Total pages in book: 162
Estimated words: 151630 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 758(@200wpm)___ 607(@250wpm)___ 505(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 151630 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 758(@200wpm)___ 607(@250wpm)___ 505(@300wpm)
The Davis family was known throughout the supernatural world for our mental and spiritual gifts. My father could move heavy objects with nothing more than a thought. I had uncles who could astral project across the planet. They worked for some scary men from time to time. One aunt could hear sounds from other planes of existence. She described it as a radio playing in her head. I always thought that would be weird, but she enjoyed it since apparently the people who lived in our house on the other plane were extremely dramatic.
My mother was a medium. She could see and speak to the dead. It’s not like what you see on television. At least not some programs. She didn’t need a séance or to hold something the dearly departed once owned. That’s called psychometry, and you do not want it. My cousin thought she was picking up a hunting knife once and spent two hours screaming because it belonged to a serial killer.
“You’ll find your power, Shy,” my mother would always say.
She didn’t tell me my power would lead me to a mental institution.
She certainly didn’t tell me the first ghost I would ever see would be the most terrifying vision, nor that she would still be hanging around so many years later.
“She’s back.” Josie Albertson stands to my left, her hands on her hips as she watches the Drowning Woman from a distance. “I wonder what she wants. You ever talk to her? Anytime I try to get close, she disappears.”
I can see her out of the corner of my eye even as I stand in the garden of the home I share with Lily Tucker and Hannah Jenkins. I love a good garden, and no one takes a garden quite as seriously as a witch. I stand among the herbs and flowers and vegetables they’ve spent half a year growing, and in the background, I see ghosts.
I turn to Josie, who is a fairly recent addition to the dead of Frelsi. Not that there are many. We’re a community of supernatural creatures and located in an isolated part of the world. Josie showed up a few months before, having fallen into a crevice while attempting to climb the mountain we live in. She presents as most ghosts do, with some form of how she died printed on her body. In her case, her left side is always stained with blood, and her left arm bends at an odd angle. She’s got a really nasty knot on her head. Other than that, she could be any sarcastic tourist who happened to die, find herself in a supernatural world, and freak out.
When I first saw her, I calmed her down, asked her the salient questions. There are a few when dealing with the dead. Do you see a light being the most important. Josie was adamant. Yes, it was there, but she wasn’t going through. I explained about how every soul has a limited amount of time to complete the whole death journey before things go sideways. She was cool with it, and we’ve been hanging ever since.
“No,” I admit and kneel down to start harvesting the mugwort Lily told me is needed for the spell of protection she intends to work before we leave this place. “She’s the oddest spirit I’ve ever seen, and when she gets close, it’s hard to look at her. I can’t see her face through the water. I know she’s not the scariest-looking being I’ve ever come up against, but I fear her more than all the rest of you combined.”
Josie huffs. “I don’t know. That dead thing freaks me out.” Her head tilts as she watches the Drowning Woman, whose limbs move in and out, every finger dripping with blood.
I wonder if she can follow me to Faery. I’ve never been off plane before. Until I came here to Frelsi, the only thing I knew about other planes of existence was that someone named Jill was cheating on her husband, Lewis, and it was only a matter of time until he found out, and my aunt was pretty sure they had a prenup.
Like I said before, my childhood was weird and wonderful at first, and then a horror movie.
And now…now I wonder if I am walking into a romance. I wonder if I am finally ready for it.
“See, that kind of freaks me out, too,” Josie says.
I nearly start when I feel something on my cheek. And then the smell hits me. Roses.
“But he sure doesn’t.” Josie smiles and smooths back her hair like she’s trying to make a good impression on a man who cannot see her.
I close my eyes and let the silky petals caress my skin, let them give me the strokes and kisses I haven’t been able to take from the man who controls them.