Alchemyst - CactusRose (books for new readers .txt) 📗

Preface

I suppose everyone has a story about a moment in life when something powerful and fleeting beyond reality or reason touched them, leaving an indelible impression on their souls.

One of those experiences with the unnatural happened in an amazing place, at an unlikely time ~ and exactly when needed the most.

Synopsis

How do you go on living after your worst nightmare comes true? When secrets of a lifetime are revealed? Maggie was born into a family with extraordinary powers. Now two of them are dead. She must go back in time to solve mysterious happenings before she is next. What she finds is explosive, a message she will not soon forget.

Alchemyst

Maggie parked the dusty car in front of a bookstore and tugged the mirror toward her. She shivered. Feeling a slight nip in the summer air, she closed her jacket.

Were the leaves turning color already? Nature steadied her nerves. Autumn colors...orange, brown, mellow red… like wine and sourdough bread.

She lowered the window to inhale deeply, imagining crisp air refreshing her lungs.

When the breath caught in her throat she choked, caught off guard by a stifling thought.Oh, God. I miss her. We were leaving on vacation in another week. Her suitcase was already packed. Why did you take her from me, God? Did she have to die? So horrible… and she's gone.

Maggie knew that if she stayed in that car recalling the trauma for a second longer she would start sobbing again. She swabbed at tears snaking a trail across her cheek, shrugging to clear her horror-stricken face.

The mirror reflected her trembling smile. It was halfway realistic, so she replaced the mirror, took a tissue, and trudged across the crowded parking lot with a notebook under her arm.

“Hi, everyone!” Maggie acknowledged each of her former colleagues with a thirsty sigh before tumbling into an empty seat by the table. “Sorry, Kai, I was a bit behind.”

They nodded, too distracted by a visitor interpreting their strengths with the ancient art of numerology to mind a late arrival. When their guest paused for a drink, JD leaned toward Maggie with a warm smile.

“Maggie, meet Sara.”

Maggie nodded, trying to look interested. Her life had undergone such radical change while working for JD. Dual stresses from a challenging new job assignment and a broken relationship with her fiancee were surreal for someone exploding onto the fancy new office scene with a broken heart. Hers was shaken until a curtain dropped, forcing her backstage to watch events unfold, while her fiancée sent tear-stained letters and chased others. It was he who courted, he who encouraged her to drop the protective walls. They separated so suddenly that her corral gate stood wide open. Nothing stopped the love from ebbing uselessly away.

At first she was devastated. An empty heart is a massive void to replenish. He had taken the part of her soul most easily adaptable to change, and spiritual death tugged dangerously on her heartstrings. During the worst of times she stayed afloat by repeated affirmation and her daughter's encouragement. Pleading didn't work. Losing her confidante was ungodly. "Lord," she begged, "Make this experience end."

Perhaps it worked. She wangled an invitation, took a leave, flew to a distant port, and reset her equilibrium. Eventually, tears dried and she returned with renewed magnetism. New men approached who were nothing like him, leaving her feeling slightly nauseous. She soon discovered that most of them wanted only to garden the long, sloping yard of her beautiful home with its blossoming flowers and shady, wooded pathways to the lake.

After the house sold she struggled to piece together life in a new location. Yet the all-consuming travel to manage seminars left her no energy for healing. Offsetting burnout meant finding time to resurrect her creative side. A few weeks before the early out began, a worse nightmare struck. She found her mother dead. She felt like she was crawling across an arid desert seeking shelter from a blazing heart tinged with horror.

Despite all that, she knew the choices were her own. And she dearly missed this wonderful friend across the table who was powerful enough to lead with humanity and human enough to quote features of the zodiac by heart. Rainbow-like acquiescence played across her features as sunshine careened into her eyes. She smiled back.

“Maggie, Sara is my friend and house guest from St. Joe Harbor on Lake Michigan,” smiled JD. "You might have heard about their growing metaphysical hotspot? Sara was giving us a rundown on… um… personal strategy.”

Maggie watched her friends turn to Sara and then imperceptibly shook her head. They had gathered to discuss business. Everything was beginning to feel backward and inside out because she didn’t believe in fortunetelling, numerology and psychic mechanics.

Simply put, once Maggie restored her life she refused to make it vulnerable to unknown forces by opening the back door. To put this another way: When she was little, and wandering vagrants begged food from her mother, she sent them to the back porch with tin plates that came back twisted. Maggie had no tin utensils, only a slightly cracked porcelain heart. Whatever consequences occurred accidentally she could deal with. But she would not purposely expose the deadbolt of her heart.

Even so, she knew something big was going to happen. Maggie felt it in every fiber of her body, mind, and soul.

Confusion

Crossing her arms with the same obstinacy she expressed in childhood, she wandered through her thoughts.

The others chatted on, oblivious to Maggie's quandary.

How mind-bending it was to Maggie, losing both parents so suddenly. Father’s demise a few weeks ago was as wrenching as Mother's. She had no answers, only frustration, anger, loss, mystery, and an unrequited desire for revenge that she firmly suppressed, knowing that any retribution she conjured up would be unholy... and pure guilty pleasure.

Suddenly, she felt that grinding heat again tearing at her insides, coiling her throat into a tight ball, thrusting its pointed sword at her eyes in an effort to escape. She closed her eyelids quickly and walked to the sandwich counter.

As she carried hot tea back to the table, she knew the time was ripe for soul searching. She'd had nightmares since returning from a cruise the previous week. Premonitions of danger spiraled through her dreams like burrowing owls, trying to enlighten but succeeding only in frightening her.

The windjammer cruise, on the other hand, was wonderful. It was a trip she would never have booked if she’d known Father’s vacation in Florida was his last, but one that profoundly magnified her existence.

But he had died without warning. The call came late at night. Her stepmother was desperate, uncertain. Before she flew to Florida, Maggie prayed, "Please Lord, don’t let it be too late. Give us one last argument over dinner. Let us say goodbye."

But when she arrived exhausted from three flights in twelve hours, he was gone. She found herself staggering through an alien, out-of-state hospital looking for the Chaplain’s office, stumbling along corridors blinded by shock and stunned disbelief, only to discover a sign on the door saying he was out to lunch.

It was all Maggie could do to prevent the anger bubbling through her veins from screaming bloody murder at the hospital that let him bleed to death, in an ordinary room, without even a properly working telephone.

She knew about the phone because she called him. He knew then his time was up. She heard the desperate concern in his voice. "The equipment malfunctioned, for Pete’s sake! What else here doesn't work?" It was inexcusable.

It wasn't her idea to remove life support. Four meetings between siblings, specialists, and spouse led to the only decision that made sense. Spending his lifetime as a powerful leader, Dad made it clear he did not want to become a vegetable.

The distancing feeling of anger anchored Maggie in place. She was a peaceful sprite, full of artistic expression and rich longing, feelings that were triggered in the private of a darkened theater, a shaded bedroom, a musical moment by the roaring fire. Privacy was out of the question. She kept the darker feelings at bay for home.

There were arrangements to help her grieving stepmother with. Younger siblings were a generation all their own who kept to themselves and flew home. During the long nights there was no one to talk to, there was only shock, gawking and empty, numbed by sleep deprivation. Serpentine grief could not flare its hooded head in that wild state of compression.

Fortunately, Maggie had a bevy of guardian angels. Her health improved at home and she was busy helping with the memorial.

A potentially dangerous situation was avoided with their help when her former fiancée asked to attend the public event. During the gathering he remained attentive and never left her side, telling family members he could not forget her. She was happy to have a tall, attractive companion at her side greeting prominent guests, and he applauded her speech.

But when the last moments drew to a close and he wanted to sequester with her in the privacy of an elevator, a young niece tugged her hand in the opposite direction. She resisted the temptation to descend into what might have become the gigolo's self-centered pit of slime, escaping with the remainder of her heart intact.

Furthermore, the barefoot cruise secured her moorings until she could regain some buoyancy.
Soon the public memorial was over. He was gone, Mom was gone, and Maggie was an orphan charged by Father to keep the widely spread family together. Before she knew it, she was flying back to the coast with friends, ready to embark and drift upon the sea.

How powerfully decompressed she felt, lying on a deck chair with a water bottle tucked between her knees. Caribbean sunshine fueled breezes that filled regal windjammer sails under stellar skies and vacuumed her soul of grief. Southern winds swept across the wave-tossed teak deck under her bare toes, waking her spiritually to the eternal quality of waves. At last she relaxed, attuned to the restless nature of the high seas on a tall ship.

Every night ended with entertainment. On the second night, the ship was under sail. Maggie was dancing Salsa barefoot on the rolling teak deck under a dense canopy of stars . For some reason she chose not to step off when the music ended. Off-duty crew members filed in. Dancing became nonstop, as partner after partner swept her around the deck and moved to the next guest. Then she realized that a tall, well-built young Caribbean dance partner did not leave. Only then did she look him in the eyes. They were dark and sincere. Their Salsa progressed naturally until they were unconsciously adding other dance movements as smoothly as the sea waggles its tide under the nose of the full moon. He sang lyrics to her and she was deeply touched.

Suddenly, she realized she was alone. Her friends had gone below! Their dance was heating to an excited fever pitch that felt dangerous beside the wild open sea. It was time to wish him a goodnight. Earlier, he had taken her aside to introduce himself as Bacchus, a college student and chef from the Caribbean coast of South America. He was only half her age. Maggie started downstairs; he coaxed her back.

With a steel resolve she didn't feel, Maggie insisted. But he caught her