The Awakening: A Sisterhood of Spirits Novel

Table of Contents

• Synopsis
  
• By the Author
  
• Acknowledgments
  
• Prologue
  
• 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
  
• Epilogue
  
• About the Author
  
• Books Available from Bold Strokes Books
  

Synopsis

Sunny Skye, a psychic medium, is the head investigator and founder of Sisters of Spirits, a paranormal society dedicated to helping others understand what they can’t see. She is excellent at finding ghosts but finds it difficult to cope in the real world. When she meets Jordan, she is instantly attracted and completely unnerved by the personal demons she carries around with her.

Street tough Jordan Lawson molded herself into what she thinks an excellent cop should be. She trusts only two things: facts and herself. She believes only in the evil that mankind commits and she certainly doesn’t believe in ghosts, even when confronted by one.

When spiritualism and jaded skepticism collide, who backs down first?

The Awakening

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The Awakening

© 2013 By Yvonne Heidt. All Rights Reserved.

ISBN 13: 978-1-60282-824-7

This Electronic Book is published by

Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

P.O. Box 249

Valley Falls, New York 12185

First Edition: January 2013

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Credits

Editor: Victoria Oldham

Production Design: Stacia Seaman

Cover Design By Sheri ([email protected])

By the Author

Sometime Yesterday

The Awakening

Acknowledgments

It takes a small village. I would like to thank mine at Bold Strokes Books. Radclyffe, Victoria, and Cindy, I appreciate your patience and willingness to work with me. Thank you, Connie, for reading my crazy e-mails. The team at BSB is one that I’m very proud to be a part of. A special nod to Ruth, Stacia, Kathi, Toni, and Sandy. Sheri, your covers are outstanding. Also, I would like to thank the authors for including me in your reindeer games. I’m having a blast.

Thank you to my family and friends who have been so amazing through this last year. I wish I had the space to thank you all. It wasn’t until I typed your names out that I realized it would take an entire book just to list you. Thank you all for your support and encouragement.

Maralee Lackman for tirelessly promoting my books and holding my hand when I need you to. I have the best BFF in the world.

Stephanie Keeler, my most amazing ninja, thank you for being an awesome beta-reader!

Sheila Powell for answering my questions about the other side.

An amazing friend, Wendy Sailor, crossed over this year. She touched a thousand hearts with her kindness, and I’m going to miss her. I also lost a beloved aunt, Joyce Ansbro. My posse on the other side is getting bigger.

Thank you, Mom and Papa, for your support and love during this challenging year.

Sandy, thank you, sweetheart, for taking care of me and inviting my characters to have dinner with us. There is nowhere on earth I’d rather be than here with you.

For Kerri-Ann & Daniel.

Prologue

Sunny Skye waited on the wide front porch, dancing nervously from foot to foot and impatiently brushing wild curls out of her eyes. She checked the watch she’d received for her eleventh birthday the week before, and tapped the crystal. “They’re late!”

She had been looking forward to this weekend for months. Her father had put together a film crew and invited two additional girls they had picked out of twenty case files to take part in a documentary he was shooting about psychic children. Special kids with extraordinary abilities. Her mother, also gifted, was going to be in it as well. Sunny was beside herself with excitement. She wanted to spend time with other kids who wouldn’t think she was crazy whenever she started talking to someone they couldn’t see.

A dark sedan pulled into the driveway. “Never mind,” she called over her shoulder before running down the stairs.

The rear passenger door opened, and Sunny saw a small girl with red hair pulled into a long ponytail. She was huddled against the backseat and looked as if she might cry. A woman who Sunny assumed was the girl’s mother got out of the car, walked past her and up to the house, not bothering to take the girl with her.

“Don’t be scared,” Sunny said and held out a hand to help her out. “I’m Sunny, and I’m so happy that you could make it.”

“My name is Tiffany Curran. I don’t like to touch people.”

“Oh,” Sunny said. “That’s right. I forgot.” She stepped back from the car to let Tiffany out. “My dad says that you have psychometric abilities. That means you can read people’s minds by touching them, right?”

“Sometimes. And when I touch things, I sometimes see what happened there. Like walls and stuff.”

“Place memory? That’s cool!”

“What do you do?”

Sunny smiled. “I’m an empath and I can hear and talk with ghosts.”

Tiffany’s light blue eyes widened. “Do you see them?”

“I see them in my mind.” Tiffany was staring at her with her mouth open. “What?” Sunny asked.

“Your eyes are two different colors.”

“Mom says they were both blue when I was born, and six months later, one of them turned green. Some people think they’re creepy.”

“I think they’re beautiful.” Tiffany smiled shyly, flashing two small dimples.

Before Sunny could politely thank her for the compliment, a door slammed behind them. She felt Tiffany startle at the sight of the last girl to arrive. Taller than Sunny, she was dressed in black clothes that hung off her slender frame. The girl glared in their direction from under spiky hair, her dark eyes framed with heavy black liner. She sneered at them, then defiantly took a drag off her cigarette before flicking it into the street.

“Don’t ever call me Lacey.”

Sunny felt a flash of uncertainty at the anger she heard in her voice but remembered her own manners. “Well, what would you like us to call you?”

“Shade.”

Tiffany took a step behind Sunny. “What do you do?”

“Necromancer. I see dead people.”

“For reals?” Tiffany’s voice squeaked.

Shade laughed. “That line never gets old.”

Tiffany looked confused, so Sunny explained. “A necromancer can speak to the dead and interact with their shades.” Sunny smiled. “Oh, I get your name now, clever.”

“What’s a shade?” asked Tiffany.

“Invisible zombies.” Shade curled her fingers into claws and moaned dramatically.

Tiffany gave a little squeak and ducked behind Sunny again. Sunny continued to grin, deciding she liked the angry girl despite the dark energy that seemed to be hanging around her. “It’s just another name for a ghost.”

The van behind Shade peeled away with a screech of tires and sped down the street. Sunny felt a sharp jab of hurt emanate from Shade that didn’t match the angry scowl on her face. Sunny’s power of empathy continued to be a mystery to her since she didn’t fully understand how it was she could feel what others did. She hated it when their emotions didn’t match their words or body language. Sunny went with her instinct and stepped closer to Shade.

“Why didn’t your mother stay?” Tiffany asked.

“She doesn’t care about a stupid movie. She’s just happy to get rid of me for the weekend.”

“It’s not a movie. It’s a documentary about special kids who have psychic abilities,” Sunny said.

“Whatever.” Shade turned away from her and wiped at her face. “It’s stupid.”

“My mother says I’m cursed and it’s the devil inside me.” Tiffany blushed and stared at her feet, her hands in her pockets.

“What?” Sunny was shocked. “They are
gifts,
not curses.” She felt instantly protective of Tiffany and shot an angry look at the woman talking with Sunny’s parents.

“Oh.” Tiffany waved a hand. “That’s not my mother; it’s my aunt Darleen. We didn’t tell my mother we were coming. She flat-out refused when she got the invitation, so we lied and said we were going to Portland for the weekend.”

Shade chuckled and crossed her skinny arms. “This might not suck.”

Chapter One

Fifteen years later

Something crunched under Sunny’s boot, sounding unnaturally loud in the silence as she took another step down the pitch-black hallway. “That was just me,” she said for the recorder.

“Um, Sunny?” the voice crackled from the radio on her hip. She unclipped the walkie from her belt. “Go.”

“There’s movement to your left on video two.”

Sunny glanced at the night-vision camera in the corner and spun to her left with her recorder and thermal detector held in front of her. “Hello? Is someone there?” She knew the question was just for the recorder’s sake, since she could clearly feel a spirit energy,
other
, as she had called them from childhood. Her body tingled with the familiar sensation of electrical pulses under her skin, raising the hair on her arms slightly.

Now, that’s more like it.
So often when they did investigations in private homes, there was little to no paranormal activity to show for their efforts.

She felt rather than saw a shadow that darted past her. Goose bumps raced along her spine and the temperature dropped. The equipment in her hand confirmed what she already sensed. “EMF spiking at point two, temp reading sixty-seven, now sixty-two, fifty-nine.”

She continued to stare through the small camera screen, but she didn’t see any additional movement, and when she glanced down at the thermostat, it was once again at base reading of seventy-one, taken at the beginning of the investigation. She set the thermal camera back on the table and called Shade on the radio.