Foster's

Christina Blythe .5

The door to her little shop opened and Madam Seroni mentally began preparing herself for the next client.

Madam Seroni prided herself in her ability to take her family's gift and make it profitable. Her abuela might not have approved of her over the top medium persona, nor would she approve of how she used that gift some times, but it kept a roof over her head and food on her table, so she tried not to think about it that much.

She went about her days giving more accurate than normal readings, whether that be palm, crystal ball or tarot card readings. For the clients that she liked best, or paid her better, she made sure those readings were even more accurate and definitely more specific. For her absolute favourite clients, or the ones who were willing to not only pay her top dollar and to give up a little piece of themselves, she'd conjure up something that was almost guaranteed to make all their problems go away.

That was the part that her abuela disliked the most. Conjuring up dark spirits, even to hand them over to someone else, left a mark on you, she was always saying. It made it easier for darkness to creep into one's life, for it to get attached, for it to turn on her the way she turned it loose onto her clients' victims.

Madam Seroni had often reminded her abuela that if she hadn't wanted her to profit off of them, why had she taught her how to do it in the first place? She never did have a good answer for her. She'd just spout nonsense about the power was in knowing both how to do and when to wield it. But Madam Seroni wanted money, so why shouldn't she benefit from what she knew?

That day was a slow day. She was holed up in the back drying her herbs and sorting her ingredients in her secret room in the back. She wasn't expecting it, but she welcomed that tinkle of the doorbell.

"I'll be right there," she called as she quickly put the herbs back onto the drying rack. She moved to the small table where she had left her robes, and then quickly pulled them on. Once she was certain she looked the part of quack psychic, turban on straight and everything, she swept into the front store area.

And then immediately came to a stand still.

It was just a woman. Average looking in everyway. Average height, average weight, average clothes. Nothing about her was spectacular except that her hair was clearly dyed a pale blonde. And yet, there was something wrong about the woman standing before her.

She wasn't staring at the décor like most did, she wasn't interested in the crystal ball on display, she was staring right at her. These narrowed green eyes appraising her in a way that made her skin crawl.

It was her aura. She could see it, of course, but there was something wrong with that woman's aura. It was off. There was something in it, something shadowed.

Madam Seroni had seen many a shadowed aura. She had helped create many a shadowed aura. But she hadn't seen anything like that.

It should have been lines, lines of darkness snaking through all the different colours that made up a person's emotions and centers. Slowly poisoning all aspects of their lives. Her shadows were different Her shadows were a haze around her, swirling like a mist. Both unaffecting her and affecting her at the same time.

She had never seen anything like it before.

"How may I help you today?"

"I think I have something you made," she said. "And I want to talk to you about it."

Madam Seroni cocked an eyebrow at the woman in front of her. That apprehension skated up her spine again, her heart began to race in her chest. The woman's aura changed just as the atmosphere did.