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She hummed to herself as she took candles out of her bulky tote bag and lit them with a wave of her hand. Next, she removed a metal bowl and handed it to me. “Go fill this with water, please.”
I did so and brought it back to her. She placed it on the little round table and gestured for Roger to sit in one of the antique-looking chairs. She took the other chair, and I perched on the edge of the sofa, watching both of them.
“Okay, I need you to close your eyes, Roger,” she said, “and open your mind to me.”
He did so, and she waited a second or two before she leaned over the bowl. Then she immediately sat upright, saying, “Whoa!”
Fourteen
I knew that Minerva would tell me what she saw if she intended for me to know, so I held my tongue and watched her. “Yeah, everything’s all in flux,” she said. “Lots of chaos here. It looks to me like you’re the biggest variable. Your future depends on particular decisions you make.”
Without opening his eyes, Roger said through gritted teeth, “That’s why I’m consulting you. What decisions should I make?”
“I’ll need to drill a little deeper. Give me your hand.”
He lifted his hand from the table, and she removed her large flower brooch, then poked his finger with its pin. He yelped and opened his eyes for a second. “Hey!” he complained.
“Sorry, I needed some blood, and it would have had a different quality if you’d been bracing yourself for it.” She grabbed his hand and moved it over the bowl, squeezing his finger to release a few drops. The blood swirled into the water. I wondered if that had been necessary or if she was messing with him. With Minerva, you never really knew.
She let his hand go and leaned over the water again. “Okay, what you have planned is the only path to success I see for you. If you don’t do it, you won’t go anywhere. You won’t fail, but you won’t soar. However, this path is also a sure route to failure.”
“So if I carry out this plan, I’ll either succeed or fail in a big way, but if I don’t, I’m stuck?”
“That about covers it. At the moment, I’m seeing equal possibilities for all three outcomes. No, wait, the sit still one is fading. I guess you’ve made your mind up there.”
“You can already see it?”
“It’s already causing ripple effects in the universe. Now that you’ve made that decision, I can get into more specifics on the other possible decisions you’re facing. Let’s see… Your biggest threat isn’t what you think it is. I can’t tell you what it is, just that your focus is in the wrong direction.”
I suspected she was talking about me. I hoped he didn’t interpret it that way, or that he was too arrogant to consider that I might be a threat. He’d probably just focus on someone else within the company.
“One of your foes is ancient, another new. You’d do better if your life were more well-rounded. You should have allies from a variety of walks of life. No, not allies, friends. Not having friends could be a problem for you. Allies who join with you for a purpose won’t have your back when you fail. Friends might. Stay at home next Saturday night. Sorry, that one’s kind of random, but the tree I see for that decision leads to potential disaster if you’re away from home.”
“But you haven’t told me anything in particular to do,” he complained.
“You wanted me to scry you up a no-fail plan to get everything you ever wanted? Anyone who tells you they can do that is lying. Ignore what those phone psychics say on late-night infomercials. They just want your credit card number. I’m telling you that I see a lot of branches in your fate—one thing happens if you make one decision, another thing with a different decision.”
“Then tell me which decision I should make.”
“It’s not that specific. Just that you have a lot of potentially life-changing decisions happening in the next few weeks. You are at the critical time in your life.”
“So I should act now?”
“I’m telling you that you will act now, one way or another. The choices you make in these weeks—even if the choice is to not make a choice—will change the rest of your life. But I can’t tell you if those choices involve quitting your job to sail around the world or not ordering the bad sushi that will send you to the hospital so that you can’t take any action.”
“Do you see me as successful?”
“That is definitely one of the potential outcomes. You could have everything you ever wanted. But that’s a potential. You have to make all the right choices to get there, and each choice creates a bunch of other choices. Basically, what I see is a big tree, and all the
little twigs at the ends are less defined.”
“What’s the choice on the trunk? The big one that starts the branching?”
“To do what you have planned for tomorrow, or not. One way, your plan starts to fail. The other way, you might have a chance of succeeding.”
“But which choice leads to which outcome?”
“Sorry, I only see potential outcomes, not what gets you there.”
