Cassidy's Touch: Cassidy's Touch, #1

By Paris Brandon

Her gift is a double edged sword. Will it be enough to save a cursed bootlegger from becoming a demon's prize?

The least of reality show host Cassidy Spencer's worries is banishing the ghost of a handsome bootlegger who disappeared after being accused of murdering his best friend's fiancée. According to an expert, her ghost isn't a ghost and if she doesn't use her psychometric ability to find his body before the witch who cursed him does, he could end up enslaved by a demon for eternity.

Chance Coraggio doesn't remember anything before he could walk through walls and that includes the crazy woman telling him he's been asleep for nearly a century. The life he should've lived has been stolen. All the people he has ever loved are dead—and it turns out the crazy woman isn't as crazy as he'd hoped.

But waking Chance is only half the battle. Now, both are bound by blood to a demon's curse. To break free, they must find out who is coming for them and why. Because the only reason for a sleeping curse that has lasted almost a century lies somewhere in a past that Chance can't remember. 

Book 1 in the Cassidy's Touch series

*Approximately 36k words

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paris Brandon
• Release date: Oct 8, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386730675

Paris Brandon

USA Today bestselling author Paris Brandon writes contemporary, paranormal, erotic and historical romance, throwing in a little mystery and suspense for good measure. She can be found most days bent over her keyboard creating worlds where sleeping beauty turns out to be a cursed bootlegger or an outlaw shifter is forced to go on the run with the assassin tasked with killing her. When not dreaming up stories featuring heroes who aren’t intimidated by strong heroines, she can be found searching through antique and thrift stores for vintage treasures, or communing with nature, which is code for sitting on the patio with a cup of tea and a good book. And as with any activity, chocolate is usually involved.

Book preview

Cassidy’s Touch

Her gift is a double edged sword. Will it be enough to save a cursed bootlegger from becoming a demon’s prize?

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The least of reality show host Cassidy Spencer’s worries is banishing the ghost of a handsome bootlegger who disappeared after being accused of murdering his best friend’s fiancée. According to an expert, her ghost isn’t a ghost and if she doesn’t use her psychometric ability to find his body before the witch who cursed him does, he could end up enslaved by a demon for eternity.

Chance Coraggio doesn’t remember anything before he could walk through walls and that includes the crazy woman telling him he’s been asleep for nearly a century. The life he should’ve lived has been stolen. All the people he has ever loved are dead—and it turns out the crazy woman isn’t as crazy as he’d hoped.

But waking Chance is only half the battle. Now, both are bound by blood to a demon’s curse. To break free, they must find out who is coming for them and why. Because the only reason for a sleeping curse that has lasted almost a century lies somewhere in a past that Chance can’t remember. 

Chapter 1

Breathe in. Breathe out. Imagine the audience naked. Her agent’s advice had never failed her. The studio lights came up and Cassidy Spencer pasted a smile on her face that lasted through her first two readings, a man wanting to know if the antique baseball card collection he’d found had belonged to his father, and two estranged sisters fighting over ownership of their grandmother’s silver tea service.

Thankfully, one touch was all she’d needed to see that granny had been the last to handle the teapot, and she’d wanted the set to go to a distant niece. The cards had been a bit more difficult. There had been decades of owners and handlers to sift through before she’d gotten to the man who’d sold his prize possession to pay his son’s medical bills.

Unfortunately, the emotional signatures of anyone who had handled the objects possessed a corresponding energy that added to what she’d been absorbing after dealing with the shooting schedule of her Chicago-based reality series, Cassidy’s Touch, for the past two weeks. Her hands shook with the effort to control the static current that was starting to make her head pound.

One more reading and she was finished until her new contract was negotiated.

She took a deep breath and brushed her fingertips over the two-carat, marquise cut, blue-white diamond engagement ring nestled in the carefully crafted folds of midnight-dark velvet. Displayed on the low, satin-draped table separating her from her final guest, the sparkling gem drew appreciative gasps from the audience as the studio lights brightened. A close-up was provided, via a screen only they could see.

The last bit of stagecraft gave her a few moments to puzzle over her final guest. She’d been trying to place him since he’d walked onto the set a few minutes ago and sat down on the couch opposite her.

To heighten audience anticipation, nothing about the last guest was ever revealed; not their name, occupation or reason they wanted an object read. Tonight’s guest had his own edge-of-his-seat anticipation going on, but his identity eluded her.

Dressed in black from his turtleneck and leather jacket to his loafers; his teeth were bared in a rigid smile that was as fake as his spray-on tan. She gave him points for not coloring his gray crew cut, but who the hell wore a leather jacket during a July heat wave?

Her fingers tingled when the warm, gold band revealed the image of the man seated across from her. No surprise there. He appeared to have an emotional investment that was making him uneasy, but she didn’t need to be psychic to guess whatever information he was seeking lay deeper.

She closed her eyes and slid her fingers over the jewel that warmed with the heat of her hand as she rolled and pressed. Cradling the ring in her palm, she curled her fingers, and waited for an image to unfold.

It came in a blur that sharpened slowly. Santa Claus decked out in camouflage and wearing a jeweler’s loupe would have made her smile except for the trepidation that colored his greed. Her instincts were screaming the moment before the image faded. A violent jolt burned its way up her arm and sizzled at the base of her skull. Exploded in a flash of light that was there one second and gone the next as the scene unfolded.

The ring’s owner had still been alive and screaming, panicking because she couldn’t remove it fast enough. The middle-aged blonde woman had tried to jerk her plump hand away because she’d known the instant her assailant had decided his knife was the solution.

The man who’d cut off her finger was tall and skinny. The detailed tattoo of a snake slithered across the back of his right hand, its forked tongue curling around his gnarled forefinger. The ring hadn’t gone over the first joint, but he’d placed it there to admire before dropping his bloody treasure into a small, dark bag.

He turned as if just remembering his hysterical victim and proceeded, without hesitation to stab her over and over, counting each wound as if he’d been meeting a quota.

Cassidy blinked and struggled to open her fist before the energy from the savage encounter melded it shut. Her stomach heaved, and her hands began to shake. She dropped the ring back into its midnight-dark velvet nest before the fingers of her right hand curled until they formed a cramped fist, nails biting into her palm.

The woman’s terrified screams were still ringing in her ears when she finally looked up—and remembered why her guest seemed familiar. Jacob Atwell, the attorney for Brent Collier, the murdered woman’s husband. The high-profile case had sparked a media-frenzy several months ago, along with most, but apparently not all of the grisly details of her murder.

Across from her, Atwell was shaking almost as badly as she was. His client had been living under a cloud of suspicion, all of his movements documented by the press and probably the police.

The man who cut the ring off her finger is tall and thin—very thin. He has a tattoo on his right hand. His teeth are bad, she whispered. Blackened stubs in a slack, wistful grin. His total disconnection from the violence he’d perpetrated as he’d admired Marian Collier’s engagement ring was more chilling than anything she’d ever experienced.

Her guest wasn’t quick enough to cover his relief. His client was muscular; softening around the edges but still much shorter, not to mention healthier than his wife’s killer.

She had no doubt that the audience’s gasps were real. They’d been on the edge of their seats since she’d groaned.

Reading any kind of violence was debilitating. The first sparks of dark energy skittered across her skin as shards of light exploded behind her right eye.

Could you identify him? Atwell slid to the edge of his seat as if his determination would produce a quicker response.

She managed a nod. Speaking was out of the question.

By the time she was able to focus, she saw more than one horrified stare and the director, thankfully, cut away to a commercial. The audience might have gotten a reprieve, but she hadn’t. Everything was too bright and too loud.

The stronger the emotions associated with any object, the stronger her physical reactions, and violence produced the worst. Pain bloomed behind her right eye. Not a good sign.

Her director, Owen Kane, whispered into her mic that he’d use a taped ending. She nodded and ignored Atwell’s somewhat chagrined offer of a snow-white handkerchief. Her nose had started to bleed. She covered the evidence with a tissue she pulled from her pocket and made it to her dressing room without anyone stopping her.

They were all probably still patting each other on the back. This was the kind of segment that would give Cassidy’s Touch the ratings bump the producer had been talking about at their meeting last week.

She should have figured out something was up when he’d reminded her she was contractually obligated to reveal any information an object contained. She’d naïvely assumed her producer, David Billings, had taken her warning about violent readings seriously. If they expected to pull this kind of crap again, she seriously needed to reevaluate her career plan.

It wasn’t as if she had a multitude of options. She’d never been very successful at anything that hadn’t included trading on her ability. Before Cassidy’s Touch, she’d built a solid reputation on the club circuit, but the hours and traveling, combined with the physical toll she experienced with each reading, had been exhausting. The television show consumed fewer hours but the trade-off would be wondering what her producer might blindside her with next.

What could be worse than viewing a murder through the eyes of a psychopath and his victim? She didn’t want to think about it, but she might not have much choice.

Keeping the house and antique business her aunt had left her hinged on her ability to manage the old Victorian’s upkeep, and if she left the show that would be next to impossible.

She’d been dragging her feet, delaying a decision until she could get through the grief of losing her Aunt Maude, the one person she’d loved most in this world and the only family member willing to take on a ten-year-old orphan with a chip on her shoulder and an ability that had made most people nervous.

The old money pit really was too large for just one person. Maybe it was finally time to sell.

Maude would have understood. Maude always understood.

Her phone buzzed. Two texts; one from her agent, Stuart.

‘r u ok?’

The other from detective Ryan Nichols, one of Chicago’s finest.

‘What were you thinking?’

She was thinking Ryan had taken longer than most to wonder if she’d broken her word and used him for inside information. She was thinking the husband was always the prime suspect and the case Ryan had probably been building might be falling apart.

There wasn’t any explanation that would have satisfied her ex-boyfriend. Getting involved with a cop had been insane. From the distance of six months, she’d realized her grief over Maude’s death had made her vulnerable. All it had taken to lower her guard was a bottle of tequila, some bad judgment and an adrenaline-junkie cop who hadn’t seemed to mind her ability.

For just a little while, she hadn’t feel alone, and then she’d watched him grow suspicious, carefully removing anything he’d handled and double-checking her apartment