The Astral, or, Till the Day I Die. V. J. Banis

going on sale tomorrow,” the silver-haired saleswoman whispered in a conspiratorial voice. “I’ll ring it up for you at the sale price.”

      “That’s very kind of you,” Catherine thanked her. That was something she must work at remembering: there were kind people in the world too, good people. One mustn’t think that everyone was evil. To do that was to let the villains win.

      She took her packages to gift wrapping and had them wrapped. That, she decided, she still wasn’t up to. Anyway, she had never been very good at it.

      Satisfied that she had taken several good steps in the direction of recovery, she left the store. On her way home, she stopped at her regular flower shop, Rose’s Roses. They had ordered their Christmas trees from Rose Leiberman for years, always—Rose’s little joke—calling it a Hanukah bush.

      The tinkle of the bell over the door and the familiar blend of flower shop scents, the sweet of fresh and the rotten of aging flowers, welcomed her.

      The pale, blonde woman by the window was new to her however. In the past Rose had always managed the shop alone. “I was looking for Rose,” Catherine replied to her greeting.

      “I’m here to help you,” the woman said.

      A new employee, then. Catherine was disappointed. She would have liked to see Rose herself, but Rose was getting up in years and the shop was probably too much for her to handle alone at this hectic time of year.

      “I’d like to order a tree,” Catherine said.

      “You must keep trying,” the woman said.

      “Oh. You mean you don’t have any trees this year?”

      “Traveling is like a muscle, the more you use it, the stronger it gets,” was the puzzling response.

      Catherine tried to digest that, but could make no sense of it. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I understand.” Did she know this woman? She looked vaguely familiar, but standing just in front of the window as she was, with the bright sunlight streaming in around her, it was difficult to make out her face. If one were fanciful one might almost imagine that the light made a halo about her head.

      “I’m sorry about the pain, but it will get better too with practice. It does sort of go with the territory, unfortunately. You were shot in the head, after all.”

      Catherine gasped. “How could you possibly know...?” she started to ask, taking a step towards this strange woman.

      “Mrs. Desmond! Catherine!” Rose Leiberman came through the curtained doorway from the back room. “What a wonderful surprise.”

      Catherine turned to greet her and was swallowed up in a determined embrace, crushed against Rose’s enormous bosom. “I was so sorry, so very, very sorry,” Rose said. “You poor darling.”

      Catherine felt a cold draft across the back of her neck. It was a moment before she realized the shop door had opened and closed behind her. She jumped back and looked around. The woman had gone.

      “Oh, wait,” she cried. She ran outside and looked up and down the street. A huffing Springer Spaniel impatiently tugged along a thin man on the end of a leash. Two boys tossed a football back and forth, and a young woman in purple Spandex that ought to have been too skimpy for the chilly day teetered perilously on a pair of inline skates. The woman was nowhere to be seen.

      Rose looked at her curiously when she came back in, the bell over the door jingling. “Is something wrong?” she asked.

      “That woman. She just disappeared. I wanted to talk to her. Did you know her?”

      Rose looked around the shop, confused. “Woman?”

      “She was just there, by the window, she was talking to me when you came through the doorway.”

      Rose looked in the direction of the window. “Oh, I suppose she was just a looky-loo, we get lots of them this time of year.” She dismissed the subject with a shrug and turned her friendly smile back to Catherine. “Let me guess, you’ve come for a Hanukah bush?”