by Amie Gibbons
PSYCHIC ECLIPSE
(OF THE HEART)
AN SDF PARANORMAL MYSTERY
BOOK SIX
AMIE GIBBONS
Copyright © 2018 by Amie Gibbons
Cover design © 2018 Oleg Volk
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Printed in the United States of America
First Printing, 2018
Gremlin Publishing
Nashville, TN.
https://authoramiegibbons.wordpress.com/
For my readers.
Because you are the reason I write.
And love the dark as well as the light.
Table of Contents
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
Chapter sEVENTeen
Chapter EIGHTEEn
Chapter NINETEEn
EPILOGUE
Chapter one
“Thanks for the update, Mama,” I said, hanging up and putting my phone away.
“How’s your dad?” my friend Annabeth Williamson, AB for short, asked, refilling her mug of coffee and looking around the kitchen as the caterers scurried about.
The whole place buzzed with energy and AB was no different.
She’d had so much coffee today, I was surprised her aura wasn’t oozing brown sludge in my magical sight.
I sagged against the solid steel counter and nodded my head. “Basically good, but the same. No change in his spine. He’s lucky to be alive. That’s a miracle in and of itself. I have never heard so many doctors spinning so many stories. It’s like I’m dealing with pea pickin’ reporters.”
My voice picked up speed. “But we have the para-neuro guy, he’s doing the talk on magical healing today, and he’s gonna take a look at Daddy after he’s wrapped up his lecture circuit. He said they have to wait a while longer to try that on Daddy. cuz of his age anyway, cuz his heart might not take it, and…”
AB giggled, and I paused for a breath.
“Sorry,” I said. “I just… Daddy was shot! He was looking at never walking again, just living in a wheelchair, and was lucky that was the worst of it. And now I’ve got this big fancy surgeon who dabbles in the occult, who I introduced to witches to learn how to do magical healing, and now he’s trying that on his patients. I mean…”
AB nodded with a smile, hazel eyes glowing behind her glasses. “You mean, look what you put together? Look what you’ve done in just eight months? You’ve put together this huge network of professionals who are working with magic to do things from solving crimes to teaching magic to healing with it.”
She paused, staring me down. “Ariana, you did that. It’s okay to be proud.”
I grinned as I turned and filled up my mug with hot water for tea.
“I can’t believe I got this all set up,” I said as I turned back around. “AB, I set up a conference! A huge, couple hundred people, professionals pounding at my email to be included and do panels and presentations conference. My dinner with a few speakers and networking turned into a conference! And I made money! I…”
My mouth worked and AB giggled again.
We were about to kick off the first annual Paranormal Professionals Conference.
And I’d put it together.
Me!
The coffee station was set up with a few coffers full of normal and decaf coffees and one for hot water. I moved so the server could get by me to put the bowls of sugar cubes and lemons on the station.
My convention officially started in twenty minutes and we already had people buzzing around the convention center lobby, waiting for the refreshments that should’ve already been ready to go for the early birds.
General rule for any big event, from a convention to a wedding?
Everything will take three times as long to set up as you think it will.
I grabbed a tea bag without looking at the type and ripped it open.
“I’m scared,” AB said. “I’m doing the first talk, and… you should have somebody better on the first talk. It’s a big deal. It’s kicking off this whole thing. Not just this conference, but all the future ones, and I-”
“No!” I pointed at AB. “What’s your therapist said about negative statements like that? I don’t even want to hear it.”
“But-”
“No.”
But I kept it gentle.
I couldn’t get on AB today.
She’d called me at nine a.m. and asked me what I’d need help with today. I’d already been up for two hours, trying to figure out what all needed to be done, when she rode in and spent the day helping me set up to actually have things ready on time.
“Is it too early for the bar to be open yet?” she grumbled under her breath.
The Paranormal Professionals Convention came with full food and drink as part of the entrance fee, but the bar was still setting up and the bartenders were under orders from me not to open early, even if they were ready to go.
“No, but I’m right there with ya,” I said.
“Take a breath,” AB said, pointing at me. “You ran your ass off today, everything is set up, these guys are getting the food out there. You’re good. Just take a minute before you have to get everything going.”
I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath.
And opened them with a smile.
“Have I said thank you today?” I asked her.
“About twenty times,” AB said with a big grin. “I know, I’m an awesome friend, and you’re welcome. I am also available for future events that take way too much planning and last-minute touches, such as conventions, weddings, funerals… um, I thought there’d be more to that list.”
She gave a big dramatic shrug and I laughed, letting out some of the tension I’d been carrying for the past week trying to make sure everything for this conference would be ready to go.
I’d come up with the idea for the convention after I decided to start my own detective agency and began to realize how much goes into an investigation, beyond the pieces of them I’d been handling at the FBI.
And beyond that, how much help victims of paranormal crimes or ailments needed.
How was someone who had PTSD from being attacked by a poltergeist, or a woman who was having identity issues because she was part siren and fed off sex, which clashed with her religious upbringing, supposed to get help, when psychiatrists thought anyone coming to them with those issues was making the actual problem up?
I’d been setting up a network of professionals who dealt with some aspect of the paranormal world for months, and I’d finally decided to bite the bullet and see if I could get a networking event going last Spring.
Not only had it gone off like gangbusters, with my network volunteering to do speeches, panels, presentations, and to pay for the privilege of it, it blew up beyond my group to the entire South and Mid-West.
I’d had to switch my first choice of a hotel convention room to the Andrews Convention Center over by the lake to accommodate the nearly four hundred registered professionals.
I’d even had to hire a college student to handle the panel programming schedule and the website, because I didn’t have time to do everythin
g myself on top of running my business.
I was a success!
If I didn’t, ya know, have a heart attack from the stress before this day was done.
I squirted some honey into my tea before putting the container back on the rolling serving table and nodded at the caterer to take it out.
“T-minus fifteen minutes,” I said, stirring my tea as I checked my phone for the time. “I don’t even know where Gavin ran off to.”
My college intern was a genius marketer and event planner in the making, and I seriously wished I could hire him on to take care of the day-to-day marketing and organizing of my PI company, but I couldn’t afford a full-time employee quite yet.
I wasn’t doing bad, but I’d only been actually running my business for about seven months, and I was still working out the kinks of small business ownership…
And the finances.
Math and I do not get along.
The networking to find business, on top of actually doing business and trying to find out who’d shot my daddy last November, had kept me pretty busy.
I knew the culprit was involved with the supernatural, cuz I hadn’t been able to find out anything about Daddy’s shooting psychically.
And with the control I had over my power now, cuz I was gettin’ good at this, darn it, that was only possible if the person knew how to block a psychic and had some serious power.
Or a piece of me, like some of my hair.
Ya want to blind a psychic? Can’t beat a charm made from a bit of that specific one.
“He said something about last minute addons about an hour ago,” AB said. “He was reprinting the schedule for tonight to replace one of the speakers and said he’d make sure the tables were all set up. He sounded pretty excited about it, so I think he got someone good to replace Dr. Patel.”
“Oh, thank the Lord!” I said, clapping my hands around my mug.
Dr. Patel was supposed to be doing a talk on treating PTSD in paranormal crime victims, because he’d been the specialist in that area in Nashville for about two years, but he’d had to drop out last week due to a death in the family. My backup plan had been to have my old coworkers at the FBI expand their talk about cases we’d seen since the SDF was formed about six years ago.
The kitchen buzz died down as more and more servers got their carts and trays out the huge double doors, and I grinned.
We were going to kick this off in a few minutes, and I’d actually pulled it off.
This whole thing was something pretty big to be proud of.
“How do I look?” I asked AB, standing up straight.
AB looked me up and down obviously and scrunched up her face. “I don’t know, you could use more cleavage.”
I snorted and slapped her arm, and she giggled.
I’d gone with a gold wrap dress that set off my green eyes and golden-brown curls well instead of a suit. I wanted to look professional, but not too stuffy.
AB was rocking a similar green dress that made the most of her tiny form and made her hazel eyes stand out even beneath her thick glasses. Her wild brown curls were tamed with styling spritz and pinned up in a vaguely forties look.
We both had on sensible short heels made for walking since we knew we’d be on our feet for the next eight hours.
We had the convention center from four to midnight, and all but two hours of that was programming, where people could listen to the talks or panels, or mingle out in the lobby and grab food.
And the last two hours were specifically set aside as a mingling session and party.
I’d even hired a musician to play.
Normally, you wouldn’t do an event so late on a Sunday, but with the big deal, full eclipse that crossed the entire country tomorrow, most people were taking work off regardless of whether they’d traveled into town for the convention or were already here. And there were parties across the country in the path of the eclipse, with tourists pouring into towns where the full eclipse would hit.
We already had an informal eclipse party set up at a local bar for everyone in for the conference. If they didn’t want to go to one of the other hundred eclipse parties around the city, that was.
“I want you to take a minute,” AB said. “Just a minute, to realize what you put together here.”
I smiled wide and nodded as pride swelled in my chest.
“You’re right. I did good!” I said.
She nodded. “You ready to kick this bitch off?”
Clang sang through the kitchen like a gunshot.
My heartrate bounced through the roof as the mug slipped outta my numb fingers, and I gagged in the back of my throat as bile and adrenaline warred in my stomach.
My legs and arms shook, and I couldn’t breathe.
My daddy flashed before my eyes.
Falling to the ground after the tell-tale crack.
Blood spreading across his green shirt.
Time slowing as I ran to his side, too late, even with my powers.
I’d kept time in that crawl as I put pressure on his wound.
I couldn’t figure out how to let my sister, the doctor, into my slow bubble without slowing her down too, so she was stuck trying to run to us for about ten minutes in slow-mo, cuz she’d been right behind me.
Luckily, everyone else at Daddy’s rally had been too busy running for the doors, away from the shooter to notice the tiny magic bubble where things slowed down.
I’d slowed time before in battle, but it was the first time I’d done it in a specific little bubble with tons of people moving around it, keeping Daddy in slow-mo until the paramedics showed up.
It was the only thing that’d kept him from bleeding out.
But it hadn’t saved his spine.
He’d been in a wheelchair ever since, and would be for the rest of his life if it weren’t for the doctor who said he could probably heal Daddy’s spine with magic once he had more practice.
“Ariana,” came through the fog clouding my vision. “Ariana!”
“Huh?” I shook my head, blinking.
AB stood in front of me, grabbing my arms hard, and based on the soreness in my neck, she’d been shaking me.
“You back?” she asked.
I nodded, very slowly.
I honestly wasn’t sure.
She picked up the mug and put it on the counter, grabbing a towel and wiping up the mess.
“What happened?” I asked as she stood back up, dropping the wet towel in the industrial sized sink.
“One of the servers knocked an empty tray off the counter with her elbow.”
I shook my head. “No, that couldn’t be that loud.”
“Ari,” she said her nickname for me, “you’ve got to see a therapist. You have PTSD. Trust me, takes one to know one. I swear, the counselor I’ve been going to has really helped.”
AB had PTSD from losing her virginity to a guy who’d possibly crossed the line into assault, that she hadn’t dealt with for nearly eight years. She’d only finally started dealing with because they’d tried to be friends, and it had fallen apart as her buried trauma slowly crawled to the surface and finally burst like a zombie zit.
She was still on the fence about pressing charges on her ex, but he’d moved away in January, so she hadn’t had to actually deal with him being in her face at friends’ events or professional functions. She’d also started therapy a few months ago and kept insisting I go see someone to help with the issues I obviously had from Daddy’s shooting.
“I… I have to get out there to start this thing,” I said. “I have to greet everyone and introduce the first speaker.”
“You still have a few minutes. Just take a few to collect yourself,” she said, handing me her coffee. “You aren’t all here.”
I nodded. She didn’t have to explain. We’d been friends for almost ten months now, and we both had issues.
When something triggered those issues, we both had a tendency to withdraw and lose the power of speech.
Something th
at had never happened to me before.
I closed my eyes, taking deep breaths and picturing waves lapping up on a quiet beach with soft white sand and water so clear you could see to the bottom.
“The EMDR therapy I’ve been doing has really helped,” AB said quietly.
“I know it’s helped you,” I said. “I get it. And I may even need it. But I don’t have the time or the money for counseling. At least not right now. Everything I make has to go back into my business. Like this convention.”
“This convention is making you a few thousand in profit,” AB said. “You had me checking the math before you hired Gavin, remember?”
I smiled, still keeping my eyes closed and sipping the coffee.
“I know,” I said. “I’m making as much in profit from this thing as I’ve been grossing every month as an investigator. I… I’m still in shock.”
I could see AB grinning in mind’s eye, and it had nothing to do with being psychic.
She’d been playing part time assistant to me on my cases when she could, after her day job working in cancer research.
I’d paid her for her time here and there, because she was doing good work, but I wasn’t paying her what I should for it because I wasn’t quite there yet.
But after this conference, with all the connections I’d made, I’d probably keep up the spike in business I’d gotten, be able to pay AB for the research she did, and maybe even keep Gavin on as a part time assistant.
We had LEOs, doctors, witches, politicians, and more from twenty different states, and most showed up on my radar because they’d needed help with some case or knew the people I’d already connected with in that capacity.
That was a lot of potential law enforcement departments that would pay good money for a psychic to ride in and solve their cases with a few well-placed visions.
My biggest problem in getting cases was a lot of these guys didn’t need me to just tell them who did it.
They needed evidence to make it stick.
And psychic visions didn’t exactly pass the Frye standard in court.
At least, not yet.