Seven Souls a Leaping Anthology (w/Lisa Pietsch and Kellyann Zuzulo)
Currently out of print.
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At New England New Age (NENA) Investigations, no case is too weird. The paranormal detective agency relies on the familial talents of siblings Duncan and Samantha and their cousin Tara. While Duncan and Samantha tend to the fieldwork, Tara mans the office tapping sources in both the physical and spirit worlds. Fate takes a hand when a killer named Jeffrey Wiles begins a death-dealing spree that puts the lives and loves of these investigators on the line.
13th Night (Tara and Darian’s Story)
Since the day she learned to put her ABCs together, Tara Conroy has been sharing a ghostly correspondence with the spirit world. One spirit, in particular, Darian, has been talking to her since she was twelve years old. His letters of encouragement, advice and conversation take a darker turn as she sends her cousin Duncan on the hunt for a killer named Jeffrey Wiles and again when Duncan’s sister Sam finds herself helping track that killer’s spirit. But when Darian’s letters flirt on the line between desire and danger, Tara must learn what his intentions are before she loses her mind and her soul completely…
Darian Barnes ran afoul of a witch in 1929 as the stock market crashed. She blamed him and cursed him to know what it was like to watch everything he possessed disappear and be helpless to stop it. For nearly a century, Darian has existed as a spirit, always seeing, never touching or experiencing until one day he encountered Tara Conroy. For the first time in eighty years, someone could hear him. She was only a little girl at the time, but desperate for the contact, he told her stories that she could write. He watched over her, guiding, protecting and advising – always there when she needed a friend. Over time, Darian discovered that their connection left him longing for more…
Together, Tara and Darian guided her cousins against an evil man, but when that man’s spirit begins to circle Tara, Darian knows he has to do something – anything – to save her.
Now Darian and Tara must find a way to bring their love into the physical world and destroy Jeffrey Wiles once and for all – because if they don’t, Darian is terrified that the witch’s curse will cost Tara her life and her soul…
What’s Being Said:
“13th Night” by Heather Long
Tara Conroy is the office support, researcher, and link between worlds, physical and psychic, for NENA. She can talk to the dead, something that would have overpowered her long ago if she hadn’t found someone to intercede for her on the psychic plane. Tara is happy for both her cousins, yet she wishes for what they have found – love. Something Tara long ago knew would not happen to her – after all the man she loves is dead. Darian Barnes is a stockbroker who met with a witch at the wrong time in history and suffered for it. Now Darian loves and protects Tara from any spirit who might try to contact her. That is until an intense evil decides Tara is just what the doctor ordered, and is strong enough to truly fight Darian. Both are terrified to discover that something from Jeffrey Wiles is back for one last try.To survive it’s going to take research and the power of love – will it be enough or will the two lovers still be on different planes when all is said and done?
“13th Night” gives Tara a chance at her one love while fighting the final battle with Jeffrey Wiles. Darian had my sympathies right from the beginning because of a misuse of power. During the majority of reading about Tara and Darian, I was sure they would never get their ending, but I should have remembered that you never bet against love. The third way that Jeffrey showed up was shocking and had me wondering just what it would take to finally kill this evil man. I found it to be cosmic justice on how Darian came to life. The final chapter of Jeffrey Wiles’ threat to mankind was metaphysics at is finest. Tara and Darian’s struggles and love made “13th Night” a superior way to end a truly fantastic book.
Seven Souls a Leaping follows along as all three members of NENA – New England New Age Investigations – discover their life partners and defeat a foe unlike anything any of them have ever had to fight before. Unlike most anthologies that just go around a common theme, I loved how this one stayed with a story line and just added to it until the end where it all came together. Each story took me along a path that started with a horrific murderer, on to a bounty hunt to the death of the murderer, and finally, in a race to kill his soul and essence. The stories seamed together so well that if I hadn’t known a different person wrote each one, I would have never guessed it. I was held in suspense from the very beginning, which to me is the best way to be held. The combination of murder, suspense, magic, humor, and passion swirled together so well I drifted from one story to the next without being torn out of the world that was so intricately developed. Seven Souls a Leaping is a suspenseful must read filled with three wonderful happy endings, and the death of a super villain you will have to read to believe. I found Seven Souls a Leaping to be one of the best anthologies I have read in a very long time, and of course, I just have to Joyfully Recommend it to one and all.” – Jo, Joyfully Reviewed Recommended Read
“13th Night is a great mixture of action and emotions. The fight scenes bring you into the story wanting to swing your fists and save these characters that you become very attached too. The emotional struggles you feel them going through pull at your heart strings all the way to the end. All you want is for these two confidants to be able to be together but that seems to be impossible. The story flows in a way that keeps you glued to the pages. I was sneaking out for a break during work so I could read a few extra pages throughout the day. It is easy to say that this story was the most addictive of the three. I would give 13th Night four and a half out of five stars if it were a standalone story.” – Jaime, Just Another Book Lover
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Excerpt:
Prologue
October 29, 1929
Ruined tycoons, brought low by greed and foolishness will fall from their office windows like rain…
Darian Barnes crumpled the note and dropped it into the wastepaper basket. The news from Wall Street wasn’t promising. Below his office window, he could see men in suits milling about, disheveled, lost and confused. Raking a hand through his close-cropped blond hair, he understood their dilemma.
The last several days of trading had culminated in the single largest drop ever. He could sympathize with the loss echoing up from the streets below. He was broken. The stacks of stock papers in his filing cabinet would serve only as kindling.
Darian slid his hands into the pockets of his trousers. His shoulders slumped. He needed to deliver the bad news. But how do you tell someone that you’ve destroyed their dreams? He’d fought to hang onto the stocks for his clients. During the previous week’s whopping drops, he’d talked all of his clients out of selling. The market would bounce.
It would adjust.
It would recover.
Now what pennies they may have made…well now they were gone, too.
Man up, Barnes. He chastised himself.
Darian turned away from the windows and their picture of mourning below. He thrust his arms through the sleeves of his suit jacket and made a point of smoothing it down before running his hand over his hair again. He would visit each and every client. He would tell them what went wrong.
He would apologize.
Yes, Darian would apologize. Then he’d promise to do whatever he could for their families. He had no idea what that would be, but he wouldn’t abandon his clients.
He had his pride and his honor. They weren’t much in the way of currency, but he would make them work.
A shudder passed through him, emotion clogged his throat. He coughed, sniffed and locked his jaw. He would not give in to despair. Not while he could still do something for his clients. He owed them that much.
Wind blew the door to his office open, rushing in and sending the papers swirling through the office like leaves in the autumn. Darian blinked at the onslaught. A woman filled the empty space of the door, a dark fury whirling around her like a cyclone of kinetic energy. Her green eyes flashed beneath the dark kohl that outlined them, Egyptian-style.
“Miss Martins…” Darian’s words choked off as the air swirling through the room pulled the oxygen from his lungs. He put a hand to his throat and stared at her, agape.
Audrey Martins. She’d brought her investments to Darian for the last two years. She’d come to him at the beginning of the month and told him that it was necessary to re-allocate her stocks. All of them. She also told him he should advise his other clients the same way.
He’d talked her down.
Talked her down from her panic.
Darian dropped to his knees, fighting to squeeze air past the fist around his throat.
“I told you, Mr. Barnes. I warned you. You did not listen to me and now it is all gone. That which I invested for my daughters and my daughters’ daughters—it has been seeded into the vacuum. This is only the beginning of the great darkness. We could have avoided it. We could have avoided all of it.” She walked into his office, her black shoes with their flashy dance heels clicking against the wood floor.
“You told me that it was unwise to liquidate. You assured me that it would be wrong to do this. I believed you, Mr. Barnes. I believed you, and now I am ruined. I have lost everything. My coven will suffer for this—they will suffer without the protection that money brings. And now all I see is sadness—sadness and death—death and loss—hunger and disease. It will be decades before they will recover and millions will die before that can happen. You are a part of that darkness now, Mr. Barnes.”
Darian couldn’t breathe. He fought for breath. He fought for it, but blackness rimmed his vision and when she knelt down, taking his head in her hands, he watched the tears splash from the green fire of her eyes.
“Today, ruined tycoons, brought low by greed and foolishness will fall from their office windows like rain…” Outside, Darian heard the screams as the wind around him tormented him. The air brushed his face, but his vision narrowed until all he could see were her green eyes. “I tried to warn you, but you would not listen. You would not hear me, and now you will know what it is like to watch everything you possess disappear and you will be helpless to stop it. I curse you Darian Barnes. I curse you with the wind that blows from the east that brings the spring rain, I curse you with wind of the north that carries the winter snow, I curse you with the wind of the west that brings forth the autumn and I curse you with the wind of the south that burns through the summer. I curse you three times most pure. May you die, but ever live. May you be silenced, but ever see. May you be helpless to save that which you love. May you see the end coming…
“…may you see that darkness coming for those you love and bound by this curse will you be until you know my pain and my suffering. As I will it…” She was shouting now, her words roaring in Darian’s ears. His vision was but sparks struck in darkness as his lungs burned and his heart screamed. “…so mote it be.”
And the sparks went out.
