Why are you here? That’s what her eyes said. Her mouth was thin and looked as if it hadn’t opened in a hundred years. Marshmallow hair and a crepe paper mask of a face, the old lady was like a million years old. And she had a death grip on her door knob peeking out around the door chain. Travis imagined her mouth opening and a river of wasps pouring out. Bett chuckled. The battle axe slammed the door.

“Shit.” Bett scrubbed her face. She walked closer to the old lady’s door and knocked. Her dad was going to kill her. Life was so unfair. So she tagged a couple of garage doors. Big deal, she had thought the row of garages were empty, abandoned commercial space, so she wrote her name and painted a bit. The space was actually cool now thank you very much. Sneaking back into her bedroom Bett had tripped over Mr. Puddles who caterwauled and she had literally been caught red handed.

Bett examined her dark hands stained in vermilion. Her dad had reached out to the property owner and worked something out. Restitution, he called it when he dropped her off in front of the old lady’s porch. Without turning Bett could feel the weight of his stare from the car. She knocked again.

“Listen I’m sorry. I’m like really sorry. I can scrub the doors. Or paint them clean. I’m not a bad person or a criminal or something or okay so technically I’m a criminal but I’m not a satanist or something. The pentagrams were part of this name thing I’m working on. I want to explain—“

The door was flung open.

“Tell me something I don’t know. The Church of Satan is serious respectable organization. Back in the day, I bummed around a cult or two, tried a handful of religions, read a bit on the history of faith, worked as a sideshow tarot readers, and let me tell you the Satanists are righteous dudes,” the old lady said picking up speed. Bett leaned back in surprise and looked back at her dad in his car. She wasn’t sure because he was driving away but she sworn her dad was laughing.

“Traveling that’s what inspired my first set of books. Now I’m finishing up my latest manuscript and I admired your work. The central figure hemmed that in by all the words. It was … powerful.” Bett could just peek into the kaleidoscope of weird crap that was the old woman’s house. The teen girl’s mouth dropped. They both eyed each other.

The old lady threw open her screen door. “Have you ever done work for cover art?”

Closing her mouth Bett shook her head. Wearing a maroon kimono with a gold and silver sun and moon, she ushered Bett inside.