Angel's Touch (7 page)

“It is necessary to work on this scar tissue. You told me you cracked sternum when you were a kid, yes?”

“When I was three.”

Megan pressed her fists, still clutching the sheet, to the center of her chest. She’d had a client once who’d been in a car accident tell her that a cracked sternum could be seriously painful, but Megan didn’t remember any pain. She’d fallen off a jungle gym, and what she did remember, with total clarity, was how time had frozen still. The impact couldn’t have lasted more than a second, but for what seemed like an eternity there was no sound, no people, no movement—just her on the ground in that profound silence, flat on her back with the breath knocked out of her, too stunned to cry, staring into the eyes of an angel.

Just went to show that even the best parenting was no match for the forces of karma that shaped kids’ lives. Most people thought karma was cosmic payback. Cause and effect. It wasn’t. It was cause and effect and effect and effect and effect. A groove in the dirt that got worn down so many times it became a canyon. Leftover habits and memories—any baggage you hadn’t let go of—that became ingrained, forming a blueprint for the shape of your life. Her fall wasn’t a punishment, but it was no accident: It was her karma’s way of re-creating the trauma she carried over from previous lives. Knock her off the jungle gym with a slip of the foot and bingo!—she was all set for a lifetime of blocked energy in her chest. God forbid she should forget what it felt like to suffocate. Oh no, fate made sure her lungs and chest would hurt in this life, even if she couldn’t remember why.

“Will you be able to work?” Svetlana asked.

“I think so.”

Maybe a hot bath would feel good after all the ice she’d been applying to her chest. It was really a horrible place to have to stick an ice pack, but not as horrible as not being able to do her job.

***

Later that night, Megan sat cross-legged and barefoot on a pillow on the floor of her bedroom, gritting her teeth against the jolt of pain that shot through her chest when she shifted position. With every hour, the pain was getting worse. She ignored it and focused on meditating. One way or another she was going to make this pain go away.

Except as soon as her heart rate began to slow, red-orange flames intruded upon her thoughts, engulfing her.

She shook her head in frustration, trying to get rid of the image. What use were these disturbing flashes of intuition? If only they came with a voice that said, “This is how you’re fated to die, so be careful,” or, “This is how you died last time, and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it.” Even if she knew whether the images were from the past or from the future, what was she supposed to do with the information? Track down the person who killed her and forgive them? Become a firefighter? Learn to flambé? What exactly was the point?

“What!” she shouted at the universe.

If there was some spiritual lesson she was supposed to learn from this, it would be nice to have the teacher’s answer key.

Her doctor had prescribed painkillers, suggested lots of rest, and said if the pain in her chest and the numbness in her arm continued, they could look into other options. The chiropractor wanted to see her again in two days to continue work on freeing the nerves she’d pinched. Svetlana’s massage had helped, but an hour later the pain was back. No one knew exactly what was wrong. Megan could tell what they were thinking, though—that whether it was a pulled muscle or a torn ligament or a wrenched disk, injuries took time to heal.

Weeks.

Maybe months.

Months of not having a job. Months for her clients to abandon her and discover someone else.

Months. Maybe years.

She wouldn’t be the first massage therapist to get injured and never make a full recovery, and be forced to change jobs, do something more financially secure—something boring and unfulfilling, like most of humanity. Kira Wagner wanted to offer her a job like that.

She clenched her fists and rammed them into her thighs. She didn’t want to be manager of Kira’s spa. She wasn’t ready to lose her clients and start over. She wasn’t ready to end her career.

And she wasn’t going to.

Because she was going to fix this.

Taking a deep breath, she turned her vision inward, past the flames, and found her inner spark. She felt it glow, and expanded it, flooding herself with its white, sparkling light. She ran the specific energy current that would release her karma and untie the knots that bound her to her past—the past that had created this injury. Flames appeared again, hot against her eyelids. She steadied her breath and continued. No need to react. Karmic patterns were a habit, after all, and habits could be broken. Whatever this karmic memory meant—and perhaps it meant nothing—she could free herself. She could let it go.

She might feel like she was burning, but in reality she was sitting alone in her room in no danger at all, and trying to push away the fear would only make it embed itself more deeply. She had to face it. She had to lower her barriers and let herself feel the screaming pain as she burned.

She would burn until she was dead, and then it would be over.

“I need to reschedule your appointment,” Megan said over the phone for the eighteenth time, relieved that she was almost done working her way down her list of next week’s clients.

“Why?” Barbara Fenhurst—number eighteen—demanded.

“I injured myself.” The words were a little easier to choke out after so many calls, but they still made her mad.

Meditation had not helped. Even the painkillers didn’t help enough to let her kid herself that she’d be able to work through it. Much as she hated to do it, she’d decided to cancel her appointments for a week and give her body a chance to heal.

“That’s annoying,” Barbara said. “I’m going to miss you so much.”

“I should be better in a week.” She sure hoped so, because some of her clients were in serious pain and they needed her.

“If I have to miss my next appointment then I want to make an extra appointment to make up for it. Do you have any openings Wednesday after work?”

“I have you down for your regular time slot on Monday, but other than that, I’m booked.”

“How about Wednesday morning?”

“I’m sorry, I’ve been rescheduling everyone and I’m already overbooked for the week.”

“Don’t you want the extra business?”

Megan tightened her grip on her phone and hoped she wouldn’t say something she’d regret. She knew Barbara’s massage was important to her, but to be honest, there were other clients she wanted to make time for who were in more serious pain. Besides, Barbara shouldn’t be making her feel guilty when there was no guarantee she’d be seeing
anyone
next week. It was times like these when it would be nice to have an assistant to make her calls for her, someone who could talk to her clients without feeling torn between wanting to help and knowing there was a limit to how many massages she was physically able to give.

“I’m flexible,” Barbara said. “You can squeeze me in anywhere.”

“I wish I could. How about scheduling your extra session for next month?”

“Next
month
?” A note of hysteria entered Barbara’s voice. “All right, but I want to make sure you have me down for every Monday through the end of July.”

“Okay.”

“How many weeks is that? Six? Seven? Can I get one free?”

“I’m sorry, but no.”

“Don’t I deserve one free session for the inconvenience of canceling my appointment?”

“I’m really sorry.” She did wish she could do something to make it up to her clients, but discounts meant more work for less money, and more work—even though she was going to be super-careful about her body mechanics when she got back to work—meant more chance of injury. And injuries she definitely couldn’t afford.

“Not even for your best customer?”

Barbara Fenhurst just didn’t know when to quit.

***

That night Megan had no evening appointments—since she’d canceled them all—so she headed over to Kira’s hotel around seven. She had planned to return to the ley lines in the pitch-dark to avoid any potential run-ins with attractive, annoyed landowners, but decided to take a chance on going early. The construction crew would be long gone, as would Kira, and because it would still be daylight, she’d be able to see where she was going in those woods near the hotel, which would be nice, because the last thing she needed was a sprained ankle.

She found the path easily. The fallen tree wasn’t as easy to clamber over because her injury made it too painful for her arms to support her body weight, but in her ratty jeans and sneakers and T-shirt she could make her legs do most of the work without worrying about snagging nicer clothes.

She went straight to the monolith, but this time was careful not to touch it. She’d investigate it later, after she mapped out where the ley lines were. No sense in knocking herself out with an energy surge first thing.

She closed her eyes and, with an ease that came from years of practice, shifted instantly from her everyday awareness of normal physical reality to a state of consciousness where her body was not a solid, physical presence, but a net of crisscrossing lines of electricity. Where her physical body ended, the electrical currents continued, hooking into the larger web of energy that was the earth itself. Energy flowed out of her and into her, sparking along different channels.

Slowly, she walked around the standing stone, feeling her way, tracking the energy. She felt her aura click into place each time she stepped onto one of the leys. Just as she’d thought, there were two intersecting ley lines that met underground inside the stone, creating two entry points and two exit points. She opened her eyes and noted their position. She chose one of the streams of energy and followed it across the wooded lot, walking in slow motion, her back very straight, her eyes unfocused as she tuned in to the energy. It wasn’t a straight line, but a shallow wave, undulating left and right. When trees got in the way, she walked around them and picked up the trace on the other side. At the far end of the lot she turned around to face the stone. She could almost see the path of energy shimmering.

What if Kira moved the building over? Kept the monolith where it was and built at the other end of the lot? But no, the lot was too small, and the way the leys crisscrossed it, there wasn’t any one spot that was big enough to accommodate a building without interfering with the lines.

The noise of twigs snapping and footsteps approaching made her turn.

***

Kira recognized Megan in the distance and tripped over a tree root.

What was Megan doing here?

She laughed silently at herself. She knew what Megan was doing here. Causing problems.

Kira had just gotten back from dinner when she’d caught a glimpse through the trees of someone sneaking around on her property. Sure, Megan said the locals avoided the place, but how many people did that really cover? Most people here were tourists. She had followed, expecting to find a group of teenagers who were going to have to loiter somewhere else. She didn’t know if discovering Megan here instead was better or worse.

Megan stood motionless and ethereal in the summer evening sunlight, her gaze unfocused and distant. Kira approached and stopped a few feet away, unsure what to say, thrown off by Megan’s complete lack of any sign of having noticed her.

Megan was the one who broke the silence. “Didn’t mean to trespass,” she said.

“You’re not trespassing,” Kira said, recovering her ability to speak. “You work for me, remember?”

Megan blinked and opened her mouth. “I—”

“At least I hope you do,” Kira added, because maybe she didn’t want to help her with the spa now that she knew those energy lines were there.

Megan shook her head. “You won’t need me if you don’t build your spa.”

Kira came closer, drawn by the certainty that they
should
work together, no matter what Megan thought. “I’m building it,” she said gently. As much as she didn’t want to force reality on Megan and wipe that dreamy look from her eyes, she wasn’t going to lie to her.

Megan gestured to the woods surrounding them. “You don’t realize what a treasure you have here.”

“I
do
realize what a treasure I have here. I have a place to build.” And a beautiful, earnest woodland creature spouting nonsense at her. “I’m trying to do something good, create a beautiful place for women to vacation. I’m not the villain here.”

“You don’t understand.” Megan’s eyes were more focused now, harder.

Kira blew out her breath in frustration. “Why can’t I build on these lines? Assuming they exist. They’re energy, right? Won’t the energy still be here if I stick a building on top of it?”

“When you build on top of a ley line, the energy’s still there, of course, but it becomes harder for us as human beings to access it. Man-made structures dilute our perception of the energy. Steel, any kind of metal, water running through the plumbing, electrical wiring—it all disrupts the energy and scatters it.”

“How do you know that?”

“I can tell that the channel—at least our perception of it—was weakened when it was paved over and electrical power lines were put in. Now that I know the leys are here, I can sense them out on the street, but they’re very hard to detect. I can’t feel them at all anywhere else in the neighborhood.”

Not that she understood how seemingly normal, rational people could believe in this stuff, but Kira had met enough strange women over the years to have heard some of this mumbo-jumbo before, and what Megan was saying didn’t make sense. “Weren’t ancient temples purposely built on power spots like this one?”

“Many of them were. But they were designed using sacred geometry to enhance the power instead of interfere with it, and they were places of worship.”

“A spa’s kind of spiritual.”

“Nice try.”

“Why not? It’s healing.”

“It’s not the same thing. It’ll be a business, not a church.”

“A spiritual business.” That was stretching it. She didn’t actually have any plans to give her spa a spiritual aspect, but anyone who sensed so-called “energy” could surely find the spiritual side to any business.