Return to Eden

by G. P. Ching

"Thanks, Lillian."

  "I’ll see you in Eden."

  Gideon nodded. "Classes start next week. I’ll make sure the weapons room is ready for you."

  "Looking forward to it." Lillian tossed the keys into the air and caught them in the same hand. She gave a little wave goodbye and jogged up the stairs.

  Unfolding a pair of sunglasses from her pocket, Malini slid them onto her face and reached for the rope.

  "What are those for?" Gideon asked.

  Malini shrugged. "Eh, nothing to worry about."

  She hoisted the sail.

  After a lifetime of magic and sorcery, Abigail didn’t think anything could surprise her, but the ball of fire that rolled through the cave had her clutching at Gideon. Gathered into his arms, she screamed as the boat propelled forward, passing through the far wall of the cavern before slowing on a pristine blue river.

  "You could’ve warned us," Abigail said.

  Malini smiled. "Sorry."

  She did not sound sorry at all.

  Abigail eyed the approaching cherubim, their crossed swords burning. "Are you sure about this, Malini? Are you sure we’ll be allowed in? The cherubim were set in place to keep humans and Watchers out. Only Soulkeepers can enter.”

  "I’m sure. You might say you’ve become an honorary Soulkeeper. It’s all been arranged."

  While she heard what Malini was saying, Abigail gripped Gideon’s hand tighter as they approached. She thought back on her life, on all of the choices she’d made, good or evil. If she had to weigh her own soul, she wasn’t sure which side of the scale would rise. She was sure Gideon’s soul would stand up to the test. He’d always been made for good. But if Abigail made it through to the other side, she knew it would be because of grace and mercy.

  The moment they passed under the swords the air turned to rubber and the cells of her body felt sifted like sand through a sieve. The boat slowed. For a second, she couldn’t breathe. Her body was forced forward, stretching against some unseen force that pressed on her from all sides.

  When she thought she could take no more, that she would suffocate for sure, the boat broke past the membrane and floated forward on pristine waters. Colorful birds sang from the trees, calling out a song of joy. The lush jungle welcomed her to Eden.

  Abigail tipped her head against Gideon’s shoulder, lacing her fingers into his. He kissed the top of her head. With her face tipped toward the sun, and the man she loved at her side, she came home to her new life.

  About the Author

  G.P Ching is the author of The Soulkeepers Series and a variety of short fiction. She specializes in cross-genre paranormal stories, loves old cemeteries, and enjoys a good ghost tour. She lives in central Illinois with her husband, two children, and one very demanding guinea pig. Learn more about G.P. at http://www.gpching.com and more about The Soulkeepers Series at http://www.thesoulkeepersseries.com.

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  Acknowledgements

  Return to Eden was a difficult book to write. I've always related to Abigail and writing this story sometimes left me in tears. She irrevocably changes and saying goodbye is never easy. I couldn't have finished this book without the following people.

  Special thanks to Karly Kirkpatrick, Magan Vernon, and Angela Carlie for your help, support, and friendship. You made Return to Eden possible. Thanks to Adam Bedore of Anjin design for the cover art and to all of the Indelible authors for your support. Thanks to Dani Crabtree for help editing the series. Finally, thank you to my family for tolerating my absence when it seemed I'd never come out of the editing cave.

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  Excerpt: The Green

  By Karly Kirkpatrick

  Hot water cascaded over me. Burning. Cleansing. I hoped it would wash away the musty smell that seemed to cling to my hair and clothes. I wondered if people at school noticed it or if it was just me. I didn’t even want to think about what moldy nastiness lurked in our basement apartment’s walls. After lathering, rinsing, and repeating, I stepped out into the steamy bathroom and wiped the mirror down with a towel. The exhaust fan broke months ago and the landlord keeps claiming he’ll fix it ‘next week.’

  I swept my dark brown hair, almost black really, into a high ponytail. Everything about me was brown. Brown eyes. Brown skin. Smooth and silky, the color of rich mocha. Hair stick straight and long. If you saw me in a National Geographic magazine, I would be dressed like my Quechua relatives in Ecuador. Colorful skirts and a Panama hat. Hooked nose. Except if I lived in Ecuador with them, I’d live in a hut and hike up my skirts so I could pee in the streets. I was the upgraded version. Like them, but prettier and cleaner. And I used a toilet. Which is good because I’m guessing peeing in the streets would be frowned upon in most American towns.

  I tied a red ribbon around my ponytail. Now I looked like the other cheerleaders. A bright shiny package that all the people at school could look at and admire.

  After a few quick strokes with a mascara brush and some powder, I popped into my room and grabbed my hot-pink backpack off the bed. I secured the door behind me with a giant padlock and walked to the front door.

  “Hey, Ariceli, where you goin’? Can you get me a pop?” slurred my brother Nando from the couch. I cringed.

  “No, I’m gonna be late for school. Get it your damn self,” I snapped.

  “School is for fuckin’ losers.” He chuckled.

  My blood pressure rose, my face and neck heating up. His eyes were almost swollen shut from a night of partying.

  “Because I suppose being wasted at six-thirty on a Tuesday morning makes you not a fucking loser? And neither does living on your mother’s couch when you’re twenty-one? Which one is it Nando?”

  “God, you’re such a bitch.” He slouched back on the couch and snickered at a cartoon on the TV.

  “Fuck you, Nando.” I slammed the door, climbing the steps out of the dungeon, I mean basement apartment, and headed to the bus stop.

  Mom had taken on two jobs just so we could move to this shitty apartment because it was in the right school district for me. Out of the five high schools in the district, Cambridge High was the best, and one of the top schools in the suburbs of Chicago. Way better than any school I could have gone to on the South Side of Chicago.

  My fancy short yellow limousine pulled up right on time for the twenty-minute drive to school. It was nearly empty, being that I was one of only a few kids from crappy Slate Park that Delores, the bus driver, had to pick up. Most kids here went to Slate Park High, but when I saw that Cambridge had a journalism academy, I knew that’s where I had to go. All you needed to get in was an essay and great grades. It was a piece of cake for me.

  I tried to ignore the rundown strip malls and apartment buildings of Slate Park. When we crossed the town line into Cambridge, the scenery changed drastically. Tree-lined streets of shops and cafes led to my three-story, red brick high school.

  I stepped discreetly off the bus; most people drove
to school and I would rather not be seen with my awesome mode of transportation. I slipped into the crowd and let it push me through the halls. Every day passed pretty much the same. Paste it on—the plastic smile. Yes ma’am, yes sir. My, isn’t she a polite girl. What a good attitude. She’ll go far. And good for her, she deserves it. She’s such a hard worker.

  Today was a day for something new. Energy crackled around me when I walked into Journalism.

  “Hey, Ari, did you finish your Calc homework?” asked a deep, velvety voice from across the room. A chill slipped down my spine as I listened to my name roll off his tongue. Mmm, delicious.

  “Of course!” I tried to keep a doofy smile from forming on my face.

  “Did you have any trouble with number twelve?” His long legs nearly touched my short ones across the aisle.

  I pulled my notebook out of my bag. “Nope. But you can look at it if you want.”

  “Thanks! Did I ever tell you that you’re my favorite?” He shook his head, tossing his dark hair out of his bright green eyes.

  “Your favorite what?”

  “Oh, Ari, my favorite everything.” He taunted me with his cute dimples.

  He was such a flirt. I was pretty sure he couldn’t tell I was blushing though. That was one benefit of having brown skin. That and all the leathery blond chicks hated me because I had the ‘perfect’ tan.

  And for some reason I was feeling lucky today. James Bartlett was not only the hottest guy in school—he was also the nicest. He always made a point to compliment me in some way everyday. And I was totally in love with him, not that it mattered, of course. For the last two years he dated the head cheerleader, Naomi Standish. Oh, and did I leave out the fact that she was my best friend? And no, she didn’t know that I loved her man from afar.

  Besides, he and Naomi were the perfect couple. They’d probably date through college, get married and be successful at whatever they did and have a million extremely attractive babies.

  “So what’s new?” I asked James.

  Our Journalism teacher, Ms. Simmons, searched frantically through her materials at the front of the class.

  “You didn’t talk to Naomi last night?” He leaned closer to me and I caught a light scent, soap or cologne, it didn’t matter.

  “Nope. After practice I had a ton of homework, so I turned my phone off. I must have forgotten to turn it back on.”

  “Ohhh,” he said as he raised his eyebrows. “So you don’t know?” His eyes searched my face.

  “Know what?”

  “Naomi and I broke up.”

  Thud. That was the sound of my jaw hitting the floor. I shut it quickly, hoping I wasn’t gaping at him like looky-lous at a car accident on the expressway.

  “What?!” I said in disbelief. I fished my cell phone out of my backpack and pressed the power button. I scrolled through the messages and found one with Naomi’s name at the top. She was going to kill me.

  As he opened his mouth to answer, Ms. Simmons finally got her stuff together and started talking to us about some project she was going to have us work on. I usually only listened to half of what she said anyway. One of the joys of being brilliant meant I didn’t have to pay attention all the time. I shoved the phone into the pocket of my backpack before I could read Naomi’s message. I just hoped Ms. Simmons hadn’t seen it or she’d take it away.

  I whipped out my notebook and wrote furiously as she droned on.

  What happened?

  I passed it discreetly. It didn’t matter. Ms. Simmons was so involved in what she was saying that she barely paid any attention to us.

  I don’t know. We just weren’t going anywhere.

  What does that mean. We’re in high school. Where is it supposed to go?

  I don’t know, we just weren’t getting along and we needed a break.

  So does that mean you might get back together?

  I don’t think so.

  Is she really upset?

  No, she seemed okay really.

  “Ms. Pisa and Mr. Bartlett, I do hope you are paying attention up here.” Ms. Simmons burst my bubble and broke our conversation. A few heads in front of us turned around, and I detected some snickers.

  “Yes ma’am,” I responded, attempting to look like I had been taking meticulous notes.

  James gave me a sideways glance and smiled, his dimples showing again. I could pitch a tent in those things.

  “You are such a kiss-ass,” he whispered.

  I rolled my eyes and shot him a dirty look. But really I wanted to jump across the aisle into his arms and confess my undying love to him. Although upon further review, I decided that this might be a bit extreme. I mean, they did just break up AND Naomi was my best friend. I really should be concerned with how she was doing instead of developing elaborate plans on how to snap up her newly-single man. Wasn’t I such a good friend? She had to get over it sometime, right? And I’d be waiting when she did.

  Excerpt: Loramendi’s Story

  By Angela Carlie

  Some think that space is the final frontier or something like that. Believe me, space has got nothing on what lives here on Earth. If people, the human type, could see what I’ve seen, they wouldn’t be so afraid of aliens or the unknown of space anymore. Aliens are a walk in the park compared to the creatures biding their time to destroy—

  Oh, wait. I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start from the beginning.

  Things started getting weird a few months ago when my best friend, Jess, arrived home from her trip to San Francisco. We lived in the same small town where I’ve always lived in the Columbia River Gorge—White Salmon, Washington. Windsurfing territory.

  We hadn’t been friends for very long. She had just moved to White Salmon about two years prior, but we immediately clicked like soul friends.

  It was a late summer mid-afternoon when Jess’ car squeaked into the driveway. The sound ran over the bird songs and wind chime music. Two dragonflies buzzed over my head before I darted from the brown grass and skipped over to the little red Honda, anticipating a big hug to leap from the vehicle.

  The driver didn’t look like my best friend, but on further examination, Jess sat behind the wheel with stranger hair.

  “Oh my stars!” My jaw dropped. “What did you do?” I stepped closer and a smile crept onto my lips.

  Resentment scribbled all over Jess’ face. She opened the door and took her time crawling out of the car. “What?” Malice dissolved into a smirk with attitude. “You don’t like my new look?”

  “I don’t know. Turn around. Let me see the whole thing.”

  She strutted, as if on a catwalk, and pivoted a quarter turn for my approval. She pushed one hip out with her hand on the other, puckering her lips in a serious pout. Her once long golden brown hair was now a short, pixie cut, dyed purplish red.

  “You pierced your eyebrow!” Pink skin puckered around a silver barbell penetrating the outer edge of her right brow.

  Jess poked her tongue out to reveal a stud straight through it as well. I gasped.

  “You better close your mouth, Lora. Lots of bugs out.” Jess pointed to the invisible bugs flying in the air.

  I snapped my jaw shut.

  Jess grabbed the bottom of her t-shirt and then laughed quietly to herself. “You like that? Well then, you will love these!” She winked and lifted her t-shirt for the world to see her creamy white boobs. Well, not the whole world, just me and possibly Old Man Franklin, the neighborhood snoop across the street.

  I leaped two steps, yanked her shirt down, and made sure the old man wasn’t having a heart attack in his front window. For once, he must have had better things to do.

  “Your nipples too?” I whispered. This was not my best friend who left in June. The girl standing before me was a stranger who only resembled my best friend. “Why’d you do that?”

  Jess didn’t answer me with words, but only shrugged her shoulders as if to say she didn’t know. She stuffed her hands into the pockets of her worn cut-off jeans.
I twisted a long blade of grass between my toes. Words stuttered through my mind but they wouldn’t form a sentence in my mouth. Why isn’t she talking? What happened to my best friend?

  “Do you want to sit down or what?” The way the question sliced through my mouth shocked me.

  Jess shrugged again, her eyes never leaving the ground. “Sure.”

  I stomped toward the house and leaned against the handrail attached to the worn front porch. “So, are you going to tell me how your summer went or am I going to have to read your mind?”

  Jess plopped onto the peeling white painted stairs. “I just hung out with my cousins a lot. We went to clubs on the weekends.” She grinned. “No one ever asked for my ID. It was pretty cool and I met a lot of people. It’s kinda weird coming back to this boring, lame town.”

  “I bet.” My turn to roll eyes, but Jess wasn’t even looking at me. She gazed up at the tree instead.

  “I think I want to move there next year after we graduate,” Jess said matter-of-fact like. “Maybe go to art school and live with my cousins.”

  “That sounds cool. There’s one problem with that, though.” I crossed my arms. “What about our plans to go to Seattle? I’m sure Seattle has just as many clubs if that’s what you’re concerned about.” I turned away so she wouldn’t see the sting in my eyes betray me, because Jess didn’t seem to care or remember the plans we had made before she left.

  Jess snorted. “I always thought you only agreed to go with me to make me happy.”

  “No, stupid!” I forced a laugh and sighed with relief. “I wouldn’t do anything just to make you happy. Who else would I want to escape this town with? There are absolutely zero cool people here other than us—oh and maybe Johnnie too.”

  Jess scrunched up her nose. “Did Johnnie find himself a girlfriend over the summer or am I gonna have to keep breaking his heart?”