All Chapters of The Search for the Crystal Key (Book 2 of Dark Escape Duo): Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

The storm ceased sometime during the early hours just before sunrise, leaving behind it mini mountains of icy snow to be removed before her home could run at its normal pace.Tara sighed. Winters in Manhattan were so much easier. She couldn’t have imagined such burdensome weather and was therefore not totally prepared for it. She was grateful for the good sense she exercised in following Maggie’s suggestion to purchase the small tractor with a snow plow attachment. A cold reminder of her friend, the valuable piece of equipment was left dormant since the day it was delivered. Today it would make its debut.She’d programmed her coffee maker prior to going to bed and wafts of the dark liquid’s rich aroma lured her out from beneath the warm security of her goose down comforter. She hated the cold and often wondered why her crazy ancestors settled in the north.  Even if they had come from a cold climate, surely, they could have accl

Dennis pushed his chair away from the table and loosened his belt. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d made such a glutton of himself at the dinner table. After a day of getting to know her future husband’s friends and assured neither knew her, Alana decided to borrow the kitchen and cook them a meal. At first glance upon the Hot Bloody Mary soup, cod cobbler and blackberry and apple turnovers, Dennis doubted he’d survive, but much to his surprise and delight, the food was profoundly delectable. Completely taken by his friend’s beautiful fiancé, Dennis praised her talent in the kitchen and questioned if she had more delicious recipes up her sleeve.  She assured him she did and promised to prove it one day. Tara wasn’t as taken with the mix of textures and flavors. Perhaps it was the food, or perhaps it was because she was no longer taken with the chef.After another night of inconspicuously following her mysteri

Tara was so absorbed in her reading that she didn’t hear Brandon climb the stairs. Assuming he was in bed she’d taken the servant’s stairs to the kitchen and hadn’t bothered to check the rest of the house before heading back to the den with tea in hand.“You’re up late,” Brandon drawled lazily as he leaned his tall muscular body against the door frame.“Did I wake you?” Tara asked in a voice just above a whisper as she gently closed the book and carefully set it on the antique side table next to her winged back chair.“I’m a little big for that fainting sofa.  I thought I’d try a bed instead,” he said while rubbing and flexing his neck for emphasis. “What were you reading?” he nodded his head toward the bookshe’d just set down.“I was seeing if I could find anything in this book about the shadow people,” she replied hesitantly.A

Tara observed her dinner companions while she sat at the long, elegantly set table and waited for dinner to be served. The view before her was amazing. Having come to the conclusion that she and Brandon were not in Shadow Land, but had stayed in the same area, but gone back to the time of the civil war, she watched in wonderment and listened with fascination almost forgetting the reason they came.Dining in the original magnificence of her home -mixed with a potent wine and candle light- caused headiness for Tara that carried on throughout the meal. She was seated opposite Brandon with Aidan between them at the head. Although he watched her every move from the corner of his eyes, Brandon’s focus never left the colonel, nor did his conversation. If Tara hadn’t known better she would have thought the two well acquainted.She fidgeted in her chair as her suspicions arose. Why would Brandon be so calm and relaxed in the presence of their Yankee captor when he w

Fiona straightened her back and admired her handiwork in the enormous garden that occupied acres of land. Although pleased with the progress she made with tending the myriad of vegetables, herbs and flowers that were grown in order to keep her pantry well stocked with supplies for both food and magic, she longed for some time to simply sit on her porch with her dog at her feet and rock the day away. Memories of her life in the twenty-first century doing just that were weak, but she could still pull bits and pieces of them up if she tried hard enough.Her recollections of her final moments in that life were the strongest. She could still feel the searing pain as Dominic’s evil creatures tore her apart before her soul managed to escape Maggie’s body. She could still pull the memory up with such vivid clarity.She was grateful she’d magically shared her soul with an infant in her family lineage of the twenty-first century and gone through the process of