Paranormal Misdirection (Sasha Urban Series: Book 5) Read online

  Paranormal Misdirection

  Sasha Urban Series: Book 5

  Dima Zales

  ♠ Mozaika Publications ♠

  Contents

  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

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Excerpt from The Sorcery Code

  About the Author

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

  * * *

  Copyright © 2019 Dima Zales and Anna Zaires

  www.dimazales.com

  * * *

  All rights reserved.

  * * *

  Except for use in a review, no part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.

  * * *

  Published by Mozaika Publications, an imprint of Mozaika LLC.

  www.mozaikallc.com

  * * *

  Cover by Orina Kafe

  www.orinakafe-art.com

  * * *

  e-ISBN: 978-1-63142-469-4

  Print ISBN: 978-1-63142-470-0

  Chapter One

  With Fluffster at my side, I review the map-meets-Venn diagram on my phone for what feels like the hundredth time.

  Then I tell him about it, and he agrees with my assessment: depicted on my screen is a path through the Otherlands. A path that will take me to Rasputin—my biological father, whom I’d finally spoken to in Headspace.

  “So you’re really going to go after him?” Fluffster asks in my head.

  “Yes,” I say. “As soon as I can.”

  Fluffster sits up on his haunches. “It’ll be dangerous.”

  “I know. But I’m going anyway.”

  The chinchilla sighs in a very human-like fashion. He knows me well enough to realize that his fantasy of me living at home like a shut-in is just that—a fantasy.

  “Who do you think is torturing him?” he asks. “If we knew that, we might be better prepared to deal with it.”

  “Sadly, I have no clue,” I say, a shudder rippling through me as I recall what I saw and felt in Rasputin’s memories during our Headspace joining. Even now, my knee aches with ghostly pain from the torturer’s excruciating blow. “All I know is that he’s my father and he’s suffering,” I say. “And though he thinks he deserves it for abandoning me at the airport, I’m not about to abandon him.”

  I’m going to save my biological father, and in doing so, I’m going to meet him—a prospect that fills me with a jittery mixture of fear and excitement.

  “I still wish you wouldn’t go, but I understand why you want to,” Fluffster says. “And though this might be selfish, I’d like to meet him myself. We knew each other once, when I was his cat, and since I got some of my memory back, I’ve thought about him from time to time.”

  “Oh yeah, of course,” I say, grinning at the thought of Fluffster as a cat. Standing up, I start heading for my bedroom door, adding over my shoulder, “I have to tell Felix about this.”

  “He and Kit left to take Ariel to rehab,” Fluffster reminds me.

  That’s right. They’re going to Gomorrah. They mentioned that at breakfast—which now feels like a lifetime ago.

  Well, since Nero excused me from work today, I might as well put my free time to good use and explore what would happen if I entered the first world on this map.

  A combination of things I learned at Orientation and seer intuition tells me that going into these worlds might be tricky—but that’s why it’s so nice to be a seer. I don’t have to actually risk my hide when I know a threat is coming.

  Instead, I can do a little vision-based reconnaissance.

  Explaining my plan to Fluffster calms him a little, and he goes to play with Lucifur—Rose’s cat, who’s now our feline mistress—while I get ready to leave.

  A few minutes later, I exit my apartment, and as I approach the elevator, my seer intuition sends a tingle of warning.

  Crap. Is someone about to try to kill me yet again?

  No.

  I don’t think it’s that.

  A part of me even has an idea of what the issue is, but I better check to be sure.

  With my finger on the elevator button, I concentrate, evening my breathing. A moment later, I find myself floating in Headspace.

  As I look around, I realize that I’ve gotten so fast at this process that I don’t even feel the seer lightning going into my eyes.

  If I channeled my intention correctly, the pyramid-like shapes that surround me by default should show me my near-term future. Judging by the music they emit, they’re not scary, which is good, as I didn’t really expect them to be.

  Here we go.

  I reach out to the nearest one and fall into a vision.

  I ride the elevator down and exit the building through the front door.

  “Excuse me, miss?” A huge guy in a bespoke suit—without a Mandate aura surrounding him—steps into my path.

  Warily, I stop.

  “Mr. Gorin asked me to take you anywhere you need to go.” He nods at a limousine parked nearby. “Where are we headed?”

  “Actually, I’m just going for a stroll,” I lie, frantically thinking up a way to ditch this unwanted distraction.

  “I guess I don’t mind a nice walk,” the guy says. “Where are we headed?”

  Damn it.

  I can’t take him with me to the gates hub at JFK. Showing that to a non-Cognizant would probably cause the Mandate to kill me, but even if not, the guy will undoubtedly report to his boss what I’m doing, and Nero might puzzle out that I’ve discovered the map—something I’m not ready for him to know yet.
r />   I find myself back on my floor, my finger still on the elevator button.

  It’s as I suspected. Nero replaced Thalia with some rent-a-guard, and I won’t be able to shake him once he sees me.

  Well, as it just so happens, there’s another way out.

  Grinning at my deviousness, I take the stairs and exit the building in the back—where the super takes out the garbage.

  The ploy works. No one stops me.

  I summon a ride with my phone. If I hurry, I might even catch up with Kit, Ariel, and Felix before they enter the gate to Gomorrah.

  Sadly, I don’t come across my friends at JFK, nor do I see them in the hub.

  Oh well.

  That’s not why I’m here anyway.

  My target is the yellow gate.

  With great trepidation, I approach the start of the path to my father.

  I’m not really going to go right now, alone and unprepared. But I can see what would happen if I did go in—similar to what I just did with Nero’s guard.

  At least I hope I can.

  Convincing myself to enter the gate takes a bit more effort than telling myself to exit my building—especially given what Hekima told us about the dangers of the Otherlands at the last Orientation.

  It takes a while, but eventually, I believe I’m about to step into the gate. My foot practically itches to step forward.

  That’s when I go into Headspace instead.

  The ellipsoid shapes that surround me now are scary—proving that I did the right thing by doing this via a vision before going for real.

  Overflowing with excitement, I reach out to the nearest shape.

  Chapter Two

  Bracing myself, I leap into the bright yellow shimmer of the gate, and my breath catches as I emerge on the other side.

  If someone had built a large theme park on Jupiter and then blown it all up with a nuclear blast, this is what the ruins would look like a few thousand years later.

  The ground under my feet is cracked and covered with multicolored slime—as is the jagged half of the Ferris wheel in the distance. Same with the ruins of the other rides.

  I try to suck in a breath.

  What passes for air sears my respiratory system like a hot iron.

  My throat and lungs are in agony, and there’s an explosion of pain in my stomach.

  “Must go back,” I think, but my legs buckle under me as I faceplant on the ground.

  The fall knocks out what little air I had in my lungs, and my nerve endings combust like fireworks on the Fourth of July.

  Unable to control a single muscle, I convulse on the ground.

  A copper-flavored liquid fills my mouth and lungs, and with one final burst of agonizing pain, I fade into darkness.

  Chapter Three

  I come to my senses in the hub and back away from the yellow gate, my heart hammering frantically.

  That was awful. Beyond awful.

  Suppressing the urge to vomit from remembered agony, I turn and start walking back through the labyrinthian corridors.

  Thank goodness for my instincts and Dr. Hekima’s Orientation lessons. If it weren’t for his dire warnings about the dangers of the Otherlands, I might not have had the foresight to have this vision.

  Walking briskly, I ponder the implications of it, the key one being how I’m going to get to my father given this new information.

  Maybe I need to get myself a Hazmat suit? Will that help me survive whatever killed me in that vision?

  I guess I can buy one, then approach the gate and have another vision to find out.

  But what if there’s radiation, and I end up dying from cancer a few months or years later?

  At least I have some savings to invest in this venture—Nero recently awarded me a hundred grand for punching him in the face.

  Speaking of Nero, should I bring him into this?

  I dodged his guard because I didn’t think he’d help, but maybe I can get his help without his willing participation? After all, he has the map. Maybe he knows how to get to my father’s world through the path depicted on it. At the very least, he could tell me if the Hazmat suit idea is doomed.

  Or maybe he would help me?

  Sure.

  Nero helping me.

  Right after someone sells me the Brooklyn Bridge.

  Still, it’s worth a try.

  Exiting the secret section of the airport, I get a taxi to Nero’s office.

  “Wait for me,” I say to the driver when we arrive.

  He agrees, and I step out of the car and stare up at Nero’s building.

  I’m about to implement the same strategy as I did at my building and the yellow gate.

  Step one: decide to go talk to Nero. Step two: see a vision of how that would go.

  “I’m going to talk to Nero about the map,” I tell myself determinedly, over and over. When I feel convinced that I’m indeed about to go face my boss, I take in a calming breath and focus on getting into Headspace instead.

  Once there, I reach out to the closest shape.

  Nero’s blue-gray eyes widen when he spots me.

  “Here on your day off?” he says. “That’s a first.”

  “Yes, and I also managed to sneak by your Thalia replacement,” I say instead of a hello. “But don’t kill him,” I add hastily. “I’m just that sneaky.”

  He stands up and stalks toward me, his expression grim.

  “Don’t blame Felix for allowing me to leave, either,” I say nervously. “He relayed your wish for me to take it easy, but something urgent came up and I had to come see you in person.”

  “Oh?” Nero stops and lifts an eyebrow.

  “I’m here to talk about this,” I say and show him an image on my phone. “The map that leads to my biological father.”

  Chapter Four

  Nero’s face turns darker than the sky during a Category 5 hurricane.

  I step back and nervously check the time as I’ve trained myself to regularly do.

  He comes after me and grabs my wrist—preventing me from escaping. “I didn’t realize you got a chance to look at the map, let alone snap a picture,” he growls, and with the speed of a striking cobra, he snatches my phone from my hands.

  An angry squeeze later, the phone crumbles into tiny shards of plastic, silicone, and glass.

  “I have the image printed,” I croak out. “It’s also in the cloud. I’ve also emailed—”

  “You will not go there,” Nero says, enunciating every word. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “But he’s my father. What wouldn’t you risk for your family?”

  Something like sympathy flashes in Nero’s eyes for a moment—that and pain. Then it’s replaced by grim determination. “You’re here on Earth for a reason,” he says. “He wouldn’t want your help.”

  I open my mouth to reply when Nero moves with preternatural speed. Before I can get a single word out, I find myself draped over Nero’s shoulder.

  “How dare you? Put me down!”

  Nero readjusts his hold and walks toward the exit, carrying me like Santa Claus lugging his bag of gifts.

  Or more like Krampus, Santa’s evil opposite.

  I spice up my screams with some kicking and punching.

  Infuriatingly oblivious to my blows and escalating protestations, Nero walks out of his office.

  His assistant Venessa stares at the spectacle in speechless horror, and I can almost see the words “harassment” and “lawsuit” swirling through her brain.

  In a few strides, Nero reaches the elevator.

  Stepping in, he presses the button that would take us to the basement, and I triple the kicking, punching, and screaming, using all my remaining strength.

  But it’s to no avail.

  He carries me into the safe-like cell in the basement.

  “You owe me a hundred-and-thirty-five work hours.” He plops me on the soft cushions of the couch. “I want those to be consecutive. Meanwhile, I’m going to post guards in every hub on the planet
.”

  Turning around, he smashes his fist into the passcode screen I’d used to escape this place, and it joins my phone in technology heaven as he steps out.

  “Wait,” I yell, but the metal door to my prison screeches into place.

  Chapter Five

  I come to my senses next to my work building and back away from it as though it were infested with leprosy-carrying bedbugs.

  My intuition was spot on again. I can’t talk to Nero about the map—or let him find out that I know about it.

  I get back into the cab, and the ride home is a blur of angry ruminations where I imagine all sorts of cleverly scathing things I could’ve said to Nero in my vision.

  By the time we arrive, I calm down enough to sneak back into the building from the back, so that the nameless new bodyguard doesn’t learn that I was gone.