Suddenly Psychic: Glimmer Lake Book One

by Hunter, Elizabeth

  “You know,” Robin said, “I never thought my mom and one of my best friends would go into business together, but they’re kind of perfect.”

  “It probably helps that Monica has the uncanny ability to predict which things are going to work perfectly and which things would be a disaster.” Mark winked. “That definitely helps.”

  Robin grinned. “True.”

  In the months since Grandma Helen’s death, no sign of Gordon Russell’s spirit had been detected in the house, but none of their powers had seemed to fade. Robin still saw the occasional ghost wandering around town, though none of them seemed particularly eager to talk to her and she could mostly ignore them.

  Monica still had flashes of insight and the uncanny ability to predict exactly when a rain jacket was needed, even on seemingly sunny afternoons. She’d also bloomed with a new project on her hands. Jake had moved into Grandma Helen’s old room and was the live-in handyman on the property, which gave him a steady job and allowed him to still keep in close touch with his mom. It was exactly the level of space Monica needed.

  Val struggled with her abilities and had taken to wearing gloves pretty much all the time. Robin worried about her the most, but until they could figure out some way for her to tamp down or control what she was seeing, gloves were the only thing that helped. People asked, but Val had come up with all sorts of imaginative excuses for the unusual wardrobe accessory.

  I’ve developed a circulation problem.

  I’m filthy rich.

  Have you heard about superbugs?

  And pretty regularly: I’ve developed psychic powers and can read the mind of anyone I touch. She always offered to shake people’s hands after that. No one took her up on it.

  But all in all, life for Robin had settled back into a seminormal pattern. She had exciting work with fun new challenges like helping to decorate a brand-new inn. She was painting again. She had friends who continued to be the best. And the worst. And the best. Her son was discovering his passion for art and finally finding purpose. And her marriage got better and better as each month passed.

  Robin was even thinking she’d be okay when Emma left for Oregon State in the fall.

  “Hey, honey?” Mark was scratching his forehead. “Didn’t we measure this twice?”

  “Nope.” The little girl who lived in the forest sat on the edge of the gazebo, swinging her legs. “You told him to measure it again, but he didn’t.”

  Robin glanced at her and winked. “I’m not sure. Is there a problem?”

  “I think I cut it about an inch too short.” He tugged on his baseball cap. “Man, I could have sworn I measured it twice.”

  “No big deal.” She walked over and kissed his cheek. “It’s just a two-by-four. We have a whole load of them. We can use the short one on the roof.”

  “Right.”

  The little girl skipped across the lawn in her billowing white nightgown, golden hair flowing behind her.

  “Hey, honey?”

  Robin looked up. “What?”

  Mark looked at her, then followed her eyes; a smile touched the edge of his mouth. “Everything okay?”

  Robin smiled. “Just the usual.”

  Mark gave her a grin. “Well, you can’t say it’s boring.”

  Is this my life?

  Really? This? Every day until I die?

  The sun flashing on the deep blue water of Glimmer Lake. Her husband working next to her. Ghosts dancing across the lawn.

  “Nope.” Robin smiled. “It’s extraordinary.”

  * * *

  Continue reading for a preview of Semi-Psychic Life,

  Val’s story and the next book in the Glimmer Lake series

  First Look: Semi-Psychic Life

  Val was battling a headache that had been brewing since she’d woken up that morning. It was just her luck that Americano Asshole handed her a refillable coffee cup. One that he hadn’t rinsed out. Of course.

  “The usual,” he said brusquely.

  “Got it,” Val said under her breath. “Anything else?”

  There were baskets of fresh lemon scones on the counter, homemade energy bars, and decadent blueberry muffins that her baker, Honey, had made fresh that morning, but he ignored them all.

  He was staring at his phone and fingering the zipper pull on his Patagonia vest. “Nothing. Just my usual.”

  The usual for Americano Asshole was a café Americano diluted with so much milk and sugar that it would be impossible to detect the subtleties of flavor between espresso and the regular brewed coffee Val had sitting on the counter.

  There was a valued place in the coffee world for the café Americano, but not when you drank it like Americano Asshole. That’s why he had his name.

  “Café Americano, heavy cream, three sugars,” Val said, ringing up the customer. He had a name, it was Allan Anderson, but nobody at Misfit Mountain Coffee Shop used it. He was Americano Asshole or AA for a reason.

  Val reached for the silver coffee mug on the counter. She hadn’t even noticed the hole in her glove until the flashing image of a woman pouring coffee into the mug filled her mind. The woman was wearing nothing but Americano Asshole’s button-down shirt. The woman was also not AA’s wife. Val knew that because he was married to a genuinely lovely woman named Savannah who came into Misfit every other Tuesday night with her book club.

  The image was fast and graphic. It was as if Val had been plopped in the room with AA and his side piece for a split second, then yanked out.

  “Shit.” She sucked in a breath and AA looked up.

  “Problem?”

  Val plastered on a smile and swallowed the ream of curses she wanted to throw at him. “It’s fine. Let me just rinse this out.”

  She turned and adjusted her glove to turn the hole to the back of her finger before she slipped up again. Then she went to rinse out AA’s coffee mug so she could get back to the growing line at Misfit that morning.

  It had been over a year since she’d experienced the car crash that had triggered her weird telepathic abilities, and most days she was able to live pretty normally. She only reacted to objects, not people. She didn’t hear random voices or see ghosts like her friend Robin. She didn’t have scary premonitions or graphic dreams like her friend Monica. All in all, she wore gloves at work and while doing chores around the house, and she lived pretty normally.

  Most of the time.

  She handed the rinsed cup to her barista Eve and turned back to the register to get AA’s money for his Americano.

  “Two seventy-five,” Val said, worrying the hole in her glove. Touching money without gloves could be a nightmare.

  AA noticed her glove and smirked. “You’d think with what you charge for coffee you could afford new gloves.”

  Eve sucked in an audible breath, and behind AA, the next customer’s eyes went wide.

  Val wasn’t bothered. They called him Americano Asshole for a reason. “I try to coast on my wealth from twenty-five-cent tips like yours, but the struggle is real.”

  Ramon, her cook, barked a laugh from the kitchen behind her, and AA’s eyes went cold.

  “I’d give anything for a decent coffee shop in this shithole town.”

  Eve handed her the Americano and Val passed it over with a smile, along with the quarter AA usually left in the tip jar.

  “But instead you’re stuck with us. Bite me! And have a nice day.”

  He turned without dropping the quarter in the jar and Val flipped off his back before she turned to the next customer.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  Marie Costa pursed her lips. “Honey, you really shouldn’t treat customers that way.”

  “You worry too much. That guy’s always in a bad mood.” She handed her mom a coffee cup. “Dad coming in?”

  “He’s parking the car.”

  Val handed over another and pointed to the counter. “The counter is yours. Grab stools and Ramon will make up your usual.”

  “Thank you, Valerie.” She pulled out her
wallet and took out twenty dollars even though Val never took her money. She wasn’t going to make her parents pay for their weekly coffee shop breakfast when they’d been the ones to loan her the start-up money to begin with.

  Marie, knowing Val wouldn’t take her money, put it in the tip jar, just like she did every week.

  “And this is why my employees love you more than they love me.” Val grinned.

  “They’re the ones cooking for me,” Marie said. “Not you.”

  “And be grateful for that.”

  “Thanks, Mama Marie!” Ramon shouted. “You better grab one of those lemon scones Honey made.”

  “Oh, that sounds good.” Marie’s eyes lit up. “I do love Honey’s scones.”

  “She’s trying to make me fat, Marie.”

  Val and Eve both laughed at that. Ramon was thin and wiry, the kind of guy who ran marathons and couldn’t put weight on to save his life. He was married to Honey, who was as sweet as her name and carried all the curves in the family.

  Val grabbed three more coffee orders and passed them to Eve before there was a break in the line. Two more tables had seated themselves, and Max was already getting them set up with coffee.

  Long before she’d been a mom or a telepath, Valerie Costa had dreamed of having a place like Misfit Mountain Coffee Shop. She’d never gone to college, though she’d done administration courses at the community college in Bridger City. Instead, she’d married her high school sweetheart and spent her twenties partying up and down California with Josh, living for the next concert or road trip. Josh fixed cars and Val got jobs at whatever office was hiring and didn’t mind someone with multicolored hair and tattoos.

  Val tried lots of things. She worked in restaurant kitchens and accountants’ offices. She worked as a landscaper for a while, then at a big coffee chain in her late twenties just to get medical benefits. Around that time, she started to realize that while punk rock life was fun, having a house and a retirement account might be kind of necessary.

  It was during her coffee stint that she got pregnant with her oldest son, Jackson. Val was thrilled, and at first Josh was too. He made all the right noises and dressed their newborn son in punk rock onesies, combing his fine baby hair into a Mohawk.

  Things got tense when kid number two rolled around. Though Josh liked the fun stuff about being a dad, he didn’t do well with changing diapers, balancing work and parenthood, and losing his nights to crying babies. Punk rock parenthood wasn’t punk rock life, and Josh started to stay out later and later. He didn’t show up for school meetings, and more and more of his paycheck started going missing.

  By the time Jackson was seven and Andy was three, Val knew he was fooling around. She confronted him. He denied it, then he walked out.

  And that was that.

  Val was a single mother of two with no college degree, no steady job, and no resources except great friends and family.

  She decided she could work with that.

  Her mother and father loaned her the money to start Misfit Mountain Coffee Stand. She brought her kids to work in the tiny coffee outpost while she figured out how to make better coffee than the chain she’d worked at. She stumbled and messed up a lot along the way, but she had a few things working in her favor.

  Everyone in Glimmer Lake liked Val, even if they didn’t get her. She was weird, but she had cute kids and she was Marie and Vincent’s daughter. She made great coffee and always made you laugh.

  A drive-through coffee stand turned into a café. Then Val met Ramon and Honey. Ramon was a kick-ass cook, and Honey was a baker. They’d grown up in Glimmer Lake but moved to the East Bay to work in the restaurant business, where they’d been happy. Then Honey’s mom got sick and there was no one else to take care of her.

  Ramon and Honey had been the spark that started the coffee shop. They weren’t a full restaurant, and the menu was limited to what Ramon could get delivered and what he felt like cooking that day. Honey’s baked goods became legendary. Along with Val’s personality and coffee skills, they’d been making it work for about three years, but they weren’t out of the woods yet.

  Of course, it was Glimmer Lake. They’d never really be out of the woods.

  And Josh?

  He was around, but he wasn’t. He flitted in and out of her boys’ lives like a punk rock fairy godfather, missing for months, only to show up with brand-new iPads for everyone or professing his eternal love for Val after he’d broken up with yet another girlfriend.

  Val ignored him. She had her two kick-ass kids, amazing parents, and the two best friends anyone could ask for. She had her coffee shop, a good tattoo artist, and was paying her own bills. Just barely, but she was making it.

  Okay, and now she had weird telepathic abilities that were kind of complicating her life, but she could handle that. Probably.

  * * *

  Just after ten o’clock, Val’s two favorite people walked into Misfit.

  Robin, Monica, and Val were as different as three best friends could be. If they hadn’t all been put in Mrs. Cowell’s advanced reader group in fourth grade, they might never have been friends. But that reading group had turned into a lifeline in junior high school, then a united and unbreakable front in high school.

  Val was the crazy and slightly dangerous one. Monica was the nurturing big sister of the group, and Robin was the planner with the heart of an artist. All three had married early, and Monica and Robin had both had their kids before Val. They’d seen each other through marriage, pregnancy and miscarriage, crying babies, hormonal teenagers, divorce, and death.

  Monica waved Val over. She reluctantly handed the register over to Eve and walked to the corner table where Robin already had some notebooks spread out.

  “I have fifteen minutes,” Val said. “That’s it.”

  “That works.” Robin spread her hands on the notebooks as if she was bracing herself. “What do you think about opening a mini version of Misfit at Russell House?”

  Val blinked. “That’s sudden.”

  Russell House was Robin’s family home that they’d de-ghosted the year before. Robin’s grandfather had been haunting her grandmother and there was another ghost involved from a man her grandfather had murdered, and it was a whole thing.

  But then they got rid of Grandpa Murderer Ghost, Grandma Helen passed peacefully, and Robin’s mom and uncle were left with a giant house that neither knew what to do with, so Robin’s mom and Monica had gone into business to turn the grand old house into a boutique hotel and event venue.

  The first events had been hosted, but they were still working out the kinks on having real hotel guests.

  “We’ve already nailed down baked goods from Honey,” Monica said. “She’ll be doing an exclusive Russell House scone for the room bakery boxes every morning. But then we were thinking, do we want to have coffee makers in all the rooms? Or would it be better to have an espresso bar in the lobby and do in-room deliveries?”

  Robin tapped her fingers. “It would basically be a coffee stand like you started out with. The hotel would just pay you instead of the public. And you could make extra money during events.”

  Val perched on a chair. “Let me think about it. I like the idea, but I just went through that whole expansion drama last year that didn’t work out, so I’m feeling a little wary, and also—no offense—but I want to make sure I don’t cannibalize my business here, you know?”

  “Makes total sense.” Robin slid a folder across the table. “I put a couple of ideas together for you to look at. Just some thoughts about how you could make it work if you wanted to.” She shrugged. “I had time.”

  Monica and Val exchanged a look. “How’s life without Emma?”

  Robin’s youngest had shipped off to university in Washington State the previous fall, leaving Robin and her husband Mark official empty-nesters.

  “It’s good. It was nice to see her and Austin over the holidays but…” Robin smiled. “It’s also nice to have the house back to ourselves again,
you know?”

  Monica whispered loudly, “They’re having freaky sex in whatever room they want now.”

  Val whispered back. “That’s what I figured too.”

  Robin rolled her eyes. “Listen, weirdos, this is me and Mark, not…” Robin’s eyes lifted when the bell over the door rang. “Oh hey, speaking of freaky sex.”

  Val whipped her head around, only to see Sullivan Wescott, sheriff of Glimmer Lake and the source of Val’s headache, walking into the coffee shop.

  She immediately spun around. “Shut up, Robin.”

  “I didn’t say anything!”

  “You were thinking it.”

  Monica raised her hand. “No, that was me, actually. I was the one suspecting you and Sully of having freaky sex.”

  Val hissed, “In what universe do I have the time to have freaky sex with anyone?”

  “That wasn’t a denial,” Robin said. She held her fist out to Monica, who bumped her knuckles. “We were right.”

  “You’re both ridiculous.” Val glanced at her watch. “And your time is up.”

  Monica leaned over to Robin. “She’s leaving us so she can get his order.”

  “Of course she is,” Robin said quietly. “I mean, who else is going to make flirty eyes at Sully? She can’t have Eve doing it. She’s young enough to be his daughter.”

  Val turned, flipped both of her best friends off, then walked back to the register.

  * * *

  The next Glimmer Lake book

  is coming April 2020! Please sign up for my newsletter for more information about Glimmer Lake and my other works of fiction.

  More Paranormal Women’s Fiction

  I hope you’re enjoying this new genre as much as I am! And I really hope you’re excited for Val’s story, which is up next in the Glimmer Lake series. There will be more awkwardly psychic moments, more minivan shenanigans, and as always, more fun and friendship with Robin, Val, and Monica.