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Chapter One
Fern
What is this weird feeling that has been following me around all day? It started when I awoke this morning, teasing the back of mind like there is something I forgot to do. You know how you feel like something is missing, but you can’t figure out what and then later you know there was nothing? Yes. This has been niggling at me, and it is pissing me off. When situations like this happen, I normally go into my meditation room and light some sage and ask the guardians who is looking for me. But in this situation, something feels different. Elemental. Visceral.
“Is your Spidey sense telling you anything?” my best friend Diamond asks me as I grab a couple of candles and oils from the shelf. Turning, I smile at her and wink.
“Other than you had a late-night visit you haven’t told me about, no.” I lie, trying to change the subject. No need in alarming her right here when there is nothing to tell. What am I going to say? I could tell her I feel like my shadow has been following me, but then she would really think I was out of my mind. Doesn’t everyone’s shadow follow them?
“Bitch. How do you do that?” she asks, shaking her head and picking up some natural soap.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” I laugh before reaching for some charms.
“I would give anything to be psychic.” she says, frowning her cute face. I smile at her, but inside I am disagreeing. Being what I am has caused not only issues with my love life, hence I don’t have one, but it is also the thing that keeps me guarded. Has been my whole life. I would run out fingers if I tried to count how many times a boyfriend left me after calling me a freak when I finally had the guts to admit I was psychic.
One boyfriend even had fun at expense. He pretended for a whole five hours asking me questions about them. He went so far as to convince me he believed in the supernatural to which I naively replied that I had friends who were Witches and Vampires that came to me for advice and vision. That was a mistake I never made again. Yes. This ‘gift’ is what haunts me. But it is also the thing that reminds me every day that amazing things exist.
My mother, Atlas Duggan, was a bit of a free spirit who took her first name to mean she should roam the world. When she was sixteen, she left her parents’ house and started on her spiritual journey, as she calls it, to find her true self. Within her first six months, she had met a man named Heirs sun God. He was the leader of a commune called The Children of Flowers and they believed in free everything. When I say everything, I mean everything. Sex. Enterprise. Love. Religion. Everything. By the time she was seventeen, she had slept with half of the men in the commune and became pregnant with me, which was par for the course in that place. So many of us babies were born to mothers who had no clue who fathered their children. We were the commune’s children. Literally.
When I was twelve, we left the commune after Heris died. The new leader, more of a tyrant than a leader, was quickly becoming a cult monster. My mom was not ok with this, and she feared for my virtue, so we left. I learned at that moment that my mom was stronger and more aware than I ever gave her credit. Until the moment we walked through the gates into the real world, I wasn't entirely sure if my mother really loved me. Or at least loved me more than she did her commune family. Her choosing to leave when she did, proved to me she did.
“What about these stones?” Diamonds asks as she picks up a Hagstone. Hagstones are not the most wanted element for spiritual connectors like me. They represent truth and the future. That in and of itself is not so bad, but it is when it can show you bad things you would rather not see, like now.
She places it in my hand before I can object and a blinding light flashes in my face, knocking me backward before dimming into a dull haze and flashing a picture of danger and chaos. I gasp, watching the scene unfold, but it is the clock and calendar on the wall that gives me the most concern. It is dated today and two minutes from now.
The stone falls from my hand before I grab her arm and attempt to drag her from this space. My eyes search the store for the owner, hoping I find him as I am walking out to warn him, but then I hear the jingle above the door and know I am too late. “Listen to me, walk slowly to the backdoor and out of it. When you make it, call 911 and tell them this place is being robbed and two people will be killed.” I try to say this calmly and without the fear I am currently feeling. I can see everyone else’s fate, but not my own.
