New release sample: ANGELA'S KNIGHT

  

"What's so natural about being a target for interdimensional invaders every year?" Maurice grumbled.

"True." Asmondius sighed. "Refresh my memory? I'm aware their numbers are increasing, and I'm sure I didn't interact with all of them when I was last here. We were rather busy unraveling those mysteries."

Quickly, Maurice ran through the list of the not-quite-Human allies in Neighborlee, and their gifts. Lanie, who retained her telekinesis after she broke her back and landed in a wheelchair. She also sometimes had flashes of future events and could tell if people lied to her if she touched them while they talked. Asmondius wasn't aware of those particular aspects of her talents. Mostly just her wry attitude toward life. Kurt had a gift for mechanical and electronic things, and the ability to "borrow" the talents of others. Felicity gave off EM bursts and had a talent for befriending and calling, at need, every dog within an eighty-mile radius. These three had grown up together, beginning life in the Neighborlee Children's Home.

The Longfellows were keeping guardian talents in the family. Ford was the patriarch, and the assumption for years was that his three children, Jinx, Lenore, and Portia, hadn't inherited any talents to become guardians. That was proven a false assumption when Portia's sensitivity to energy became a liability, with a strong chance of attracting a group of people who tried to steal Lost Kids just as their talents awoke. She had chosen to have a child and let everyone assume she had simply gone to a fertility clinic. The assumption was half-right: she had teamed up with Colonel Hayward, another Lost Kid, to have her daughter, Athena. Then when they realized that Portia's presence combined with Athena's was generating a resonance that would indeed alert and attract the Rivals, Portia had chosen to become a world traveler, seeking more Lost Kids, and left Athena for her parents to raise. In safety and anonymity.

Doni Longfellow was Lenore's daughter, orphaned at age nine. She didn't have any visible talents, but she was clever and part of the support team, along with her computer-genius boyfriend, Cosmo, Athena's fiancé, Wallace, and Jinx. Several other friends of the core group of guardians had grown in sensitivity over the years, after long exposure to the magic of Divine's Emporium. These included Gordon Priebe, a police officer, and his wife, Mandy; Troy and Diane Richards; and Gina Sinclair, the director of Eden, the community center.