Chapter One

"Lizzie, I have to confirm with the gallery owner," Seth sighed. "I swear the old man is going to have a conniption fit if you're not there. He's left at least five voicemails since six am, and it’s barely noon.”

Standing on the loft overlooking the converted barn Elizabeth Wentworth called home, she picked at a stray piece of lint on the back of her glove as she pondered her answer. It wasn't that she didn't want to go or that she was worried the patrons of Ernesto’s would be disappointed in her latest works, it was that she didn’t feel strong enough to be around all the people lately.

Wasn't it enough that she'd offered to be on a live feed via Skype for the entire show? Didn't they understand what being near so many emotions, so much converging energy, just so much of everything was like walking on hot coals or having needles pushed into her eyes?

Turning away, the weight of Seth’s stare and his impatience weighing her down, pulling at the very fiber of her being, making it hard for her to breathe, Lizzie moved towards the floor-to-ceiling stained glass window. Looking through the clear petals of the daisies Jonathan had so delicately designed, she was finally able to catch her breath. Warm and inviting, the sun on her face made her want to sprout wings and fly away. Leave the swarm of buzzing emotions, chatty people, and noxious energies far behind and live on a mountain, or in a bubble at the bottom of the sea, blissfully alone and totally untouchable.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The toe of Seth's shoe striking her hardwood floors was akin to someone beating a railroad spike into her skull. Folding her hands so tightly together that they shook, the only thing saving her palms from being raw and bloody from her nails were the black cotton gloves she'd grabbed when her assistant had unexpectedly shown up at her door.

“Seth, please,” she cringed, her vision blurring as his venomous irritation swept through her, becoming her own seething cross to bear as it tried to take root in her psyche. “Just go. I’ll call you,” she ordered, her tone sharper than she intended, but something she would have to apologize for later.

“Oh god, Lizzie. I’m so sorry.” Annoyance turned to regret and shame as her assistant hurried on. “I wasn’t even thinking. I don’t know what… Two fucking years and…”

“Just…” she swallowed back her tears. “Please… go.”

Quick footsteps preceded the opening and closing of the front door, thankfully, resulting in the powerful exhale of the breath she'd been holding. Allowing the tears caused by Seth's immediate and intense embarrassment, to fall, Lizzie laid her hand on the wall, closed her eyes and counted to ten.

“Wonder if there’s a psychiatrist who would visit me on a deserted island?” The sound of her own voice echoing through the rafters was comforting in a way she simply couldn’t describe and refused to analyze too closely for fear she would spoil the magic. “Or send me recordings tied to the foot of a carrier pigeon?”

Pushing off the wall and straightening her spine, Lizzie rolled her shoulders and jerked off her gloves. Throwing them against the window, not waiting until they floated to the floor, she inhaled as deeply as she could, threw her fists in the air, and screamed with all her might until she could scream no more.

Gasping for air, she leaned against the railing, her latest painting, one in a series of three named Shadow Man, sitting on the easel, catching her eye. The huge canvas, colored with multiple hues of grays that faded to the black, should’ve made her feel sad, but instead intrigued her in a way no other work ever had.

The protagonist, a man with mystery in his eyes and hardness around his heart, looked at her as if he thought she held the answers to questions he’d yet to even imagine. “Sorry, Bub, I can’t help myself, let help alone you.”

Walking to the farthest side of the loft, Lizzie made her way down the stairs, grabbed a bottle of water from the kitchen and strolled towards the nearly finished painting as she asked, “Are you ready to show me what comes next?”

Never one to plan, an artist who let her muse decide what she should create, she set the unopened bottle on the coffee table, slipped on her smock and picked up her palate and brush. Staring into the eyes of the man she'd named Beast for the fierce way he held himself and the intricate tattoos covering the better part of his right arm, she dabbed the tips of her thin, delicate, hog-hair brush into a dollop of stark white paint left from her late-night session.

Gently placing the thinnest layer of paint possible from the very top of the left-hand corner of the canvas, radiating like rays of light towards Beast's head, she immediately knew what was to come next. Mixing and matching, one color and then another and then another, the time flew by as she allowed her muse to have its way.

A single lightbulb, hanging from a thread-bare wire, its light falling short, left the man in the shadows. Forgotten by the world, his hope shattered. Painful in its simplicity, stirring in its poignancy, Beast spoke to Lizzie’s soul. They were birds of a feather with no flock.

Setting her paint and brush on the waist-high stool at her side, Lizzie took several steps backward to study every angle of the six-foot-by-three-foot painting. There it was. Finally finished. And so much more than she’d ever imagined when making the first brush stroke nearly three weeks ago.

Who was this man? Was he real, as she'd often found out after painting or sketching or sculpting a man, woman or child? It wasn't unusual for her to recognize bits and pieces of several people she'd either encountered in one of her few trips out into the world or seen on TV or in a magazine in one of her babies, as she called them their completion? The compilation of her own thoughts, fears, joys, and feelings, put together just so, flowing from her subconscious to the canvas always came from somewhere – be it imagination, real life, or the mystical combination of the two.

It didn't matter where, how or why, she liked him and had already begun to let her imagination run wild with plans for the second portraiture. Picking up the lukewarm container of water and sitting on her feet on the couch, Lizzie couldn't look away from her Beast.

There was just something about those midnight gray eyes and the silver flecks that she could imagine swirling within their haunting depths in sync with the beat of his heart. Powerful. Unrelenting. Angry. Wronged. Bitter. The words marched through her mind. Gave her courage and strength. Made her get off her butt and race up the stairs.

Dressed in record time, every inch of skin covered from her neck down, Lizzie looked at her reflection in the mirror and announced, “You, Elizabeth Wentworth, are not a slave to your gifts. You, just like the man in your painting, are formidable and implacable. You have every right to be mad and can allow yourself to want retribution.”

Slipping her feet into her new red leather heels, she turned to the side, making sure the lines in her floor-length, crimson dress flowed as they should then finger-fluffed her long, light brown curls before checking her gloves one more time. Touching the tear-shaped diamond that had been her mother’s, she smiled, “Hope I make you proud, Mom. Maybe we’ll get to meet in Heaven someday,” then turned and left her bedroom.

Stopping with her hand on the doorknob, Lizzie took three cleansing breaths, repeating her mantra with each exhale, “My walls are tight. My mind is shielded. Nothing can get in that I do not allow.”

Hurrying before she lost her nerve, she locked the door behind her, dashed to the car and started the engine of her black SUV. Plugging her phone into the stereo, she picked the classical playlist and set her GPS for Ernesto's Gallery.

Living so far from the city, in the middle of nowhere, her closest neighbor ten miles on either side had not only been her choice but a necessity after her father's disappearance and the barrage of reporters who hounded her day and night. Having acute Empathic abilities for all her life, Lizzie had learned how to maneuver every situation, but there was simply no way to avoid being touched and therefore absorbing every emotion, thought and memory, when confronted with a mob of correspondents from every continent in the world.

Being groomed from birth to be everything society demanded from the daughter of the richest and most influential arms manufacturer in the western hemisphere, Lizzie had tried to master skills for every situation. Growing up without a mother had meant she was required to be at her father's side for every function, party, speech, and gala. And most times answer questions about how it felt to have lost her mother due to a surgeon's shaky hands when she was less than a month old.

Things got worse the older she got and plummeted when she reached puberty. The influx of hormones only served to heighten her abilities and make her susceptible to even a passerby's whim.

After the first round of doctors diagnosed her with agoraphobia and aggressive panic disorder, prescribed a plethora of pills, shots and relaxation techniques, Reginald Wentworth III was hopeful everything would sort itself out. Unfortunately, things got worse instead of better and soon, even made her father’s touch unbearable.

Deciding on another course of action, Daddy Dearest flew in every psychiatrist, no matter how far away he or she might live. Some didn’t even know what an Empath was and most said Lizzie was a hypochondriac and needed tough love. Then came the very few with an inkling of what was going on, but even they hadn’t seen a case as severe as hers.

Years passed. Lizzie grew into a bright young woman with a first-class education supplied via the best tutors money could buy. Early on, Professor Marilyn Smith, an accomplished artist in her own right, introduced Elizabeth to Art as a form of expression and release. 

Everything seemed to fall into place. She could rid her mind of the clutter, find her spiritual center and set boundaries for not only herself but those she wanted and needed to be near. It also helped that painting and sculpting, at least the way she did them, were solitary activities. Meditation, refueling her soul and strengthening the inner focus of her own heart and mind became more natural with each work she saw to its completion.

Right before her twenty-first birthday, her father returned home from an extended business trip and announced that Lizzie would be going to live in South Dakota on a Lakota Reservation. Unsure and afraid, she was captured by her father's excitement and soon listened to his plan. 

Lost and looking for directions, Reginald had happened upon a diner and began talking to a man he later found out was a Tribal Elder. The man, Jonathan Longbear, had immediately asked about Lizzie, calling her a Heyoka, which he explained meant that she was an emotional mirror and conduit to those around her. He chastised Wentworth for not nurturing her gift, for seeing it as a weakness, and demanded that she be brought to him and allowed to study what the Lakota had known for centuries.

The next five years were some of the happiest of her life. Jonathan and the members of his tribe were beautiful people, with so much knowledge and so much love that Lizzie never wanted to leave. Unfortunately, on a cold night in October the owner of the diner came to the cabin with a message from Reginald's lawyer. Holding the note in her hand, unable to move as Lydia's shock and horror washed over her, Lizzie finally read the words that would send her back to the city and force her to deal with the chaos she'd left behind.

Your father's yacht was reported missing eight days ago off the coast of Cuba. The Coast Guard has been searching, and to date, nothing has been recovered. Please come home as soon as possible. Gerald.

Snapping back to the present as the cello reached its crescendo in Carnival of the Animals, Lizzie sighed, “But tonight I shall conquer…”

Rounding the bend of Pauper's Cross Rd, her headlights highlighting a hooded figure in the middle of the road, Lizzie hit the brakes. Swerving to the right, she tried to immediately correct the wheel back to the front but instead caused her SUV to spin in two complete revolutions.

Sliding towards the steep ditch on the left, she sideswiped a concrete marker left by the Daughters of the Revolution, careened across the road. Hitting the grass embankment with both right wheels, the SUV then rolled three times, finally stopping with its wheels in the air in the middle of a freshly plowed corn field.

Upside-down, her head pounding, her vision blurry and blood dripping from at least two spots on her head, Lizzie promptly threw up twice and bit her tongue. The feeling of floating on air and needing to take a nap became almost irresistible.

Letting her eyes slide closed, she slurred, "Just a little nap then I'll go the gallery. Seth can…"

Jarred from her trip to La-La-Land as the door of her SUV was ripped from its hinges, her seatbelt was torn from around her, and a pair of muscular arms lifted her from the wreckage, Lizzie's fear evaporated as her vision momentarily cleared, and she saw the face of her rescuer.

Grinning, she giggled, "Oh look, it's you. You came to save me," then promptly lost consciousness.