“But how?” I asked, but Agnes just shook her head.
“Best not to get into it. Plus, I want to see what you see without any information leading you one way or the other.”
“That’s fair,” I said, bending over and pulling my laptop from my bag. “All right. Birth details, then. I don’t suppose you know your exact time?”
“Of course I do.” She rattled off the date, time, and place. “You can’t live around all these witches and not know some of your astrology.”
The chart wheel spun onto the screen, familiar and yet…not. Because even before the threads rose, even before the magick, I could feel the density of it.
As I stared, the now-familiar shimmer started.
Lines glowed, lifting off the screen, weaving themselves into a silvery web between us. Bracken scampered up to my shoulder.
“Here we go,”he whispered.
Agnes squinted. “I can’t see what you’re seeing, can I?”
“No,” I said softly. “Maybe. I don’t know. You might feel it. Matthew could see it faintly. Greta couldn’t at all.”
The threads vibrated gently, like a harp string plucked in a distant room. I reached out, letting my fingers hover just above them, grounding myself in the way Gran’s book had advised to—breathe, anchor, remember you’re a guide,nota god.
“Okay,” I said, slipping into the comfort of astrologer mode. “Agnes, you’re a Virgo Sun, Capricorn Rising, Pisces Moon.”
“Right, that doesn’t sound too bad, does it?”
“It’s not,” I agreed. “Virgo Sun means you’re here to be of service, to refine, to analyze, to make things better than you found them. You’re detail-oriented, practical in your own way, but you also hold ridiculous amounts of information in your head.”
“And the Capricorn?”
“Cap Rising is how you move through the world. Serious and responsible. People look at you and think, ‘She knows what she’s doing, I’ll follow her into battle.’”
“Och, aye? That’s a fine compliment.” Agnes patted her own shoulder.
“And then,” I continued, smiling, “Pisces Moon. All squishy feelings and intuition and art. That’s your inner world. The creative. The historian who doesn’t just catalog facts but feels the stories behind them.”
Her lips twitched. “Truth.”
“That mix—earth and water—makes you this fascinating blend of practical and dreamy. You build containers for other people’s feelings. Book clubs. This shop. The Order.”
She shifted, looking oddly uncomfortable. “All right. Don’t get too complimentary. I’ll break out in hives.”
I laughed, then sobered as one of the threads pulsed more brightly. It ran from her Moon in Pisces in the third house—communication, stories—to her seventh house of partnership, where Venus was snuggled up close to Saturn.
“Ah,” I murmured. “Here we are.”
“What?”
“You’ve got Venus and Saturn conjunct in your seventh house,” I said. “Partnership is…serious business for you. You don’t do casual. When you commit, you commit.”
“No half measures,” she said quietly.
“Exactly. Saturn there can mean…delays. Lessons. Sometimes relationships that feel fated but blocked, or that require a lot of work. Venus wants warmth and affection and romance, and Saturn wants structure and long-term commitment. Put them together and you get soulmate energy, but with obstacles.”
She swallowed. “That sounds … about right.”
The thread connecting those points shimmered gold and charcoal by turns, like it couldn’t decide whether to be a blessing or a burden.
Curiosity tugged at me. I let my fingers brush it—just lightly, a feather touch.