Chapter Seventeen

I had gotten home shortly after three in the morning. I had left Mr. Northrop's, Paul's, as he had insisted I call him, anything but humble abode with a near full gas tank at 12:30. I had been traveling farther away from home for forty minutes before I even stopped to consider which direction I was going when I noticed I had just over half a tank left. Even after getting back on the right path home, every few minutes I had to confirm where I was with reassuring familiar landmarks as though I had been lost again just moments before identifying each one. If my gas tank had held more than three and a half gallons of gasoline, I might have driven all night. It was a good thing I was still able to use my auto-pilot on the motorcycle as I did while conducting business out of my car for so many years because the wind may have been blowing by the outside of my head at 60 miles per hour, but inside, a regular ol' typhoon was making a real mess of things. The only sense of time I felt when I finally pulled into my own drive was due to the gas tank being right on the empty marker.

After a grand finale of servants had appeared in a swooping graceful attack on the table and replaced each guest's dessert plate with a steaming cup of cappuccino using the speed and precision that would have made any pit crew at the Indy 500 proud, one by one, though I had not heard the instruction to do so, the dinner guests casually picked up their cappuccinos and disappeared through a different door than we had entered from on the opposite side of the table. With half the table empty, which in my mind was better than half the table full, a single black and white clad servant of the female variety came through the kitchen door behind Elvira with a pre-opened 20 ounce bottle of cold, crisp, refreshing Mountain Dew and placed it in front of me with a smile and a wink while picking up my untouched cappuccino.

After Paul and Elvira had each disappeared in turn through the new door, I caught on to the pattern being employed and the reason why, but I still got the impression this was a sequence of events, piano parlor to dining room to next room, that everyone here, excluding myself of course, had done before.

The first two that had left were the two directly across from me. They looked to be together, probably husband and wife. Both were in their mid to late forties, smartly dressed in formal dinner party attire, his complete with a hand-tied, black bow tie, hers, a long, satin, dark blue, skin tight, perfect cleavage-featuring dinner gown that at the same time complimented his suit. He, with the distinguishing streaks of gray appearing in his perfect dark hair, she, noticeably trying to defy time and its laws of aging, the outfit a little too revealing, the hair a little too red, the facial skin a little too tight...I gave them a Porsche. It appeared to me that I would have absolutely nothing in common with this couple and the idea that they and I would be invited to the same exclusive dinner party only further supported my growing belief that for whatever reason Harry had invited me here for, it had been a mistake.

With the casual air of normality, one by one, the other side of the table emptied up and the two heads stood a moment later in unison as I realized that once again, possibly by design, I would be the last person to enter the new room. I took a long refreshing drink from my bottle of Dew and wondered if we were going to be allowed a smoke break any time soon. As a few more guests left the room in orderly fashion, I presumed in order to avoid spilled drinks in a mad rush to the next activity on tonight's exciting agenda, I tried to calculate my odds of slipping out the opposite direction unnoticed and through the massive doors for an early escape. I figured if I were lucky enough to get passed Mr. Doorman and Mr. Valet, I probably wouldn't be able to get past Mr. Iron Gate, at least not with Shadow still supplying the source for a speedy getaway.

Ronnie gathered in her cappuccino, stood up next to me and without even a glance my direction began walking around the table towards the black hole that had just vacuumed up eighteen of the other strangers I had broken bread with. As she rounded the head of the table in unison with whomever had been sitting unnoticed by me on the other side of Harry's massive body, Harry likewise stood and waited for me to follow suit as though he knew I had been contemplating a jailbreak.

I had no reason to fear moving blindly and trustingly on to the next portion of the night's festivities. The piano music when I entered had been upbeat and the tone of the chatting people had been pleasant. The meal itself, first course forgiven, was better than any I had been party to in longer than I could remember, if ever. It reminded me of three or four of my family's annual Thanksgiving get-togethers with all the relatives when I had been a kid, all put together. More different kinds of delectable food than I had stomach enough to sample. And though I had chosen not to be involved in any of the conversation, it had all sounded comfortable and friendly enough throughout.

Still, I didn't want to follow Harry into the room. Although everyone else appeared to know what was going to come next and had no qualms or misgivings in anticipation of it, I had a feeling that once I went through that door, my whole life was going to drastically change and I wasn't sure if it would be for the better or not. Harry was still smiling broadly but all of a sudden I didn't feel like I could tell the difference any more between the innocent smile of an excited child and the malevolent smile of a scheming madman.

"They're a harmless bunch," Harry said, as though he could read my mind, and I was beginning to believe he could. "You'll see when ya get to know 'em. Now grab yer sugar juice there and let's you and me see if we can't find us a couch close to the fire to socialize in."

Harry began to walk around the table to the left. The price for the wonderful meal waited beyond the opposite wall. I stood up, stuffed a glove in each front pocket, grabbed my Dew, started around the table to my right, and then stopped to pull my gloves back out of my pockets to hand them over to an almost but not quite grinning Chancy Doorman who seemed to have magically appeared by my side holding out his hand. I watched him retreat with my gloves through the door of our initial entry into the dining room before continuing around, catching up with Harry, and following him through the door. I just wanted to get the night over with, although I understood on some level for some unknown reason that going through this door would not get me closer to the end of anything, but would in fact only be the beginning of everything.

* * * * *

It was the library. I had seen a couple pictures of it online earlier that day. It was in one of the four rounded corners of the castle and the ceiling was two floors high giving room for the massive shelves found on two of the walls. The little photos I had seen on my 13" computer screen had not done justice to the size of this room or the sense of open space you felt standing below two stories of books. Each wall of shelves had it's own built in ladder that slid horizontally along the wall to retrieve the books stocked out of reach. A third wall was ninety percent glass and looked out over the beach and lake that extended out past a brief grassy lawn. There was no doorway leading directly outside from the library. It was purely for the lighting and the view.

The fourth wall featured a large circular stone fireplace with three comfortable couches loosely surrounding it and a genuine bearskin rug that lay at its base. Above the stone fireplace, the entire two stories of wall space was covered with a huge painted mural of seven Dragons in a fiery lair. The Dragons appeared to have golden scales, the fire surrounding them, engulfing them, causing a green tinted reflection on the insides of their wings which appeared poised for flight. If Dragons can have facial expressions, these looked determined and dedicated, wise and fearless. Together, the sinister seven looked more like a sentinel, blocking passage to some magical no-man's land. There had been no pictures of this wall on the Internet.

Spread out throughout the rest of the library, scattered among a wide variety of exotic-looking plant life and antique-looking lamps and coffee tables, enough seating and more was available for the entire party to sit in small groups and converse while sipping cappuccinos, although half had decided to remain standing and chatted in small circles while holding their warm cups with two hands close to their hearts.

Two of the three couches in front of the fireplace had indeed been vacant and I followed Harry toward the center one that faced the already steadily blazing six log fire. With the sun beginning to set behind the trees that bordered Northrop's Inlet, reflections of the red and yellow leaping flames began to dance here and there across the massive glass wall. The library was climate controlled, kept on the cooler side year round for the comfort and preservation of its permanent elderly residents, the books. For this reason, even in late August, even before the sun had pulled up stakes allowing the night to embrace our world with its dark and chilling touch, the heat emitting from the large fire felt a perfect balance.

"This is quite the place," I said to Harry, trying on my voice for the first time since asking him why I was here some two and a half hours earlier. It wasn't a confident sounding voice yet but I didn't actually feel the presence of twenty more people in this room. It hardly felt like we were in a room at all. To see a bird fly from one bush or plant to the potted tree in the center of the room would not have struck me as odd at the time. The ceiling was too high to be noticed in your peripheral vision giving the affect of open sky. A domed skylight in the center of the massive room added to the a la naturale ambience.

"Yes it is," said Harry, settling into the couch on the opposite end from me. "I like comin’ here if’n ever I git me a d’limma. Things jus’ kinda got a way a makin’ sense in here."

"I think it’s because of all the books," added the only other person that had opted for sitting around the fire. "Somewhere in all the millions and millions of words, ideas and stories in this room, is written all the questions and all the answers. Even if you can’t find the book itself or even know the question you need to be asking, sometimes just meditating in the company and presence of the energy created by all the wisdom and knowledge in all these old books just being together in the same place can somehow put things in proper perspective for you."

need some oil for that jaw or you just waiting to let the flies in

I closed my mouth. I hadn't even noticed Elvira tucked into the corner of the cushiony couch on my right...

...and the name's miranda, kojak.

"Sorry," I said, looking down. The glaring, angry stare coming up at me from the bear’s head on the floor wasn’t much of an improvement.

"Wha...Randi, you messin’ wit’ John here?" Harry asked, looking at me first and then over to Elvira/Miranda/Randi in response to my comment and ensuing look of dejection and embarrassment. "I told ya to keep dat stuff to yerself t’night." Pause. "I don’t care what he called ya, ya know he ain’t in da know yet." Pause. "Sticks and stones."

"Whatever," the girl in black said out loud to Harry. "I’m sorry," she said to me.

I felt seriously left out of the loop.

"Randi is a telepath, John. She reads thoughts and can direct thoughts just as easily as you and I speak."

"Can everyone here read minds?" I asked, suddenly feeling very naked and vulnerable.

"Not everyone. Many can to one degree or another, but none like Randi."

"Can you read minds?" I asked Harry. I figured that would have explained a lot.

Harry laughed. "No. I can’t read minds any better den I ken read palms like my mamma used ta, which’n I can’t. Drive me critters havin’ ever’one’s nasty thoughts runnin’ inda my head like that. No thank you."

"You know how to shut your mouth when you want to shut up, Harry?" Randi asked, with a little extra emphasis on the word "shut" each time by. "Or close your eyes if you don’t want to see. If you concentrate, you can shut out a noise, ignore a smell. Same damn thing here. If I don’t want to hear your nasty, smelly old thoughts, I just don’t listen to them. What‘s so tough."

"She be a real swee’heart if’n ya git t’know her," Harry said, smiling at me while giving Randi a nod and a wink.

"So what’s going on here, anyway?" I asked. Harry had just said I wasn’t ‘in the know yet.’ I thought it was about time I was let in on 'the know.' "What am I doing here?"

"We jus’ gettin’ t’know ever’body," Harry said to me. Then to Randi, still smiling like a proud parent, "Which is easier when we all behave."

"Whatever," Randi said again.

"You know, that’s not an answer," I said to Harry. "Why am I here getting to know anyone, let alone everyone. I’m not much of a socialite. I only came because..." I was hoping to learn something to help me save Katelynn. But I didn’t want to say that. I didn’t want to be here. I was just hoping, for Katelynn...

"Who’s Katelynn," Randi nonchalantly asked, as though the name had just been brought up in conversation.

flies

I closed my mouth.

"Well?"

Now I couldn’t open my mouth. I couldn’t think of anything to say. I couldn’t even think.

"I think John an’ I need to talk a spell, Randi. Ya mind?"

"Whatever," Randi said, and stood up. Walking right up the brown bear’s spine in bare feet with black polish on every other toenail, she stepped over his snarling mouth still full of sharp white teeth and slipped between the couches towards the rest of the party.

welcome aboard, kojak

* * * * *

After Shadow got me safely home and I got it tucked away in the garage for what was left of the night, I got undressed and stepped into the shower where I once again completely lost track of time. I didn't break out the soap or the shampoo. I turned on the shower as hot as I thought I could get away with without blistering and stood facing the waterfall, taking short breaths between the individual streams that make up the river. I stood there motionless, hypnotized by the sound and the feel of the water beating against my face and my bald head. I'm not sure how long I stood there trying to decide if I had made the right decision or not, and I probably would have remained wrapped in the comfort of the water's warm embrace a lot longer had her touch not eventually lost its heat and begun to turn cold. I promised Harry that I would return, that I would at least hear him out. I could have still walked away from the whole mess by just not showing up...I think. However, looking back, did I really have a choice? Had someone else already made up my mind for me? Or was I caught like a deer in headlights in front of a crazy string of tumbling dominos?

At any rate, by whatever means of transport time uses to get from one moment to the next, it had delivered me to then, in that spot at that time, faced with a decision to make that may or may not have been my own. I was given a choice. I made a decision. And life goes on...for most.

* * * * *

"This house," Harry started, as soon as Randi had made her gracious exit, "but most importantly, this room, belongs to all of us here right now and a few more that couldn't make it tonight. Benny, the old fart ya met at the hospital, he also owns this house. Even though Paul Northrop's name appears on the deed and takes care of all the house affairs and upkeep, most of us here tonight are the one's that put our heads together to design it and ol' Benny put up most of the dough. We're like a family, John. We come from all over the country, and even a few from farther than that. But for all of us, this is also our home."

"So why are they all here tonight?" I asked. "Where are you from?"

"I'm from N'Orleens, Louisiana," Harry said, suddenly regressing back into his southern accent that seemed to diminish for the most part when speaking about the house. "But I been spendin’ more an’ more time up here at the house. An’ when Benny took ill, Benny’s from Dallas, Texas, he said he wanted be close to here."

Harry paused and for a brief moment, the smile seemed to falter in his eyes for a second as he maybe thought about his friend in the hospital. But it quickly returned and he continued.

"Quite a few members of our little family though have moved near by or bought second homes in the area. We all love it here and come as often as we can."

"So this is a normal crowd for a Wednesday night?" I asked sarcastically. I knew it wasn’t. That hadn’t been a nightly meal we had eaten in the dining room. That had been a special meal, a feast fit for festive celebrations. Tonight was a special occasion. For whatever reason, Harry was obviously not going to reveal to me what the special occasion was until he had to, or until I figured it out, maybe which ever came first. But he had also said that a few others "hadn’t been able to make it tonight." So they had been asked. Why?

"No," Harry replied honestly. "I asked everyone to come tonight. I wanted everyone to get a chance to meet you, but I see now that may take a little more time than I thought."

If he couldn’t read minds, his intuitions of my feelings and thoughts had been remarkably accurate all night. The last thing I wanted to do was meet twenty new people tonight. Or any night. If I hadn’t met twenty more new people throughout the rest of my life, it would have been fine by me. But as reclusive as I had become over the years, a more embedded nature wouldn’t allow me to be rude to these people that had treated me thus far with nothing but considerateness and fine food. I decided I could endure whatever Harry had in mind for one night. I mean, what were the chances I’d ever see any of these people ever again? As fine as this library was, as nice and generous as this weird array of folks appeared to be, I knew that I would be much more apt to spend the evening after work hanging around in my own greasy garage/den with the view of the run-down house across the street reading a Stephen King novel than to hang out here and shoot the shit with people I don’t even know...and whom might even be trying to read my mind. I was trying to remember why I had even come to begin with when Harry started up again.

" We want you to join our family."

Now, I have heard of love at first sight. And making an instant family is a million dollar business in Vegas. But this isn’t Vegas and Harry and I had not fallen in love. I still had no clue why I had gone against my nature in accepting a mysterious telepathic invitation to an unfamiliar place from a complete stranger, not that that sort of invitation came along all the time, but I had developed half a reason for the invitation itself. Randi was a telepath and some others, Ronnie to name one, were as well, "to some degree." Harry said he wasn’t, but then how did I get the invitation?

"Does everyone in this family have a special talent like Randi’s? What is your talent," I asked him.

"Yes, John. They do," he said, and then added, "Just like you."

"All I can do is tell how old people are and I’m not sure I can even do that every time," I dared to lie. If he were lying about reading minds, he would know I was lying. I hoped Randi wasn’t within mind-shot but to risk a look around to see if she were would certainly be admitting the lie to the sharp intuition of Harry so I forced myself not to back away from his eyes. I don’t think he was fooled anyway.

"I don’t know what your gift is," Harry said, his smile back in high gear again. His subtle substitution of my word, talent, with his word, gift, did not slip by unrecognized. "You might not even be aware of what your gift is yet. But how do you think you knew to come here tonight?"

"You told me," I answered. "Just like you told me your age."

"But I’m not telepathic, John."

"And I need to be touching skin for it to work for me."

"Do you? I am not telepathic, John. And neither is Benny. It was you. You have the gift. I just thought the invitation real hard and you plucked it outta my mind. Jus' like I knew you would, too. You weren’t to quick on my age. I thought you might not be feelin’ me for a second there. I was pract’ly screamin’ seventy-two but then at the last second, you musta found it."

"How about Ronnie?"

"Ronnie’s got herself a touch. She says she can hear some folks’ thoughts and others’ she can’t. She has a few theories why that she might share if ya ask."

"So what’s your gift," I asked again.

"I get premonitions."

"You can see the future?" I challenged, thinking he was possibly senile. I can handle a little ESP among friends. But I don’t care who you are, seeing the future never was, isn’t now and never will be possible. Period.

"Not exactly," he said, I thought to his credit. "I don’t get cloudy visions or a voice in my head telling me what’s going to happen. I get like feelings. Feelings that sometimes form into ideas kinda the way water forms into ice. It was twenty years ago that I got Benny and Pauly together on one of them premonitions and weren’t three years later when Benny was financin’ some new weather doohickey Pauly dreamed up which made ‘em both a whole lotta money that won’t never dry up. Then I had another premonition about a great house and a great library and names would get stuck in my head when I heard them. It took Benny and Pauly and me three more years to figure out the names that were trying to sneak into my head and then to track them down. But we did track them down. And we joined the family. Then we built this great castle around this priceless library and moved the family here. An’ I still get names sneakin’ into my head an’ gettin’ stuck there ever’ now an’ then. One been stuck in there for some time now, been drivin’ me critters. Then Benny call me t'other day and as soon as he says that name I knew it was the one that been nibblin’ on my brain. John Johnson. Can’t get more common a name than that. But when he said it, I knew it was the name. Then you walk in and I seen you an’ I knew you was the name. I don’t know how or why. It’s just my gift. I knew it was you."

* * * * *

It was me. So I was it. I wanted to just stop Harry right there and tell him that whatever it was that I was supposed to be, I honestly didn't want to have anything to do with it. I appreciated the invite, the meal, the sentiment, but I must respectfully decline, take care of some immediate personal business over the next couple of weeks and then try to essentially disappear from organized society, probably up in the West Virginia mountains (easier than trying to find an isolated island in the Pacific to lay claim to) or maybe some small desert town in New Mexico. I hadn't figured out yet how I was going to make a living or even survive, but I didn't have time to worry about that right now, nor did I have time to be joining any new families. Katelynn was all that was important right now. Then getting out of Dodge. Then staying alive. In that order. No mention of new families in the plan. No mention of new friends with different psychic powers. I had my plan. I have freewill. I have good manners. I have legs. I had everything necessary to stand up, politely say thank you but no thank you and proceed to walk out the door, taking full control of my own fate and destiny, sidestepping a falling domino.

But I also had that bothersome curious side of me that looked up words in the dictionary just to finish a crossword puzzle, that couldn't let questions I ask myself go without attempting to answer them or to at least speculate potential answers, that presence in me that needed reasons and answers for everything it encountered. If I were to get up and leave right then, which I was more than capable of doing physically, I might never know what it was that I was supposed to bring to this talented family. The cat-like side of me would forever wonder, if not mind reading, what the hell the rest of the family's special "gifts" could possibly be. Physically, I was ready, willing and able to leave. Mentally, the curious side had assumed control, confined me to my seat and was frantically trying to formulate the best questions to ask to get the most revealing answers when Paul Northrop stepped in front of our couch. With the angry bear nipping at his ankles, he extended a hand towards me.

"I'm Paul," he said, with a familiar smile I had seen used many times on television. "Paul Northrop."

My curious side allowed me to stand to greet him as etiquette would require, but I froze half way up and then fell clumsily back into my seat unsure of what to do. Paul was holding out his hand for me to shake. I wasn't wearing my gloves. I recovered quickly, trying to make the return to the couch appear unintentional, re-stood and looked at Harry the moment before my hand clasped Paul's. A quick single pump and I pulled my hand back and sat back down before looking back at Paul.

"Glad to meet you, Mr. Northrop," I said, as I sat down this time with a bit more grace. "I have seen you on the news." He looked like he had just come from the news, still in his clear-sky blue suit jacket and wide dark blue tie and slacks accompanying his white shirt. His dark hair was still perfect, not a one out of place as though permanently molded into place. And he also had smiling eyes and a friendly, trusting face, one easy to believe when he said the rain would not spoil your weekend this week.

"It's a job," he chuckled. "and call me Paul. This is my true passion here," he said, sweeping his arm in a wide arc encompassing the library behind me. "The books, the people, the stars. The job helps finance the passion, is all."

"So what's your special gift?" my curious side asked, quickly dispensing with the small talk going right for the juicy stuff.

Paul gave Harry an amused glance and then returned his attention to me to answer my question. "I am a reader," he said proudly. "I read ancient writings and hieroglyphics as well as the stars and the constellations. I read and study and translate the writings of old prophets and astrologers. And I think I'm pretty good at reading people, too." he added with a wink. "I speak for myself and everyone here when saying that I hope you decide to join our unique little family. Harry has told us much about you and we would welcome the opportunity to work with you."

"Thank you," I said as a conditioned response to his sudden second to Harry's proposal that I become a member of their unique family.

Paul nodded in simulation of a brief bow and said, "If you have any questions tonight after your chat with Harry here, feel free to ask me or anyone here anything you want, John. I'll let you and Harry continue your chat now, I was just very anxious to come say hi. Hopefully I'll see you around here a lot more very soon."

"Thank you," I said again.

He gave Harry the same nod/bow before leaving the two of us alone again with the bear and the fireplace before us and the seven fire-breathing serpents looming over us.

"A passion for History and Astrology," I said to Harry after Paul had left. "Doesn't sound much like an unusual gift to me. A lot of people go to college for that stuff."

"But Paul weren't taught these things in no college," Harry said. "When he was five years old, he discovered he could look up at the stars and see the zodiac patterns without ever having been told they were there. He knew which star wasn't a star ‘fore he knew what planets were. When he saw hieroglyphics at the age of eleven in his first world history class in school, he read the message as though it were written in English. He hadn't mentioned anything at the time to his teacher because what he was readin' wasn't even close to what the text book reported the hieroglyphics read, so he thought he was the one that was wrong. Studying ancient Greek and Egyptian Cultures on his own time, he discovered that he could read all the hieroglyphics and that much of it pertained to the alignment of the stars, connecting his two talents and beginning to define them as one. He had also discovered that 80% of all accepted translations of the Egyptian hieroglyphics were in fact wrong due to the universally accepted translation of only ten or eleven very common symbols that actually meant something very different, completely changing the true context and meaning of the accepted translation by the world’s experts in the field. Now 40 years later, he still works privately with his hieroglyphic and astrologic discoveries. With his gift, he knows more about this planet's ancient history than pro’bly anyone else in the world."

"What did he mean we he said he looked forward to ‘working’ with me?" I asked. I was quite sure he had no intention of getting me a job down at the news room if I joined the family. And then the other most recent question Paul had inspired during his brief interruption moved into its place next in line but I didn’t wait for an answer to the first one. "And how could you have told them so much about me when you don’t even know me?"

"I told them of the things I felt in relation to your name," Harry explained. "It grew stronger over time. Benny an’ me figgered you were a Johnson jus’ ‘fore he took sick about two months ago. Every time I heard the name Johnson or John, which we figgered was just part of the Johnson, I would feel lighter, happy, warm. This is what I was telling them at first. I came here to be with Benny four weeks ago. There was a Nurse Johnson that tended to Benny in the evenin’s. When she would come in and Benny would say ‘Howdy, Miss Johnson,’ the feeling was stronger, more intense, almost inspirational. Benny said he felt inspired too ever’ time Miss Johnson came in the room, but for a different reason den me. Then las’ week, that Doc of Benny’s come in an’ tells ‘im a man named John Johnson wanted to do a test with ‘im. Benny didn’t feel the vibes the way I did whenever I heard any part of that name, but he know better than to b’lieve in coincidence. He called me soon as the Doc leaves his room and tells me the name John Johnson and I knew another puzzle was ‘bout to be done wit’. Well, I jumped on my hog and got to Benny so fast I was lucky I ditn’t spill ‘er. An’ I weren’t disappointed neither when you come walkin’ in that door. You had a shine on you I never seen b’fore. Made me shine too. I told my family all that about you, too.

"Randi, that girl got a shine to her too, different than yours, also like none I ever seen before. She joined our family a three years ago after both her parents were killed in a drug raid."

Harry leaned in a bit and lowered his voice, the couch creaking under his shifting weight. "Don’t ask her about it. Still kind of a touchy subject, a lotta mixed emotions towards her parents’ death. She’s healin’ herself though, an’ she’ll tell you when she’s ready. She really is a swee’heart. You’ll see."

He resettled against the far arm rest again with only a small protest from the couch’s skeletal structure. "Everyone here has a certain shine to them that I can feel, but only a few shine like stars." He paused and looked me in the eye, his smile apparently giving back some of that shine, it looked close to exploding into unrestrained glee. He leaned forward again, allowing the couch almost no time to rest since he had last strained its joints. "You, John, are one of those few."

Great. This was just what I needed to hear.

* * * * *

Chapter Eighteen


Michael

Front Desk

Return to Author's Page

The Master Plan

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Tweny-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Epilogue