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The P.I. Prologue | page 1 | page 2 | page 3 | excerpts
In the tower room on the top floor of her house, Cass Angelis sat at her rosewood desk and prepared to see the future. Laurel leaves burned in a glass bowl, candlelight flickered on the walls, and the music of Yolanda Kondonassis, the Greek harpist, flowed around her. Her ability as a seer came as naturally to Cass as gardening or cooking came to other women. In her younger years, she’d used her abilities to help anyone who came to her. It was only after her husband Demetrius’ death that she’d begun to charge for her services, and over the last eighteen years, she’d built up enough of a reputation in the San Francisco area to make a comfortable living. But tonight she had no client. Tonight her concern was for her family. Her son Dino, who was serving his country in the navy, her nephews Nik, Theo, Kit, and her niece Philly – she wasn’t sure which one or ones the Fates would offer choices to. All she was sure of was that choices would be offered this weekend. The small china clock on the mantel read two minutes to midnight – the witching hour. Not that Cass was a witch, not by a long shot. She couldn’t have whipped up a spell to save her life. But she did have insights into what the Fates might weave into a person’s future. Might weave because it was always up to the individual to embrace or try to escape their destiny. Her gift of sight had been inherited from her great-grandmother, Ariel Andropoulis, who’d claimed that her powers could be traced all the way back to Apollo’s Oracle at Delphi. Cass liked to believe that was true. On occasions like tonight, she even burned laurel leaves the way Apollo’s priestess had. But the only thing she was certain of was that psychic powers ran in her family, especially in the females. Her sister, Penelope, had possessed the ability to “see” too, and although Cass knew that she’d passed it on in some form to all four of her children, it was only her daughter Philly who acknowledged and used her gift. Cass glanced at the latest family portrait that her nephews and niece had given her for her sixtieth birthday last month. She was sitting in the same chair she sat in now. Her brother-in-law Spiro stood to her left. Philly, her niece sat on the arm of the chair, and her nephews, Nik, Theo and Kit, stood behind and to her right. Her son Dino hadn’t been there for the photo. Currently, he was stationed in the Gulf. All of the Angelis men loved the sea, but it was Dino who’d always been most susceptible to its lure. From the time when he was a little boy, she’d sensed that one day he would leave, so she hadn’t been surprised when he’d applied to and been accepted at Annapolis. Cass continued to study the family photo. The Angelis men were all beautiful – tall, dark and handsome, just as her husband Demetrius had been, and for just a moment, she allowed her mind to drift backward to the past. When she and Penelope had graduated from high school, their father had taken them to Greece. He’d intended to put them in touch with their heritage, but she and Penelope had “known” that the visit to Greece would offer them much more than that. Cass’s mind filled with images of Ionic columns, marble statues, and theatres built into sloping hillsides. Although she and Penelope had been fascinated by the history, the culture and the literature of the country, it had been the sea that had drawn them the most. Cass bet that they’d dragged their father to just about every fishing village that existed along the coast lines, and it had been in one of them that they’d met Spiro and Demetrius Angelis. For both her sister and herself, it had been a case of love at first sight. Still, Cass wasn’t certain that she and Penelope would have had the courage to grab what the Fates had offered them. Luckily, the two Angelis brothers had taken the decision out of their hands by following them back to San Francisco and opening a restaurant. Then with her father’s help, they’d opened their own restaurant, The Poseidon. For a time, Cass had known what it was like to love and be truly loved in return. With a sigh, Cass shifted her gaze to a picture of Demetrius. She knew all too well that the Fates were fickle. What they gave could be snatched away at any time, but even in the worst of times, they offered unexpected gifts. Spiro and his children and her son Dino had been her family since that day nearly eighteen years ago when both her husband Demetrius and her sister Penelope had lost their lives in a boating accident. Nik, her oldest nephew, had been twelve, the same age as her son Dino. Theo had been eleven, Kit ten and little Philly had been only four. Spiro had been left with the restaurant to run all on his own. So her father had invited them all to move into his house, and she’d taken over the job of raising Penelope’s and Spiro’s children along with her son. Cass smiled. By a twist of fate, her life had been filled with both sadness and unexpected joy, and she’d come to look on Penelope’s children as her own. At some point in the wink of time that had passed since then, the Angelis boys had become men. Her gaze returned to the photo of her husband Demetrius. At least one of them was about to find the love of his life just as she had. It would happen this weekend – if they chose to take what the Fates offered them. Maybe that was why she’d been thinking of Demetrius and missing the special connection that they’d had. The first stroke of midnight brought Cass out of her reverie. Taking a deep breath, she put away the odd feeling of loneliness that she’d been feeling lately and lifted her crystal ball. Light from a full moon streamed through tall, narrow windows and the milky mist in the ball began to swirl. She often saw things more clearly at that magic moment when one day gave way to the next. When the clock chimed again, the shadows in the ball broke into colors, a rainbow of them. The globe warmed her palms, and slowly, colors shifted, parted, then bled into one another until an image formed – a young woman – small and blonde with bottle green eyes. And she was racing down a shadowed flight of stairs. In a holy place? Before Cass could get a real sense of the surroundings or the circumstances, the colors shifted again, and this time it was Kit, her youngest nephew, she saw. The young woman was at his side and they were both running through the darkness. This time she sensed danger. Closing her eyes, Cass tried to see beyond the images to what they meant. A damsel in distress for Kit. The Fates had chosen wisely, she thought. Her youngest nephew, the dreamer, had always had a knight-errant streak in him. Even as joy streamed through her, her heart squeezed a bit. Kit would be the first of her children to meet the woman he was fated for. From the time he was small, Kit had always been insatiably curious, and that characteristic had often gotten him into scrapes. It had also shaped him for his future careers as a PI and a fiction crime writer. Her lips curved slightly. The boy just couldn’t resist solving puzzles. Yes, a damsel in distress might do very well for Kit. Shifting her attention back to the swirling colors in the crystal, Cass moved the ball in her hands and watched the rainbow grow darker and darker until everything was gray. Suddenly, a flash of fire knifed through the darkness. Cass’s heart chilled and her stomach tightened with fear. What she saw was money, guns, and blood. What she sensed was greed, envy and death. The crystal burned now against her skin. But she kept her gaze steady. Colors flashed again, shattering the darkness. And she sensed the love – passionate and true. Would it be enough to protect her Kit and the woman the Fates had chosen for him? (continued...) |
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