a Touch of Ice Read online

  A TOUCH OF ICE

  An Everly Gray Novel

  L. j. Charles

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  A Touch of Ice

  Copyright © 2011 by L. j. Charles

  Cover Design by Lucie Charles

  Smashwords Edition

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without written permission.

  For more information: [email protected]

  For Julia,

  Who read the rough draft

  And still encouraged me to keep writing

  One

  Bone cold and heart warm.

  Me, I live in the middle. No extremes allowed in my life.

  Not so for Shelly Summers. She’s the only client I have who regularly leads me on a wild ride through the twenty-somethings, a decade I stumbled through without taking notes.

  “Everly!” Shelly’s squeal shattered the quiet of my Zen-like office. “You won’t be-lieve what happened.”

  I wrapped her in the barest minimum of hug, experience telling me it would be enough. My fingertips brushed against her back for a fraction of a second. Fragments of her desperation slammed through my body, leaving behind fractured images of her latest internet dating disaster.

  My mind and body struggled, reached for the comfort of balance, for the safety between the extremes that ruled Shelly’s life. I stepped away from her with my best professional smile firmly in place and my inner dialogue running at top speed. You can do this, Everly. Personal coaching is your thing, and Shelly’s issues are nothing like your nightmares.

  The wispy notes of her floral perfume tickled my nose, and I stifled a sneeze as I bent to snag two bottles of water from the mini-fridge. I’d been working with Shelly for a couple months and wasn’t about to give up, no matter how hard she clung to her desperation. But oh, how much easier this session would be if I didn’t have a lack-of-sleep hangover.

  I turned to face her. “Fill me in on what I won’t believe.”

  She perched on the edge of one of my overstuffed chairs—mahogany leather—and tapped the bottle of water against the palm of her hand. I counted three seconds before she tossed the bottle on the seat and popped up to pace my office, stopping every so often to smooth her miniscule denim skirt over the top of her thighs. “I stood outside the restaurant, Everly. Just stood there like a dork. Couldn’t make myself go in like you wanted me to. Not without a date. Everyone would have stared at me and felt sorry for the loser, and that’s no way to get a guy to notice me. Relationships are such a pain. Well, except for having sex. Orgasms are easy. It’s relationships that are a problem.”

  “The assignment wasn’t to help you get a date. We’ve discussed the importance of knowing yourself before you attempt a relationship.” I pointed to the client chair, a not so subtle suggestion.

  Shelly controlled her agitation long enough to squirm onto the edge of the seat. “Okay, I’m ready. Tell me what you think.” Her voice held a hint of demand as she tugged on the hot pink strands of her spiky ’do.

  “If you’re going to get past this relationship issue, you need to start listening to your internal wisdom. What makes you smile? What do you look forward to when you get out of bed in the morning? Make a list of those things, a written list that we can talk about.”

  “Yeah. Okay, I can do that. Like last night I had dinner with Keith and he took me to—”

  I held up my hand. “The rule is: nothing you put on the list can involve a man. Everything you write down has to reflect what brings you, alone, joy.”

  “Just me?”

  “Just you. I also want you to gather pictures from magazines that make you happy, and Shelly, no pictures of men. Arrange them in a collage, what I call a storyboard. Bring it to your next appointment along with the list of what makes you happy, and we’ll decide where to go from there.”

  “You can’t be serious. I’m twenty-five years old, and there are new wrinkles popping out on my face every day. I don’t have time to be screwing around with pretty pictures. Look at me.” She pointed to her face, stood, and started pacing again. “I don’t make enough money for a lot of plastic surgery. Maybe a tuck here and there, but… Don’t you think I’ll be more successful if I continue hitting the best singles bars in town? Oh, and maybe add a new internet service to my subscription list?”

  “Let me just ask—how’s that been working for you?”

  “Okay. You have a point. Not so well.” She huffed, watching me through confused eyes as her ring-laden fingers rubbed circles on her temples. A shaft of sunlight glittered against the sparkling stones, sending rainbows of color around my office.

  Chills tingled over my skin, and Shelly dissipated into a blinding white haze of fog. What the hell was happening? Fear caught the edge of my last conscious thought and clung with the tenacity of steel manacles. Bone cold.

  The old woman’s bare toes pushed against the floor, keeping the rhythm of the rocking chair smooth and even. Her body taut, she struggled for every breath.

  The motion, and the ragged sound of her breathing, pulled me deeper into her pain.

  Her left hand clutched the arm of the chair. Her right hand was extended; a cube of ice rested on her palm, melting. She didn’t feel the cold. It was too late.

  Time.

  Slowly, continuously, disappearing.

  Her midnight blue eyes glistened with tears, but still held the clarity of youth. She focused on the window in front of her, not seeing the scene on the street below, but on a memory.

  A murder.

  The crumpled body of a man loomed in the distance. She paused and then turned her back on the scene. The opportunity for her to accept her destiny was lost forever.

  The internal movie played on, the story of all the things she’d missed in life. All the things she could have done, but didn’t.

  The darkness outside provided a clear reflection in the window.

  My face looked back at me.

  Old. Wizened. Every wrinkle etched with regret for what might have been.

  Cold, bony fingers dug into my shoulders, shaking me. “Everly? Everly Gray?”

  The old woman? Panic zinged through me and my eyes popped open. Shelly Summers. Client. Young. Coaching appointment. “What the hell—?”

  Shelly’s breath whooshed out, drowning me in the scent of peppermint and apprehension. “You’re okay, right? It was just a spell of some kind, like an epileptic thing? You should have told me this could happen, that you flipped out sometimes. A girl likes to be prepared for something like this, you know.”

  I’d reduced my client to a babbling heap of nerves. And then there was me. No telling how long it would take me to recuperate from…whatever the hell that was. I reached for my bottle of water, the trembling in my fingers visible. Client session. Professional. Get. It. Together, Everly. I chugged several gulps of the life-giving liquid, knowing I had to act normal and complete Shelly’s session. “I’m fine, Shelly. Honestly, it was just one of those déjà vu moments. We were discussing your—”

  “Lack of a permanent life partner. But I really need to know you’re not gonna flip out again.”

  “You have my complete attention. It was nothing more than a brain blip.”

  She bobbed her head up and down. “Yeah, I know what you mean. Only I usually have them after spending an evening in a club. So, about your not-so-brilliant idea to have me create some kind of art project.” Impatience lurked behind her words. Immediate scare about my mental stability over, Shelly was
completely back to normal. Her eyes snapped with annoyance and a rosy pink glow had pushed the pale from her cheeks.

  Relief left my knees wobbly. Later, Everly. You can deal with…whatever that was…later.

  I sucked in a breath. “You’re not letting potential life partners get to know you. The purpose of this—” I gave Shelly another glimpse of my professional smile— “art project is to move beyond orgasms and into the heart of a relationship.”

  Silence hung between us.

  “With this kind of assignment, you should give me a guarantee. After all it’s going to take me off the market for—” Shelly’s hazel eyes dilated “—maybe hours. Hours of prime time spent on self-reflection?” She collapsed back into the chair, tugged the bottle of water from under her, and blew out a sigh that ruffled her bangs. “What if I can’t do this?”

  “You can do it. I’m not saying you should stop the activities you’re comfortable with, only that these assignments may improve your chances of finding the right mate.”

  “All right.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “No, it’s not all right. This self-reflection idea makes me kind of crazy, actually.”

  “Take it in small doses. Work your way into the assignment.”

  “Maybe I should consider a lesbian relationship instead. That would change the way I look at things for sure.”

  “Yes, I expect it would, but I don’t think your sexual orientation is…optional. Start with creating the storyboard. And I’d like you to make another attempt at eating a meal in a restaurant by yourself.”

  “Okaaay.”

  “How about if you try lunch instead of dinner? More single people are out at lunch time.”

  “I’ll try. But I’m going to give the lesbian idea some more thought. It works for a lot of people.”

  I shifted in my seat and contemplated the best way to approach this. “Take a minute to imagine a day-in-the-life of being lesbian. Do you honestly think you’re going to be happy with a woman as your life partner?”

  “What? No. Oh, no of course not.” She dug a tube of pink lipstick from her pocket and smoothed it over cosmetically plump lips. “The idea is to broaden my horizons, make me more interesting to potential husband material.”

  “How about you put that idea on hold until after you try the new assignments. Let’s see how they work before you move on to anything too life-altering.” Bloody whacko twenty-somethings. Shelly pushed every nerve in my body to the breaking point.

  She slid her gaze in my direction. “To my way of thinking, self-refection is way more life-altering than spending a few hours as a lesbian.”

  Not much I could say to that.

  She stood, tugged at her skirt, and pulled on some attitude. “Okay. I’ll give it a try.”

  I kept my fingertips to myself as we hugged goodbye. No way could I chance being tossed into another Shelly image. Not after…whatever that…vision thing was.

  I shrugged out of my work clothes on the way upstairs and replaced them with my most comfy sweats. I stopped, drinking in the serenity of my sleeping space. I’d done all the floors of my townhouse in bamboo before I moved in and still loved the natural beauty of the pattern. The walls were white with a faint purple undertone that blended with the gray and violet accents of the bedding and loveseat. A perfect room for peaceful sleep. So why was the universe sending me nightmares?

  I padded barefoot down the hall and gathered the supplies I needed, dumped them on the white lacquer kitchen table. Kitchens, my kitchen anyway, had to be pristine white. The perfect background for creating any number of colorful recipes, only this one was for my psyche, not my taste buds. I’ve always believed that client assignments are gifts from my subconscious wisdom, meant to be applied to my life as well as theirs. Helps me connect with them.

  Except this time I had the…vision to decipher.

  Damn it, I hate when the universe gives me crap like this to deal with. Wasn’t it enough being born with the hinky touch thing? Now I was going to have to cope with visions as well? I blew out a frustrated sigh but dutifully sat down with a stack of magazines and a pair of scissors.

  I started flipping pages, the colors, shapes, and words blurring as an odd pressure built in my head. It was disorienting and more than a little scary. I tried to slow things down, to make my brain catalogue details and select a logical sequence of pictures. But no. My brain had a totally different agenda and kept sending “rip” commands to my fingers.

  The pressure in my head eased the faster I ripped, so I went with it. Tossed the scissors aside and focused on tearing out whatever sent shivers through my fingertips. It didn’t take long, maybe fifteen minutes of clock time, but I was shaking and a thin film of sweat covered my body.

  What the hell? I stumbled to the sink and slurped handfuls of water until my breathing slowed to normal. And then I faced the pile of shredded magazines and a haphazard arrangement of glossy pictures.

  The images had nothing to do with my life at all. Nope. Not a chance in hell they were about my life.

  They were about someone’s murder.

  Two

  “It’s safe here, you know. I can avoid people.” My words flittered away on the breeze as I inhaled the scent of the ocean. The salt air filled my nose and left the flavor of brine on my tongue. I licked the saltiness from my lips and tried one more time to explain the cluttered mess in my head to Violet, my only real friend—also my neighbor—and at the moment my five a.m. escape-to-the-beach buddy.

  “It happened three nights in a row before yesterday’s session from hell with client S. Count them. Three nights without being able to sleep more than a few hours before the nightmares hit. Not that I can remember any details, but still, this kind of thing only happens to me when the universe is trying to slap me upside the head with something. And then there was the…vision. And the collage. It’s always a mistake to argue with the universe. I know better. Bargaining never works in my favor. Not ever.”

  Violet slowed her pace and raked me with her too-wise, moss green eyes. “Uh-huh. You do know you’re not making any sense, right? I sort of get it about the nightmares and the old lady vision, but the collage could mean anything. Art interpretations are subject to personal whims. And Everly, the universe doesn’t talk to people. Not unless they’re locked in a small room with soft walls.”

  Was I going crazy? A shiver rushed through me. No way. I would not succumb to a soft-walled existence. “A cleansing ritual. That’s what I need. No, more than that. A new beginning. Time to be done with the cold-sweat, heart-pounding, head-throbbing wake ups.” I veered from the shoreline and dove into a wave. When I came up for air, Violet stood on the shore, arms crossed, blonde curls whipping in the wind, and the elegant lines of her face compressed with worry. “Talk.”

  I shivered, sloughing water from my arms and legs, wringing out the hem of my t-shirt. “That déjà vu vision thing happened in the middle of a client session. It was me, Violet, me sitting in that rocking chair, my life totally blah. Dead. I need to face whatever badass fear is nipping at my heels. Obviously something to do with death. Mine and someone else’s.”

  She eyed my wet shirt, squinting through the gray streaks of barely-dawn light, and then reached to give me a sloppy hug. “We’ll work this out, Everly. Whatever you need, we’ll figure it out, because, hey, soul sisters. ”

  I stepped back, avoiding her open arms, her loyalty a sweet sting behind my eyes. “Thanks, I…no reason we should both shiver our way through the drive back to Cary. Even with the ninety degree day they’re predicting, it won’t be enough to dry me out.”

  She opened her mouth, snapped it closed, and frowned.

  “Violet?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “What’s wrong with me? Aside from the touch thing. I’ve learned to live with that, and oddly it’s why I’m a good coach. Makes me exceedingly objective about life on the outside of my picture window. But why is it suddenly such a big deal that I change how I do things? And what’s
gonna happen to my business if I do?”

  “Best guess as to what’s wrong with you: a rapidly ticking biological clock, and if you want children—”

  “No. No children.” A shaft of loneliness left a hollow trail in my chest. “I couldn’t do that to an innocent child. What if they inherited the ESP fingers and couldn’t live a normal life? There’s no way it can be that.”

  “Well, maybe your decision to protect the world from your fingers has worked a few brain cells loose. You’ve been hiding from the world since college, and that’s not exactly learning to live with your gift.”

  “Gift. Right.”

  She ignored my sarcasm. “You didn’t say, but I assumed that’s why you suggested this trip to the beach—that you were finally ready to expand your boundaries—and FYI, I don’t think it’ll change your business much. You’re still you, and that’s what your clients depend on.”

  “Yeah. Maybe so. But because of the…vision. And the murder thing. Shouldn’t I try and figure out who’s going to be murdered? Stop it somehow? Use my gift for more than coaching people through the blips in their lives?”

  We ambled along the shoreline, quiet except for the shrieks of gulls and the pounding of the waves. My anxiety settled into the pit of my stomach, leaving behind a dull ache.

  Violet coupled a long-suffering sigh with a brief headshake. She knew the details of my problem. How I see images when I touch people, usually about whatever’s dominating their thoughts—like where they’ve been or what they’ve been doing. Once in a while something will pop in about their future. Ditto when my fingertips brush over objects. I try not to trespass, to only use it with clients so I know how to help them.

  The wind brought shivers to my skin. Obviously, my dip in the ocean had not been the brightest move, to say nothing of… “Oh, damn it all to perdition. There isn’t supposed to be anyone on the beach this early on a Saturday morning.”