Psyche’s Prophecy
Book One of the Transformation Series
By Ann Gimpel
What if your psychotherapist could really see into your
soul? Picture all those secrets lying
hidden, perhaps squirming a bit, just out of view. Would you invite your analyst to take a peek
behind that gossamer curtain? Read your
aura? Scry your future…?
Classically trained at the Jung Institute in Zurich, Doctor
Lara McInnis has a special gift that helps her with her patients. Born with “the sight” she can read auras,
while flirting with a somewhat elusive ability to foretell the future. Lara becomes alarmed when several of her
patients—and a student or two—tell her about the same cataclysmic dream.
Reaching out to the Institute for answers, Lara’s paranormal
ability sounds a sharp warning and she runs up hard against a dead end. Her search for assistance leads her to a
Sidhe and ancient Celtic rituals blaze their way into her life. Complicating the picture is a deranged
patient who’s been hell bent on destroying Lara ever since she tried to help
his abused wife, a boyfriend with a long-buried secret and a society that’s
crumbling to dust as shortages of everything from electricity to food escalate.
Psyche’s Search
Born with the sight, Laura McInnis is ambivalent about her
paranormal ability. Oh it’s useful enough some of the time with her
psychotherapy patients. But mostly it’s an embarrassment and an
inconvenience—especially when her visions drag her to other worlds. Or into
Goblin dens. In spite of escalating violence, incipient food shortages and
frequent power blackouts, Lara is still far too attached to the comfortable
life she shares with her boyfriend, Trevor, a flight attendant who lost his job
when aviation fuel got so expensive—and so scarce—his airline went out of
business. Forced to seek assistance to hone her unusual abilities in Psyche’s
Prophecy, Book I of this series, Lara is still quite the neophyte in terms of
either summoning or bending her magic to do much of anything.
Reluctantly roped into channeling her unpredictable psychic
talents to help a detective who saved her from a psychopathic killer, Lara soon
finds herself stranded in the murky underbelly of a world inhabited by
demons. The Sidhe offer hope, but they
are so high-handed Lara stubbornly resists their suggestions. Riots, death on all sides, a mysterious
accident and one particular demon targeting her, push Lara to make some hard
decisions. When all seems lost, the Dreaming, nestled in the heart of Celtic
magic, calls out to her. Books On Board
________________________
Ann Gimpel is a clinical psychologist, with a Jungian
bent. Avocations include mountaineering, skiing, wilderness photography
and, of course, writing. A lifelong aficionado of the unusual, she
began writing speculative fiction a few years ago. Since then her short fiction
has appeared in a number of webzines and anthologies. Two novels, Psyche’s
Prophecy, and its sequel, Psyche’s Search, have been published
by Gypsy Shadow Publishing, a small press. A husband, grown children,
grandchildren and three wolf hybrids round out her family.
http://anngimpel.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/anngimpel.author
@AnnGimpel (for Twitter)
__________________
Excerpt
Psyche’s
Prophecy
Book
One of the Transformation Series
By
Ann Gimpel
Chapter One
Lara McInnis
fidgeted in the ginger-colored overstuffed chair taking up most of one corner
of her cozy psychotherapy office. Schooling her face to neutrality, she tried
to gin up some energy to support her quarreling clients. Bethany Beauchamp
wasn’t saying all that much, though; and her husband was cataloging her faults,
clicking them off one by one on his fat fingers. Wonder why they really wanted
to come here? Lara asked herself, searching for an opportunity to intervene.
Aha, there it was.
“Mister
Beauchamp,” she murmured, voice pitched purposefully low so he’d have to stop
talking in order to hear her.
“Yes, what?” He
sounded irritated, voice scratchy from too many cigarettes. “You interrupted
me.”
“Yes, I know.
But I was interested in what you were saying and I didn’t quite catch that last
part before I, um, interrupted. Might you be so kind as to repeat it for me?”
Oh-oh. Watch the sarcasm.
Ken Beauchamp
straightened self-importantly in his chair, carefully slicking back a couple of
mouse-brown hairs that had fallen out of place in his too-careful comb over.
Uncrossing short chubby legs encased in expensive suiting, he turned so he
could look right at her with close-set blue eyes. Broken blood vessels along
the sides of his nose suggested a far-too-intimate relationship with alcoholic
beverages.
“We pay you
quite well. The least you could do is be attentive,” he snarled.
She nodded,
offering a silent invitation to speak to her rather than to his wife who looked
exhausted. Bethany’s eight-month pregnancy dragged at her tall slender frame
and dark smudges under her hazel eyes detracted from her showgirl beauty. Light
auburn hair fell in limp curls to her shoulders. Though only in her early
thirties, today she looked ten years older.
After an
imperceptible pause Ken took the bait and, rather than repeating his last
statement as requested, he started in on Lara. “Well, Doctor, you’ve been late
for our appointments twice out of the ten we’ve scheduled. None of the things
you’ve suggested work and our marriage isn’t any better than it was the day we
walked in here.” He sat back in his chair, a smug smile on his florid face.
“Which things
have you tried?” It was a struggle to keep her features pleasant. She was
coming to detest Ken Beauchamp and suspected his wife felt much the same.
Stealing a glance at her other patient, Lara noticed Bethany seemed to be
trying not to cry. Reaching over, Lara handed her the box of Kleenex she always
kept next to her chair. “Mister Beauchamp?” she urged. “What things have you
tried? I need to know so I can work with you to figure out what might be more
effective.” Or, so I can find an excuse to terminate you from my practice.
Ken’s face reddened
even more. “I’m sure we’ve tried some of them,” he said defensively. Shifting
his bulky body around in his chair, he shot his uncomfortable wife an
intimidating look. “Beth, the good Doctor here is asking what we’ve tried.”
Withering under
her husband’s knife-like stare, Bethany burst into tears, choking on the word,
“n-nothing,” as she buried her face in her hands. Outside of her soft sobbing,
the corner office, morning sun streaming through leaded-glass window panes, was
absolutely silent.
Lara leaned
forward, her dark luminous eyes moving from Ken to Bethany. “It’s like I told
both of you when you first came here, I can’t fix your marriage. Only you can
do that. But, for there to be any improvement, you have to be willing to listen
to one another.
“We’re nearly at
the end of today’s hour, but frankly there’s not much reason for you to spend
your money coming here week after week just so I can listen to you argue and
try to referee. What I want you to do is this: go home and have an honest
discussion, this morning while everything’s still fresh. Figure out if you
really want to continue seeing me. If the answer is ‘yes’, call me and come on
back next week. If the answer is ‘no’, well. . .” She let her last words hang
in the air, realizing she was hoping to never have to see Mister Beauchamp
again.
“Uh, here.” Ken
rustled around in an inner jacket pocket coming up with a well-creased piece of
paper. “Sign this.”
Taking the paper
from him, she flipped it open. Damn the man. He’d been court-ordered to attend
marriage counseling and he hadn’t told her. In fact, neither of them had.
Fuming, she hastily checked the box verifying attendance at ten sessions,
signed the document and handed it back to him. “You should have told me, Mister
Beauchamp. We might have done things a bit differently.” We sure would have,
since I’d have referred you to another therapist. He just looked at her as he
snatched up the paper, a feral smile on his unattractive face.
“Thank you,
Doctor McInnis.” Bethany’s voice was still clotted with tears. Planting her
feet beneath her ample belly, she lurched to her feet. Standing, Lara held out
her hand and Bethany latched onto it like a lifeline. The two women looked down
at Ken who hadn’t made the slightest effort to leave his chair. He was chewing
on his lower lip, his face the color of a boiled lobster.
Acting on
impulse, Lara let go of Bethany’s hand and gestured to her. “I’ll just walk
your wife down to the ladies’ room, Mister Beauchamp, so she can put some cold
water on her face. She’ll meet you at the car.”
Pulling the
office door open, she exchanged a meaningful glance with her receptionist.
“Arabel, could you please see Mister Beauchamp out?” Without waiting for a
reply, she took Bethany’s elbow, pushing her out into the hallway. As soon as
they were safely out of the office, Lara turned to Bethany. “He hurts you,
doesn’t he?” Her voice was the barest of whispers as she remembered the little
she’d been able to drag out of Ken about his obscenely violent childhood.
A single tear
leaked from one of Bethany’s eyes as she mumbled, “I, uh, can’t, um, shouldn’t.
. .” They had reached the bathroom and were both inside the tiny enclosure.
Lara waited, regarding her patient intently with well-honed inner senses, but
Bethany maintained an edgy silence. Lara could see the ragged darkened edges of
Bethany’s aura dragging around her lank hair; and suddenly she knew much of
what the woman was unwilling to divulge. Sadly, the incandescence typical of
pregnant women was all but missing.
Reaching into a pocket
of her plaid wool skirt, Lara pulled out a pen and one of her cards, scribbling
a number on the back. “If things get bad, make an excuse, any excuse. Tell him
you’re going out for a walk. Bring your cell phone and call this number. They
help women like you.”
Bethany’s hand
snaked out and she took the card; then a frantic look washed over her. “But
what if he finds the number?” she whimpered.
“It doesn’t
matter. They won’t talk to him.” Lara laid a hand on Bethany’s arm. “You
probably need to get down to your car. Maybe you could come in and talk to me
by yourself.”
“He’d never let
me.” Dull voice matching her dead eyes, Bethany let herself out into the
corridor and began walking, with the awkward gait of the very-pregnant, towards
the stairs.
Back in her
office, Lara stopped at Arabel’s desk. “Who else do I have today?”
Hooking her
thumb out the door, Arabel asked, “What’s up with them? The mister, he seemed
pretty put out. For a minute there I didn’t think I was gonna git him out of
the office.”
“You know I
can’t discuss patients with you, dear. Or, at least we have to pretend we don’t
talk about them.” Lara smiled fondly at the elderly Black woman who had been
her sole office help for over twenty years. Arabel was dressed in her usual
white blouse, navy gabardine skirt and black flats. An ancient maroon sweater
hung over the back of her secretarial chair. Hair in a modified mostly-gray
afro, she had a piquant sense of humor and a quick temper that was sparking
from her nearly-black eyes.
“Hmmmmph. . .”
Arabel bristled, mouth twisted into a frown. “You know I got nobody I’d be
tellin’ anything to. Never have.”
“Sorry, sorry.
Didn’t mean to your feelings.” Lara held out a conciliatory hand. “Truce?”
Arabel cocked
her head to one side. The corners of her mouth twitched as she reached up to
shake hands. “Truce. Never could stay mad at you. Not for long, anyways.”
Turning back to the computer, she brought up the day’s schedule on the computer
monitor. “David Roth cancelled, so you’re free till one thirty. Then you got
folk packed in here till close to eight.”
Lara walked
around the desk so she could look at the screen. Groaning audibly, she glanced
at her watch. “Okay, I’m going to swing by the gym and then grab some lunch.
Call me if anything comes up.”
“You got it.”
Arabel’s voice followed Lara into her office where she grabbed her purse and
her BlackBerry, locked her client file drawers and let herself out the back
door.
Lara’s office
was in an old, pale blue Victorian on Seattle’s Capitol Hill. She’d bought the
building for a song about ten years before because someone had thought there
were problems with the foundation. There had been some structural deficiencies,
but they’d proven relatively trivial to fix. Split into four offices, her
building was home to an architect and a CPA on the first floor, and herself and
a psychiatrist on the second. Walking through a carpet of leaves that had
fallen off the Madrona trees thickly lining East Avenue, Lara hit the clicker
and heard the answering chirp from her nearby BMW.
As she drove,
Lara thought about the Beauchamps. She’d spent an unusually long time—at least
the first five sessions—gathering a history from them. One problem had been
Ken’s reticence to disclose much of anything. Persistence and caginess had paid
off, though, and he’d told her far more than he’d meant to about the
French-Irish gang-affiliated father who’d turned him out as a child prostitute
at the age of eight. His mother had abandoned the family when he was so young
he had no memories of her at all, just oodles of anger Lara suspected he
generalized to all women. . .including her. By contrast, Bethany’s meager life
story had tumbled out with very little prodding. Not that hers read much better
than her husband’s.
Fears for
Bethany nagged at her. “What if they want to come back?” she asked herself
softly. “Should I see them?” Pulling into the parking lot for her fitness
center, Lara knew she’d turn that question over in her mind as she moved
through her workout. Once she lost her objectivity—and any empathy she’d tried
to gin up for Ken had long since evaporated—it became progressively more
difficult to work with clients. She’d learned some hard lessons over the years,
including that it was usually better to cut the cord sooner rather than later.
“Hi Tony!”
Dropping her membership card onto the glass countertop, she snagged the
proffered key and towel from the tall well-sculpted front desk attendant and
headed down the lushly carpeted stairs.
“Have a good
workout, Doc! Power’s on today so all the machines are available,” Tony’s
throaty voice trailed after her.
Pulling her
longish coppery hair into a snug ponytail, she was just pocketing her locker
key when she heard her phone trilling its Bach Etude. Wrinkling her forehead in
irritation, she stuffed the key back into its hole, retrieved the phone and
barked, “Doctor McInnis,” without bothering to look at the screen.
“Hey there,
Lara. It’s me.” The clipped British accent of Trevor, her long time, live-in
lover, came through the tinny cellular system. “Sorry to bother you, love, but
the power’s off again. . .at least on Queen Anne Hill.” He paused. “Thought
you’d want to know.”
She found she
was gripping the plastic of her BlackBerry. “Again? But that’s the third time
since, let’s see, last Wednesday. How long did they say this time? Or did they?
Or did you even call? What about the food in the freezer?” She stopped
abruptly, realizing her voice had become unnecessarily shrill. “Sorry,” she
muttered. “I’m just worried, that’s all.”
“I know, I know.
That’s why I called you.” There was a hesitation. “Guess I’m worried too, and I
just wanted someone to talk to.”
She closed her
eyes, summoning an image of him with his Nordic features and summer-blue eyes.
He was a flight attendant for KLM airlines, which meant he only worked about
fifteen days each month. She’d met him ages ago on a return flight from Europe
where she’d been completing the last leg of her analytic training at the Jung
Institute in Zurich. Exhausted from a grueling six weeks of seeing patients, she’d
been half-asleep in her narrow airline seat and he’d solicitously brought her
tea and cookies. Lara wasn’t quite sure how it had happened, but he’d come home
with her that night and they’d been together ever since. Those first few years
had been more than a bit rocky. In fact, she’d run screaming from their home a
time or two, so she wouldn’t kill him on the spot. But something indefinable—in
fact she still didn’t truly understand what it was—had always drawn her back.
Sinking into one
of the wicker chairs in a corner of the locker room, she felt a less-than-vague
sense of unease tugging at her. “What do you think it means? Have you any
idea?” There was a very long silence, so long she finally said, “Trev, you
still there?”
“Yes, Lara, I
am.” His accent was more pronounced, so she knew he was debating whether or not
to give voice to his thoughts. Finally, he blurted, “I think we’re really
running out of oil this time. Not like all those other times when the
government stock-piled it and then released it after the price sky-rocketed.
You wouldn’t know about this, since you’re such a news-phobe and I gas up the
cars, but it was really hard to find petrol last month. Damned near impossible,
actually.
“If what I
suspect is true, everything that takes oil to run will eventually go tits-up.”
He paused to draw what sounded like a frazzled breath before adding, “We might
have been all right here in the northwest with all our hydroelectric power,
except the rest of the country’s been draining power off our grid to compensate
for their shortages. That’s been in all the papers since our state lawmakers
have been kicking up a fuss in D.C. Anyway,” his voice was brusque, “I’m
cooking up what I can from the freezer. We can talk more about this when you
come home. If you get any breaks today, think about how you’d feel if we had to
leave the city. Whoops, my cell’s ringing. See you tonight.”
Slipping her
phone back into her locker, Lara walked towards the aerobics room and jumped on
one of the elliptical trainers. She wanted to come to some decision about
Bethany and her husband, but the conversation with Trevor kept intruding. Damn
it, she thought irritably. He hung up before I could even react to that whole
doomsday scenario he laid out. Hmmmmph! Probably didn’t want to give me a
chance to talk him out of it. Meantime, I’m supposed to think about leaving the
city? Where the hell would we go?
Mopping at sweat
that was trickling down her face, Lara glanced at her reflection in the mirrors
covering almost every wall. Staring back at her was a tall too-thin redhead
with freckles covering every inch of exposed skin. Her angular face, with its
prominent nose and chin, glistened in the reflected light. Moving to the
treadmill, she set it for six-and-a-half miles an hour and ran hard for ten
minutes. Gasping, she slowly backed off on the speed, while increasing the
angle. Ten minutes after that, she sucked down what felt like a quart of water
from the drinking fountain and stopped by the squat rack to do three sets.
Finishing with twenty pull-ups, she headed for the locker room and the showers.
Briskly toweling
off, she felt animated and dynamic, the problems with power outages and the Ken
Beauchamps of the world temporarily pushed to a back burner. Nothing like a few
endorphins, she told herself, inhaling deeply. Making plans to get a
smoothie-to-go with extra protein powder from the small on-site restaurant, she
contemplated the afternoon’s lineup of patients.
Out of the six
scheduled, there was one analytic client, two angry teenagers: a cutter and a
bulimic, another couple and two lonely middle-aged women, one depressed, the
other anxious. Too bad it’s unethical to introduce patients to one another. .
.outside of a therapy group that is. Lara chuckled softly to herself. She loved
doing analytic work, but there weren’t many who really wanted to delve that
deeply into themselves. Not to mention the cost. For analysis to be truly
effective, patients needed to come three, or even four, times a week. “Magic
theater, not for everyone,” she mumbled as she picked up her smoothie, a tofu
bar and some green tea before heading for her car. The sun, an elusive
phenomenon in Seattle, was nowhere in sight and it was raining lightly. While
not cold, the day held some of the crispness typical of mid-October. Her phone
chimed again but she ignored it, figuring she’d be back at her office in less
than five minutes.
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2 comments:
Thanks for the awesome promo, Mila. I love your blog. It's got great content as well as being artistically pleasing to look at.
Thank you Ann for a glimpse into your amazing book! And thank you for the compliment. Funny enough I've had this blog for almost 4 years now and I still love the layout. :) Thank you!
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