“Or you’ll what?” he asked quietly.
Corinda did not answer. Angelo nodded.
“Mucho cuidado, mi hermana,” he said, and walked away like a hungry tiger. Corinda stared at his back until Angelo vanished into the stockroom. She was furious, but she was frightened, too. Angelo always scared her. There was something wrong with him. Maybe something wrong inside him. A darkness that Corinda had never been able to penetrate. She would have fired him months ago, but she was afraid of what he would do. People told her stories about him, about his temper. About his bursts of violence. Like the week before Christmas, when two drunk college frat boys threw an empty beer can at him. Angelo had beaten them unconscious and would have served time had Sunlight not happened by and broken up the fight. Sunlight claimed to the sheriff that the frat boys had thrown the first punch, but Corinda had her doubts. And there were all those fights he’d gotten into when he was younger. Sunlight thought he had potential, but Corinda did not. She thought Angelo was damaged goods.
However, Sunlight protected the boy. And while Corinda admired Sunlight’s compassion and generosity, it put her in the position of having to work with the increasingly impudent Angelo.
Now this. She had seen him standing there, leaning his ear against the door, eavesdropping on Sunlight’s session with Dana. It was outrageous.
She watched the stockroom door for a full minute, but Angelo did not reappear.
The store was emptying out for that slow gap between afternoon shoppers and the start of the evening classes. No one was looking at her.
She took a breath and then leaned her own ear against the door.
CHAPTER 47
The Chrysalis Room
6:22 P.M.
“Listen to the sound of my voice,” said Sunlight.
Dana sat cross-legged on the floor, hands layered one atop the other in her lap, eyes almost closed. The session started gently. They drank a cup of herbal tea as Sunlight explained the process he used to help his students tap into their inner selves and allow their psychic qualities to manifest without conscious interference.
“We all want to be who we truly are,” he said as he positioned candles in a circle around them. Some of the candles gave off a harsher smell than the first batch he’d lit, and he explained that perfumes were used for commercial candles, but for doing difficult psychic work, other elements had to be added to the experience. He lit several sticks of incense, and again the scent was complicated, almost challenging, because it wasn’t actually pleasant, though not offensive, either.
When she asked if the incense was for sale in the store, he made a face. “Corinda, bless her well-intentioned heart, sells a lot of what can best be described as ‘tourist incense.’ Same for most of the candles she sells. They’re very popular with the crowd that orbits the real world of the expanding mind, but they aren’t much different from the dream catchers and kachina dolls people buy for their homes. The unenlightened think that just by having those items it means they are doing the actual work necessary to move from the still-point of spiritual inaction to the place where the soul runs free. Do you understand that, Dana?”
“I think so.”
“No. Do you understand it or not?”
She smiled and nodded. “Yes,” she said firmly. “I do.”
“And there we go. Baby steps become steadier, and then you’ll leap into the air and dance.”
Dana wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or not, but she chose to take it as one.
“As for this incense,” added Sunlight, “it’s not for sale, but I’ll give you some.”
Once the room was set the way Sunlight wanted it, they spent ten minutes together just breathing in the incense, sipping the herbal tea, and relaxing. After long minutes of agreeable quiet, he began speaking, guiding her deeper into the meditation.
“Your body is a vehicle for great power,” he said. “As you relax, as you breathe, you will feel your body change. The density that confines you into your physical shape will become less and less and less … until it no longer has the power to trap your spirit. And then, with a breath, you will rise up and out.”
She inhaled and exhaled, soft and long and easy, feeling the strange smoke soothe her and sand the edges off her anxiety.
“Nothing can hurt you here,” Sunlight told her. “You are safe. You are powerful. You are in your power and of your power. You are powerful in so many wonderful ways. Say it, Dana, decree it. You are powerful.”
“I am powerful,” she murmured.
“You are safe.”
“I am … safe.” There was the slightest stumble over that, but she repeated it. “I am safe.”
“You are safe,” echoed Sunlight. “You are like a caterpillar in a chrysalis. The form and nature that defined your life until now disguises the form that you will become.”