The rusted Beetle stutters and dies like a boomer with asthma as it rolls to a groaning stop in front of 7 Heart Lane. It coughs smoke. It wheezes. It sounds personally offended by the idea of functioning machinery.

  Then the door shrieks open, and out spills Alby.

  She is barefoot, which Aster is pretty sure isn’t a style choice so much as a “lost the shoes at a drum circle” circumstance. Her dress has once been white, maybe even elegant, in the same way a corpse was once alive. Now it looks like she wrestled it off a scarecrow and lost. Her ankles and wrists rattle with wood-bead bracelets, feathers, and shells, like she scavenged them from a voodoo flea market on discount day.

  A backpack sags over one shoulder, loudly embroidered with so much tribal colour it makes Aster’s eyes ache. Her hair is a crime scene, a hostile biome that has resisted soap for at least a presidency.

  She slaps up the driveway, eyes locked onto him like a feral raccoon who has learned to barter.

  “Did you warm the pizza pocket?” she says—no greeting, just pure, weaponized urgency.

  Aster blinks. A thousand responses try to immigrate to his tongue. None make it past customs.

  This meeting already skirts the border between necessary and regrettably mythological. He knew her through one of his foster mother’s old circles—a spiritual grifter who peddles incense, “goddess oils,” and dubious rituals to the desperate and stoned.

  He isn’t proud he needs her. But here he is.

  Despite the absurdity of it all, when he told her—truthfully—that he was crafting an elixir because a man in a vision told him to, she didn’t bat an eye. She had nodded sagely, all serene-like, as if this kind of thing happened all the time.

  Before he can answer, Alby reaches past him and rips the still-warm pizza pocket off the plate like a seagull committing a daylight mugging. She tears the plastic open with her teeth and shoves half the boiling innards straight into her mouth.

  Aster winces—and waits.

  The sound begins as a choke, then morphs into a gargled shriek.

  She bends over, clutching her mouth, arms windmilling like she is trying to cool the damn thing down through interpretive dance. Then she spits—right on his driveway. A half-melted, steaming pizza ooze slaps the pavement.

  “You could’ve told me it was fresh!” she shrieks, offended at the basic laws of thermodynamics.

  Aster deadpans. “Didn’t get a word in before you attacked it like a starving pelican.”

  She either doesn’t hear him or refuses to acknowledge the dignity of the moment.

  He doesn’t sigh. He beams a sigh through his eyeballs. “Did you get everything on the list?”

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  She pauses mid-attempt of another bite, licking her lips like someone checking for signs of second-degree trauma. She narrows her eyes. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?” she asks, trying to peer past him like a sitcom neighbour who doesn’t understand boundaries.

  “Did you get everything on the list,” he repeats, with a tone that could marble stone.

  She shrugs, completely undisturbed at being denied access. “I did.” Then—sharpness. “But a lot of this stuff? You sure you’re ready for it? Some of this will fry your brain from the inside out. Not that I care,” she adds. “Happy to take your money and vibe out. But if you’d rather start with something kinder, I’ve got a batch of moon-blessed love potion I could—”

  Aster can actually feel his eye twitch.

  The first time he thought of her, he halfway convinced himself she could be legit—someone who could give him a lead on this Astral Realm madness without being from the mouth of a hallucination. But after a few probing questions on the phone, it was clear: Alby only plays dress-up with spirituality. Her “love potion” is essentially ecstasy cut with kombucha and brewed under a full moon, like that somehow makes it magic.

  “No thanks,” he grunts, cutting her off before she can start ranting about lunar deities again. “Just the materials.”

  She shrugs, biting into the pocket again now that it is tongue approved. “Your funeral.” She goes back to the Beetle and comes back with a turquoise Checkers bag, slapping it into his palm like a drug deal conducted by a spiritual Etsy seller.

  He rifles through it—baggies of fur, jars of stones, crushed fungi wrapped in unbleached paper. Psychedelics in labelled vials, obsidian shards, dried herbs he recognizes and doesn’t. Everything from the list.

  He withdraws a tight stack of hundreds from his pocket, wrapped in a rubber band. Cash for chaos. She snaps it up with a noise halfway between a hum and a giggle.

  “Enjoy the stars,” she says breezily, turning to leave, and pauses only to add, “Oh, and drink water during the ceremony. Helps keep the screaming internal.”

  Then she struts back to the Beetle, humming some tune that might be Janis Joplin if Janis had been raised entirely on bath salts and Tumblr manifesting culture.

  The door slams. The car bleats like a sheep being murdered. Two cars swerve when she pulls out, honks blaring. Doesn’t faze her. Cigarette lit, arm hanging out the window, she flicks ash onto the street like a fairy godmother of synthetic enlightenment.

  Aster watches her putter away in a cloud of existential exhaust.

  He mutters, “I need to make damn sure this doesn’t turn me into her.” His voice is dry. Cracked. Bracing.

  But the joke turns to ash on his tongue.

  Because Alby is a warning sign in human form. She is the end result of not knowing when to stop—a cautionary tale with moccasins and filterless Camels. She has slipped so far from the edge she wraps it into her identity.

  Aster stands at the door of 7 Heart Lane, wondering again if this can really be happening. Handing someone a house really places your thumb on the scale; having monsters bleed into reality is practically overkill. The plastic bag full of impossible ingredients lies heavy in his grip—like fate stuck in grocery-bag form.

  He can throw it away. He should. He imagines himself doing it—the glorious clatter of quartz shards hitting the bin. But when he closes his eyes, he doesn’t see trash.

  He sees cyan eyes. That man again. The impossible stillness of his voice.

  Find me. Cross over.

  The hook twists inside him. Deeper. Inevitable.

  He grips the bag, knuckles bone white.

  He whispers to himself, like a vow or a curse, “Feet on the ground, Aster. Stay tethered.”

  But underneath, he isn’t sure if the ground even exists anymore.

  He isn’t sure he does either.