by Yvonne Heidt
Table of Contents
Synopsis
By the Author
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Epilogue
About the Author
Books Available from Bold Strokes Books
Synopsis
Sunny Skye, a psychic medium, is the head investigator and founder of Sisters of Spirits, a paranormal society dedicated to helping others understand what they can’t see. She is excellent at finding ghosts but finds it difficult to cope in the real world. When she meets Jordan, she is instantly attracted and completely unnerved by the personal demons she carries around with her.
Street tough Jordan Lawson molded herself into what she thinks an excellent cop should be. She trusts only two things: facts and herself. She believes only in the evil that mankind commits and she certainly doesn’t believe in ghosts, even when confronted by one.
When spiritualism and jaded skepticism collide, who backs down first?
The Awakening
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The Awakening
© 2013 By Yvonne Heidt. All Rights Reserved.
ISBN 13: 978-1-60282-824-7
This Electronic Book is published by
Bold Strokes Books, Inc.
P.O. Box 249
Valley Falls, New York 12185
First Edition: January 2013
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Credits
Editor: Victoria Oldham
Production Design: Stacia Seaman
Cover Design By Sheri ([email protected])
By the Author
Sometime Yesterday
The Awakening
Acknowledgments
It takes a small village. I would like to thank mine at Bold Strokes Books. Radclyffe, Victoria, and Cindy, I appreciate your patience and willingness to work with me. Thank you, Connie, for reading my crazy e-mails. The team at BSB is one that I’m very proud to be a part of. A special nod to Ruth, Stacia, Kathi, Toni, and Sandy. Sheri, your covers are outstanding. Also, I would like to thank the authors for including me in your reindeer games. I’m having a blast.
Thank you to my family and friends who have been so amazing through this last year. I wish I had the space to thank you all. It wasn’t until I typed your names out that I realized it would take an entire book just to list you. Thank you all for your support and encouragement.
Maralee Lackman for tirelessly promoting my books and holding my hand when I need you to. I have the best BFF in the world.
Stephanie Keeler, my most amazing ninja, thank you for being an awesome beta-reader!
Sheila Powell for answering my questions about the other side.
An amazing friend, Wendy Sailor, crossed over this year. She touched a thousand hearts with her kindness, and I’m going to miss her. I also lost a beloved aunt, Joyce Ansbro. My posse on the other side is getting bigger.
Thank you, Mom and Papa, for your support and love during this challenging year.
Sandy, thank you, sweetheart, for taking care of me and inviting my characters to have dinner with us. There is nowhere on earth I’d rather be than here with you.
For Kerri-Ann & Daniel.
Prologue
Sunny Skye waited on the wide front porch, dancing nervously from foot to foot and impatiently brushing wild curls out of her eyes. She checked the watch she’d received for her eleventh birthday the week before, and tapped the crystal. “They’re late!”
She had been looking forward to this weekend for months. Her father had put together a film crew and invited two additional girls they had picked out of twenty case files to take part in a documentary he was shooting about psychic children. Special kids with extraordinary abilities. Her mother, also gifted, was going to be in it as well. Sunny was beside herself with excitement. She wanted to spend time with other kids who wouldn’t think she was crazy whenever she started talking to someone they couldn’t see.
A dark sedan pulled into the driveway. “Never mind,” she called over her shoulder before running down the stairs.
The rear passenger door opened, and Sunny saw a small girl with red hair pulled into a long ponytail. She was huddled against the backseat and looked as if she might cry. A woman who Sunny assumed was the girl’s mother got out of the car, walked past her and up to the house, not bothering to take the girl with her.
“Don’t be scared,” Sunny said and held out a hand to help her out. “I’m Sunny, and I’m so happy that you could make it.”
“My name is Tiffany Curran. I don’t like to touch people.”
“Oh,” Sunny said. “That’s right. I forgot.” She stepped back from the car to let Tiffany out. “My dad says that you have psychometric abilities. That means you can read people’s minds by touching them, right?”
“Sometimes. And when I touch things, I sometimes see what happened there. Like walls and stuff.”
“Place memory? That’s cool!”
“What do you do?”
Sunny smiled. “I’m an empath and I can hear and talk with ghosts.”
Tiffany’s light blue eyes widened. “Do you see them?”
“I see them in my mind.” Tiffany was staring at her with her mouth open. “What?” Sunny asked.
“Your eyes are two different colors.”
“Mom says they were both blue when I was born, and six months later, one of them turned green. Some people think they’re creepy.”
“I think they’re beautiful.” Tiffany smiled shyly, flashing two small dimples.
Before Sunny could politely thank her for the compliment, a door slammed behind them. She felt Tiffany startle at the sight of the last girl to arrive. Taller than Sunny, she was dressed in black clothes that hung off her slender frame. The girl glared in their direction from under spiky hair, her dark eyes framed with heavy black liner. She sneered at them, then defiantly took a drag off her cigarette before flicking it into the street.
“Don’t ever call me Lacey.”
Sunny felt a flash of uncertainty at the anger she heard in her voice but remembered her own manners. “Well, what would you like us to call you?”
“Shade.”
Tiffany took a step behind Sunny. “What do you do?”
“Necromancer. I see dead people.”
“For reals?” Tiffany’s voice squeaked.
Shade laughed. “That line never gets old.”
Tiffany looked confused, so Sunny explained. “A necromancer can speak to the dead and interact with their shades.” Sunny smiled. “Oh, I get your name now, clever.”
“What�
�s a shade?” asked Tiffany.
“Invisible zombies.” Shade curled her fingers into claws and moaned dramatically.
Tiffany gave a little squeak and ducked behind Sunny again. Sunny continued to grin, deciding she liked the angry girl despite the dark energy that seemed to be hanging around her. “It’s just another name for a ghost.”
The van behind Shade peeled away with a screech of tires and sped down the street. Sunny felt a sharp jab of hurt emanate from Shade that didn’t match the angry scowl on her face. Sunny’s power of empathy continued to be a mystery to her since she didn’t fully understand how it was she could feel what others did. She hated it when their emotions didn’t match their words or body language. Sunny went with her instinct and stepped closer to Shade.
“Why didn’t your mother stay?” Tiffany asked.
“She doesn’t care about a stupid movie. She’s just happy to get rid of me for the weekend.”
“It’s not a movie. It’s a documentary about special kids who have psychic abilities,” Sunny said.
“Whatever.” Shade turned away from her and wiped at her face. “It’s stupid.”
“My mother says I’m cursed and it’s the devil inside me.” Tiffany blushed and stared at her feet, her hands in her pockets.
“What?” Sunny was shocked. “They are gifts, not curses.” She felt instantly protective of Tiffany and shot an angry look at the woman talking with Sunny’s parents.
“Oh.” Tiffany waved a hand. “That’s not my mother; it’s my aunt Darleen. We didn’t tell my mother we were coming. She flat-out refused when she got the invitation, so we lied and said we were going to Portland for the weekend.”
Shade chuckled and crossed her skinny arms. “This might not suck.”
Chapter One
Fifteen years later
Something crunched under Sunny’s boot, sounding unnaturally loud in the silence as she took another step down the pitch-black hallway. “That was just me,” she said for the recorder.
“Um, Sunny?” the voice crackled from the radio on her hip. She unclipped the walkie from her belt. “Go.”
“There’s movement to your left on video two.”
Sunny glanced at the night-vision camera in the corner and spun to her left with her recorder and thermal detector held in front of her. “Hello? Is someone there?” She knew the question was just for the recorder’s sake, since she could clearly feel a spirit energy, other, as she had called them from childhood. Her body tingled with the familiar sensation of electrical pulses under her skin, raising the hair on her arms slightly.
Now, that’s more like it. So often when they did investigations in private homes, there was little to no paranormal activity to show for their efforts.
She felt rather than saw a shadow that darted past her. Goose bumps raced along her spine and the temperature dropped. The equipment in her hand confirmed what she already sensed. “EMF spiking at point two, temp reading sixty-seven, now sixty-two, fifty-nine.”
She continued to stare through the small camera screen, but she didn’t see any additional movement, and when she glanced down at the thermostat, it was once again at base reading of seventy-one, taken at the beginning of the investigation. She set the thermal camera back on the table and called Shade on the radio.
“Sunny to base.”
“Yo.”
“See anything else on the monitor?”
“That’s a negative, but I think I caught it on video.”
“Okay.” Sunny felt the absence of other and called to her third team member. “Tiff?”
“Here.”
“What’s going on down there?”
“A couple of knocking sounds. Nothing on the thermal to indicate animal presence.”
Static pierced Sunny’s ears and she held the radio at arm’s length. “Tiff?” Concerned, she started toward the basement stairs. She hadn’t quite reached the door when a scream pierced the darkness.
Sunny snapped on her flashlight before hitting the landing. She found Tiffany doing her I-hate-spiders-dance at the bottom of the stairs. It was kind of cute actually. Her arms were up in the air, and she wriggled around in a circle before brushing off her skin maniacally. “Damn, Tiff. You scared the hell out of me.”
“Check now!”
“Hold still, then.” Sunny ran the routine of checking Tiffany’s hair, moving down in a smoothing motion. “Shush, it’s okay. Calm down.”
“You know I hate the basements.”
Sunny bit back her laughter. Tiffany really was scared of spiders, unnaturally so. “It was your turn, remember?”
Tiffany shuddered dramatically before Sunny called base. “False alarm.”
Shade’s laughter seemed to burst through the tiny speaker. “I know. You should have seen the look on her face.”
“Laugh it up, funny girl. It’s your turn next investigation.” Sunny turned her attention to the left, seeing a small movement out of the corner of her eye. “I just saw a shadow duck behind the boxes.” She flipped off the light and turned her camera back on. “Hello?”
Sunny didn’t care how many investigations she went on, the thrill was there every time she saw, felt, or heard something from the other side. She moved carefully across the concrete floor, making sure not to trip over the usual detritus found in a basement, wondering as she often did why people had so much clutter and why they didn’t bother to clean some of it up before they called her team in. Standing still for a few moments, she closed her eyes to listen with her senses but heard only the sound of Tiffany’s soft breathing behind her. She’d just taken another tentative step when she was shoved violently from behind. “What the—”
“Oh God, I’m so sorry.” Tiffany reached down to help Sunny up from her sprawled position on the ground. “I stepped on a skateboard.”
Sunny cupped the elbow she’d landed on, and her hand came away sticky. Great. She was bleeding and it was filthy down here. “S’okay, Tiff.” She made the decision to wrap the investigation for the night. “Let’s pack it up.”
*
Jordan Lawson stared at the small stack of boxes lined up against the wall in her new apartment, thinking it was a sad state of affairs when thirty-one years of living could be packed up and moved in one small truckload. The meager belongings she’d brought along mocked her, showing her how much the last ten years of her life had actually been lived for her job rather than her home life.
Other than the new bed, couch, and desk she’d had delivered, the apartment in the old brick building was empty. Like her.
Her boot heels echoed off the newly refurbished hardwood floors as she walked to the naked window, reminding her she would have to buy an area rug as well as curtains. Where the hell did someone buy curtains, anyway? Every shithole she’d ever lived in had those ugly gold monstrosities with the white rubber backs, turned gray over time and older than she was. She assumed the lack of window dressing was due to the recent remodel of her apartment. Jordan sighed and cut open the box labeled DESK. She’d just pulled out a stack of manila files when a loud knock at the door startled her into dropping them onto the floor. She hadn’t met any of her neighbors yet, and truthfully, it wasn’t high on her list of priorities. She didn’t want to be bothered, and she sure as shit didn’t want anyone coming to borrow anything they had no intention of replacing. Other than the landlord, the only person she’d met in Bremerton so far was the sergeant who’d done her interview after her transfer from Seattle.
Jordan peeked out the security hole; she didn’t see anyone but opened the door anyway. The hallway was empty and the door across from hers was shut. Puzzled and a little irked at what she thought might be a prank, she went back to the box she was unpacking.
One of the files lay open and scattered on the floor. The article written by her friend, Katerina Volchosky, on three missing teenagers caught her eye. Jordan ran a finger down the face of one of the girls. The picture of Gina Brayden had been taken when she was still in high school. When Jo
rdan had met the girl, there was little trace left of this innocence caught on film. By that time, she’d been on the street for a year, and months of prostitution and drugs had exacted its toll.
She picked up the poem that Gina had given to her on a piece of dirty notepaper and read it.
Throwaway girl
Curled up in the gutter
Dirty and scared
What are you crying for?
No one here cares
What happens to you.
Throwaway girl
Everything’s for sale.
Your innocence,
Your trust, your body,
And your mind.
Past, present,
And future.
Throwaway girl
Let me set you straight.
You don’t need.
You can’t feel.
Forbidden to want.
You’ll do what I say
When I say it.
Throwaway girl
Shut your mouth.
There’s a hundred
More behind you
To take your place.
Unwanted, unloved,
Forgettable and lost.
Throwaway girl
Get back in line.
You’re just doing time
On this blood-soaked street.
The last line still gave Jordan chills. It hurt her to know that someone so young knew so much about pain and violence. Gina reminded her so much of herself at that age.
When she went missing along with two other kids, Jordan had questioned every teenager in the pack that ran together near Pike Place Market, but she never uncovered a single lead. Gina Brayden disappeared without a trace. Jordan tried not to think of the if onlys and carefully put the file into her desk and shut the drawer before standing. New town, new job, and she couldn’t save them all. But damn, how she wanted to.
