Page 18 of Midnight Salvation

I sat on the windowsill of the conservatory, my hand gripping the phone tighter. “Are you alone?”

“Yeah, I’m standing at the window in the airport while they do the final checks.”

I needed him to be here right now since I felt lost. “I’m wearing my Minnie Mouse bra and panties.” That sounded useless. I should really get sexier underwear.

“The panties with the ears?” His voice sounded like it had deepened an octave.

A smile curved my lips. “Mmmm. The ones with the furry ears and the button nose.”

His laugh echoed down the line. “You’re killing me.”

“I know I’m not good at all this stuff, but I’m trying.” It came so easily to Cassandra and Megan was a walking sex bomb waiting to detonate. Me? I was plain in comparison who had no idea what she was doing most of the time. How I managed to catch Ash’s attention I would never know.

“You’re perfect just the way you are, Angel.”

“I miss you, Ash. I wish it was just the two of us the way we were in Tuscany. Is it wrong that I want to go back to our beach house and grow old there together?”

“No, because I want that too. Sitting under the moon with the sound of the waves sounds wonderful right now.” He sighed again. “I have to go. As soon as we reach London, I’ll text you. Just remember that I love you.”

“Love you, too,” I whispered before the line went dead in my hand.

The inner wanderer in me wanted to disappear into the garden and lose myself in the luscious greenness, but I’d promised Ash. Cassandra sat at the table rearranging paperwork. An idea occurred to me, so I retrieved some of my art supplies from my room. She’d said to me that her dad had an astrological birth chart in his office. In my teens, I’d been very interested in astrology, and not the type you read in newspapers and magazines.

“I need a bigger piece of paper,” I said, frowning at the size of my sketch pad.

Cassandra hunted in the corner where Xavier had a lot of supplies and printer paper sitting. She pulled out a used flip chart and tore off a clean page. Xavier tended to like to write his thoughts as he chatted.

I got to work, drawing a huge circle. A small circle sat in the centre. From there I drew twelve lines like a clock to create the twelve houses of an archetypal chart.

“Okay, so these are the twelve houses that form a birth chart,” I explained. “On a basic chart, Aries sits at the nine o’clock position as the first sign of the zodiac. The area between eight and nine is the first house and is governed by the planet Mars. Normally your rising sign sits at this position on your birth chart and the entire outer ring of the chart moves anticlockwise until your rising sign is at this position, although the first house always sits between eight and nine o’clock.”

Cassandra sat down to watch me. “You know an awful lot about astrology.”

I shrugged. “Not really. I studied it for a while because the girls at school used to read their star signs every day at break. I was intrigued and wanted to find out how it actually worked.”

“So how does it work?” Cassandra pointed to the chart I was drawing.

“Okay, so your rising sign is determined by the date, time, and place of your birth. The first house is all about you as a person—your personality. The second house is your material possessions, the third how you communicate, and the fourth your home and family life and your mother’s influence.” I continued to write on the paper as I talked. “The fifth is your romantic life, and the sixth your health, while the seventh governs over relationships such as business and marriage.”

I stopped since I didn’t want to bore Cassandra.

“What about the other houses?” she asked. “Megan would love all this, she’ll be upset she missed it since she’s in London for that difficult client.”

I pointed to the next house on the chart.“In the archetypal chart the eighth house would be governed over by Scorpio, so it’s all about sex and death. The ninth house is about the wider world that includes travel and your beliefs. The tenth house governs over your career and holds your father’s influence in your life. The eleventh house governs your friends and aspirations, and the twelfth is the subconscious mind and endings, which takes us back to nine o’clock again.”

“I never realised about the houses. I just remember Dad telling me about the planets moving. He said that he was Saturn and that Mum was the moon.” Cassandra frowned as she studied the symbols on my chart.

“That’s right,” I agreed. “Your mum is shown as the moon in the chart and your dad as the planet Saturn.”

“So what do we do with the clues that have been left behind?” Cassandra asked.

“Why don’t we try putting them all where we think they fit best in the chart?” I suggested.

“It’s as good as any other idea,” Cassandra replied.

“Since your dad left the clues, maybe you should decide which house they sit in?”

We spent the next few hours moving pieces about the table until a pattern started to form on the chart in front of us.

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