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then and there, so that someday she would be able to find her own husband.
    Though it did occur to her later, and she hated herself for it, that maybe it hadn’t been so lucky after all. Had she been willing to give up her life so young, just to find love at twenty-one? Even at eleven that had seemed like a pretty bad deal.
    â€œThis one”—Marie took out what looked like a great big diamond—“is a plain ol’ crystal quartz. Very very magical.”
    â€œIt looks like a diamond!”
    â€œIndeed it does. It is good for everything. Very good luck for everything.”
    â€œBut she died!”
    â€œIt was her time.” Marie gave Prinny another hug, and it spread over the child like a soothing balm. “She chose that long before she ever came to this earth. She came here so she could create you, and you, child, are destined for greatness.”
    Those words never left Prinny’s mind.
    You are destined for greatness .
    They had supported her through some pretty hard times, but they had also taunted her when the going got tough and she felt she should have been more successful, in more ways, than she was.
    She’d always thought that by thirty she’d be married, have kids, be living the life that had been taken from both her mother and herself. She’d thought she’d finally be starting to heal all the things that broke when she was six and her mother “disappeared.”
    Too late for that possibility. She was months away from thirty now.
    And even though she still clung to Marie’s words— you’re destined for greatness —as time marched on she believed them less and less.
    Nevertheless, that day in the attic had changed her life forever. At first she’d just sneak up there whenever her father—or whatever subsequent nanny was on duty—wasn’t looking and go through the trunk.
    She never dumped the whole thing out or tore through it, taking it all in and trying to understand it. Instead she lifted out all the books and made them into a pile, so she could tell what she was looking at as she went along, then took things out piece by piece, letting each one be the treasure of the day.
    The bag of stones was first. There were so many of them, and she sat in the attic—now with a flashlight—and looked through a metaphysical book she found in the library to identify each one and its magical properties. It was a cross between being a geologist and a witch doctor.
    The amber and blue lazulite was to reduce worries. She could use that.
    The purple amethyst was for peace and happiness. There had been a small one in the bag, but a large bookend of it as well, deep in the dark of the trunk, sparkling like treasure in Captain Hook’s lair.
    Moonstone was just a beautiful name, and a beautiful moon-gray stone, and according to the book it was for protection from negativity. But there was a warning not to be near it during the full moon, as the energy could get too frenetic. Prinny didn’t know what that meant, but it didn’t sound good, and since she didn’t know the phases of the moon, she set it aside so she would never accidentally interact with it at “the wrong time.” Later, of course, she learned the phases of the moon and their power and got quite adept at harnessing the power of the moon and the moonstone, if only in small ways.
    There were a bunch more, but the one that interested her the most was the selenite. It looked like an ordinary crystal, or, to be more specific, like the bauble on the end of a cheap necklace from Claire’s after it aged for a while, but the book said it called in the angels.
    Prinny was sure that her mother was an angel now, and she’d do anything to bring her back, so she kept the selenite on her at all times, a long, slim cirrus cloud, right up until it crumbled to chips and dust in the front pocket of her jeans.
    That was when the idea to have a metaphysical shop first