We didn’t speak much more for the remainder of the five-and-a-half-hour flight.
A large jasmine plant was perched in the kitchen window of my apartment, speckled with white flowers. I stopped dead in my tracks, staring at it dumbly. Declan was still in the entranceway, collecting the mail that had accumulated while I’d been gone.
The apartment was sparkling clean, of course, thanks to Lark. But I didn’t keep plants. I didn’t spend enough time in any one place to grow them.
I stepped forward, raising a shaky hand to pluck a thick white card out from between the leaves of the plant. A sweet aroma wafted toward me as I disturbed the flowers.
Jasmine’s B-cubed tattoo was meticulously drawn onto the two-inch-by-three-inch card. The word Forever was written underneath. The handwriting was heavy, severely denting the paper. Almost as if she wasn’t certain of her strength anymore.
Jasmine.
Jasmine’s handwriting.
Jasmine’s tattoo, immortalizing our childhood fantasy of being Betty-Sue, Betty-Lou, and Bubba. Of being together with our perfect house and garden …
I stumbled away from the kitchen, crossing blindly through the living room into my second bedroom.
“Wisteria?” Declan called after me, concerned.
I stopped in the doorway, scanning the room. The Murphy bed was folded up, my Pilates apparatus tucked against the wall.
And Jasmine’s boxes were gone.
Declan pressed up behind me, scanning the room over my head.
I swayed into him, choking out a sob. “She’s alive. Declan, she’s alive.” I spun, pressing the card into his hands.
He stared at it for a long moment, rubbing his thumb across the image of the tattoo. Then he lifted his tear-filled gaze to meet mine. “Well,” he said wryly. “She’s not dead.”
I laughed, just to force myself not to cry. I reached up, pressing my hands to his face, feeling his warmth, seeing glints of his magic in his golden-hazel eyes.
He stared down at me, as if he couldn’t look anywhere else.
Joy flooded through my chest. Lifting up on my toes, I wrapped my arms around Declan’s shoulders, knowing he’d been waiting for weeks, even months for me to do so.
He kissed me, brushing his lips across mine tenderly.
“Declan,” I whispered.
“I missed you,” he said.
“I’m here.”
“Don’t leave me again. I couldn’t bear it.”
“I won’t.”
“Let me give you a life,” he said, his voice cracking with barely contained emotion. “I know I can’t offer you what he did …”
“Who? Kett?”
“You’ve been mourning him, haven’t you?”
I laughed quietly. “No. How could I mourn the eternal? Kett hasn’t left me. I was just so, so afraid that Jasmine had.”
“I don’t mind sharing your heart with the both of them. I know you’re booked for the next lifetime, but I’ll take this one. Will you share it with me?”
“It was always yours.”
Declan and I made it into my bedroom, already half unclothed. We stayed in bed for hours, remembering each other, learning who we were and what we wanted as adults. Then the sky darkened and murmured thoughts of food began to intrude.
Stretched out across Declan’s warm chest, his rough fingers stroking long passes down my back, my gaze settled on Jasmine’s card. Despite our rush to be intimately connected, to celebrate Jasmine’s existence by cementing the bond between us, I had carefully placed the hand-drawn tattoo on the bedside table. The white of the card stock caught in the moonlight flooding in through the windows.
The Forever inscription was a promise Jasmine could now keep. A promise she would keep.
Lying there, completely satisfied but oddly awake, I realized that I’d taken a step toward a future unfettered by the past, or by any obligations inflicted upon me by outside forces.
Whether or not I would head the Fairchild coven. Whether or not I’d choose to stay in Seattle. It was my future, defined only by myself and with Declan. The echoes of the past would fade away, replaced by the new moments of magic we’d create.
We three. Beyond death. Forever.
Are you interested in baking the cupcakes from the Dowser Series? Well, now you can!
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Acknowledgments
For Michael
With you, the echoes of the past haunt a little less.
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With thanks to:
My story & line editor
Scott Fitzgerald Gray
My proofreader
Pauline Nolet
My beta readers
Terry Daigle, Angela Flannery, Gael Fleming, Desi Hartzel, and Heather Lewis.
For their continual encouragement, feedback, & general advice
Megan Gayeski – for the Chicago weather report
John and Louise Croall – for finding niggling errors
SFWA
The Office
About the Author
Meghan Ciana Doidge is an award-winning writer based out of Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, Canada. She has a penchant for bloody love stories, superheroes, and the supernatural. She also has a thing for chocolate, potatoes, and cashmere yarn.
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For recipes, giveaways, news, and glimpses of upcoming stories, please connect with Meghan via:
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Also by Meghan Ciana Doidge
Novels
After The Virus
Spirit Binder
Time Walker
Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic (Dowser 1)
Trinkets, Treasures, and Other Bloody Magic (Dowser 2)
Treasures, Demons, and Other Black Magic (Dowser 3)
I See Me (Oracle 1)
Shadows, Maps, and Other Ancient Magic (Dowser 4)
Maps, Artifacts, and Other Arcane Magic (Dowser 5)
I See You (Oracle 2)
Artifacts, Dragons, and Other Lethal Magic (Dowser 6)
I See Us (Oracle 3)
Catching Echoes (Reconstructionist 1)
Tangled Echoes (Reconstructionist 2)
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Novellas/Shorts
Love Lies Bleeding
The Graveyard Kiss (Reconstructionist 0.5)
Dawn Bytes (Reconstructionist 1.5)
An Uncut Key (Reconstructionist 2.5)
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www.madebymeghan.ca
UNLEASHING ECHOES (RECONSTRUCTIONIST 3)
Copyright © 2017 Meghan Ciana Doidge
Published by Old Man in the CrossWalk Productions 2017
Salt Spring Island, BC, Canada
www.oldmaninthecrosswalk.com
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be produced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author, except by reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, objects, and incidents herein are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual things, events, locales, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Library and Archives Canada
Doidge, Meghan Ciana, 1973 —
Unleashing Echoes/Meghan Ciana Doidge — SMASHWORDS EDITION
Cover design by: Damonza.com
ISBN 978-1-927850-61-9
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