“He's coming...he's coming...beware!”

The jolt of energy rolling off of the wall as Lily's ghostly voice whispered urgently in my mind was so painful I almost doubled over. I raced down the threadbare Persian carpet covering the staircase hoping I wouldn't trip and fall. I had to get away from it as fast as I could. Once I made my way out of the mansion and inhaled the heady fragrance of night blooming jasmine from the mansion's front porch, I finally took a breath. I plopped down on the corner bench dropping my bag at my feet to think about what I'd heard. Cripes, even with the ghosts helping me the evening had gone pretty smoothly up until then.

Kathy, one of the ladies I'd just read for at the party, came down the steps behind me. “Are you okay? What happened when you touched the wall, Sofie?”

“I'm okay. I heard Lillian's voice again when I put my hand on the wall, and it caught me off guard.”

“Is it common for you...to hear ghosts outside of the context of a reading?” Kathy sat down next to me, “What did she say?”

“No, this was weird. Normally, I only hear them while I'm doing a reading. I heard Lillian's voice telling me to beware and that he's coming.” I stood and Kathy walked me to the corner where the valet stand was as I dug into my purse for my valet ticket and handed it to him.

“Who's coming? Do you know what she meant?”

“No idea. I'm not going to worry about it.” I said trying hard to shake off the willies crawling up and down my spine. I chatted with Kathy for a few more minutes and then left as soon as the valet pulled up with my car.

The Lemp Mansion is the best-known haunted mansion in St. Louis. It's also a top restaurant and Bed and Breakfast Inn. I'd been there a number of times in the past but until tonight had never done a psychic party there.

The women who booked me for their party had me set up in the Lavender Room, which was famous because of a ghost referred to as The Lavender Lady. She was one of two powerful female spirits, as well as several male spirits, that haunt the mansion. Tonight both female spirits, Elsa and Lillian, were present in the room with us and Lillian's voice had been the strongest.

The first lady I read for was a breeze. My second client wanted to know if I could talk to her late mother. Here's the thing, talking to the dearly departed can be very draining. I normally tried to avoid it but lately I found myself tuning into the dead-zone more often than not. I was thankful that I didn't actually see ghosts like the character, Melinda, in Ghost Whisperer did. I had a sense of them and I could hear them but seeing them, it was the last thing I hoped I'd ever have to go through.

I tried to tell her I couldn't do it there because of the spirits haunting the mansion. Then I heard Lillian's whisper in my mind, “ It's ok, I'll help you with it .”

Shit! As soon as I heard her voice the woman's mother jumped forward. Here's the freaky part, whenever I do this I really have no clue what I'm saying. I sort of drop away from myself and let whoever needs to come through. I knew I was on target tonight when my client started to cry. I thought I'd gotten off easy until my last client. She'd lost both her parents in the same year. Lillian came through and helped me channel them also.

When I finished doing the readings, I hung out for a while chatting. They wanted me to go through the various rooms with them to see what I felt. I was on my way out when I leaned my hand against the outside wall of the nursery and heard the ghostly warning.

As I pulled away from the mansion, trying not to screech my tires, I wondered what she'd really meant and who he might be.

Sam, my son, who had twice the social life I had since starting his junior year in high school, was gone when I got home. I had some quiet time to mellow out and reground myself before he got home. I fixed myself a sandwich and then curled into the softness of my sage green sofa to channel surf for a while. Sam came home about an hour later from the movies and after chatting for a while it was bedtime.

~~~~~~~~~~

No! Damn...not again! OK, I know I'm asleep so I'm having a conscious dream. Oh shit! I can feel him standing next to the bed. I don't think he's aware I know he's there. I can almost see his outline clearly. I've got to do something to shake his presence and wake myself up. I can feel how powerful his desire is to touch me.

I need to shock myself into waking up. I need to do something fast. He's getting ready to reach out and touch me. He wants to stroke my hair. I can't let it happen! Who is he? Is he from the mansion? Is this who Lillian warned me about? My adrenaline is pumping so hard my heart is ready to jump out of my chest. This feels totally different from what I've experienced before. I've got to do something to wake up.

I shot up so fast I hit my head on the light pull hanging down from my ceiling fan. The sheets and blankets were twisted in a knot around my legs and most of my pillows had hit the floor. I wrestled with my blankets, untangled myself, and sat on the side of my bed taking in a few deep breaths. Man, oh man, that was weird, I thought to myself. It really felt like there was someone standing over my bed watching me sleep and was almost ready to touch me right before I woke up. I got myself some water and then tried to settle back down again.

~~~~~~~~~~

I woke up to the heady smell of Hawaiian Kona beans brewing. I stumbled my way into the kitchen with my eyes half closed--what a good kid, making his Mom coffee first thing in the morning--and poured myself a cup.

After going back to sleep I didn't dream again but was still shaken up by the male entity standing next to my bed. Once before, right before my marriage had ended, I'd had a similar experience. I shivered thinking about how that had turned out. This experience, though, felt different from what I'd gone through back then.

Sam was online with his friends so while I sipped my coffee I watched Amazing Vacation Homes on the Travel Channel--my ultimate fantasy was a vacation home in South Carolina--and chatted with him between his IM's to his friends.

When I thought about my experiences as a psychic there were still certain aspects of my ability that freaked me out. In general, I'd made peace with myself a long time ago. It was actually a very cool ability to have. It ran on both sides of my very Sicilian family.

Joe, my ex-husband, had said he was okay with it when we got married but in the end it was one of the reasons we'd split up. I was always looking for something more and he, well, he was happy with what he had.

Our divorce had been amicable for Sam's sake. I was glad we'd been able to remain friends since then. We married right out of high school and had Sam right away. I really started working on developing my psychic abilities when Sam was only three. By the time Sam was seven, Joe and I had grown so far apart that there was no saving us anymore. I was thankful for those years with Joe because it had taught me a great deal about myself and had given me Sam.

Granted, after the divorce I turned my whole attention to raising my son, my job at the university, and establishing my psychic practice. I dated on and off but never really connected with anyone and in the last few years, had pretty much given up on dating, (much less sex), until Sam was out of high school.

As for my ability, my greatest reward came when a client would call to let me know just how much I'd been able to help them. It made me feel like I was living up to my greater purpose. Personally, the ability to medium was the weirdest part of being a psychic, and the scariest. How can I do it? I have no idea. It just happens. I've always thought that everything happens for a reason. When this ability was kicked up about ten notches, all I could do was go with the flow and let it take me where it was suppose to. Last night was a prime example of it. Lillian being there and helping me out was actually kind of cool. I decided to tell Sam about it.

“Guess what happened last night while I was doing a couple of the readings.”

“What?” Sam broke away from the computer and came over to sit on the arm of the loveseat. He'd grown taller than me in the last year and was almost five ten now. He'd also thinned out and had his dad's lanky frame along with his dad's green-orange eyes. That was what had really drawn me into Joe when we were teenagers. He has these vivid green eyes flecked with an orange rim and a little dash of orange right in a corner as if God had flecked his eyes with a paintbrush. Sam has those same eyes along with mega long eyelashes that women of any age would kill for, or pay a small fortune in mascara to achieve.

I told him about Lillian's spirit and how she'd helped me channel the dead for a couple of my clients.

“Mom, that's just creepy! Doesn't it bother you?”

“Yeah, it's freaky. But also cool too, don't you think?”

“Nope, just creepy to me. I don't know how you deal with it sometimes.” He shrugged his shoulders as he went back to his facebook.com page.

~~~~~~~~~~

On Monday, I decided I was lucky to have two careers I enjoyed. I work at the best university in the city. My job had peak times and low times when it came to managing the chemistry courses I handled and this week was peak time. It was exam week, which usually meant controlled chaos. I'd been there long enough to have my routine down to a fine science so despite being mega busy I was always able to keep my sanity. At least I liked to think so.

I was hiding out in my office winding up the first draft of our second semester exam when I started feeling extra strange vibes. There was something weird in the air and it was more than the full moon.

I tried to concentrate on my work but by 3:00 p.m., I decided I needed a break. I headed over to the student center bakery to pick up a double-shot mocha. There was nothing better than coffee and chocolate to put me in a good mood. I was trying to decide what type of scone, chocolate chip or orange, I wanted to go with my coffee when I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

I looked around and noticed two men, one younger and one older, heading toward the doorway from one of the back tables. The older man was stunning. He was deep in conversation with the other man so I took him in all at once; tall, at least six feet plus, short dark hair with a streak of gray on the side, and dressed all in black with a long black overcoat. They walked out of the coffee shop, and I heard the cashier ask me again what type of scone I wanted.

After settling on the chocolate chip I beat a hasty retreat outside. It was early March and there was still a chill in the air. I took a quick sip of my mocha to warm up before I headed back across the yard to my building. I felt the strange energy twitch again so I decided to take the sidewalk closest to the library instead of the middle path. As I looked around the library, I noticed a small group of people at the end of the walkway. I was trying not to stare but the man from the bakery was there with them, his scarf blowing in the breeze.

His back was turned away from me but the energy he gave off was powerful. He turned suddenly, as if he felt me looking at him, and our eyes made direct contact. I ducked my head, embarrassed that he'd caught me staring. I started to walk away when I heard his voice call out.

“Hello, wait, don't go. Don't I know you?” he said as he approached me. A jolt of electricity shot through me as he looked me up and down that made my toes curl. He was easily the most beautiful man I'd ever laid eyes on.

Did I know him? I think I would've remembered meeting this man before. There was something vaguely familiar about him but in that moment I had lost all power of reasoning.

“Do you? I'm sorry, I don't remember you."

“I'm sure we've met before...perhaps another life?"

I saw a smile enter his forest green eyes and had a flash of a very old memory...being in a forest waiting for someone or something. The image was so strong that I jumped back from him. I found myself mumbling like an idiot some excuse that I had to go back to my office. Then I rudely turned away from him and hurried toward my building. I heard him call out to me, but I was too afraid to turn back.

I was out of breath by the time I closed the door to my office and fell into my chair kicking myself for the way I acted. When he walked up to me as if he knew me, and smiled at me with those sexy deep forest green eyes--yes, I was still a sucker for green eyes--I froze. I'm thirty-six years old and I froze like an awkward teenager. What an idiot! I'm normally fine when it comes to talking to men but there was something about Mr. Beautiful and the way he looked at me that set my senses on edge...or was it my hormones? Damn, he was incredibly sexy. Anyway, nothing I could do to fix things now. I'd probably never see him again. I tried to settle back down to finish my project and enjoy my scone.

~~~~~~~~~~

Later that evening I finalized my plan for my meditation class the next night. It had been a long strange week, starting with the Lemp party, the entity dream, and the guy on campus, and--oh shit--the guy. Could he possibly be the entity come to life? Was that why he was familiar?