pendant under her turtleneck turn to ice against her skin as if she doesn’t already know. So she pulls it out and snarls at him, makes sure he is fully aware they are not a match. Not in a million years. (Not that it matters, Penelope thinks the idea of soulmates and matching pendants with glittering gemstones is a more pathetic idea to reassure you of your existence than the idea of psychics in dusty shops downtown.)

She’s been taught the concept of soulmates for as long as she can remember, and for as long as she can remember, she’s hated the whole idea. In theory it is simple, everyone has a soul. Souls never really die. They move from home to home, never staying longer than their lifespan, but they do not die (though, some days her soul feels so old and tired, she just wishes it would).

Unless they fail to find their soulmate.

That’s where those stupid, silver necklaces with their intricate shapes and gleaming stones come into play. The legend has it, you receive your necklace your first sleep after your birth by a silent wisp of smoke resembling a woman in black. There are hundreds of stories and myths of what she represents, of how she won’t be satisfied until every soul has felt every sort of pain she did in her long, miserable existence, of how the only way to ever truly find happiness and to be reborn again is to find your soulmate. Your soulmate who has the only pendant in the world that will match up to yours, gemstone shade and charm shape and all. The only person your charm will scald your skin for, to make sure you don’t miss them.

It’s a load of shit.

And that’s what Penelope is thinking about when she flies into the shop, a mile a minute, hair blown across her face and cheeks pink from the wind. (She’ll learn much later what an even sicker kick that higher power must’ve gotten out of her that day.)

“Nelly!” Gina (the first shift version of Penelope) is popping out of her seat behind the psychic’s desk before she can breathe in her first breath of dust and stale air. She has to hold back an eyeroll and the urge to tell her it’s Nel or Penelope, not Nelly, because she’s only a minute late and it wouldn’t be wise to draw attention to it.

“Hi, Gina,” she mumbles instead, dropping her purse behind the desk directly in front of the doorway as Gina tears off the ridiculous, printed scarf on her head and dark, knit shawl from her shoulders before passing them to Penelope automatically.

“You’ll never believe what just happened!” she titters on in her heavy accent as Penelope ties the stupid scarf around her hair and pulls on the shawl, “I got a fucking twenty buck tip just before you got here!” her voice drops and her bubblegum stops smacking as Penelope reaches to shove her necklace back under her turtleneck, “And Maria finally hired someone to replace Sarah, and he’s gorgeous!”

Penelope doesn’t hear the rest of her spiel before her skin makes contact with the silver and burns.

It feels a little bit like the world has been tipped upside down, not at all like someone who didn’t believe in soulmate’s would’ve ever expected it to feel like. There’s a rushing in her ears and something bubbling up in her chest as she lets the pendant fall back against the black material on her chest. It cannot be happening. Not here. Not now. Not him.

She sees him then, standing behind the counter in a thick, navy sweater, completely oblivious to the metal threatening to burn his skin through it as he listens intently to whatever Maria is telling him and something in her chest feels funny. It feels like something like recognition, like coming home after a long vacation and knowing nothing has been moved but nothing is quite in the same place. She hates it.

She hates him. Gina’s right, of course, he’s gorgeous. Thick brown curls frame his green eyes and a strong jaw. He’s tall and a little lanky, but broad enough in the shoulders to come off as strong. His hands are splayed on top of the glass display cases, large and veiny and dotted with silver rings and tiny tattoos. He is exactly her type, the exact sort of weird, indie type she’d take to bed, the kind her pendant would turn to ice against her skin for. (Except this time it hasn’t.)

And she’s screwed.

Her mind is racing a hundred miles an hour and she’s sure her heart is going to beat out of her chest as she sits down at the desk, absentmindedly waving Gina off and telling her to have a good weekend and hoping she won’t notice something is off. She has no idea what she’s supposed to do, how she’s supposed to prevent the absolute worst.

A few years ago, she would’ve come up with some elaborate, intricate spell to ward him off, a few months ago even, she would’ve tried some nasty little curse. Now, she wonders if it would just be quicker to tell him to fuck off.

She doesn’t have the chance though. She’s only just sat down and began nervously reorganizing the mess Gina had left when Maria appears in front of her, smoking a cheap cigarette and tapping her foot impatiently.

“This is Harry. You’re going to train him. Harry, this is Penelope.”

Penelope will not take her eyes off the cheap crystal ball in front of her, she won’t. She can’t. Not when Maria’s shoes clack away and out the front door. Not when this boy, Harry, is clearing his throat as if she didn’t hear Maria at all.

The words are sticky, clinging to her throat, “You can sweep the floor.”

He snorts, an accent she isn’t expecting drawls out, “I don’t think that qualifies as training, love.”

Her veins run hot, wondering if he knows or if he likes to piss off every girl he meets, “Training isn’t my job.”

“Sounds like it is right now.”

She can’t hold back a snarl, can’t keep her eyes from looking up to burn into his. She feels her breath catch in her chest, his green eyes burning back just as intently into her brown. She hopes to some sick higher power he doesn’t know, hopes he’s an oblivious idiot. Hopes she can escape the shift unscathed and quit, find something else with better pay that qualifies as a real job. Maybe across the city.

“The broom’s in the back.”

He doesn’t get a chance to argue, the bell on the front door behind him is ringing and a thin, sheepish figure is pushing past the beads in the doorway. Penelope is already forcing herself into character before he can step away.

The first customer is easy, a nervous, wisp of a teenage girl. They’re easy to read and Penelope likes to think she isn’t taking advantage of one of her own if she uses whatever reading they choose to build their confidence and hope in the future. She’s always felt most protective of her own kind.

She can feel Harry’s eyes on her periodically as he sweeps and she tries her hardest to ignore it. Before the second customer she manages to unclasp the fiery chain from her neck and toss it in a drawer like an outgrown, childhood toy and doesn’t dare to check if his eyes have caught her.

By the end of the night she’s read ten people, average for a Saturday night, and has not stopped thinking of ways to escape. She’s made him sweep and dust and wipe down display cases filled with cheap jewelry and knick knacks, which means as soon as the last customer is gone, she is free and so is he.

She busies herself with pretending to straighten up her obnoxious costume in a desk drawer until he disappears to the back room, to return some cleaning product, and makes a grab for the necklace in the drawer and her purse next to her feet. She thinks maybe if the necklace hadn’t still been so damn hot or maybe if her hands were a little more nimble, she could’ve shoved it in her pocket and been on her merry way.

But of course that fucking necklace is still searing hot, putting angry, red lines into her hand and streaming curses from her lips as she dumps it in her purse and makes a dash for the door. But he’s already beat her there.

“Show me how to lock up?”

She doesn’t. She rolls her eyes and does it herself, hoping he’ll take a hint and slip off into the night.

“How do you get home?” he asks when the shop is secure and she’s pulling out a pack of cheap cigarettes (for emergencies only, she swears). The city is lit only with its own lights, but completely still, completely dead.

“Train,” she answers flatly and digs around for a lighter, avoiding the necklace at all costs, “No, I don’t want you to walk me. Yes, I’m sure.”

He pauses as she places the cigarette between her chapped lips, “This isn’t going to be easy, is it?”

Her veins run hot again because he is an idiot, naive and simple and everything Penelope never got the chance to be. He accepts his fate easily, lies down for it even. And she refuses. It is against her birthright, every fiber of her being. Witches are not pliant and complacent, they cannot be. ‘Magic is not for the passive – it is employed by those who are unwilling to submit meekly to their destiny or fate.’

“You’re better off giving up now,” she flicks the lighter a few times, avoiding his eyes, avoiding the familiar little pendant hanging around his neck, “Save you the trouble.”

“‘M not much of a quitter,” he admits quietly, the most genuine tone she’s heard all night (though she hasn’t heard much).

“Well ‘m not much of a believer,” she tries to keep her voice flat. She isn’t, not in the things he believes in anyway.

“So it won’t make a difference if I ask you out to get to know you?” his voice is still honest, still true, not even trying to guilt her, “For the sake of the whole thing?”

She swallows harshly, inhales deeply, shakes her head and forces herself to turn on her heel before she answers, “I told you, ‘m saving you the trouble.”