Amplifier 4: Paisley and …

*SPOILERS**SPOILERS**SPOILERS**SPOILERS**SPOILERS**SPOILERS*

Paisley shoved herself between Aiden and his father. A single tentacle sprung forth from her neck. It was wrapped around a large bovine bone. The demon dog flashed a double row of sharp teeth at Kader, then poked him in the thigh with the bone.

“Ah,” Kader said. “Look at you, beautiful. I didn’t know that any of you had survived.” He glanced at me. “Did you get the entire litter out?”

I hadn’t. Only Paisley had survived the destruction we Five had wrought on the compound when we’d escaped the Collective.

Paisley poked Kader with the bone again.

“Yes, sorry,” he said to her. Then he wrapped his hand around the end of the bone, gazing deliberately into Paisley’s blood red eyes.

Silence stretched. A distant rooster crowed, then the rooster overseeing our flock responded. An airplane passed overhead.

Aiden glanced my way questioningly.

I shrugged. Paisley had done something similar when Opal had appeared on the property, making her hold the bone as well. I hadn’t thought to mention it to anyone. But the demon dog seemed to be using the bone that Aiden had given her as some sort of way to vet intruders, friend from possible tasty treat.

Not that I’d let the demon dog eat someone. Though, even I couldn’t stop everything that might happen in the heat of battle.

– Excerpt from Idols and Enemies (Amplifier 4), 4th draft. Releasing Sept/Oct 2020.

A space opera teaser …

“Okay.  Just so I’ve got this straight …” Ryanne lifted up on her tiptoes, leaning into Trand’s personal space. “Some crazy mercenary —”

“Thief.”

Ryanne bared her teeth in anticipation. “Some thief recognizes her Royal Highness Astrea’ea Torval, second in line to the throne of Tor’valla, daughter of the Priestess Zara, born in the waters of the fount itself. But …” She held up one tattooed finger. “They don’t know that she can shred their minds or skin them alive from kilometres away?”

“Technically I can’t flay skin with my mind,” I said, trying to not laugh as my friend schooled the new recruit.

“You just bought two knives,” Ryanne growled. “And you can wield both at the same time with your obscenely powerful magic. Consequently, the flaying of skin.”

I looked at Trand. “She has me there. If the blades are sharp enough I suppose.”

“They’re sharp enough.” Ryanne sniffed. “Because your freaky ass magic sharpens them, doesn’t it?”

I made a face, looking at Trand apologetically as if I’d been trying to be on his side of the argument. “Technically … possible.”

– untitled space opera, chapter one, first draft

Dowser 5: A fav excerpt

I was making a quick addition to the Adept Universe Cookbook today – apparently, I forgot to mention WHEN to add the chocolate chips in the peanut butter and chocolate chip cookie recipe (thank you to Bronwyn’s hubby for letting me know) – and I stumbled upon this excerpt from Dowser 5 that made me smile.

I do adore Drake.

“That’s a Vixen in a Cup. Chocolate gingerbread cake with a salted caramel icing.”

“Tell me the tale of this cupcake,” Drake demanded as he dramatically held a newer creation of mine aloft.

I glanced up from the last handwritten page of the journal. “That’s a Vixen in a Cup. Chocolate gingerbread cake with a salted caramel icing.”

“Vixen in a Cup,” Drake whispered as he carefully peeled the paper off the cupcake. Earlier this year, I’d tried to do away with cupcake holders by using silicone cups to bake. But they were fiddly — the moist, delicate cake broke more often than not — and my customers had rebelled at the breaking of tradition. At least the paper cups I used were compostable.

The final line of the journal read: Shailaja has broken with the guardians. She has broken with me.

“Who is Shay-la-ja?” I asked Drake, attempting to sound out the foreign name.

The fledgling, who’d stuffed the entire cupcake in his mouth, could only shrug in response.

“Way to savor.”

 – excerpt from Maps, Artifacts, and Other Arcane Magic (Dowser 5)

Misfits 1: Chapter One, Part One

Author’s Note: The Misfits of the Adept Universe series directly follows the events in the final Dowser trilogy. And, in my opinion, it is best read after the Dowser Series, including Graveyards, Visions, and Other Things that Byte (Dowser 8.5). Otherwise … SPOILER ALERT!

I stepped from the cab, lingering on the sidewalk with my satchel over my shoulder and a small duffle bag in hand until the taxi had pulled away. Combined, the two bags held every precious possession I owned, not including the magical artifact perpetually slung around my neck and currently hidden under my bulky red poncho.

The cab disappeared around the corner. But instead of traversing the front path leading to the house that corresponded to the address I’d given the cabbie — because I didn’t actually live there — I veered left. Jogging across the perpendicular street, I skirted the cul-de-sac that abruptly capped East Thirty-Seventh Avenue for vehicles, even as the road continued east for foot and bike traffic. The beads attached to the multicolored fringe of my hand-knit poncho clacked together, seemingly amplified against the fronts of the closely clustered homes of the residential area. 

In another couple of hours, residents would be returning from school or work. But for now, the street was dead quiet.

Practically running — or as close to running as I ever got, at least — I traversed the length of a tall chain-link fence. My heavy boots barely touched down as I crossed through the open metal gates that were all that stood between me and a wide concrete path. A step beyond that entrance, and the magic embedded within every centimeter of the sprawling grounds of Mountain View Cemetery welled up underneath me. 

I shuddered, suppressing a groan of contentment. Eyes closed, partially on my tiptoes, I paused to absorb the sensation. It felt intensified, perhaps due to how long I’d been away.

I was home.

I settled back on my heels, content to simply let the magic roiling under my feet just be. For the moment.

Mountain View Cemetery, spreading some ten city blocks north to south and two residential blocks east to west, might have been owned and operated by the City of Vancouver since 1886. But its magic belonged to me, grounded me. Even sustained me. Over 92,000 gravesites and 145,000 interred remains equaled a shit-ton of death magic. And all of it had been tied to me for over three years now, since a few days before my eighteenth birthday.

Ironically, I had claimed the cemetery — at both the witches’ and my mother’s urging — to keep my path on the side of the light, to balance my burgeoning magic. Everyone had been so worried about me being tainted. Worried about me going dark. And now, upon returning to the city, having completed training the magic that had everyone’s panties in a twist, the cemetery was still my first stop. Even before checking in with friends or so-called family, I’d needed to come to Mountain View. The urge had seized me as the wheels of the plane hit the tarmac, then had only intensified in the time it had taken to clear customs and wait in line for a taxi.

Feeling more settled and still hauling my bags, I took a path that cut through to the center of the property. The headstones were a mixture of raised and in-ground through this section, crafted from different types of stone and metal. A few family plots with larger memorials were randomly scattered throughout. My steps were quiet on the wet pavement, though my beaded fringe still clattered with each step. 

A few joggers traversed the many paths running parallel and perpendicular to me — not that I needed to worry about being seen. The magic that ebbed and flowed under my feet hid me from casual view. If someone didn’t know I was there, wasn’t looking for me specifically, my passing presence was absorbed by the energy constantly emanating from the cemetery. That inherent obfuscation would be the same in any graveyard, for any necromancer. But it was more concentrated at Mountain View because I’d claimed the property. Our magic was connected, almost symbiotic.

It wasn’t raining, but it had been earlier in the day. The headstones, the paved path, and the bright-green grass were all speckled with tiny droplets that hadn’t evaporated yet. Sunlight glinted from the petals of the flowers and the wreaths decorating a number of graves — tokens of grief, celebrations of a life lived, from those who visited their dearly departed.

I stepped onto the damp grass, weaving through a grouping of flush-mounted headstones and passing a three-foot-tall white concrete statue of a woman holding an urn, before I arrived at my favorite gravesite. I stopped there, gaze unfixed, pressing my palm to the top of the tall, light-gray granite headstone. Ignoring the fading name and dates etched into it, I listened. Waiting. Still feeling incomplete, but putting the pieces of myself back together. The pieces that made me the Morana Novak who called Vancouver home, who had claimed Mountain View Cemetery.

The pieces that made me Mory.

The pieces that made me the wielder’s necromancer — and everything that went with that title, that position within the so-called misfits who made up the Godfrey coven. The younger subset of that coven, at least.

I wasn’t the same Mory who had abruptly left Vancouver in the middle of February over a year and a half ago, less than a week after the offer to take specialized training at the Academy had hit my inbox. But I could still collect and keep the best pieces of that Mory before I announced my return. 

Before everything that had happened almost two years ago, I would never have expected to feel the need to do so. But here I was.

I waited to see if the sweet soul who occasionally haunted her gravesite would visit. I didn’t try to summon her or to pull her forth. I was too powerful to play at such things anymore. And if her spirit had finally moved on … well, that was the ultimate goal.

Oh, yes. I was a necromancer. From a long line of necromancers. A soul seer, to be specific. A rare specialty. A frowned-upon branch of magic, because screwing around with souls was as dark as magic could get, even for a necromancer. 

Unless that necromancer was trained and certified by the Academy, then gainfully employed by the witches Convocation.

Which I was.

As of just over twelve hours ago.

I wasn’t the necromancer of the Godfrey coven, though, which claimed all of Vancouver and beyond as its territory. You know, ‘The Necromancer’ in capital letters. That was my mother’s position.

A slight breeze stirred my hair, tickling my jaw and obscuring my vision. That hair was currently deep purple, shot through with shades of pink and a hint of light blue. It pulled my attention back to the present. No spirit or shade arrived or greeted me. I tried to not feel disappointed. 

Instead, I reached into my satchel for Ed, finding my undead turtle tangled up in three strands of yarn. A deep purple, a baby blue, and a multicolored speckle — all merino, silk, and cashmere — were woven around his legs and neck. I’d started a simple knitting project on the plane, and after a fifteen-hour flight from Latvia with a connection through Frankfurt, I was almost at the crown decreases on a marled slouch hat. I was knitting with yarn left over from the shawl I’d completed at the Academy, right before leaving for my final assignment. And yes, it matched my current dye job.

“Ed,” I grumbled. “We’ve talked about you building a nest in my bag.”

The red-eared slider blinked his gray-orbed eyes at me as I set about untangling him. His front legs were the worst. He had managed to weave multiple strands through his long nails. Magic glistened from his carapace — power I could see only because it wasn’t my own, and because it was particularly intense. That power gave Ed supernatural abilities that went beyond simply being the undead familiar of a necromancer. A soul seer.

I’d actually needed to register Ed with the Academy in order to keep him with me while on the grounds, along with the heavy necklace that I never removed, not even while showering. Such secrets were difficult to keep around dozens of Adepts who could feel the power of both Ed and the artifact without even being in the same room as me. And my magic was rare enough that I didn’t need to frighten new acquaintances with my mere presence as well.

Not that officially registering Ed or the necklace had eased that apprehension much. It also didn’t help that I was the only soul seer among the specializing necromancers. And that the Academy hadn’t trained another soul seer in over twenty-five years.

Ironically, the somewhat obsessive reputation I’d inadvertently built at the Academy with my near-constant knitting, along with my penchant for bestowing hand-knit socks, hats, and arm warmers on my fellow classmates, mitigated that tension far more than anything else had. I knit more than I could justify wearing, and almost everyone preferred to have warm toes, fingers, and heads. 

Despite finding myself slightly ostracized for my rare subset of magic at the Academy when I first arrived, I actually couldn’t pick up magic as easily as a witch or a sorcerer could. Being on the grounds of a cemetery allowed me to stretch my other senses much farther than usual, though. If an Adept — a person of the magical persuasion — passed me on the sidewalk of a busy street, I wouldn’t know it. But I’d know the instant anyone with magic in their blood set one foot over the boundary of a cemetery.

Anywhere else, I could sense other necromancers, of course. And spirits in all forms. 

And vampires.

But if an unknown vampire got anywhere near me, I wouldn’t be casually brushing shoulders with them. More likely, I’d be running. Screaming down the sidewalk in question. Even with the protections that I wore literally around my neck, tangling with a vampire wasn’t something any necromancer sought out. The ingrained rivalry between those magical species went back — as in, all the way back. With the vampires the ultimate victors. On all occasions. Being immortal, supernaturally strong, and able to beguile their victims gave vamps the ultimate advantage when it came to slaughtering those of my ilk.

An unknown vampire wouldn’t want to take the chance that I or any other necromancer could control them, bend them to our will.

Ed wiggled in my hands, having spotted the grass. He liked cemeteries as much as I did. He was undead, after all.

Death might be just another beginning — but what it was the beginning of, I couldn’t tell you. I could, however, talk to the parts of the soul that remained on this plane of existence. I could also raise the walking dead, human and animal — under very specific circumstances. I’d never tried it with a fish. They’d probably decompose too quickly.

The eighteen months I had just spent at the Academy had been all about proving that I could work with soul magic — not simply death magic — with a level of accuracy needed to get certified. As of completing my last assignment, in Latvia, I officially worked for the witches Convocation as a junior specialist. I was now a resource for the investigative teams tasked with policing a certain subset of the Adept. And also with cleaning up incidents that might draw the attention of the mundanes, aka the nonmagical people who outnumbered the Adept by a massive amount. Like, a million to one or something.

There were two other necromancers who called Vancouver, British Columbia, home. Danica Novak — my mother — and Teresa Garrick. Neither of them had required certification to prove their worth, though. To anyone. My mother had worked with the Vancouver coven since before my father died. Teresa Garrick’s presence in Vancouver was still relatively recent, but the Garrick necromancers were well-known badass vampire slayers. Or at least they had been until they’d all been slaughtered by rogue vampires twenty-five years ago. Teresa was the only survivor, and she’d been in hiding with the help of the witches until recently.

The Garrick family’s vampire-slaying gig turned out to be seriously ironic. Because one of the only three vampires I wouldn’t run from on sight was Teresa’s son, Benjamin Garrick.

Benjamin was the reason Teresa wasn’t in hiding anymore. He was the reason they lived in Vancouver, under the protection of the Godfrey coven. He was also one of the major reasons I hadn’t returned to Vancouver in over a year and a half, selecting work-study assignments and finishing a three-year program in record time, rather than coming home on breaks.

That and the empty house that would have been sure to greet my return.

Necromancers and vampires didn’t mix.

And they certainly didn’t date.

Or pine for one another.

And certainly not, in this particular instance, when the gorgeous Jasmine also called Vancouver home. Like Benjamin, Jasmine had also been recently remade. With the blood of the executioner of the vampire Conclave reanimating her. And though we’d never spoken of it directly, not in person or by text, Benjamin Garrick was enamored with the golden-haired beauty. And he would likely be so forever. He was epically focused like that.

But unlike Benjamin, I didn’t have eternity to wait for a crush to even think about glancing my way. So I’d left Vancouver and that unrequited crush behind, knowing that life changed so quickly that coming home would be sort of a new beginning.

Or at least that was what I was hoping.

Magic shifted, lapping against my toes from the direction of the cemetery’s main entrance on Fraser Street. An Adept of some power had just stepped onto the grounds. Facing in that general direction, I perched atop the granite gravestone, pulling my knitting out from my satchel. Ed gamboled around in the damp grass nearby, and I made a mental note that I would need to thoroughly dry him off so he didn’t decay. I knew that the power that coated him was more than just mine now, so perhaps that wasn’t even a possibility anymore. But it wasn’t a risk I would take either way. Ed was part of me. He held a sliver of my soul, so I took care of him. And he grounded me — or more specifically, my power — when I was away from Mountain View.

The latent aspects of necromancy couldn’t be turned off or on. My magic was constantly seeking and picking up the dead. The best I could do was mute the intensity, and redirect it. Hence, the creation of Ed. Most necromancers worked with bones or ghosts. Teresa Garrick preferred the corpses of birds. My mother was perpetually tethered to the ghost of her uncle. But being a soul seer, I had Ed, who was continually animated with my own life force.

More magic curled up from the damp ground, slipping up my dangling legs to churn around my hands. I finished straightening my knitting, further untangling the mess Ed had made, and took up my needles.

Sorcerer magic. At best guess.

I’d been away for a while, and though my magic was sharper than it had ever been — focused and full — I didn’t know the magic of the Adept traversing the grounds of the cemetery well enough to identify them.

No one knew I was back in Vancouver. I hadn’t even texted Benjamin or my witch friend, Burgundy, who was out of town herself at a healers retreat. I’d gotten on the first flight I could, but I’d wanted a soft landing. A gentle reintroduction. One that didn’t involve my mother, assuming she was even at home.

It could have been a random Adept approaching. The population of the magically inclined in Vancouver had grown over the last few years. But Benjamin, who made it his business to know such things — like, officially, with a title and everything — would have mentioned if there was a new sorcerer in town. Even though he was one of the reasons I’d left Vancouver, Benjamin and I had texted constantly while I’d been gone. The vampire, aka the chronicler, had maintained that connection, wanting to know every last thing about my training, and about the Academy itself. Vampires were not numbered among the staff or the students.

Thankfully, my weird susceptibility to Benjamin’s inadvertent beguilement didn’t translate through text message. If the vampire had actually wanted me — me, Mory, rather than the decades of knowledge I’d accumulated while passively living among the Adept — I might never have left Vancouver. And I would have been worse off for it. Untrained and jobless, not just feeling out of place like I presently was.

The sorcerer steadily cutting across the graveyard toward me might not have even been looking for me. But what were the chances of that?

He … him … his magic felt … forceful, insistent. Somehow self-assured. And definitely male. Though sex and gender was one of the first things I could intuit about a corpse, whatever point the person who’d become that corpse had occupied on both those spectrums, that level of sensitivity with the living was new for me. Nice.

I laughed quietly, anticipation welling. Tangling my fingers in the three strands of yarn, I began to knit, slipping the moonstone-skull stitch marker that noted the beginning of the round from my left needle to my right needle. I’d memorized the self-designed pattern so thoroughly that knitting it was practically just muscle memory. I had knit the same hat in different combinations of yarn many times, because it was perfect for using up leftovers from other projects.

I was home.

I was more powerful, more focused than ever.

I was ready to confront the next chapter of my life — perhaps even more ready than I’d thought. So maybe I hadn’t needed to gather the pieces of the old Mory at all? Maybe I was still her.

Mory.

Necromancer.

Soul seer.

I could control the dead. I had carved my way through an invading force of mythical beings, using the corpses of the elves the others in my team had killed as an undead shield. Then I’d untangled the soul magic that had powered an other-dimensional portal. A task that only I could have accomplished. Well, without blowing the entire city up, at least. 

I had worn the instruments of assassination, the wielder’s necklace, at her request, for days — while slowly dying. An artifact that powerful would have killed another at first touch. That was its actual purpose, after all.

I had survived.

With my own soul completely intact.

For years, everyone had watched me, waiting for any sign of darkness born from the trauma of my brother’s death and betrayal — yes, in that order.

But I didn’t dwell there.

I lived in the light.

So I smiled in the direction of the interloper on my territory, and I waited. Knitting happily, for ever after.

Let the sorcerer come.

I was ready for whatever request I knew he was bringing with him. Because there was no other reason to visit a necromancer in a graveyard. A dealer of death magic. A beguiler of souls.

Though it was unlikely that the sorcerer in question knew that last part. It was, after all, frowned upon. Even when properly trained and certified.

COMING APRIL 14, 2020. PREORDER NOW

AMAZONAPPLE BOOKSKOBO BARNES & NOBLESMASHWORDS

New to the Adept Universe? The first book is Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic (Dowser 1). Or click here for the entire reading order.

Misfits 1: A snippet of Ed

As I was working through my final read of Misfits 1 (before sending it to the proofreader), this made me smile:

Ed was perched on the edge of Tony’s desk, looking as though he was contemplating leaping off to get to me. He was wearing what appeared to be a tiny pirate hat on his head. I peered closer. The hat had been meticulously folded out of a bubblegum wrapper and secured with an elastic band.

“Tony,” I groaned.

Tony swiveled, glancing at Ed, then at me, grinning. “He likes it.”

–Misplaced Souls (Misfits of the Adept Universe 1)

Ed – the undead red-earred slider familiar of a necromancer (aka Mory) – from the Dowser and the Misfits of the Adept Universe series. Illustration by Memo (Instagram)

Apologies in advance and a snippet

I’m about to post SEVEN administrative posts on the blog, namely a welcome sequence. Hopefully you find it somewhat interesting, but I apologize in advance for spamming your inbox and I offer this snippet of Misfits 1 and a cool shot of a headstone that features heavily in the book in recompense.

“Where did you park?”

“On West Forty-First.”

“But you came in on Fraser.”

He went quiet for a moment, then asked in a deceptively casual tone, “How did you know?”

I laughed. “That’s for me to know, sorcerer.”

“And for me to find out?”

I grinned, feeling myself starting to flush again. What the hell was going on with my hormones? “I’m cultivating an air of mystery.”

He cocked an eyebrow at me. “With the undead turtle, the knitting, and the … “ He peered down at the colorful fringe of my poncho. “… beads clicking and clacking while you walk?”

“Yes,” I said haughtily. “You have absolutely no idea where to even start figuring me out.”

He laughed. A little uproariously for my taste. He sobered quickly though, murmuring absentmindedly, “mysterious through and through.”

I didn’t press my point.

Mysteries didn’t explain themselves after all.

– Misplaced Souls (Misfits 1), third draft

Misfits 1: off for story editing

I’m about to be sipping a hot chocolate, knitting by the fire, and enjoying a fav audiobook – One Fell Sweep, Innkeeper 3, by Ilona Andrews – but first, I wanted to share an excerpt to celebrate Misfits 1 being sent off for story editing (aka developmental editing) – YAY!

The snippet below is one of Michael’s fav (nonspoiler) moments from the book.

Mountain View Cemetary, Vancouver, BC. October 2019

He reached for me. And, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, I wrapped my arm around his again, leaning into him for comfort.

“Thank you,” he murmured. “For breaking the rules. For me.”

“Misfits unite!” I declared quietly, trying to jest but not quite making it work.

He snorted. “Misfits. Right. I’m not sure how I got grouped in with the rest of you though.”

“I didn’t write the club guidelines,” I groused. “I just enforce them. Hence having your back.”

– Misplaced Souls (Misfits 1), chapter one, third draft (unedited/unproofed).

Amplifier 3. 4th Draft. Done.

I just dropped Amplifier 3 into the editor’s (aka SFG) inbox. He will take the next month to line and content edit the manuscript (aka wrestling it into submission), then send it back to me for final touches (and proofread, etc). I’m still shooting for an end of November release date.

So I get to work on Mory (aka Misfits of the Adept Universe 1) for the rest of September and into October – YAY! I’m halfway through the first draft (around 41k so far).

To celebrate, I thought I’d share a sneak peek.

“I’m dying anyway.” She swallowed, whispering, “I’d rather it be you, Socks. If anyone is going to put me out of my misery, I always thought it would be you.”

“That’s a terrible thing to say to me,” I snapped, pissed. “How many times have I put myself between you and death?”

She laughed darkly. “I’ve lost count. How about one more time?”

– Amplifier 3, Chapter 11, Fourth draft

Amplifier 2: Chapter One, Part One

FYI. The Amplifier Series begins with The Amplifier Protocol (Amplifier 0). The excerpt below is rife with spoilers if you aren’t up to date.

Bonds and Broken Dreams (Amplifier 2) – Chp 1, Part 1

A faint hum of sorcerer magic prickled up my bare arms. I flipped over the back of the couch, grimoire still in hand, and peered through the front window. Despite the fact that the sun was out, the February air was still cold enough that the front section of the skirted patio was covered by the skiff of snow that had fallen overnight. Tires crunched on the gravel driveway, drawing my attention past the red-roofed barn. A black luxury SUV was slowly rolling toward the house, the driver having left the gate to the main road hanging open behind them. 

Not locals, then. 

That was ignorant, even rude. Especially in a rural area. Even I knew that, and I’d been raised to be a sociopath, confined for the first two decades of my life to a militarized magical compound.

The hum of sorcerer magic had made me think of Aiden, made me hope he’d returned unexpectedly. Just as I had each time one of his packages had been delivered since he left five months ago. At least I had finally learned to recognize the sound of the grocery delivery truck, so that I’d stopped springing hopefully to my feet every Tuesday afternoon. That had only taken a month. 

But unfortunately, though the two figures occupying the front seat of the SUV both appeared to have dark hair, their obvious hesitation over where to park made it clear I was about to be forced to interact with strangers.

Magically inclined strangers. Which was far more annoying than the occasional mundane who dropped by to ask a question about the farm stand or to introduce themselves. We’d been living in Lake Cowichan for over a year, but we were still considered newcomers.

I glanced over at the barn. The double front doors were closed, my Mustang safely sealed within. Since the temperature had started dropping to below freezing at night a few days earlier, Christopher had kept the barn closed up, concerned about the chicken eggs he was trying to hatch within.

In the thin layer of snow, I could clearly see two sets of prints leading from the back of the house around to the back of the barn. And for some reason, the evidence of Christopher and Paisley’s passing made me feel vulnerable. As did the fact that I’d felt the sorcerers’ magic from all the way down the drive. 

The house was set near the center of our two-hectare property, slightly closer to the main road at the north edge than the forested section that bordered the lake to the south. I picked up the tenor of magic from most Adepts easily — since I had to be able to feel magic in order to amplify or drain it. But distance, as well as the steel exterior of the SUV, should have dampened my range. That indicated that the uninvited visitors were powerful.

Still, if they’d come with ill intent, Christopher would have already seen it. The clairvoyant was almost impossible to block, especially since the number of Adepts who actually knew what sort of magic either of us wielded was an exceedingly short list.

I caught a glimpse of BC license plates as the SUV pulled up, parking with its driver’s-side door directly in line with the front path to the house. I stepped back from the window, grabbing my light-gray cardigan from the arm of the chair as I crossed into the front hall.

I shoved my disconcertion away as I tugged the lightly felted cashmere sleeves over my arms, then secured the top two buttons. I was more than a match for two sorcerers, even with my blades tucked away upstairs under my bed.

I paused, tugging my cotton socks off as I caught sight of the driver through the windowed front door. He’d paused to scan the property as he exited the SUV. The socks would be slippery on the varnished fir flooring if I had to move swiftly. I’d given in to the weather and opted for leggings under my calf-length dress. This far from the fire that Christopher kept constantly stoked, the wood floor was cool under my bare feet.

The first sorcerer looked achingly familiar, even in profile. Dark-navy suit, white dress shirt, no tie. Dark hair, medium-brown skin, just shy of six feet tall.

I tossed my rolled socks into the empty umbrella stand that Christopher had liberated from the attic and set in the corner by the front door, just in case we had any visitors during the rainy season. There hadn’t been any snow all winter so far, and according to the locals at the diner, the skiff we’d received the previous night was considered late in the season. And more was on its way.

Weather was a big deal in Canada, or at least in this tiny section of it. Christopher had taken the new cows we’d been free-ranging since the fall — an adult and two of her calves — over to the Wilsons’ farm so they could be indoors if the predicted snowstorm hit. Thankfully Paisley, who considered the cows her property, was preoccupied with the chicks that would be hatching imminently, so her protest over this temporary arrangement was short-lived.

I brushed away the feeling that I knew the sorcerer as I caught sight of his companion. Her long dark hair caught in a breeze that also stirred the winter-bare rose bushes lining the driveway. Her layered navy silk dress flared around her, revealing long legs and deeply golden-tanned skin.

She shivered, rubbing her arms and casting a disdainful gaze over the house. She wore dozens of multicolored bangles on each arm, and several different lengths and thicknesses of necklaces. Though I wasn’t sensitive to such magic, I didn’t doubt that the precious metal and gems of her jewelry thrummed with stored power.

The male sorcerer turned his attention to the front patio. I waited, tucked far enough down the hall that he wouldn’t catch sight of me until he climbed the stairs. Though I had no idea of his own magical sensitivity, of course. And my magic wasn’t something easily hidden away in pretty trinkets.

The female sorcerer said something to the driver, and he shook his head sharply. I couldn’t immediately catch the words through the single-paned glass. Then I realized they weren’t speaking English. Arabic, maybe?

The female’s tone turned argumentative but the male ignored her, climbing the stairs to the front patio.

I stepped up to the door. The sorcerer on the other side of the glass paused, hand raised to knock, locking his dark eyes to me through the window. His expression shifted, becoming speculative. Then he smiled tightly.

Though his skin was a shade or two darker, nose narrower, jaw slightly rounder, and his eyes were brown instead of blue — he looked like an older version of Aiden. A sorcerer of the Azar line was on my doorstep. Literally.

Which could have meant anything. Including that he was an emissary of the Collective.

Continue reading … July 23, 2019!!

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Bonds and Broken Dreams by Meghan Ciana Doidge is the second novel in the Amplifier series, which is set in the Adept Universe along with the Dowser, the Oracle, and the Reconstructionist series.

Reading order of the Amplifier Series:

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Demons and DNA: Chapter One, Part One

September 2018.

A sorcerer pushed open the door of the diner, both of his hands on the metal handle that bisected its glass. Holding himself upright. He raised his shockingly blue eyes, seeking out and pinning me into place in the red-vinyl booth situated at the far corner. 

My heart fluttered oddly, even as my rational mind immediately snapped to assessing the situation.

Three exits.

The first required a vault over the stools and the laminate counter, then a quick dash through the kitchen beyond. This had the added advantage of putting me within reach of the shotgun gathering dust under the cash register. A shotgun I was fairly certain was illegal in Canada. I hadn’t researched the country’s gun laws, though, because guns rarely worked against the magically inclined. The Adept.

So even with his magic as drained as it felt, a gun might backfire if I tried to use it against the sorcerer currently blocking the second exit.

His hair was dark brown, his chiseled jaw shadowed with stubble. His black suit and rumpled white dress shirt were streaked with dirt. No tie. No objects of power on him. Not that I could feel, anyway. But I picked up magic in people more consistently than I did in artifacts.

The sorcerer looked as though someone had tortured him, drained his magic, then just tossed him from a vehicle and sped off — including a scrape on one of his cheekbones that was so sharply defined it might have cut glass.

Cheekbones? Cut glass?

That was an absurd thought.

The second exit was through the sorcerer himself. And by the way he stumbled as he stepped into the aisle between the booths along the windows and the red-vinyl-topped metal stools that lined the counter, he was slow. Likely so drained that I’d be on the sidewalk before he even reacted to my passing.

He placed his hand on the back of the nearest booth, earning a disconcerted glance from Harry Morris, co-owner of Cowichan Kayak and Tubing. Harry had just started eating his lunch — a burger with all the fixings, including bacon. He ordered the exact same thing every Friday.

The sorcerer straightened, visibly reining himself in, smoothing his demeanor. But he stood out among the small-town locals even more than I did, and I’d put a lot of time and energy into being accepted, even if I couldn’t truly fit in. He was going to draw the attention of everyone in the packed diner. And then I’d be forced to make a choice instead of just sitting in the booth and gazing at him as if in awe. As if struck by … something. 

It was his magic, or lack of it, that intrigued me.

Yes. That had to be it.

Of course, that didn’t explain the way I felt. Amped up, stomach churning, heart rate spiking. But at the same time, sedate, easy … languid.

He flexed his hands. His fingers were long and unadorned, though distinct tan lines indicated that he’d recently worn rings on each finger, as well as spent significant time in a sunny climate. The rings had most likely been filled with his power. Practical adornments that had been stripped along with his magic.

I forced myself to focus on everything that was wrong about the situation and what my options were now that I’d allowed the sorcerer to close the space between us. I was down to my third possible exit. I could go through the window. A relatively easy move, which would in no uncertain terms let every Lake Cowichan local currently lunching in the diner know that I was more. More than human. More than I wanted them to know.

It would draw far too much attention, though it wasn’t the mundanes — those without magic — that concerned me. Rather, such actions might allow the powers that enforced the secrecy of the Adept world — or the members of the Collective themselves — to become aware of my continued existence. Gaining the notice of either would mean a prison sentence. Just not necessarily one that came with a barred cell.

All three exits required me to run. Through the town, north along the lake, all the way home. Grabbing our go-bags, climbing into the Mustang, and leaving.

Leaving.

Leaving everything I’d spent the last ten months cementing, the previous five years making possible — risking exposure, and occasionally my life, to earn the money necessary to build … a new life. An actual life.

The sorcerer took two more steps my way and his expression shifted, causing him to falter as if he’d just gotten a read on my magic. He had just figured out that I represented everything he’d lost, every iota of power that had been stripped from him. He stumbled, resting his hand on the back of another booth.

“Can I help you?” Mary Davis asked him, still chewing a bite of her chicken salad. Mary, along with her husband, Brett Davis, was a local real estate agent. They had held the listing on the property I’d purchased over eighteen months ago, even before the disastrous job in San Francisco that had nearly been my last.

The sorcerer ignored Mary. I was his sole focus. His sole desire.

In his obvious state of need, he might kill me to get the power running through my veins. And I realized with something like shock that I was fully capable of just stepping out of the booth and letting him have me. Letting him consume me.

At that ridiculous thought, my strange physical reaction to the sorcerer’s appearance resolved into unmistakable, unbidden desire. That warmth curled through and settled in my lower stomach, informing me instantly that I’d only ever felt a shadow, the barest hint, of lust before.

I knew I should have been reacting. I should have been moving. Instead, I was just sitting there, staring at him as if he was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. As if his beauty had knocked every rational thought right out of my head, dampening every instinct.

Behind the long counter, Brian Martin, co-owner and operator of the Home Cafe, paused after placing a piping hot plate of tuna casserole in front of Lani Zachary. The ex-air force technician, now a mechanic, had cropped her dark hair short at the beginning of the summer, and her bangs were just long enough to brush her eyebrows now. She was perched on her habitual stool, eating at the counter. Brian, a barrel-chested and balding, soft-spoken man in his early fifties, frowned at the sorcerer, wiping his hands on his white cotton apron.

Lani swiveled on her stool, following Brian’s gaze. Her hazel eyes narrowed as she traced the sorcerer’s focused intent back to me in the corner booth.

I was going to have to act. I was going to have to make a choice. Otherwise, people were going to get hurt. Hurt in a way that would draw unwanted attention.

I wasn’t ready.

I just wasn’t ready. I’d wanted more than ten months. I’d been hoping … thinking that we might be able to stay. That Christopher, Paisley, and I might be able to put down roots in this small town, tucked away from all the powerful Adepts who’d want to use us, to control us if they knew we existed. If they knew what we were capable of doing.

The sorcerer was five steps away. He didn’t seem quite so unsteady on his feet now.

Was this what looking into your future was like? A slow, torturous stroll punctuated by indecision, and yet … desire? A dreadful aching desire to reach forward and embrace what was coming, no matter where it took you.

“Can I help you?” Brian asked from behind the counter.

Lani plucked her napkin from her lap, placing it down beside her plate. Her own latent, untapped magic was coiling within her, but so quietly that the sorcerer wouldn’t be able to feel it under everything emanating, beckoning from me.

I naturally and continually dampened my magic, of course. But a sorcerer of his power level would be able to trace any residual, even subconsciously. He could have followed the path I’d inadvertently laid along the roads I walked every few days in my almost obsessive need to create habitual routines.

Lani was going to reach out. She was going to touch the stranger’s shoulder, holding him back from closing the space between us.

Then the violence that the sorcerer was barely keeping contained was going to explode all over the diner — taking those with whom I was building tentative relationships with it.

I set down my soup spoon, unaware that I’d still been holding it. I slid out from the booth.

The sorcerer hesitated, sweeping his hungry gaze down to my ankles and white sneakers, then up all the five foot ten inches of me — pale bare legs, sundress, wide shoulders. Long neck and green eyes, and red hair that fell in a straight sheet down to the middle of my back.

“Hello.” I spoke as if I knew him. As if I’d been waiting for him.

And for the moment that the word hung between us, I thought it might just be true. I might have known him forever, though I was just meeting him for the first time.

Brian and Lani exchanged glances, their combined concern easing from protective to simply wary.

Oblivious to everything around him, the sorcerer closed the space between us far quicker than he’d been moving previously. He was taller than me, maybe six foot one. I had to tilt my head to maintain eye contact.

He reached out, wrapping his hand around the back of my neck, his thumb across my throat. His grip was harsh.

But though I was completely unaccustomed to being touched, even gently, I didn’t break his hold. I didn’t try to step away.

Frustration, restlessness, and a fierce need filtered through his touch, picked up through my latent empathic ability. I kept my gaze locked to his, slowly raising my hand and hovering my fingertips by the road rash on his cheek. “You’re hurt.”

His frustration turned to confusion. Then, as he felt the magic that hummed through my skin no matter how tight a rein I kept on my power, it shifted into amazement. Even awe. He gasped, his pupils expanding and his expression softening into a different sort of hunger.

A hunger much closer to the need, the desire, that was already brewing in my lower stomach.

“Hey!” Brian shouted.

“Are you here to kill me?” I asked in a whisper. “Or am I supposed to kill you?”

The sorcerer frowned. His grip loosened, hand falling away from my neck, severing our empathic connection. “I’m … I don’t know.”

(END OF PREVIEW)

Demons and DNA (Amplifier 1) releases tomorrow, April 30, 2019!! YAY!

Cover design by: Gene Mollica Studios
Models: Devon Ericksen and Jonathan Cannaux 

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