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  Text copyright ©2018 by the Author.

  This work was made possible by a special license through the Kindle Worlds publishing program and has not necessarily been reviewed by S.E. Smith. All characters, scenes, events, plots and related elements appearing in the original Magic, New Mexico remain the exclusive copyrighted and/or trademarked property of S.E. Smith, or their affiliates or licensors.

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  A Touch of Myst

  Lyz Kelley

  Contents

  A Touch of Myst

  Praise for Lyz Kelley’s writing and a special gift just for you.

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  More Book By Lyz Kelley

  Copyright

  A Touch of Myst

  Your life or your true mate….

  Myka has one goal in life - to return to his battle unit. He’s served his time on the outer rim space station. His focus is clear: retrieve the energy pod and get his reassignment.

  Raine, a powerful witch from Magic, New Mexico, is devastated when she learns that her son is dying. Hope comes in the form of the unusual alien who crashes in her cornfield. Whether the alien warrior likes it or not, he is about to have a little help returning to the stars - for a price! Raine will help Myka on the condition he takes her and her son with him.

  One life in exchange for another.

  But, what if there was a way to save them all?

  Praise for Lyz Kelley’s writing and a special gift just for you.

  The Molly: Award for Excellence

  “A writer who will go the distance.”

  “Masterful dialog.”

  “I look forward to seeing this book on the bookshelves.”

  The Sheila: Finalist

  “The story has great bones! The plot is interesting, the characters are unique…there are so many things to love about this story.”

  “H & H are both very appealing and certainly not cookie cutter characters.”

  “Your opening is a grabber.”

  “This is one of the best books I’ve read in a good long while. CONGRATULATIONS.”

  “Prose is sleek, polished and smooth, a near frictionless read.”

  The Marlene: Finalist

  “You have a lovely writing style with dialogue and scene setting.”

  “The sensory details are rich, and I was able to visualize the scenes. I chuckled several times at your turn of phrase and thought they were very sassy and smart.”

  “The plot seems to have it all: conflict, a mystery and a romance. So kudos for creating an interesting story.”

  The Golden Network: Finalist

  “The setting is painted well and the characters are engaging with very different voices.”

  “The manuscript is clean and tightly written.”

  “The manuscript reflects beautiful writing.”

  Chapter One

  “Mommy am I going to die?”

  Beck Clayton reached up to touch his mother’s face, but he was so weak his fingers slid down her cheek and his arm fell back on the bed.

  Raine kissed her son’s fingers and tucked his hand close to her heart, then adjusted his bed pillow.

  His sunken eyes still asked the question.

  What should she tell him?

  A few months ago, his frail body was vibrant and full of energy. Now each passing minute was a reminder that his time, and his life force, were running out.

  “I don’t know, honey. I wish I did,” Raine brushed the fine, reddish-brown hair off her son’s forehead. The color reminded her of New Mexico’s fertile soil and beautiful landscape.

  Was moving here a mistake?

  No. Magic was their home. A refuge from prejudice and evil. She felt safe in the small town, and had built a life for her and her son. If only she could find a way to cure Beck’s sudden illness.

  “Honey, look at me.” Beck opened his eyes slowly, as if the effort was a burden. “Lacey and I will keep working to find a healing spell to make you better.” She touched his nose with her finger, hoping to get a glimmer of a smile. “I’m not giving up. Promise me you won’t either.”

  “I promise, Momma.” Beck blinked slowly, and when she noticed him struggling to swallow, she tucked her arm under his shoulders and lifted him a few inches for a few small sips of water.

  Even more alarming, in the past few hours his breathing had turned raspy.

  Raine eased her precious son back onto his pillow, tugged on the edge of the quilted blanket, and tucked the hand-stitched cotton around him, hoping the healing spell woven into the fabric would do something...anything...to prevent him from deteriorating further.

  As a powerful witch who could manipulate organic matter, she’d never encountered a problem she couldn’t solve, until this one. In spite of consulting with every witch, warlock, and healer within summoning range, disappointment after disappointment plagued her.

  But despair wouldn’t save Beck. Someone had to know how to heal her son. She would find an answer—she had to—and soon.

  “Would you like me to read you a story?” Raine picked a book off the nightstand. “How about Dragon’s Magic?” She opened her eyes wider and tried to infuse some enthusiasm into her voice. “It’s your favorite.”

  Beck’s eyelids drooped, his breathing sounding like their cranky old air conditioner that had conked out midsummer. “Maybe later,” he croaked.

  “Later, then.”

  She stifled the tears and fear, refusing to give in to the possibility that Beck might die while she could do nothing but watch. She rolled off the bed and ran her fingers through the fur of the golden retriever lying on the other side of her son. “Mandy, watch over him.”

  The puppy nuzzled closer to Beck’s side. She shouldn’t think of her as a puppy anymore. Lacey, the local animal shelter witch, had given Mandy to Beck when they first arrived in New Mexico. The two-year-old golden adored Beck as much as he loved her. “Let me know if anything changes.”

  Mandy rested her muzzle on Beck’s hip. Her sad, intelligent gaze meant she understood. Nothing would tempt this dog to leave the boy’s side, except to bark a warning.

  Raine left the bedroom door open a crack and headed to the kitchen to make a cup of tea and an herbal balm for Beck. The room’s vaporizer filled with droplets of lavender and tea tree oil ease his congestion a little.

  Just to be sure he didn’t need anything, she’d sit with him until morning, as she had done night after night for the past three months, listening to him breathe, and hoping each inhalation wouldn’t be his last.

  As soon as she entered the kitchen, a shimmer of magic ran up her arms and trickled down her spine to her toes. “Jonah. Joseph. Get out of my pantry. Now.”

  An identical pair of faces peeked at her from behind the door.

  “Come on out. I know you’re just trying to help, but you need to let Beck rest. He’s too weak to play right now.”

  “I told you she would catch us.” Joseph elbowed his twin.

  “It’s okay. You’re not in trouble,” Raine assured the two boys, who were staring back at her with identical sad expressions.

  The only way Raine could tell the twins apart was one wore a tall black hat the other a curved white one.

  The boys had befriended her son as soon as they had arrived in Magic with nothing more than a suitcase and the clothes on their backs. Even though a couple of years s
eparated the boys in age, the three had become inseparable.

  Joseph put the white mouse running up his sleeve back into his pocket. “Beck’s really sick, isn’t he?”

  “Your mom, aunts, and I are doing our best to make him better,” She pressed a couple of fingers against her temple and willed her head to stop the throbbing. “Beck wants to play with you, but he just can’t.”

  “Aunt Lacey says a change is coming.” Joseph hopped up to sit on the counter.

  Lacey, her nearest neighbor and good friend, could read the future better than anyone.

  The warmhearted witch had greeted Raine and Beck as soon as they stepped off the westbound bus they managed to board in Boston using false names and magically altered identities. No one knew they were arriving.

  No one except Lacey and her intuition.

  Raine took the plate with Beck’s half-eaten dinner to the sink. “A change. That’s interesting,” she said, trying to sound interested in spite of the overwhelming fears dogging her. “Is this change good or bad?”

  Joseph shrugged and continued to swing his legs, banging his heels on the cabinets under the counter. “I don’t know.” He looked at his twin.

  “Don’t look at me! You were the one hiding under the…” Jonah let the rest of the sentence fizzle when Joseph glared at him.

  “Don’t you two have homework?” Raine asked, hoping mundane concerns might stave off the lurking doom haunting her the past couple of days.

  “Yes, they do.” A tranquil confident voice floated into the kitchen.

  Raine turned just in time to see Lacey open the screen door. “Hey. The boys just told me you sense a change coming.”

  “Something is coming, I just don’t know what.” Her best friend dropped a large bag of dog treats on the counter and a couple of empty canning jars. “You two, home. Now. Before I tell your mother you sneaked out of the house again. And if I catch you out again tonight, you’ll be spending the next two weeks shoveling dog poop at the animal shelter.”

  “But—”

  “Three weeks.”

  “But—”

  Lacey’s brow lifted higher. “Four weeks. You both better skedaddle now, before I add another week.”

  The two ran out the front door faster than Mandy trying to herd the stubborn chickens into their coop for the night.

  “I don’t know how Tory does it. Those two must be a handful.”

  “Half vampire, half werewolf, and curious and busy as rambunctious raccoons. My cousin has her hands full. Then again, I woke up this morning to find Snow had lowered the temperature in her room again. Icicles were hanging from the curtain rods. Frost is freaked out.”

  “Did you tell your husband that’s what happens when you marry a witch and have a newborn?”

  “No. But I think he’s getting the idea.”

  Raine remembered the day Lacey’s Star Ranger arrived in Magic and captured her best friend’s heart. Frost might be freaked out today, but he adored his three-month-old daughter. Just last week, Lacey was complaining Frost was already trying to convince Lacey they needed to add a few more little star rangers to the mix.

  Frost’s arrival had given Raine hope. One day she, too, might find someone who would accept her and her gifts instead of fearing them.

  But that day wouldn’t come any time soon.

  For now, her entire focus was on saving her dying son.

  She slid her hands down her gardening apron, making a mental note to harvest the zucchinis and tomatoes before they rotted on the vines, and finish folding the laundry, and start the dishwasher, and…a frustrated sigh drained out of her overtired, aching body. “How did your research go? Did you come up with any new healing spells?”

  “I’ve referenced every spell craft book I could find. If there was a healing spell I didn’t know about, I know about it now. Last night I finally got ahold of my sisters.”

  “Have Sam or Joanna come up with anything?”

  “Nope. Nothing.”

  Despair oozed to the surface, but Raine reinforced her shields to keep her anguish from leaking and scaring the townspeople. And the last thing Beck needed was to feel her pain.

  Raine extended a hand to the basil plant on the window ledge. The leaf bowed in her direction. She plucked off an older stem and rubbed the skin, letting the aroma soothe her worry and unsettled stomach. “There must be something we haven’t thought of.” She lifted the basil leaf and inhaled deeply. “I refuse to let my son die.”

  Lacey enfolded Raine in her magical embrace. Warm, soothing vibrations eased the building tension in Raine's shoulders.

  “He’s got to get better,” Lacey whispered with a weepy sniffle. “He needs to pass his first level magic tests and win the county pumpkin-growing contest. I was passing by your fields yesterday. His galactic pumpkin is getting big. We just need to stay—”

  Ka-boom.

  The earth shook. Raine grabbed onto Lacey as plates rattled and fell out of cabinets. The potted herbs on the window ledge crashed to the counter, and the roof creaked like the timbers were about to collapse.

  Ka-boooom.

  “What the hell?” Lacey blasted a spell to freeze the cups and saucers mid-air, then another to replace the repaired dinnerware.

  When Mandy didn’t race into the kitchen barking a warning, Raine relaxed a bit, but hurried back to check on Beck and the dog anyway. Mandy looked up and wagged while Beck still slept.

  Back in the kitchen, she looked outside the window to see a plume of fire streak and billow into the night sky.

  Raine gasped. “That’s my cornfield. If those gnomes blew up my gas tank, I will singe some butts. Would you call the sheriff?”

  “Theo?” Lacey moved closer to the paned window. “What good will that do? He’s a dragon.”

  “Good point.” Raine untied her apron and tossed the vegetable-printed cotton on the hook by the back door. “Can you summon your husband? Maybe Frost can ice the fire. Meantime, I’ll see what I can do to stop the flames from spreading.”

  “Let’s go together.” Lacey followed her out the door. “Frost just sent me an image. He’s on his way.”

  Raine grabbed the broom off the porch and waited for Lacey to hop on.

  “I’m ready,” Lacey tightened her arms around Raine’s waist.

  “Hold on tight, because if those gnomes damaged Beck’s pumpkins, I’ll hunt every single one of them down and burn their beards off.”

  “Why don’t you just turn them into turnips? I’ll let you borrow a few pigs.”

  “That’s a fine idea.”

  Chapter Two

  “Secondary engine failure.”

  Myka tapped the control grid to shut down the engine. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “You are about to crash,” the onboard computer continued.

  “I said, something I don’t know.” He grunted and switched on the stabilizers, hoping to keep his ship from flipping while maintaining his trajectory to the damaged energy pod’s last coordinates. If luck was on his side, he’d land not far off the mark. “Having some warning about the planet’s defense grid would have been nice.”

  “Record logs show this primitive planet has limited technology. There is no record of defense weaponry.”

  “You mean until the satellites locked on to the ship and started firing.” He clamped down hard on his controlled panic and worked to keep the craft level. “Help me get this piece of shit on the ground.”

  “This ‘piece of shit’ is a fifth-generation interstellar transport—”

  “Yeah. Yeah. Not now.” If he didn’t know better, he would have sworn the computer was offended.

  The thruster’s grid showed the engines reaching max capacity.

  “Too fast.” He focused on the control panel and mentally calculated the speed and distance to his target. “We’re coming in too fast. Come on, old girl. Slow down. Shields up. Autocontrol on.”

  His personal safety clamps locked into place, and he braced for impact
. Three, two, one. The vibration and screech of metal impacting the planet’s surface lasted for several seconds before the forward motion came to a creaking stop.

  He closed his eyes and released a steady exhale. “System check.”

  “Calculating.”

  Myka unfastened his harness, then lifted the outer shields to check the damage. Strange vegetation covered the outer hull, but the ship appeared to be intact. Relief eased in.

  Ka-boom.

  He rocked sideways as a flash of fire flared and then settled to a burn. “What the hell? Shields up.”

  “There has been an explosion,” the computer voice intoned.

  “Remind me when we get back to have your components upgraded. You’re a little slow.”

  “I’m a fully functional—”

  “I said, not now. I need to put out that fire.”

  “Your retrieval mission now has an 83.837 percent chance of success.”

  He paused while his brain encountered a mental hiccup. “What happened to the other sixteen percent?”

  “The short-distance scanners were damaged upon landing. The last coordinates show the pod is within five hundred meters of the ship, but the exact location is unknown and must be located manually.”

  He sighed out his frustration and released the security lever to retrieve a foam canister.

  “Any more good news?”

  “Ship diagnostics confirm that liftoff is not possible without repairing the auxiliary engine.”

  “Perfect. Just what I needed to hear.” The thick layer of sarcasm helped ease his growing frustration. “Whoever shot off those rockets will be looking for this ship. Transfer long-range scan analysis to my personal unit and run additional diagnostics on that auxiliary engine.”