Showing results by author "Meghan Ciana Doidge" in All Categories

I’d given myself and Sisu 12 days to get settled into our new life before tackling my first official day as the head archivist of the magical archives at the National Museum of Ireland. Our new kitchen was under construction, with the electrical and plumbing upgrades in the main rooms of the estate well on the way. I knew how and where to buy groceries, and had arranged a tutor for Sisu. Totally under control.

I’d been compromised, then turned against those I loved. But no one controlled me. No one took anything I didn’t willingly offer. Not for long, anyway. If the elves wanted a war, I’d bring it. The instruments of assassination would come out to play. The dragon slayer would wreak bloody, sticky vengeance. And then I was getting freaking married—no elves invited. Even a baker of cupcakes and a maker of trinkets occasionally had to set aside the chocolate, the spice, and everything nice to save her friends. And her city.

I knew that opening the letter from the sorcerer Azar would have deadly consequences. So we had prepared. We’d planned. We knew we might have to defend ourselves, our freedom. And that I might finally get a chance to exact the revenge I kept telling myself I wasn’t interested in exacting. What we didn’t know was that we’d find ourselves hosting a dysfunctional family reunion — the kind where everyone tries to kill someone at least once over dinner.

I never got involved in the dirt and the details of an investigation. I never let my preconceptions muddy a reconstruction. And I steadfastly refrained from ever allowing my past to dictate my future. At least until the one person I couldn’t lose went missing. Because then I’d relive every dark moment of my childhood, confront every heartbreak, and even sell my soul if that was what it took to get her back. Because I couldn’t accept a future - not even a promised one of immortality and unbridled power - that didn’t include one of the only two people I’d ever truly loved.

Here be an oracle. Despair all ye who seek her. Magic will have its cake and eat it, too. Okay, well. So I was mixing metaphors. I was new to the gig. But as far as I could tell, there were three kinds of people. Those who wanted confirmation that they’d chosen the correct path. Those who wanted to deny there was any sort of destiny at all. And those who wanted to tear it all down. So why was it always the third type that showed up at the door to my 1975 Brave Winnebago, dragging me into their power struggles and using my past against me?

I’d led a deadly squad of genetically enhanced, uber-powerful magic wielders through life-threatening missions multiple times in the first 21 years of my life. When marked for death, I’d led the escape from those who’d bred us, controlled us. Utterly annihilating the Collective’s compound, and destroying everything that had gone into creating us—the Five. I found Christopher and Paisley a home, a safe haven.

I preferred it when life came in tidy packages. When it didn’t — when something went awry — I was exceedingly skilled at packaging it back up. It was my job to do so after all. I was a reconstructionist. I collected the puzzle pieces, then I gave those pieces to an investigative team to sort out. I didn't ask questions. I didn't offer answers. I saw. I recorded. I moved on. I didn't dwell or obsess. I didn’t hunt down suspects. I didn’t follow clues to find a killer. And I certainly didn’t work side by side with anyone.

Three days. That was all the reprieve we got before one of the five showed up, injured and on the run. The snowstorm that had encased the property, as well as stifled the town, hadn’t even melted away. That wounded prey led our newest adversary directly to me. To Christopher. Inconvenient timing, but not unexpected. It was the betrayal forcing me to stay my hand against that adversary that shocked me. Betrayal from the least likely of sources. Or so I would have thought.

We had run. We had adapted. And when our magic came back, we changed course again. Hiding instead of running, knowing that we needed to remain hidden from the Collective. Knowing that our lives, our freedom, depended on it. Then the sorcerer showed up, drained and disoriented. And when my past came quickly following him, I had to make another choice. Fight or flight. Continue to deny the power that resided in my blood, in my DNA. Remain perpetually caught between being Amp5 and Emma Johnson. Or face my demons.

I hadn’t set foot in the human world for more than a few hours in over three and a half months. Sure, I was stronger and faster than I’d ever been before, and I had a shiny new sword, but I was seriously chocolate deprived.

They called me an amplifier. And they had bred me, raised me, and trained me to be a killer with preternatural precision. I was capable of taking, holding, and transferring power that wasn’t my own with a simple touch. Skin-to-skin contact. Along with four others of my generation, I could infiltrate any magical organization, extracting whoever or whatever I’d been ordered to extricate. Then I could destroy all evidence of our passing presence. They had made me. They directed me. Controlled me. Then they tried to kill me.

We had chosen our place, etching our lives into a new land. Then, we had defended that land when called upon to do so. And we’d won. We’d maintained our freedom. But magic attracts magic. As they say. So, when the sorcerers showed up, holding my recent past hostage - along with a future I had dreamed I might build - it was just as expected. In fact, I might have been getting just a little bored playing at being Emma Johnson.

The plan was to hop a train to Oslo, hang out at a coffee shop, and connect my personal archive, Infinity, to the Internet. Yes, completely disregarding the well-established fact that magic and technology didn’t mix. At all.

Over a year and a half had passed since Jade Godfrey - aka the dowser - fixed my mother’s necklace. Since I’d thwarted the vision of the death of love. Since I’d made a deal with a devil and acquired a demigod for a mentor. I still didn’t understand or control my power or my magic, but it had been a great year. A year of rest. A year of love and light. But now the reprieve was over. Now it was time to see. Magic willed it so. This paranormal romance/urban fantasy is the second book in the Oracle Series by author Meghan Ciana Doidge.

The day I turned 19, I expected to gain what little freedom I could within the restrictions of my bank account and the hallucinations that had haunted me for the last six years. I expected to drive away from a life that had been dictated by the tragedy of others and shaped by the care of strangers. I expected to be alone. Actually, I relished the idea of being alone. Instead, I found fear I thought I'd overcome and terror that was more real than anything I'd ever hallucinated before. I'd seen terrible, fantastical, and utterly impossible things...but not love. Not until I saw him.

The Collective was already done. I’d destroyed them more than eight years ago. But apparently, some of those who’d survived now needed a reminder of their demise. When it was done, I would walk away with everything that was mine to have and to hold. And what I couldn’t outright destroy? I would absorb or claim for myself. Because Emma Johnson was stronger than Amp5 had ever been.

If you’d asked me a week ago, I would have told you that the best cupcakes were dark chocolate with chocolate cream cheese icing, that dancing in a crowd of magic wielders—the Adept—was better than sex, and that my life was peaceful and uneventful. Just the way I liked it. That’s what 23 years in the magical backwater of Vancouver will get you—a completely skewed sense of reality. Because when the dead werewolves started showing up, it all unraveled—except for the cupcake part. That’s a universal truth.

A masked gala. A solstice celebration with the werewolves. Broken relics and doorways leading not only to other realms, other mythical and magical creatures, but to other possible futures. For me, and maybe even for Kellan. That’s all just another day at the office for me.

Three months ago, I lost my foster sister, Sienna, to the darkness. As in blood magic, chaos and, general mayhem. No one saw it until it was too late, but I should have. Now, I have a wounded heart and soul that I can’t even reveal to anyone around me, because I’m supposed to hate Sienna with the fiery passion of the justified.

Three months ago, I nearly lost my best friend while retrieving the first instrument of assassination. I also inadvertently released a rival who was definitely unhinged, way more powerful than me, and obsessed with harnessing the deadly power of the artifacts I’d been tasked by the guardian dragons to collect. Add a sexy sentinel and a nearly immortal vampire to the mix, and what could possibly go wrong?