“Ah,” she said, as she turned and looked at me, hands on hips, and lunging, “you are a fan of Russell Crowe, I see.”
“That obvious?” I asked. I was lunging right alongside her.
“Well, your eyes lit up when I mentioned his name.”
“I thought I was, you know, acting cool.”
“You were acting, you know, cool...except for the fact that you looked a bit starstruck. Plus, I’m a bit of a psychic.”
“Are you now?”
She nodded, sweat dripping from the tip of her nose. She might be beautiful as hell, but she was quite the sweater.
Welcome to the club, I thought.
“Yeah, I’ve been a little psychic my whole life. I’m always seeing things I shouldn’t see, hearing things I shouldn’t hear, and getting feelings that things are going to happen before they do.”
I digested that, as we switched from lunges to squats. She wanted to keep the squats light, as she wrongly believed that squatting would make her ass big. I explained to her that they wouldn’t but accommodated her request anyway. Besides, she had the bad elbow and I was okay with not putting too much stress on that.
As she positioned herself under the rack, with only a 25-pound plate on each side, I couldn’t help but notice the many glances and outright stares directed our way. Or, rather, her way. Ivy, however, ignored them all. In fact, she could have just as easily been at home, working out in a private gym, for all that she noticed the looks and stares. I suspected that not everyone knew her from her acting. She wasn’t big enough yet. Still, she simply looked like someone famous. And in this town, that was sometimes good enough.
“I guess you think I’m pretty weird,” she said, grunting a little as she squatted with almost perfect form. She was, I knew, twenty-four years old and, in today’s fast-paced world of apps and widgets, that placed her nearly another generation behind me. Then again, I was only in my mid-thirties.
I said, “Even normal people are secretly weird.”
She giggled and focused on her squats. When she was done, she slipped from under the bar as I repositioned it on the squat rack. She patted her face with a towel and said, “There are other things about me, too. Other weird things.”
“Oh?” I said. I eased myself under the squat rack. After all, why not get in my own workout while she cooled down? Yes, I was basically paid to work out, and that tickled me to no end.
“I’m not sure why I’m telling you all of this,” she said. “I don’t normally go around telling people how weird I am.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, waving it off. A young man literally stopped directly behind Ivy—stopped and gawked at her. I cranked out about triple what Ivy had just done. “After all, I might be just as weird.”
“Really?”
“I’ll tell you about it sometime.”
“Okay, deal. So, do you wanna know what else is weird about me?”
“Boy, do I.”
She giggled. “You’re funny. Okay, now keep this between us, all right?”
“I’ll do my best.”
“I’m being serious, Allison. Something like this might, you know, hurt my chances in this town.”
“With looks like yours, kiddo, I doubt it. But my lips are sealed.”
“Oh my God, that was so sweet. Trust me, there are women who are tons prettier than me. Most of the time, I don’t think I’m anywhere close to those other girls.”
I wasn’t sure if she was telling me the truth or telling me what she thought I wanted to hear. But as soon as that thought crossed my mind, I knew the answer was the former. The girl was oblivious to her own good looks.
I wasn’t sure if this made me like her more or less. Either way, she was an easy-to-work-with client. Yeah, I liked her. A lot.
“Well, you’re gorgeous, let’s just settle that right now. And you’re a fine actor, too. Actually, you’re perfect and it’s making me feel less confident about myself. Maybe we should get to the part about you being really, really weird, so that way I can start feeling a little better about myself.”
She laughed. “You’re funny, Allie. Can I call you Allie?”
“Sure, why not. You paid for ten sessions ahead of time, so you can call me whatever you want.”
She laughed again, and then lowered her voice. “Okay, now this is going to sound really out there, you know? But...I think I might be a witch.”
“Now, why doesn’t that surprise me?” I said.
“Wait, what?”
“I think we need to talk,” I said.
Chapter Nine
“So, how long have you suspected you were a witch?” I asked.
We were both drinking unsweetened tea at The Coffee Bean on Third Street in Beverly Hills.
“Since I was a teenager, I’ve always been interested in anything and everything that had to do with witchcraft. I watched Bewitched, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Charmed, The Witches of Eastwick, Practical Magic, you name it. I watched documentaries, studied Wicca. I thought it was normal to be interested in witchcraft. After all, there are women—and men—who are imbued with special powers. Women who look like you and me.”
“Well, maybe like me,” I said.
“Excuse me?”
“Never mind,” I said. “I also have a job as a telephone psychic, but please, go on.”
“Oh, you do?” She paused. “I mean, why wouldn’t you be curious about Wicca? Why not look a little more into it?”
I played devil’s advocate. “Well, many think that witchcraft is evil.”
“Many are wrong. Wicca is an Earth-based religion. They are, if anything, more respectful to life on Planet Earth than many other so-called religions.”
I didn’t want to get into a heated discussion on religion and kept her on track. I said, “So you studied it.”
“I did more than study it, Allie. I practiced it.”
“Oh?”
“And what’s more, I discovered I was damn good at it.”
“Good at being a witch?”
“Right. I sort of had a knack for it.”
“What does that mean, exactly?”
“It means that when I performed a spell...it generally worked.”
I wasn’t a “kitchen witch,” which was a term that was generally applied to someone who used ingredients and such for their witchcraft. Traditional Wiccans often used various ingredients...and, no, not all that “eye of newt” crap. But real ingredients, some of which could be found in most kitchens. Turned out, I wasn’t very good at that sort of stuff at all. The person who had been good at that was, yes, Samantha Moon. She had, in fact, been the kitchen witch of our happy little trio in her former life.