So that was how it went. I was in and out of that place.  Sometimes, when things got heavy, two or three times in a ten day stretch.  Other times, I’d wake up and realize I hadn’t been in there for a couple of weeks, and stop by and buy a candle or something.  Fall turned into winter and winter was lazily rolling over into a rapidly approaching spring, but it wasn’t here yet. It was one of those days when I hadn’t been in for a while, and after a particularly ugly case.  I’d just come from a woman’s house where I’d showed her films that her husband had made of him having sex with their fourteen-year-old daughter on custody visits.  I needed a drink.  It was a Tuesday, six or so, and the San Diego sky was beginning its show of one of those Technicolor sunsets that it does that time of year. I found a parking spot down near the end of Newport, thanked God for winter, and walked into the Sunshine.  Up on the roof deck with one of those gas heat lamps taking the edge off an already cooling evening, I watched the purple, pink, fuchsia, and blue pastels fade to the blue-black of the night sky and tried to wash the filth out of me.  Three beers later, hungry, and aware that the beer had done all that it was going to do, I left.  A little tipsy, I left my car where it was and started walking back up Newport toward home.  I thought about stopping for a bite, and in the mood for nothing but grease, I headed up the two blocks toward the diner.  Then it happened.  I was up at the corner, thinking: chicken-fried steak…burger….meatloaf and mashed...fries, mulling over in my slightly intoxicated mind exactly what soothing ball of grease I would put into the soiled jagged edges of my stomach, when I noticed three girls walking into the ‘Magick Shop.”  I’d since learned in the past six months that that was what the girls that worked there called the lovely and good Willow’s store – a “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” reference -- a TV show that my wife watched and that I left the room when it was on.  Ignoring my hunger -- and all my best instincts – I turned left and followed their lead.  When I pushed open the door, I was met with a scene that I did not expect to see: fifteen folding chairs set up in the middle of the room and ten or twelve people in them, turning around to each other and chatting, or reading quietly.  I almost turned.  I almost wish I did.  No, I do. I do wish I did.  But before I could, Julia, one of the girls I’d come to know, happened to glance my way.

“Hi Jay.  You here for the class?”

“No. I mean…I didn’t know.  I just walked in.”

“Well, you’re welcome to stay.  It’s twelve bucks.”

“What is it?”  At this, she motioned to the easel with the big pad of paper that was clearly in my view and had it not been for the three beers and empty stomach, I would surely have noticed. On it were the words in blue and green magic marker, “Advanced Spells and Rituals.”

“Oh,” I said.  “I don’t know.”

“Whatever,” she answered pleasantly, and not with a bit of judgment.  “It starts in ten minutes.”  At this, she turned back toward the two girls and a guy she was talking to, only one of whom I recognized, and the somewhat animated conversation they were having.

“I’m staying.”  The voice came from just below me and to my left.  I looked down to see a woman who would have been beautiful if not for the jet-black dyed hair, the fifteen piercings, and the eye shadow.  She was beautiful anyway.  At the moment I looked at her, I saw Willow’s face flash in my mind and took it, wrongly, to be a good sign.  She slid over into the empty seat next to her to make room for me.  When I sat down, on three beers and no food and in a state of mind where I should have been nowhere but home alone, she clasped my hand.

“I’m Hope,” she said.

CHAPTER 4 COMING 12/1!!