Did you ever wish that you had supernatural powers? The ability to see ghosts, to read auras, to work spells? One of the icebreakers I do with teams sometimes is to share your superpower: what would be your superhero name, what’s your power, and what’s your kryptonite. Mine would be The Awakener. I could reach out and touch you gently on the temple and you’d suddenly shake like a dog, look down at your feet, and say, “Crocs! Ick, what was I thinking?” My kryptonite, however, is that I would be tempted to use it all the time. Sometimes you need to leave people some self-delusion to hide behind. Like the Guru on the highest peak, people need to want you to apply that power. Make them traverse deserts, ford rivers, climb mountains to reach to ask – otherwise, they won’t appreciate it. That’s why the Guru doesn’t live in the village – s/he’d be revealing truths all the time and people would stop listening.

If you meet someone on the road who proclaims that they have all the answers, that they can make everything better, run – don’t walk – away.

The two main characters in this book start in very different places. Tom is working as a school janitor, just trying to keep a low profile, never staying any one place for long, nagged by ghosts who urge him to use his telekinetic powers to save lives, then quickly slinking out of town afterwards. Laura is living, for the moment, in Portland, working as a fashion model which she thinks she can do safely because her family never reads magazines and so wouldn’t no where to look for her. But then she finds a wedding invitation in her mailbox. Her brother. She plans to attend. But it means she’ll have to move again afterwards; disappear to somewhere her family can’t find her.

Then Tom ends up driving a cab in Arcadia¹, one more short-termer who will be there a few months then disappear, the locals think. Laura’s car breaks down and she becomes a fare for Tom, a fare to her family home about 18 miles away. Good fare, he thinks, until things get strange. First, there’s a voice inside his head – Laura’s voice, saying things that she’s not saying aloud. He feels compelled to stay with her, despite her telling him aloud to go back, stay away. Stay away from her family, who takes outsiders as slaves, to command and torture, because they can. But it’s too late – they’re fated to be together, they both feel it. And he can literally see the threads binding them together.

And then Tom finds himself whisked away to Laura’s family home where she insists he is a guest – not a fetch, like the other humans that find themselves there – and drawn into a purification rite for her brother’s wedding. It does something to him, releases his shame at his powers. The ritual also reveals that he and Laura are “matched” to be wed and, within hours of meeting, they marry.

As it turns out, her family is old and extensive, and mainly marries each other, to keep their powers strong. But, within the last century, their genetics have become weakened, with many babies dying and children failing to thrive. So they are happy to have new blood – at least some of them are. Others still perceive Tom as an Outsider and cast spells at him which he breaks, much to everyone’s surprise. And then he casts his own spells back at them. And frees the humans they have enslaved.

When he returns to Arcadia with the people he has freed, he learns that the town and Laura’s family had a symbiotic history. The family did things for the town; and the town did things for the family. Only, in the last century, the balance of power had shifted. Now the family was taking more of what they wanted, including people. Though they had rules – don’t take people from their homes, they have to consent although they can be tricked into consenting, take people who won’t be missed because they don’t have families – mostly the town keeps the children indoors at night and gives the family members what they want. Safer that way.

Tom and Laura are soon to upset the delicate arrangement that exists between the two communities; and also the complex spell that has enscrolled Laura’s family, corrupting the recent generations and weakening them, all in the name of “purity”.

I always thought this book would make a good movie, something along the lines of The Frighteners, only with a better plot and more interesting characters. The action moves quickly as does the book.

If you like supernatural fantasy, set in parallel reality, this one is for you.

Oh, and what’s your superpower?

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1. Where The Goonies was set. I visited once, and stayed in a motel along the beach, a low-rise motor court, with sliding glass doors onto the parking lot. And all night long, cars were arriving, car doors slamming, people laughing drunkenly, then car doors slamming, headlights on (into my room), and driving off. I have a knack for picking the worst hotels. ↩︎