By
USA Today Bestselling Author
Dale Mayer

After spending a brutal year trying to cope after the loss of her sister, Alexis Gordon knows she needs to get on with her life. Only, instead of the normal work day she’d anticipated as the means to begin her journey back to the land of the living, reality as she knows it disappears…

Kevin Sutherland is a detective and a psychic. Recognizing Alexis’s gift and aware she has no idea what’s happening to her, he calls his friend and frequent case consultant, Stefan Kronos, an artist with psychic gifts. Stefan leads a community of psychics able to help Alexis understand and develop her unique skills.

Alexis has unwittingly become involved in a case unlike anything Kevin has ever seen before. The killer seems to have a personal vendetta against Alexis herself. He intends to eliminate her before she uses her psychic gift to discover not only his identity but the garden of sorrow he’s buried his long-dead victims.

Only Alexis can stop this madman who fully intends to survive … even after death.

While all these books are standalone, I am really enjoying reading in order. As we meet different women with unusual psychic abilities, there are some stranger than others, some somewhat aware, others clueless and scared.

Alexis Gordon is a gardener with the city, she loves plants and although she doesn’t recognize it as such she boosts plants energy with her thoughts and actions. That has been all it is until this political filled groundbreaking for the new gardens. Alexis makes a startling discovery when she falls into a ditch that is being dug for new sewer lines. She’s never had a vision before and the one she has as she holds a skeletal finger is both scary and disturbing.

Kevin Sutherland is also attending this event, he is there in a supposed official capacity. Not that there is any case to investigate but he does use his psychic abilities to scan the area looking for possible issues. He senses something is wrong and moves away from the crowd to find the source. When he finds Alexis, he also finds the source of her need for help, a child’s skeletal body in the wall of the ditch.

When Alexis gives her account of finding the body, she doesn’t mention her vision of the child. She wasn’t sure what to make of it, and didn’t want to be labeled as crazy. Her friend and co-worker Scott understands something happened. An older gentleman she regards him as almost a father figure, he refers to her gift with plants as sight which she rejects. Now she’s just not sure of anything anymore. She needs help to understand but doesn’t know anyone or even how to explain this turn of events. Especially the vision in her apartment hallway and the appearance of her sister Lissa’s ghostly form.

Kevin is trying to find out what she’s hiding, and is surprised when she felt his psychic probe as a physical caress. Yet he gains no further information as she leaves for home. However once she arrives home he hears her cry for help and needs to get to the bottom of it all. He was more than a little surprised to find she has no clue how strong a psychic she is.

This is a favorite scene.

Time stopped.

A transmitter? Is that what she was?

She rolled the idea around in her head, trying it on. Did it fit? Maybe…in some ways. But there was so much more to it than just that. Like seeing the vision of the little girl, seeing the hallway shift and even hearing the voices.

And if she were transmitting like Kevin said, how come no one else was hearing her but him?

Another thought struck – what about her plants? She’d thought she just talked to them. Was she transmitting when she talked to them? Yes, that made more sense. But what about her understanding of their needs, colors and even their sounds – didn’t that make her a receiver, too?

Was there such a thing?

“Does everyone have this ability?” she asked cautiously. “Lying latent until something brings it to their awareness?”

“Researchers say we do, but only a small fraction of the population uses it or even knows those abilities are there to be used. It can also get more confusing because all receivers are transmitters but not all transmitters are receivers.” He leaned forward, locking his hands together in front of him. “This whole idea is</em? new for you, right?”

“Absolutely.” And with the word came a question. Should she tell him everything, or wait?

He cocked an eyebrow in surprise at her answer, but he continued, “Chances are something triggered this. Something like finding the body, maybe?”

“The finger,” she added softly, needing to tell someone. Maybe he would understand. “Something happened when I picked up the bones and realized they belonged to a child’s finger.” The horrific memory made her wince. God, she didn’t want to revisit this.

“Tell me,” he urged. “Exactly what started with the finger?”

Slowly, haltingly, she related the weird series of events from the ditch. He let her get it all out, and somehow, in the process, her hand ended up cradled in his.

Mesmerized, she watched the strong, sinewy thumb stroke and slide over her palm, warming and comforting on a level she hadn’t felt in many years. It moved over the rounded pad, sliding down the valley between her fingers, sensuous, sexy and definitely seductive.

She ordered her hand to withdraw. But her long fingers had a mind of their own and refused to obey. They chose instead to nestle against his much larger and stronger ones. As if they belonged there…

Enough. Alexis broke the trance and snatched her hand free, tucking it into her pants pocket.

“What else?”

She glanced at him. “Is there anything else?” His question prodded gently for more.

Alexis wavered, but there was no point in keeping the rest from him. As clearly and as succinctly as she could, she described her visions of the hallway, and of little Daisy – and Lissa.

“When you heard the little girl calling you, did it come from outside your head or inside?”

She smiled without humor. “Believe it or not, I’d wondered that myself. I don’t have a definitive answer.”

Kevin seemed to consider her words. “Is that everything?” he asked.

She flushed.

“It would help if I knew it all,” he suggested quietly, his eyes never leaving hers.

She wanted to believe in the understanding, compassion and acceptance he offered. Taking a chance, she shared the last bit about her gardens and the need to transplant the suffering plant to the child’s grave.

“You planted a daisy on her grave, and you’re saying the ghost child said the same word as her name? That’s odd and too much of a coincidence to ignore.”

“I know. I’m presuming it’s her body we found.”

“Anything’s possible.” He pulled his sleeve back to check the time. “I need to leave. Let me know if anything else like this happens.” He paused, gave her a wry look and added, “Or else I’ll find out the same way I did last time.”

Alexis almost laughed but now that he spoke of leaving, Alexis found the thought of being alone, disconcerting. How stupid. She hadn’t wanted him here in the first place. Still he’d gone a long way toward helping her tonight.

“Are you going to be okay here?”

“Of course. This is home.” Even though she hadn’t put much effort into making it hers. She cast an unhappy glance around the cold place.

“We need to talk some more about your abilities and how you can learn to control them. I have a friend, Stefan, who might be able to help. I’ll talk to him.”

He walked to the doorway, jacket in hand.

She’d trailed behind him, helpless to abate the sense of loss already threatening.

Slowly, she closed the door behind him and turned to look around the empty room. An odd thought struck. Outside of Scott, Kevin was her first real visitor in a year.

How pathetic.

When her sister’s cancer had first been diagnosed, priorities had to be set. Everything had been about Lissa. Afterwards, Alexis had remained secluded, inside a wall of pain that refused to ease.

When had that changed? When had the pain reduced her to the point that she’d just been hiding?
Mayer, Dale. Psychic Visions: Books 4-6. Kindle Locations (736-779). Valley Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Stefan becomes a friend helping her to navigate the ethers and control how much she puts out there. She sees her sister in the ethers and having her there brightens Alexis even more as she realizes she can move forward. It’s while she’s with Lissa that she sees ‘evil’ for the first time. It’s a threat to her personally and somehow involves the child she found.

Stefan jumps in at her cry of fear, and of course Kevin shows up at her door. There’s a relationship brewing there one that will complete the two of them.

Plenty of anxiety, suspense, romance and so much more as Kevin and Alexis work to solve the mystery of the child’s identity.

I am really enjoying these books, I love the pairings so far, cops and psychics. I can’t wait for Stefan to find his, it’s being hinted at in almost every book. I’m so happy these books are offered in bundles so I can just move on to the next one.

5 Contented Purrs for Dale!

Dale Mayer

Dale Mayer is a USA Today bestselling author best known for her Psychic Visions and Family Blood Ties series. Her contemporary romances are raw and full of passion and emotion (Second Chances, SKIN), her thrillers will keep you guessing (By Death series), and her romantic comedies will keep you giggling (It’s a Dog’s Life and Charmin Marvin Romantic Comedy series).

She honors the stories that come to her – and some of them are crazy and break all the rules and cross multiple genres!

To go with her fiction, she also writes nonfiction in many different fields with books available on resume writing, companion gardening and the US mortgage system. She has recently published her Career Essentials Series. All her books are available in print and ebook format.