Excerpt: VIRTUALLY LONDON, Neighborlee, Ohio, Book 3

 Doni slipped her little hand into mine as we sat around the white wrought iron café table in the main room of Divine's. We sipped pineapple sherbet floats while I talked about my dreams. Angela didn't react. Her expression didn't change, except maybe that funny little smile, indicating she knew more than anyone else about what was going on... Well, it didn't quite fade, but it wasn't as strong as usual. She didn't ask me any questions, just focused her big blue eyes on me and listened until I ran out of words. Angela had a way of listening that made me think she heard more than anyone said. It would have been a relief not to say some of the things I had experienced in my nightmares, just picture them in my mind and have them go directly to hers.

I finished my story. We sat sipping in comfortable silence, for a few more minutes. I felt a lot better, like some pressure had been removed. Maybe it would be more accurate to say that having told Angela, I had fulfilled a responsibility I didn't know I had.

That made sense, I realized. Angela and Divine's Emporium were there in Neighborlee to protect it, or us, or maybe... Well, to be honest, sometimes I was sure there were things in our town that had to be contained in our town. So maybe Divine's protected the world from Neighborlee, instead of just the special people, the oddness, being hidden from the world? By telling Angela about my dream, I was helping her to guard us, or guard something else?

"Guardians," Angela murmured. Her little superior smile edged toward a smirk when I flinched at her word, coming so soon on the heels of my thoughts.

Yeah, I could definitely believe Angela read minds.

"Bethany, would you and Doni go upstairs and get one of my moonlight journals from the chest in my bedroom?" Angela reached inside the neck of her dress and drew out a thin silver chain with a long, crystalline skeleton key hanging from it, and handed chain and key to Bethany.

As the two of them held hands and hurried out of the room, heading for the stairs, Angela's smile faded entirely.

"It's real, isn't it?" I whispered. "The things in my dreams." I swallowed hard. "And you don't want Doni to hear what you're going to tell me about fighting it."

"Right, and yet not entirely." Angela took hold of my hand. "My dear Athena... How I wish you weren't so perceptive, that you hadn't inherited your grandfather's gifts and the responsibilities that come with them. And yet I know, from long years of experience, we are born to duties and burdens. We destroy our souls if we refuse them." She took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, all the while gazing into my eyes. "First, I sent them away because there are things I don't want Bethany to hear. I made a promise to her mother to protect her from the very things you must face because you are Ford Longfellow’s granddaughter. Until Doni starts dreaming too … why worry her?”

"Why don't you want Bethany to know?"

"Her bloodline has done enough already for Neighborlee. Her mother was another foundling, just like your grandfather, like Lanie Zephyr and her friends."

"Her mom?" I shivered, the cold coming from deep inside, as I remembered when Bethany's mother died. We were only nine. Sometimes being young helped to make the heavy sadness fade, but other times it just made the impact worse, and last longer.

Then I knew. I understood. Fragments of those sad, confusing days bobbed up to the surface of my memories.

"There was that weird storm. Mrs. Miller... She didn't die of a heart attack, did she?" I whispered.

Angela gripped my hand tighter and shook her head.

Six years ago, there were strange buzzing sensations in the ground for a day or two. Other people didn't seem to notice the electrical tingles in the soil, but Granddad let me curl up on the couch with him, where we both kept our feet off the ground. That day, Bethany and I were at soccer practice with Miss Lanie. Mrs. Miller had left the diner on an errand before lunch and didn't come back. A freak storm had struck, sending people diving for cover, driving rain horizontally. When it cleared up, she was found collapsed in an alley between two stores on the Mall, drenched, cold and dead.

Part of me wanted to yank my hand free of Angela's and run away. If I tried, she probably wouldn't hold onto me, keep me there. Not with her hand, anyway.

"Where are the dreams coming from? There's someone--no, something trying to come up, come out, break through a wall." I shook my head and pressed my free hand against my forehead. "I remember hearing things. You and Miss Lanie and Granddad talking. Mrs. Miller stopped something." For a second, it was like I couldn’t catch my breath. “Something that tried to happen before.” 

"Yes, our enemy tries periodically to shatter the barriers we hold up to protect the world. Stephanie was part of that defense. Neighborlee has many guardians, each of us picking up clues, warning signs, in different ways.”

Excerpt: VIRTUALLY LONDON, Neighborlee, Ohio, Book 3

 

Like I said, I had nightmares. Those really nebulous, misty, disjointed nightmares where I knew I was being chased. I had to keep moving, because if I slowed down or looked behind myself, whatever it was would catch me. Plus, the nightmares weren't letting me go. As soon as I fell asleep again, I was right back to the point in the dream where I had managed to yank myself awake.

"What's bothering you?" Bethany asked, one morning after some wake-me-up-six-times-during-the-night nightmares.

That was the great thing about having Bethany for my closest friend. We could tell when things were wrong with each other, or when one of us had an incredible secret. I lost count of the times, growing up, when one of us would be thinking about the other, wanting to talk, and the other one would call, or come by the house. Angela encouraged our friendship and said we were good for each other. As we got older, I grew more sure that she somehow helped our link or whatever-it-was grow stronger.

So when Bethany asked me, before I even finished sitting down next to her in homeroom, I tapped my ear, then my wristwatch, our signal for "tell you later--when the mundanes aren't listening."

We went outside at lunch and walked around the high school instead of sitting in our favorite spot under the trees next to the agriculture class's experimental garden plot. It was the only way we could guarantee someone wouldn't eavesdrop. When I finished describing the nightmares, the solid sense of threat but no other details, Bethany didn’t even pause before telling me what was only common sense.

"You need to talk to Angela. Have you told your folks?"

"I would have, but you know how crazy it is in the mornings at our house."

Bethany just rolled her eyes and grinned. She had slept over enough times to know that no matter what time of the year, whether it was the weekend or weekday, Longfellows couldn't seem to get our acts together in the morning. We were always rushing around and snatching up things, hurtling out the door and coming back a few times. Usually we raced out the door half-dressed, running late for work or shopping or appointments or school or wherever we had to be that morning.

Honestly, I wanted to talk to Gram and Granddad about my dreams before anyone else. They would listen and understand. They weren't the kind of grownups who listened to psychology books that contradicted what their children knew was going on. I planned on going to them that night, probably after dinner, when all our day's craziness had calmed down.

Going to Angela, however... That might be a better first step.

So we went right after school, Doni and Bethany and me.

Newest release: ENCHANTING THE PRINCE, Enchanted Castle Archives Book 3

 

Go to Ye Olde Dragon Books to get your copy, in ebook or audiobook, and get a free short story in the Enchanted Castle Archives too!

https://yeoldedragonbooks.com/want-to-be-enchanted/

What's it about?

Zair was thirteen when he was kidnapped and trained to be a Shadow -- to stand in for Crown Prince Anwir in dangerous situations. Magicians broke the rules of magic when they wove illusion spells around him, so he would walk and talk and sound and look like Anwir, The two boys were meant to be friends, companions, perhaps the only true friend either one would ever have.

Magic in the kingdom of Dorwain was broken, the old ways purged, forgotten, or warped. The magicians made mistakes. Some fatal. However, when they used the dust of a shattered magic mirror as the base of their spells, that proved to be Zair's only hope for survival and escape.

Despite the destruction of her physical body, Viza the magic mirror was alive in her dust. Zair could hear her, proving the strength of his sleeping, inborn magic. She became his friend and teacher. Together, they sought a way to escape. The magic awakening in Zair proved he had royal blood, with a claim to the throne. That made him a threat to the current king. He needed to break the growing web of spells that imprisoned him, and reclaim his own face before time ran out.

 

Excerpt: VIRTUALLY LONDON, Neighborlee, Ohio, Book 3

 That summer, I spent a lot of time with Doni. Not just because I realized early what a smart, quietly fun kid she was. And not because I felt sorry for her. Bethany left town. It wasn't any fun working at Miller’s Diner without her. We had always asked for the night shift because first, the tips were better with the evening menu and second, we liked to have our mornings free. We liked sleeping in. Exploring what new treasures had arrived at Divine's Emporium. Or just sitting somewhere quiet in the park and reading or daydreaming about our futures.

Well, Bethany's future not only arrived, it snatched her up and dragged her off to Hollywood. So I was pretty much alone. Yeah, I had friends, but nobody I really liked to hang with, day in and day out. I kept my night job at the diner, because I was still saving for my dream computer.

Mornings were for Doni and me. She was quite happy to spend her afternoons and evenings hanging with Gram and Granddad, talking about books, working in Gram's garden, making a place for herself. Roots.

She needed those roots when the Hallidays fought back.

They got pretty offensive because they had to get defensive. Mr. Carr went after them with everything he could think of, to protect Doni from them in the future. We would have preferred to let sleeping dogs lie, meaning doing everything possible to avoid reminding the Hallidays we existed and Doni was with us. However, the smart thing was to look for landmines now. We had been dealing with the Grandstones for generations, here in Neighborlee. So we knew to anticipate the Hallidays pulling the same kind of dirty tricks, and worse, once they learned just how rich Doni would be when she reached twenty-one.

For example, the Grandstones had bought up a bunch of old buildings, intending to get rich off urban renewal. Kurt Hanson worked for a garage they bought. He quit when that jerk-face Reggie Grandstone marched into the garage and boasted that he was now Kurt’s boss. A year later, when Kurt sold a security alarm system he had been working on at the garage, the Grandstones claimed that anything invented by their employees was automatically their property. Even when they didn't sign any agreement regarding intellectual property and work-for-hire.

The Grandstones sued, and lost. Kurt had proof he had been inventing and tinkering with the system for years before that tiny window of time between them buying the garage and when he quit. So he didn’t "invent" the system while he was still working for the garage. Mr. Carr got involved, and proved the single paycheck Kurt received after the Grandstones bought the garage came from the previous garage owner. Technically he never worked for them. They outsmarted themselves, making the former owner pay for any accounts payable generated before they took over.

Excerpt: VIRTUALLY LONDON, Neighborlee, Ohio, Book 3

 After Mr. Zephyr left, Gram took Doni upstairs to show her some things she had dug out of storage for her room: rugs and curtains and pictures and things like that. I was alone with Mr. Carr for a little while. He settled down at the kitchen table, covered with all sorts of documents and lots of handwritten notes. I put away the lemonade and cookies and washed the dishes we had used.

"How's your cousin settling in?" he asked me, when I'd finished rinsing the last glass.

"She's a pretty tough little kid. There were a couple times I thought she'd start crying..." I shrugged and looked up at the ceiling. Gram and Granddad's room was over the kitchen, with the big cedar closet right next to it, and I could track Gram and Doni's movements by the faint creaking of the boards overhead. "They took all her books away."

"Eh?" He slid his glasses off the end of his nose and sat back, looking at me.

"Aunt Lenore was like Granddad--loved books. Doni's the same way. I'm pretty sure all those books Aunt Lenore and Uncle Thad sent to us, they had the same books for themselves. So that's like thousands, maybe. They had to build an extra room on their house for all the books, Doni said. Well, the Hallidays sold all her books. Except for that backpack full, that she stole when she figured what they were doing. Who'd be so mean to a little kid?"

"Indeed, I've been wondering what kind of people these Hallidays are. I met Thad, after he married Lenore. A good man. It amazes me that such a kind, generous man could come of such people. Then again, serial killers often pop up in loving, moral, strong families, so who can say?" He tapped the papers in front of him, written in a bold, square handwriting. "Charlotte and I have been planning what to say and do. The way this whole affair was handled is unforgivable. She isn't a woman to seek vengeance, but this is her granddaughter who has been irretrievably injured by the cold callousness of these people. It pained her to admit she suspects the way everything was handled indicates these people were maneuvering to profit from Thad and Lenore's deaths. The secrecy, and holding onto London, and then casting her off the way they did." He shook his head, his eyes dark with stern disapproval.

His eyes got darker when I told him what Doni had said, about being in the care of the authorities for seven weeks before the Hallidays showed up.

"I believe I shall take great joy in...hounding these people, causing them as much inconvenience and frustration as I can."

Excerpt: VIRTUALLY LONDON, Neighborlee, Ohio, Book 3

 

"Charlotte, did you send Jinx to get Ford, tell him the news? Or would you like me to run up to the old fishing hole and get him?" Mr. Zephyr said, when they came down after the final trip, hauling the last set of bookshelves.

"Oh, you'd better believe it," Gram said. "That boy wasn't in so much a hurry to get out of town that he'd overlook something like that." She chuckled and gestured with her tray of lemonade and fresh sugar cookies, out onto the porch. We all settled down. Doni curled up next to Gram on the three-seater swing with one of her new books.

"Get out of town?"

"Senior Prank Night." I took my usual spot on the steps with my back against the big support pillar Uncle Jinx had carved to look like dragons had wrapped around it. The other pillar had unicorns chasing each other around and around up to the top.

"Oh, joy." He shared grins with Mr. Carr. “Forgot about that.”

"What's Senior Prank Night?" Doni asked, and sprayed a few crumbs from her mouthful of sugar cookie.

It was kind of nice to see she was a normal little kid in some aspects.

We explained about the long-standing tradition in Neighborlee for graduating seniors, on the first Wednesday of June, to play some extravagant prank. Sort of to leave their mark on the town before they headed off into adulthood. If they survived. Some members of the police and fire departments, and teachers spent Senior Prank Night on patrol. They tried to head off any pranks that got out of control, and prevent expensive or long-term damage to people, places, and things.

"Lanie swears some of these kids don't want to attend their own graduation ceremony," Mr. Zephyr said with a chuckle.

"We're still trying to figure out how she and her friends threaded those tires on the flagpoles in front of the schools, the board of education office and the police department," Mr. Carr said. "No ladder in this town tall enough to get to the top of those flagpoles. I tend to think that friend of hers, the one with the gift for gizmos--" He looked around, stumped for a moment.

"Kurt Hanson," I supplied.

"That's right." He nodded. "I think he rigged some elaborate pulley system to lift those tires up and over. At least Lanie’s prank didn't get anyone hurt." He chuckled. "And they used ordinary, worn-out tires that could be cut off easily. As I recall, the year that idiot Grandstone and his friends tried to blow up Blackwater Pool, some other fool in their graduating class put steel-belted radials on the shorter flagpoles in front of the bank and the post office. Brand new ones. That's what got them caught, as I recall."

"How?" Doni sat up, eyes wide, her fourth cookie in her hand.

"They tracked the tires back to the store where they were stolen and the fools were caught on the security tape. Had to get a special saw to cut those tires off the flagpole." He nodded to Mr. Zephyr. "Nobody was hurt or upset, and didn't cost the town or the schools a penny to remove those tires, the year Lanie graduated."

"Yeah, Rainbow and I raised our kids right, I think," Mr. Zephyr said.

"I suppose Lanie is on patrol tonight," Gram said.

"You can bet on it."

March Quiz: VIRTUALLY LONDON

 Here's your quiz for March to earn points toward free books from the Neighborlee, Ohio fantasy series.

Listen to the first chapter of VIRTUALLY LONDON on the Ye Olde Dragon's Library storytelling podcast, either on the podcast page at YeOldeDragonBooks.com, or on your favorite podcast app.

Answer the questions below.

Send the answers to 2OldeDragons@gmail.com and earn your points. That easy!

• What's the name of Athena's uncle?
• What end of the year party was Athena looking forward to?
• What day of the week did the story start?
• What was Athena's mother's name, and where was she when the story started? What was she doing?
• What were Doni's parents' names?
• Where did Doni and Athena go while their grandmother talked with their family lawyer?
• How did Athena's grandparents meet? What was her grandfather doing, and what did her grandmother do to stop him?
• Where was Angela and what was she doing when Doni met her?
• What kind of cream soda did Doni love? Who else loved it?
• What furniture did Doni and Athena find? What did it look like? Who helped them bring it home?

Excerpt: VIRTUALLY LONDON, Neighborlee, Ohio, Book 3

 "So they took care of you until your relatives showed up?" Mr. Zephyr said. His voice was so gentle, it made me want to cry. Doni nodded. She sniffled a little when I reached up to her in the front passenger seat and took hold of her hand. "How long was that?"

"About..." She frowned for a few seconds and the fingers on the hand I was holding twitched a little, so I guessed she was counting. "About seven weeks."

Mr. Zephyr growled something that sounded Chinese. It was a good guess he was cussing, like Granddad did sometimes. Doni's eyes got big. Then she giggled.

"Sorry about that." He shook his head and gave us both a crooked grin. Then he pulled into the driveway of our house, right behind the glossy black Lincoln that belonged to Mr. Carr.

The nice thing about Mr. Carr was that he wasn't afraid to do manual labor or get his hands or even his clothes dirty. Of course, there wasn't any dust on the furniture or books we hauled home from Divine's, but the possibility of it counted. Mr. Carr came outside in his light gray, three-piece summertime lawyer suit, and helped haul that furniture upstairs to Doni's room. 

Before that, he bowed to Doni and shook her hand and said he was very pleased to meet her. Gram had told him the whole story already, so he didn't ask any questions. Instead, he talked about Mr. Zephyr's upcoming research trip, and offered to help find someone to rent the big old Zephyr farmhouse while they were away.

Excerpt: VIRTUALLY LONDON, Neighborlee, Ohio, Book 3

 

A funny little hitch socked me in the chest, when I looked at Doni and realized something. Aunt Lenore was dead, but in all the fuss of Doni showing up and getting her settled and being so furious on her behalf, that little fact had slipped right past us. Who was going to tell my mother that her sister was dead? Had anybody thought of that yet?

I felt about twenty years older all of a sudden, and tired. Tragedy sure created a lot of work and a lot of things to think about. Even if--maybe especially if?--that tragedy was four months old.

What was wrong with those Hallidays, that they couldn't be bothered to call and say, "Oh, by the way, your daughter is dead. We don't want her daughter. She's on her way"?

Doni turned and looked at me with those big, sad eyes, and I shuddered at a new thought: Maybe it wasn't that they didn't care about her. Maybe they hoped something nasty would happen to her. Then there would no one to claim whatever inheritance she had coming to her, so they could take it over.

Of course, that begged the question of just what these people had done to Doni in the four months since her parents died. Why had they held onto her all that time, and only now cut her loose?

"Hey, Doni, how long after Aunt Lenore and Uncle Thad...well, after they had their accident--"

"There were a lot of government people and protective services people and lawyers." Her eyes got bigger and full of shadows, but there was no feeling in her voice. That was kind of scary.

Mr. Zephyr gave her that look I had seen him and Police Chief Tanner use when someone tried to snatch a little girl from the playground at the middle school back in March. The middle school was next to the high school, and I was trying out for the track team with Miss Lanie when it happened. Someone screamed. Miss Lanie vanished, like she flew from the running track to the playground. Then she was back, holding that little girl, who was so scared she didn't start crying until Miss Lanie told us what happened and sent someone to call school security. The kidnapper got away, though.

Suddenly there were people coming from every side of town. Police and teachers and Mr. Zephyr and Pastor Rocky. They got those sad, determined looks on their faces, just like he had now. Nobody ever said what happened, but there was a big time gap between when they caught up with the kidnapper on the edge of the Metroparks, and when he showed up at the police station.

That kind of look can be scary, but make you feel really safe, all at the same time.

This month's featured book in the Neighborlee Visitors' Guide: VIRTUALLY LONDON, Neighborlee, Ohio, Book 3

LISTEN to chapter 1 of VIRTUALLY LONDON on the Ye Olde Dragon's Library storytelling podcast.

QUESTIONS for a quiz will be posted here later in the month, with all the answers in Chapter 1.

ANSWER those questions, and earn points toward a free book in the Neighborlee, Ohio fantasy series!

What's VIRTUALLY LONDON about?

Athena Longfellow and Doni Halliday are granddaughters of one of Neighborlee’s guardians, Ford Longfellow. When danger threatens Neighborlee, the girls awaken to their duties and their gifts, and slowly grow into their heritage.

Athena, the computer whiz, finds and experiments with an unusual video camera at Divine’s Emporium. She records Doni, and then records a room at the shop -- and inadvertently opens a door to another dimension. Properly frightened, she shuts down the program behind firewalls. Enemy invasion thwarted. For now.

She doesn't realize she also created a virtual copy of Doni, until an advanced computer class in college, when the artificial intelligence that calls herself London Holiday "moves into" her team's class project.

Athena suddenly has a good idea how Dr. Frankenstein felt. The question is: If she has to pull the plug on London Holiday … how?

 

 And remember: ALL formats of VIRTUALLY LONDON are on sale for the entire month of March.  Catch up, fill in the holes in your collection, and save $$$!!

At YeOldeDragonBooks.com

 

Meet Me in Akron?

 

Akron Book Fest

Saturday, March 8, 11 am - 3 pm, Main Library

60 South High Street, Akron

 

Over 75 authors, illustrators, and publishers will be tabling, selling and signing books.

 For more information:  https://www.akronlibrary.org/

 

I'll be there selling the first three books of my Book & Mug Mysteries -- and giving you a first look at the cover of Book 4, coming in May!

 

 

March Firsty Freebie

 The March Firsty Freebie book is part of a celebration!

The next Enchanted Castle Archives book, ENCHANTING THE PRINCE, releases March 15.

The Firsty Freebie book, available only today, is a new Enchanted Castle Archives short story:

THE SOUL OF THE HOUSE.

Here's the link. You have the option of signing up for my newsletter. If you haven't yet, please do!

https://dl.bookfunnel.com/3394jjpeiq

A story between books, after THE BEASTLY BEAUTY, The Enchanted Castle Archives Book 2

 Friar Ipswich has always loved books. When Ash appears in Castle Fairhold's library and asks him to take some books to a healing cloister, he is more than happy to help out. Especially when he learns the books are sought by scheming magicians from another kingdom, who want to use the books for nefarious purposes.

 On the journey, he is separated from his escorts, is nearly knocked from his horse, and wakes on the porch of an old abandoned house. When he takes shelter inside, he finds the house holds a secret, and is much larger inside than outside. His love for books could result in him being trapped inside the house forever.

And ... if you go to YeOldeDragonBooks.com and click on the storefront, you have a chance to buy the ebook and audiobook of ENCHANTING THE PRINCE before everyone else, AND at a discount!!

Such a deal!!

Ready?

GO!