I hadn't tripped over a dead body in more than a week. This was a huge milestone, I thought, as I sat on the back porch sipping hot water with lemon while Sampson, my Chocolate Labrador Retriever, chased something only he could see. Slits of pink appeared between the patches of morning fog as the sun came over the trees. The rush of cars on the highway two miles away penetrated the silence in an irregular beat. A mile in the other direction, a farmer's cows mooed, and a horse answered. At age fifty, I'd come back to where I began. Abracadabra had been a boomtown. Then a ghost town. Now, I wasn't sure what to call it. But it was home.
Last week, I traded in my high-paid job as a Feng Shui Consultant to the rich and famous, and my closet filled with sequins, designer suits, and stilettos for jeans, boots, and garden gloves. I, Faith Bracken, was now officially a flower farmer. My seeds were germinating in the workroom off the hoop house I rented on the grounds of Nothing Fancy Garden Center. My brother Arie's business. Funny how quickly life changes.
Today, my body griped and grumbled, protesting the new workload. I'd downed two eight-hour Arthritis Pain Relief tablets an hour ago. Yet, every muscle in my body rapped the same painful lyric. Lifting the dirt onto the tables, mixing it, and spreading the concoction was somehow harder at fifty than it had been at fifteen. But, at the end of yesterday, five twenty-foot tables were covered in dirt, seeds, and paper under grow lights just waiting to produce big bouquets of beautiful flowers. The ends would justify the muscle torture—that was the plan anyhow. Now, my body just had to catch up. Thus, the lemon water and health kick. I downed another sip. A root beer would taste so much better. But root beer for breakfast wasn't exactly healthy. Right? That's what the experts said. But what do they know?
Last night, my reward for all my hard work had been a trip to the old Abracadabra Amusement Park with Blake Bloom and my father, Vito Bracken. Vito intends to reopen the park. Blake, who is Captain of The Michiana Major Crimes Task Force, is a crime fighter by day and a super mechanic by night. He volunteered to look over the rides' inner workings and give Vito an honest evaluation of their mechanical guts.
Conveniently, Vito hired me to write a Feng Shui assessment of the grounds. Vito insisted I do the walkthrough while both he and Blake were working on the rides. As a matchmaker, Vito failed. He didn't allow Blake and me one minute of alone time. As a protector of his only daughter, Vito succeeded. No bodies. No bad guys. No flying bullets. That was a good thing.
Dad offered to pay my fee. I told him I'm good. I can't get my family to understand I can live comfortably and invest in my dream without working for an income. The little girl they thought was a screw-up did well for herself. I learned to be thrifty from Grams, market myself from Aunt Georgia, and hone my gifts from Trixie.
Trixie and Vito, my mother and father, had seldom been around when Arie and I were children. We were raised by our extended family most of our lives, but Mom would send little notes when she had time. With advice like, "treasure your gifts and share them with the world." At the time, I had hated those notes. I wanted my mother. Not pieces of paper. Somehow through all that rage, my subconscious absorbed the wisdom. It had paid handsomely.
Until a few months ago when I started to feel the need for something more. Not more material things or more money, but something I would only know when I found it. Looking back, I think I'd always been searching for that something. Or perhaps, running from something. Before, I was able to bury it under my work. But just like a cat who insists on attention, the something kept pawing me until I couldn't ignore it. And then the bodies started dropping, and I ended up back here in a ghost town called Abracadabra. And my family stumbled back here too, with all the messy hurts, grudges, and opinions that define our legacy.
I'd been here less than two weeks, but I already had a glimpse that the whatever I was searching for was probably here. In what form? I still had no idea. Why? I guess I was here to find out. I instinctively knew the road to finding it was treacherous. But for the first time in decades, my internal compass felt steady.
Although, I was probably going crazy. Flower Farms are a lot of work and my messy family even more. Not like I hadn't done crazy before. From the time I was little, I'd gone where magic—at least what I thought of as magic—led. When I finally got around to listening to it, that is. And please don't ask me to define magic. It just is. It seems to change all the time—sort of this inner magnet that pulls me towards something. The more I resist, the more it pulls, the crazier I become until I follow it.
Right now, magic seemed to be rounding up the old Abracadabra players and introducing some Supernatural ones I couldn't begin to explain. And they weren't very forthcoming with info. Only cryptic messages of "you'll see" and "when the time is right."
The roar of a semi nearby broke my meditation. Semis didn't travel this road. Heck, cars didn't often travel this road. The shifting of gears grew closer. I raised myself from my chair between muscle pangs, opened the back door, and walked through the house to the front. Air brakes warned as the semi slowed and pulled into my circle driveway. My pod with the contents of my California apartment had arrived one day ahead of schedule. So today's to-do list had just become tomorrow's. Yes, I could keep the pod as long as I needed. Anyhow that's what the contract said, but it would sit here screaming at me, "you're not finished. Faith, you've got stuff to do. Get it done." My anxiety didn't need another distraction.
Speaking of distractions, I felt the Supernatural Being's presence. It came in with a pop.
"Remember to look in the In-Between," the strange voice without a body said as I stepped off the porch to meet the driver. "He's been waiting. Answers are in the In-Between." The voice was gone. It always left with a tiny whoosh.
I swear, I'd never heard voices before. Not until I'd come home a few days ago. Apparently, other people heard the voice too. At least, if I was going crazy, I wasn't the only one. Strength in numbers, as they say.
I'd worry about the voice and its message later. The voice belonged to something that called itself The Lighter. And it only spoke in cryptic messages. If I talked back to The Lighter, the delivery driver might find out how crazy I am.
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