The Soul Summoner (The Soul Summoner Saga Book 1)
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Authors: Elicia Hyder
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The Soul Summoner
By
Elicia Hyder
Copyright © 2015 by Elicia Hyder
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
ISBN: 978-0-9964483-5-2
Forge Creek Press
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The Soul Summoner is for my kids…
in hopes that it pays for college.
Special Thanks to everyone who made this book possible:
To Dr. Gopal Kunta and his staff (Hi, Rena!) - Thanks for keeping me alive to see this thing published.
To my family and friends who nursed me back to health this year.
Chris for being my in-house specialist in all things police and military related. I love you.
Matt Nichols at Mr. Maple in Flat Rock, NC for teaching me about trees.
Jane M. Wallace, BSN RN for checking my medical ramblings.
All my favorite Asheville businesses and beers mentioned in this book and the city itself for being as rad as it is.
MY AWESOME LAUNCH TEAM - I would be nowhere without you! (Alphabetically):
Nikki Allen, Elsbeth Balas, Tracie Bechard, Cindy Brown, Tiffany Cagle, R.K. Close, Erica, May Freighter, Venice Gilmore, Lina Hanson, Ashley Huttinger, Susan Huttinger, Kristin Jacques, Ara James, Tango Jordan, Juliet Lyons, Chuck Mason, Sal Mason, Tammy Oja, Wendy Pyatt, Lucy Rhodes, Megan Robinson, Melody Shalurne, Vandi Shelton, Ana Simons, Stephanie Smith, Heather Grace Stewart, Leigh W. Stuart, Jen Wander Woman, Shanna Whitten, Russ Williams, Stephanie Williams, Bridgett Wilson, Natalie Wolicki, Ann Writes
1.
HER HAZEL EYES were judging me again.
God, I wish I could read minds instead.
Adrianne spun her fork into her spaghetti, letting the tines scrape against the china. I cringed from the sound. She pointed her forkful of noodles at my face. "I think you're a witch."
I laughed to cover my nerves. "You've said that before." Under the white tablecloth, I crossed my fingers and prayed we would breeze through this conversation one more time.
A small, teasing smile played at the corner of her painted lips. "I really think you are."
I shook my head. "I'm not a witch."
She shrugged. "You might be a witch."
Sighing, I picked up my white wine. "I wish I had a dollar for every time I've heard that. I could pay off my student loans." With one deep gulp, I finished off the glass.
She swallowed the bite in her mouth and leaned toward me. "Come on. I might just die if I don't get to see him tonight! Do you really want that kind of guilt on your hands?"
I rolled my eyes. "You're so dramatic."
She placed her fork beside her plate and reached over to squeeze my hand. "Please try."
My shoulders caved. "OK." I shoved my chair back a few inches and crossed my legs on top of my seat. I closed my eyes, shook my long brown hair back off my shoulders, and blew out a deep slow breath as I made circular O's with my fingertips. Slowly, my hands floated down till they rested on my knees. I began to moan. "Ohhhhhmmmm…"
Adrianne threw her napkin at me, drawing the attention of the surrounding guests at Alejandro's Italian Bistro. "Be serious!"
I dropped my feet to the floor and laughed as I scooted back closer to the table. "
You
be serious," I said. "You know that's not how it works."
She laughed. "You don't even know how it works!" She flattened her palms on the tablecloth. "Here, I'll make it easy. Repeat after me. Billy Stewart, Billy Stewart, Billy Stewart," she chanted.
I groaned and closed my eyes. "Billy Stewart, Billy Stewart, Billy Stewart."
She broke out in giggles and covered her mouth. "You're such a freak!"
I raised an eyebrow. "You call me that a lot."
"You know I'm only joking. Sort of."
Adrianne Marx had been my best friend since the fifth grade, but sometimes I still had trouble deciphering when she was joking and when she was being serious.
I picked up my fork again and pointed it at her. "It's not gonna happen, so don't get too excited."
She let out a deep breath. "I'm not."
I smirked. "Whatever."
Our waiter, who had been the topic of our conversation before Adrianne began gushing about her new crush on Billy Stewart, appeared at our table.
"Can I get you ladies anything else?" His Southern drawl was so smooth I had nicknamed him Elvis over dinner. He was a little older than Adrianne and myself, maybe twenty-two, and he had a sweet, genuine smile. His hair was almost black, and his eyes were the color of sparkling sapphires. I had drunk enough water that night to float the Titanic just so I could watch him refill my glass.
I looked at his name tag. "Luke, do I look like a witch?"
His mouth fell open. "Uh, I don't think so?" he stated as more of a question than an answer.
Nodding toward him, I looked back at Adrianne who was twisting her auburn ponytail around her hand. "See, Luke doesn't think I'm a witch."
He lowered his voice and leaned one hand on our table. "You're too pretty to be a witch," he added, with a wink.
I smiled with satisfaction.
Adrianne laughed and pushed her plate away from her. "Don't be fooled, Luke. She has powers you can't even dream of."
He looked down at me and smiled. "Oh really?" He leaned down and lowered his voice. "How about you let me take care of this for you"—he dangled our bill in front of my face—"and later, when I get off, I can hear all about your powers?"
Blushing, I took the check from his hand. His breath caught in his chest when I pulled a pen from his waistband apron. I flashed my best sultry smile up at him and scribbled my name and phone number on the back of the bill. I stood up and let my hand linger in his as I gave him the check. "I'm in town on a break from college for the weekend, so let me know when you get off."
He smiled and backed away from the table. "I will"—he looked down at the paper—"Sloan."
I took a deep breath to calm the butterflies in my stomach as Adrianne followed me toward the front door. She nudged me with her elbow. "You should win some kind of award for being able to pick up guys," she said as we passed through the small rush of dinner customers coming in.
I shrugged my shoulders and glanced back at her with a mischievous grin. "Maybe it's part of my gift."
"Witch," she muttered.
Laughing, I pushed the glass door open. As we exited, I stopped so suddenly that Adrianne tripped over my legs and tumbled to the concrete.
Billy Stewart was waiting at a red light in front of the restaurant.
* * *
Adrianne might never have even noticed Billy's official game warden truck at the stoplight had my mouth not been hanging open when she struggled to her feet. She was cursing me under her breath as her eyes followed the direction of my dumbfounded gaze across the dark parking lot. When her eyes landed on the green and gold truck, she fell back a step.
Her fingers, still coated in gravel dust, dug into my arm. "Is that…?"
Swallowing hard, I turned my wide eyes to meet hers when traffic started moving again.
Frantically, she waved her finger in the direction of the traffic light. "That was Billy Stewart!" She was so excited that her voice cracked.
"Yeah, it was." Mortification settled over me, and I pressed my eyes closed, hoping to wake from a bad dream. When I focused on Adrianne again, I realized she had taken a pretty nasty fall. Her blue jeans were torn and her right knee was bloody. "Oh geez, I'm so sorry."
She looked at me, her eyes wild with a clear mix of anxiety and amusement. She glanced down at the gash on her knee. "Can you heal me too?" Her question had a touch of maniacal laughter.
I shoved her shoulder. "Shut up." I tugged her back toward the restaurant's entrance. "Let's go to the bathroom and get you cleaned up."
Once we were behind the closed door of the ladies room, Adrianne's curious eyes turned toward me again. She hiked her leg up on the counter beside the sink. "What the hell just happened out there?"
I ran some cold water over a paper towel and handed it to her. "I need a drink." I splashed my face with cold water and, for a moment, considered drowning myself in the sink.
She pointed at me as she dabbed the oozing blood off her kneecap. "You and me both, sister. You've got some major explaining to do."
Alejandro's had a small bar near the front door where I had never seen anyone actually sit. When we pulled out two empty bar stools, the slightly balding bartender looked at us like we might be lost. His eyebrows rose in question as he mindlessly polished water spots off of a wine glass.
"I think I'm going to need a Jack and Coke," Adrianne announced.
I held up two fingers. "Make that two."
"IDs?" he asked.
Getting carded was one of the best things about being twenty-one. Any other time, I would have whipped out my finally-legal-identification with a smile plastered on my face. But in that moment, fear of what the next conversation might bring loomed over me like a black storm cloud that was ready to drop a funnel.
I had already learned the hard way not to talk about these things.
People are scared of what they can't comprehend, and the last thing I wanted was for Adrianne to be afraid of me. Despite my unnatural propensity toward popularity, Adrianne was one of the only real friends I had.
I knew the jabs she made about me being a witch were all in jest, but there was a part of her that had been genuinely curious about me since we were kids. Adrianne, above anyone else, had the most cause to be suspicious of the odd 'coincidences' that were happening more and more frequently around me.
Summoning Billy Stewart had been a complete accident. God knows I had tried my whole life to summon all sorts of people—my birth mother and Johnny Depp to name a couple—without any success at all. Sitting next to Adrianne at the bar, I knew from the look in her eyes that seeing Billy at that stoplight solidified to her what I already knew to be true: I was different. Very different.
Swiveling her chair around to face me, she pointed back to the dining table we had just vacated. "OK, I was just kidding about Billy at dinner. That was some serious David Copperfield shit you just pulled out there, Sloan. Totally creepy."