Normal life is complicated enough. Add magick to the mix, and suddenly all hell breaks loose!
Viviane doesn't have time for voices in her head or monsters in her bed! Her family relies on her. She's in charge of a mentally ill mother, a sneaky grandfather, and a sexy (but delusional) fiancé. And yet, the whispers in her mind are barging into Reality—with claws and teeth and murderous intent.
When her fiancé goes missing, she'll do anything to find him. If that means magical, mythical creatures hunt her down, then so be it. This could be the end of her life as she's known it, but well… Consequences be damned.
Excerpt
from STALKING THE MOON by Angel Leigh McCoy
The staff
entrance was on the women’s wing, near the employee parking lot. Out of habit,
I entered there. Nurses, orderlies, and doctors all greeted me as I made my way
to Richard’s office.
Richard was
seated at his desk. "Hey, Vivi. Come on in." He rebuttoned the collar
of his white, custom-fitted dress shirt.
"Howdy."
I shut the door behind me and went to the leather couch. It was overstuffed
with a high back and deep seat. I felt small on it, but that was part of
Richard’s evil plot. Plus, it would have been impossible to fall off it while
under hypnosis. It cradled me.
"What part
of my psyche are we going to poke today?"
Richard folded
his arms on the desk, a pen flapping in one hand as he looked me over. "I
want to revisit your early days," he said. "I’ve been going through
the transcripts of our sessions, compiling them, and there are a couple things
I’d like to revisit."
"Let’s get
to it then."
The first time I
met Richard, back in the early days, he was finishing his last year as a
graduate student in the Psychology Department at the University of Illinois. He
was in Peoria doing an internship at the counseling center, and Abram had
dragged me there to get my head fixed—at the junior high principal’s request.
Back then,
Richard had a long ponytail and was every teenage girl’s dream of the older
college boy. I was only thirteen, and he was taller than me, though that
changed when I had my growth spurt a few years later.
Thirteen-year-old
Me had gone into his office with a chip on my shoulder, hating Abram, hating my
illness, and hating Dr. Richard Reuter before I’d even met him.
He'd appeared in
the waiting room and asked, "Viviane? Right? Would you come with me?"
"I don’t
got a choice."
Abram hissed,
"Hey," at me, and said "Be nice."
"Yeah,
sure."
I walked into
the office and went straight to a chair, flopped there, and crossed my arms on
my chest. The first thing I noticed that interested me was the plate of cookies
on the coffee table. They were chocolate chip and appeared homemade. I
pretended not to see them. I didn’t want him to think I was going to stay all
that long, and besides, my stomach didn’t feel too good.
Richard sat in
the chair opposite me and watched me for a full minute. Finally, he asked,
"How old are you?"
"Fifteen."
It was a bold-faced lie.
"I know
you’re lying."
I asked,
"How old are you?"
"Twenty-nine."
"Are you
gay?" I said with vehemence, calculating his possible reactions.
He didn’t even
flinch. "Viviane, do you know why your grandfather brought you here?"
"Because
he’s a sociopath afraid of being noticed. I draw attention to him, and he wants
me to stop."
He smiled at
that, and for the first time, but not the last, I thought how handsome he was.
In that first
session, he didn't hypnotize me, though later, it became a regular part of our
therapy sessions. Richard felt it was the best way to track down the source of
my hallucinations. He would take me back to the time before my first
hallucination, and we'd go over the events of a day or two in each session,
gradually working forward through my memories. It was my own personal
reality-TV show.
One time, I had
what can only be described as a past-life memory, or maybe a dream. Both
Richard and I waved it off as an aberration, though I never forgot it. The
dream had been wonderful, about a place with emerald hills, crystal streams,
and a palace that felt like home. Whenever I thought about it, I could still
imagine the smell of honeysuckle on the breeze.
Twenty years
later, I was thirty-three, and our regressions were catching up to the
conscious flow of time. In the hypnosis sessions, he recorded my soul in bits
and pieces, saved forever as audio recordings, transcribed to digital
documents, and printed out on paper. He kept the files in his cabinets.
I’d often
wondered what would happen when we finally caught up to the present moment.
Maybe I’d die. Maybe he’d die. Maybe the entire world would end as the
Ouroboros swallowed its own tail.
"All
right." Richard got up from his desk. "I’m ready, if you are."
He sat in the chair opposite me and leaned forward to turn on the metronome.
I said,
"Take me to a happy day."
"You know
the drill. Close your eyes, relax, and remember."
Not every tick
and tock of the metronome sounded the same. The differences were subtle, but
they were there if I listened for them. It was a song without rhyme or reason.
It started small
and distant: tick.
The cuckoo clock
on the wall at Abram’s house had to be wound. I loved pulling the chains that
raised the heavy, metal pinecones. Tock. It had been my job, every morning,
when I was a kid. My body rocked to the beat: tick tock. Time ebbed, and space
flowed. My spine relaxed. Tick. Gravity released me. Tock. The metronome sang
its song in my belly. Tick tock. I was energy, and I radiated.
"We’re
going to continue our journey back in time," Richard said. The waves of
his voice rippled through me, and the present faded into the background.
I followed the
metronome down into a trance. We had a signal. I raised a finger to indicate
that I was ready to begin.
"Go
back," Richard suggested, "to the moment when you first met Simon,
when you were thirteen."
The scene formed
around me, inside me, throughout me.
"Describe
it to me."
I’m home, and
I’m taking a shower. There’s blood running down my leg. It’s swirling in the
water and spinning down the drain. I know what it is. Lettie’s had hers since
last year, and she took me to buy the stuff I’d need. I’m really glad I didn’t
have to do that with my grandpa.
Lettie and me,
we read the little instruction book that came in the box and made fun of the
pictures. She warned me how it would be, the cramps and mess, but it’s worse
when it’s actually happening. It’s scary and weird. I keep thinking that my
blood is supposed to stay in my body.
So, I’m standing
there in the shower, watching my blood drain away, and I’m trying not to cry,
wondering if I’m going to die, and that’s when I hear a man. He sounds like
James Bond. "You’re probably not going to die."
I scream and
cover my private parts with my hands, but no one’s there.
The voice says,
"What I mean is, you are going to be just fine." But nobody’s there.
I’m freaking out. I jump out of the shower and run through the house. I’m
screaming.
The voice is
following me. "Oh, lass, it’s okay."
I streak into
the kitchen, and my grandpa is there, trying to calm me down.
I’m crying,
naked and wet, shaking all over, blood staining my leg, and Grandpa thinks I’m
upset because of my period, but that isn’t it. It’s the man talking to me right
next to my ear, when there’s nobody there.
He says his name
is Simon.
The metronome
sang. Tick. Tock.
