Catalyst: A Game of Gods Novel: Game of Gods, #4

By Rosetta M. Overman

Luna Caruso has spent her whole life in Sparta, North Carolina, and finds herself drowning in memories best left behind, and a deadend job she can only wish to move up from. In need of money her newspaper column can't offer, she opens her attic up as a room for rent. Little does she know who will take her up on the offer.

Luna is thrown into a pool of self-doubt and madness when Damien Hyde enters her life as her new tenant. A series of dark, twisted events follow, unraveling everything she believed about her family and herself. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rosetta M. Overman
• Release date: Oct 31, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386362814

Book preview

Prologue

The Seer

December 2, 2002

T

he chill in the air that day should have been a warning that there were strange things happening inside that little fortuneteller’s shop. I should’ve seen the harsh bite of bitter cold wind as foreshadowing about what I would experience inside, but I had never believed in things like that. Still, the creak of the rusty door gave me a foreboding feeling deep down in my bones, making my blood run cold, almost as though it was too thick to travel through my veins as my heart pounded overtime, but I managed to muster all my courage and shove my way into the incense filled room. 

My eyes lingered on the rusting bars that kept all the unwanted prowlers out during the dark of night. To me they were like prison bars, locking me in instead of keeping the bad out. My eyes tried to focus on the details of the room, but unlike the bright afternoon light, the sparse glow of a handful of candles did very little to illuminate my surroundings. Even the slatted rectangle of light that fell in through the now closed door was useless, showing me nothing but the green, threadbare rug that covered the floors under my feet. 

If it had been anyone else to dare me to come into this place, I would have told them where they could stick it, but it hadn’t been. Instead it was Herman. I hated that boy with a passion, so naturally I had to prove him wrong. I wasn’t afraid of the crazy old lady who dressed like a gypsy. Well, at least not on the outside. On the outside I was strong, head held high, shaking hands shoved in the pockets of the pretty blue coat my brother bought me for Christmas. 

Inside, I was shaking like a leaf, a high-pitched scream ringing in my ears. It wasn’t a real scream, just one from my childhood when I suffered from night terrors. Those hadn’t plagued me in ages, and although I knew they were bad, I never remembered what they were about. This was ten times worse, because it was real life and I had only ever seen the old lady once before. 

All around the room, hidden under a dense coat of smoke and darkness, were potions and talismans. One item particularly twinkled in the meager light of the room, catching me off guard every time it winked at me through the gloom. I walked over and examined it. To my surprise, it was just a rosary. The beads were a dark color, really cool to the touch, almost like ice. They slipped across my fingers as I inspected the rosary, taking in the way that the minimal light seemed to make the entire thing glow faintly. I wanted it.

Twenty-eight dollars was a lot for anyone and I wasn’t willing to part with that much money for one object, so I slipped over to the center of the room, bypassing some floral scented love potions that I had no interest in and stopping in front of a beaded curtain. Beyond the curtain was the room I was expected to have my reading in. I took a deep breath and readied myself for whatever was on the other side of those curtains.

Before I could even release the air in my lungs, a croaky voice called, Come in, my child, I will not bite. Hesitantly, I pulled the curtains aside, listening to them as they made a noise like rain falling heavily into a pond. My feet padded against the bare wood of the floor, echoing as though I were in a cave and not a building.

I– My voice cracked, and I cleared my throat, looking around at the better lit room. There were hundreds of candles in all different shapes, sizes and colors. I’m here for a reading... I allowed my voice to trail off from its high-pitched whisper and simply walked across the room, standing behind the chair on the opposite side of the table from the elderly woman. 

There was no crystal ball as I suspected there would be, no bright purple walls, instead they were painted an extremely dark color that could have been black. I felt as though I’d either entered a void or fallen into the night sky. The candles were like twinkling stars against their dark backdrop. It was so overwhelming I felt myself swaying to the same unheard melody as the candle flames flickered. 

The old woman stared at me curiously, a strange light in her luminescent green eyes. She smiled her crooked tooth smile at me and motioned vaguely for me to have a seat in the chair I was standing behind. I obliged, smiling at her uncertainly. 

You feel it, the woman said. She didn’t sound too surprised. It was almost like she expected something like this to happen. Maybe not now, but sooner or later. She said on the local news that her fortune telling was hardly an exact science when it came to the precise moment when something was going to happen. No one else has before you.

What is it? I whispered, feeling like the sound of my voice would shatter something in such a strange environment. 

It does not matter, the woman whispered back. I had the sneaking suspicion that she was teasing me, but more in a maternal way than an unfriendly way. Cards or palm?

My teeth bit into my lips as I thought about that question. Palm? It came out as a hushed inquiry. The woman laughed.

Very well. She held out her wrinkled hand, palm up, and waited patiently as I retrieved my own trembling one from my jacket pocket. Her skin was cool to the touch as I slid the back of my right hand into the palm of hers. She smiled reassuringly before staring down at my hand like it held all the secrets to life. According to her, it did hold all the secrets of mine. 

I watched as her surprisingly dark brows knitted together in either concern or concentration. My free hand clenched in my pocket, sweat making it cold and clammy inside the moth-eaten glove that encased it. 

Suddenly her head snapped up and her eyes burned into my own. I jumped backwards from shock, metal chair legs scraping loudly against the wooden floor. I was wrong, the noise wouldn’t break anything. It made the air seem heavier as the woman – Delilah, that was her name – as Delilah stared at me with eyes far too keen and soulless to be her own. 

Help me, she croaked, but it wasn’t her voice. It was the pleading voice of a man. That wasn’t supposed to happen. I retrieved my other glove and shoved my fingers into it, hoping that covering the exposed flesh might do something. The same hopeless eyes stared at me pleadingly as her fingers wrapped around my wrist, scorching me with their heat even through my gloves. Please, I need you, the man whispered through borrowed lips. 

A shiver went down my spine around the same time that Delilah’s eyes went back to normal. Smiling at me like she wasn’t just possessed or whatever, she asked, Are you going to help him, Luna? You are the means to his salvation. I could do nothing but blink at her rapidly. You are the catalyst.

I leaped to my feet, causing the chair to tilt and topple to the floor. A cloud of dust flew up around me. Coughing, I rushed toward the door. Take the rosary with you, dear, Delilah called loudly. He would want you to have it. The words were spoken softly, almost to herself, yet I still heard them. I was determined to leave, stalking angrily toward the door of the shop when there was a bright flash off to the side. 

Unable to leave them for some odd reason, I snatched the rosary beads from the shelf. They were still cold as I brought them around my neck. The moment they settled on my skin, they began to burn with an intense, dry heat. It was a surprisingly pleasant sensation. 

I walked out the door and faced my friends and Herman. 

So, what did she say? Candice asked. 

Rolling my eyes and playing it off, I replied, You know, the usual. You will meet a tall, dark stranger. I wiggled my fingers dramatically. I was good at this. Acting tough. All my friends laughed, and we walked off leaving Herman behind, none of them knowing the truth. I could tell that Candice knew I was lying though. She always knew.

Chapter One

Midsummer Cleaning

A

lock of golden-brown hair that had managed to shimmy its way out of my hair tie fell across my face as I stretched my arms up over my head. Maybe this hadn’t been such a great idea. Who knew so much junk could accumulate in an attic over six years? If I had, there wouldn’t be a sign out in front of my house saying I was trying to rent out my attic, that much I did know. 

Eyes sweeping over the boxes scattered around, waiting to be dropped off at a charity store, I started to feel a little empty. Did I really want to get rid of the bassinet that my parents bought for me? The toys and baby clothes that sat up here for years without anyone to wear them? Of course, it wasn’t like I had a man around to have a baby with anyway, and without one of them, there was no need to even imagine myself with a child. Plus, my job took up enough of my time. Newspaper columns don’t write themselves. 

A laugh drew my attention to the pretty blonde I’d called my best friend since I knew the meaning of the words. She held up a Barbie cell phone and winked at me. Do you remember when we traded these things with your brothers for their walkie-talkies? she asked, a wide grin tugging at her lips. You told them that the phones could take them to a different dimension and it would be just like on those sci-fi shows they liked to watch so much. 

We both chuckled at the memory, but my attention was soon drawn by the sharp edge of a book against my hand. Looking down, I realized it was a photo album. With a snort, I lifted it so she could see. This is that life book Mama was working on for me, I mumbled, blowing six years’ worth of dust off the front and flipping through the stages of my life. I can’t believe I did that to my hair. She leaned over my shoulder, trying not to laugh at the God-awful perm that frizzed out on top of my head in one of my freshman photos. 

With a snort, she replied, High school was a blast with you, Lune. You were so crazy with your looks. I don’t think there’s anything you didn’t try. A grimace crossed my face as I nodded in agreement. Yeah, there wasn’t much I hadn’t tortured my hair with and the dead straight locks still cursed me silently for it once a month or so. 

What about you? I asked, glancing at her out of the corner of my eye. Ms. Homecoming Queen 2003? I sniggered at the memory even as I turned the page to show her the picture of the pair of us. She had a perm almost as bad as mine was our freshman year. Don’t knock my choices when you’ve tried the same things, Candice. 

She rolled her eyes at me, a thoughtful expression crossing her face. That was the year you were stuck in the middle between Vinnie and Frankie, wasn’t it? Like I was about to take a walk that long down memory lane. 

Waving a hand at her like she was a pesky mosquito and not a human being, I turned back to the book. Keep looking through those boxes. Even without her reply I knew she was giving me that pity look that she always did when she brought up my old boyfriends. She’d never really understood my outlook on relationships, and I wasn’t about to try to enlighten her again. 

As if they had a mind of their own, my fingers flipped past my high school graduation and my disgustingly short first marriage to the pages that held the first two years of college before everything petered out. No children, no more family photos, nothing. Slamming the covers shut, I put the book in a box of things I wanted to keep. It fell with a hollow thud that matched the feeling that was beginning to grow in my chest. 

With a sigh, I continued looking through everything there was up here, getting rid of most of it with the same amount of disregard as I’d tossed it up here with in the first place. Candice tried reasoning with me a few times. The drapes from the nursery I decorated but never got a chance to use. The cute stuffed animals that would probably make someone else’s kid smile since there was no one here to play with them. 

We need to hurry, I informed her, glancing at the clock I found in one of the boxes and put up on the wall after fixing the time and a quick battery change. My feet and lower legs throbbed numbly, protesting the fact that I was still sitting on them after hours of working up here. The delivery man is supposed to bring the furniture in about an hour. 

Looking over at me, she arched a dyed brow. There are only two more boxes and then we’ll get down to the fun stuff. A grin lit her face while I wondered silently how the hell she found cleaning to be a fun process. If anything, it was tedious and time consuming. Her nose scrunched a bit as brown eyes moved over my attic with a professional’s eye. Leave it to me to befriend a woman who would one day become a well-known interior designer. When was the last time you dusted this place? 

Lifting and dropping one shoulder in a lazy shrug, I responded, Probably six years ago. The attic wasn’t my favorite place, probably because of all the things that had occurred up here, but I wasn’t about to mention the past to her and bring about bad memories for the both of us. There were some things that just shouldn’t be said aloud. 

It shows, she replied, sifting through a box of old reports and a few columns from The Spartan Times, the old paper I edited back in high school. There were a few sniggers coming from her direction, probably about something I wrote. Either that or the stuff that was booted out by the editor before me because it was too controversial. What wasn’t these days? God, no wonder you managed to make so many people cry. 

With that said, I didn’t want to know what she was looking at, so I chose to ignore her, something she understood simply meant I wasn’t interested in the topic. What most people would take as rude behavior, she understood to be my personality in general. It was nice knowing I didn’t have to pretend to be someone I wasn’t with her. If only there were men in the world like that. 

The last two boxes done and several to take down and pack away into the back of my brother’s truck, we dragged everything down the narrow steps carefully and left it sitting in the hallway. Hopefully my brothers would come up and realize that there was a mess of boxes that needed to be taken out. It wasn’t like they were easy to miss. 

Armed with cleaning supplies from the closet right next to the door that hid the attic stair from view, we surveyed the room. With a groan, I finally decided, This is going to be a pain in the ass. 

Candice looked at me, lips twitching. Don’t say that! It’ll all be over before you know it. Now, move that clock off the wall again so that we can clean the walls. They’ve got more dust on them than the floors do. It was a disturbingly true statement. 

Walking away from her, I stood on my toes and took the clock off the nail that was conveniently already hammered into the sheetrock, walking it to the top of the steps so that it wouldn’t be in the way. The bare bulb hanging from the ceiling did nothing to light up the dim room, so I walked over and pulled the heavy blackout curtains back only to have them rip from the curtain rod and fall to the ground at my feet in a dry rotted heap of old velvet. 

Scrunching my nose, I marched the fabric to the steps and tossed it down, watching as it tumbled over the last few steps to sprawl out in the hallway as far as it could without encountering any of the boxes. The front door opened shortly thereafter, and two sets of heavy footsteps pounded up the stairs to the second floor. 

Hey, Luna, one of my brothers called, sticking his head around the corner so he could peer up at me. You want us to take all these boxes away? 

Nodding, I replied, Just the ones that are marked, Theo. If it doesn’t say it’s leaving, then it’s not. 

Stepping back into the room, I spent the next hour inhaling dust mites and cleaning products as we scrubbed the place from top to bottom, stopping occasionally when Candice would scream, and I would have to valiantly step in and murder a spider with my Converse of Doom. In the end, even the spiders were scared to creep out of the shadowy corners and the window looked like real glass instead of having the somewhat transparent quality of a plastic milk jug. 

Unfortunately, the work wasn’t over. Now there was furniture to move and neither of my brothers were stepping up to help with the heavy lifting, which wasn’t nearly as shocking as it should have been. They were lazier than hibernating bears and harbored the same temperament when disturbed. 

With a good-natured smile, Candice grabbed onto one end of the double bed I managed to get at a reasonable price at the local thrift store while I took the other side. We somehow managed to walk the bed up the stairs without beating it against the walls, even though the two of us were walking like drunkards and complaining the entire time. It looked nice pushed up underneath the big square window with the clock on the wall and I was almost cruel enough to leave it that way, but my parents taught me to be hospitable and since whoever wound up in this room would be paying me, I figured it would be best that I give them more than just the bare minimum requirement.

S

o," Candice panted as we looked around the attic, admiring our work. There was a desk with a computer that used to occupy my in-home office before I updated to a