Dark Legacy Excerpts–Dive In!!!

To win Dream Flutters Jewelry and more XOXO and Coach Purses and Excessories in September, you’ll have to keep up with the excerpts I’ve posted so far. So, kind and generous online friend that I am, here they are, all in one place ;o)

More contest news September 1st–including an exclusive offer on Dorechsterpub.com.

Until then, read and enjoy all things Dark Legacy ;o)

Dark Legacy Excerpts

Start with the prologue from the website!!!

Important stuff, because our heroine’s problems started a long, long time ago… Generations ago, you might say.

Meet Maddie Temple next…

Maddie’s breath misted in the frozen morning air. She’d been up for hours. It felt like she’d been standing there forever. Shivering in the hospital parking lot. Still not ready to go inside. Not ready to pretend for another day that her life wasn’t falling apart.

Anger bubbled beneath the calm that people expected from Dr. Madeline Temple, ER Trauma Specialist. Her twin’s anger and insanity had come only in the dreams at first. But echoes of Sarah owned more of Maddie’s waking mind every day. No matter how hard Maddie fought, her comatose sister’s demented memories kept taking more.

Or maybe it was Maddie’s own mind. Maybe it was simply her turn. Like Sarah and her mother, this was her destiny. Maybe that was the prophecy Phyllis had been so terrified of. Maddie had managed to do some good with her life. It was time for the darkness to take the rest. Could it really be that simple? That hopeless?

She squared her shoulders against the ridiculous thought.

She was a grown woman, not a scared teenage girl. She didn’t believe in curses and phantom prophecies. Besides, she had real problems to deal with. Problems like Dr. Jarred Keith, who’d become St. Christopher’s Chief of Psychiatry less than a year ago. Notorious for keeping to himself, he’d surprised her by wanting to take their casual dates to a level she hadn’t been ready for. He’d found the calm, sweet Maddie she’d been too charming to resist. She’d told him she needed to stay focused on her career. Then she’d stopped returning his calls. Ignored his repeated voice mails. Until last night.

Last night, Jarred hadn’t left her a choice. He’d said he was sorry that it had come to this. He was sorry, but they’d find a way to clean up her mess of a life together.

Right.

Shrugging off a shiver, Maddie marched up the granite steps that led to the wall of windows fronting St. Christopher Memorial Hospital. Focus on what’s important. Forget about everything else. She had a residency to save. After scraping and fighting for years to get where she was, she refused to let everything slip through her fingers. She wasn’t losing herself now. She wasn’t weak like her sister.

Maddie would handle Jarred Keith. Then she’d handle her nightmares, the shadows from her past, and her family’s penchant for instability—alone. Whatever it took to not let the darkness win, the way it had with Sarah…

Then, a Closer Look at Jarred Keith…

There’s something you’re not telling me.” Jarred was staring at Maddie from his expensive chair, behind his expensive desk. Maddie stared back, swallowing the instinct to trust him. To invite him deeper into her messed up life. Into her mind.

Expensive suited the man. But not as well as the warm, inviting clutter that softened the periphery of his office. His reputation with hospital staff bordered on hard ass. But Maddie had always known better. Even if she hadn’t, the sight before her would have confirmed what she’d felt the first day they’d met. The walls of Keith’s office were covered with a hodgepodge of diplomas and civic awards. Small prints of impressionists’ work. Those of modern realists. There was even a sampling of what looked like children’s Crayola creations. His bookcases were filled floor to ceiling with volumes on varied topics. Fiction and nonfiction, aligned with less and less care the easier the titles were to reach.

Jarred’s was an ordered but approachable mind. Intelligent but sensitive to subtlety and the value of indulging the imagination. Maddie had liked that about him–his logic and his no-bullshit approach to taking life as it came. The softness underneath the reserve he kept firmly in place for others. She’d liked it a lot. She’d felt drawn to him, first just a little. So little, she’d thought she was imagining the intensity of that instant connection. Just like she’d imagined all the other weird things that had started happening around the same time. But before she’d known it, Jarred had gotten inside. With each smile or his jokes or his gentle touch, and the way it all had eased the chaos brewing in her mind.

Not a good thing as it turned out. Not now that her job was on the line, and he had the final say. Not when she found herself wanting to reveal everything she didn’t understand herself to a man who held the keys to her professional future.

“According to you and your bosses–” Maddie willed away her blank stare, settling for a smile that was closer to You’re imagining things than Help me! “–there’s plenty I haven’t told Dr. Yates.”

“I’m not Dr. Yates. And I don’t like the hospital board putting me in the middle of this any more than you do.”

“But here you are.” And there his voice had been on her machine last night, saying that her administration-mandated therapy sessions would be conducted in his office from now on. That accepting his help was her only shot at salvaging her future.

“You seem almost desperate to disengage this morning,” he said. “If I didn’t know you well enough to be worried, I’d be intrigued.”

“Intrigued?” Actually, he was a smug son-of-a-bitch, just like everyone had said. “Is that what shrinks are calling it now, when you stare at someone as if they’re a juicy journal article you can’t wait to write up?”

Before Sarah’s nightmares began haunting Maddie, sparring with Jarred had been a guilty pleasure. First over a quick bite in the hospital cafeteria. Then when they ran into each other, grabbing coffee from one of the machines sprinkled about the building. Dr. Untouchable had finally admitted that he’d been inventing ways to accidentally hook up with her. They’d moved on to late night or early morning meals at a diner near her apartment, before or after one of Maddie’s grueling ER shifts. Out of sight of any St. Chris staff who might find it gossip-worthy to catch them together. Because just six months ago, the male-dominated realm of emergency medicine had been Maddie’s playground. She’d finally made it. She was home free. No more worries.

Then Jarred had started to notice the bizarre things Maddie had hidden from everyone else. How she’d found herself eating food she hated but didn’t remember ordering. She’d say something out of character–something rude and hostile like Sarah used to say. But when Jarred commented on it, Maddie wouldn’t remember whatever had shocked him.

“So,” he said, “you made things difficult with Matt Yates because he was treating you like just another patient. Well, you’re not just another patient to me, Maddie,” he leaned forward, “but you’re not giving me anything to work with either.”

“Maybe I’m trying to keep you on your toes.” She took her own stab at smug. “We can’t have such an important doctor wasting his time.”

“Is that what I’ll be doing? Is that what I was doing every time I tried to get the most intriguing woman I’ve ever met to open up about what was bothering her?”

Jarred flashed his Harrison Ford, circa Raiders of the Lost Ark, smirk.

For a moment, Maddie forgot how to breathe.

“Do your bosses know how inappropriate this arrangement is?” she countered.

“Do you want me to remove myself from the situation? Because if Yates had had his way, that call last night would have been your termination notice. Not me sticking my neck out to give you one more chance.”

“Don’t tell me you’re pissed because I’m not thanking you for this!”

“Something’s changed.” Jarred did that head cocking thing shrinks do when they think they have all the answers. “Since the last time we spoke. When was that, three weeks ago? Things have gotten even worse, and I remember offering to admit you to psych back then.”

“I had a long night. Nothing new.”

“Yates said you haven’t been sleeping at all.”

“Like I said, nothing new.”

“Are the dreams that bad?”

“Who said anything about dreams?” Sarah’s rebellious, eat-shit smile spread across Maddie’s face. Maddie coughed, covering her twin’s sass with the back of her hand.

“Okay.” Jarred steepled his fingers in front of him, elbows resting on his desk. “Nightmares, then. Fantasies. Whatever’s going on in your head while you’re staring at the ceiling all night. Can the bullshit, Temple. I’ve read Yates’ files. Not that I needed to. When we met, you were the most professional, best-liked resident on staff. What’s been messing with you so badly the last few months that you have to be supervised when you see patients? Why wouldn’t you talk to me about it back when I would have helped you prevent all of this?”

It wasn’t the question that jerked Maddie straighter in her chair. It was the way the warmth in Jarred’s voice washed over her. How the worry in his gaze felt too good, deep inside where she secretly needed him. Craved him, like an addict who couldn’t resist the seductive pull of something she knew would destroy her. The man saw her–really saw her. And his undivided attention was as dangerous as it was warm…comforting…flooding her mind…

Making her skin crawl!

Because sometimes, it was like she could read Jarred back–the way Sarah had been able to feel people toward the end. Not just with intuition or empathy or a little brush of minds. But all out becoming the person’s feelings. Taking them in. Making them herself, and her them. Sometimes it had felt like Jarred was in Maddie’s mind, sharing his secrets while he dug for hers.

These days, everyone at St. Chris was happy to keep her freak show at a distance. But Super Shrink wanted in. So much for bluffing her way through this session the way she had with Yates.

“If my career is over,” she challenged, “just man up and say it, then leave me the hell alone.”

Eight years of college packed into six, most of it while Maddie was still a teenager. Her internship. Two years of residency. The only identity that would ever fit. It couldn’t really be gone.

Jarred smoothed the rumpled end of his tie.

“It doesn’t have to be.” He flipped open a file–a red one. Yates’ had always been blue. “Tell me about your twin.”

Maddie was out of her chair and halfway to the door before she realized she’d moved. She reached for the doorknob.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Jarred’s warning and a flash of last night’s nightmare froze her in place. “The people who pay my salary want my diagnosis to jive with Yates’. And they want it soon. I’ve stalled them by not letting on how much I already know about what’s happening to you. I argued that you were at the top of your med school class. You aced your Boards, years before most doctors finish their coursework. You’re a diagnostic prodigy. Innately gifted beyond your colleagues’ ability to comprehend. You deserve one final chance. But you’re falling apart emotionally, Dr. Temple. You’ve become a threat to your patients. You’ve lost all ability to focus in the ER. So, you can drown in denial and keep fighting alone and fail. Or, you can accept my help figuring out what’s really going on. Which is it going to be?”

Maddie saw a malevolent raven in her mind. Her father’s car exploding. An evil tree swaying. She imagined her fingers around the raven’s throat, squeezing until she was free of the darkness. Really free.

Die! Sarah’s voice demanded. He has to die!
Jarred wheezed.

Maddie spun back as he fought to inhale. He stared at her, as if he didn’t want to believe what was happening, or that she had anything to do with it. Through the shadows fogging her mind, she reached for what was left of who she’d dreamed she could be. She forced herself to focus on Jarred’s warmth, not the bitter cold of Sarah’s insanity…

Things Are Getting Spookier…

She was at the door. The door Jarred had left open, as if he’d sensed she’d feel safer that way. She yanked it wider. Stared at the floor. Waited for him to catch a clue. Jarred walked closer, but stopped in front of her instead of leaving. She could feel him staring. Wondering. Leaning in.

She flinched away.

Whimpered.

Relax…The word, in Jarred’s voice this time, echoed through her mind.

 ”So, it’s not just when you touch a patient?” he said out loud.

She left him and the door behind.

“Get out!” Her body was shaking. She couldn’t fall apart like this in front of him.

“If being around other people is this difficult, how do you handle the ER?”

His voice was so soothing, brushing across her frazzled nerves. Where had soothing come from? She wanted smug back. She needed smug back.

“You want to tell me what happened with that patient today?” he pressed. “Don’t bother saying it was nothing, because I felt it, too. At least some of it. Like I felt your anger during our appointment when I tried to make you talk about your twin. Even if you don’t want to analyze what’s happening to you, I do. Whatever this is, I’m a part of it now. Accept that and—”

He paused when she stumbled farther out of reach. Away from the instinct to trust him. To let this dangerous, tempting man even further in. To scream her confusion and keep on screaming until something, anything made sense.

“Okay.” He slowly followed her across the room. “Let’s talk about tomorrow, then.”

The hallway bathroom was just behind her. The kitchen to her right, and beyond it the side door of her corner, ground-floor apartment. She’d left the deadbolt off. If she ran fast enough—

“Where will you go?” he asked, as if he knew what she was thinking.

Don’t run from me, Maddie, his thoughts pleaded. Thoughts that she shouldn’t be able to feel so clearly—not without Sarah there to fuel the kind of emotional connection Maddie had never achieved on her own.

“Stop doing that,” she begged.

“Doing what?”

She sprinted for the back door. Hard hands yanked her to a halt from behind. Jarred’s breath brushed her cheek. Needs from long ago, from when she’d been sixteen and still let herself need, rushed back.

No more barriers.

No more safe.

No more careful.

“Talk to me, Temple,” Jarred insisted.

Trust me just this once, was his unspoken plea.

“No!” Maddie lifted a fist to her pounding head. Pressed her other hand to her churning stomach. It was too much. All of it, too much. His thoughts. Her patient’s. Sarah’s…

None of them should be in her head.

“You’re making yourself sick.” He steered her toward the couch and let her slide down until she crumpled into her snowy white blankets and pillows. “Just like at the hospital this morning when I thought you were going to beat Britton to a pulp, which I personally would have enjoyed watching. But then you almost passed out in the hallway.”

You’re making me sick.”

Jarred and the thought of what it must have been like for her twin to go through this their entire childhood. Always open. No way out. The panic attacks and the constant fear. It had driven Sarah over the edge. Maddie panted. Swallowed. Pulled the blanket to her chin. She was so cold.

“You’re…” She had no idea what to say next.

“How am I making you sick?” Jarred planted his hands on his hips, just above the age-worn jeans he always wore beneath his lab coat. “I’m offering a friend the courtesy of my best professional advice. But you seem convinced there’s nothing I can do to help you.”

There was nothing anyone could do, Maddie finally accepted. The nightmares were going to win. The guilt and the pain. The confusion. Feeling and knowing things she shouldn’t. Other people’s things. The same darkness Sarah had fallen into—the sister no one at St. Chris but this man knew about. Because Maddie had been so determined to believe that there was no legacy of gifts the women in her family couldn’t control. No spiraling need to—

Die!

And Spookier…

“…You didn’t just see what happened when Sarah began to lose herself,” Jarred pressed. He couldn’t believe he was entertaining such an outlandish explanation. But somehow he knew he was right. “You…felt what happened to your twin, didn’t you? Like you felt that patient’s injuries this morning.”

Maddie’s fingers slid from his arms. Her body fell slack as she withdrew into that mind he wanted—needed—to understand.

“Somehow,” he added, “you survived what happened to your family. You thrived. Excelled, after a trauma that should have devastated you. But something happened along the way. At some point over the last year, you stopped being able to deal with people and their feelings. With the patients and doctors constantly streaming in and out of the ER. And…” It was difficult to believe. “…No matter how much you’ve resisted my help or Yates’, I think you’ve known what’s been happening since it started. Because…you felt the same thing happen before—to Sarah.”

“I c-c-can’t do this.” She trembled as she stood. Instead of bolting for the door again she slowly headed for the kitchen, her expression a devastating blank. “I tried. I thought I could take the control back. Focus. Get better so I could get back to work… But I can’t. I…need… I need to…”

Jarred could hear her teeth chattering. But nothing showed on her face when she turned toward him. That degree of internalization could rip a mind apart.

“Stop trying to handle this on your own.” He reached his feet, too, but he didn’t shadow her this time. He’d already pushed too hard. Too much. Be her doctor, man. Keep her safe. Nothing else matters right now. “Whatever condition you and your twin share, it’s better to face it than keep hiding. Once we’re sure what we’re dealing with, we can figure out a solution.”

“We?”

“Together,” he promised.

Jarred had no business promising her anything—not when it was clear that his involvement was part of what was terrifying Maddie. He should leave and transfer her case to another doctor who would monitor and manage it more professionally. He’d almost convinced himself to do just that, screw his selfish compulsion to keep this woman close, when Maddie drew a revolver from the drawer of the cabinet she’d stopped beside.

Fuck!

“Temple…” He breathed her name calmly, while he mentally kicked his own ass for not hospitalizing her when he’d had the chance. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I don’t want to…” She stared at the gun, gone from him.

He felt it, as if she were someone else, somewhere else, and the nightmarish image before him was just a dream. She didn’t see him slide closer as she lifted the deadly monster. Turned it. Pointed it at her head.

“I can’t m-make it s-s-stop,” she said. “I-I have to—”

He grabbed her hand and pulled the gun away from her head.

“No!” She fought him.

“Drop it!” He yanked her arm down. Pried her fingers back until he could rip the weapon away. “You’re smarter than this, Maddie. You’re a fighter. You battled for that father’s life today. What the hell are you doing trying to throw yours away!”

“Like you care.” Her voice was deeper. Not her own. “Like any of you fuckers care. Just let me die, before—-”

He shoved her away and opened the revolver’s chamber. The God damned thing was full. The safety was off. He dumped the bullets into his palm and flung the gun across the room.

“Oh, I care,” he snapped, terrified for her. “For some reason, I’ve gotten myself attached to a woman with a death wish who keeps a loaded gun in her house. Which makes me more of a head case than you are, I suppose. Because here I am. Still. Convinced I can help you.”

“I…” Clarity returned to Maddie’s expression. Tears surged. She was back, the Maddie he knew, staring at the gun that had landed near the window sheers. “I’ve never seen that before in my life…”

Her gaze begged Jarred to believe her.

And for some inexplicable reason, he did. Just like he’d accepted every other crazy thing that had happened that day. The question was, what did he do next? Call an ambulance? Commit her to an indefinite psych hold, the way he would anyone else? But he couldn’t abandon her that way. Not Maddie.

He was certifiable.

“How did the gun get into your kitchen?” he asked.

“I…I have no idea…” She scraped her nails up and down her arms.

He drew her hands to her side.

“Just let you die,” he repeated, “before what?”

Maddie putting a gun to her head hadn’t been a cry for help. There’d been determination in her eyes. Conviction. And he was certain she hadn’t been aware of what she was doing.

“I…I don’t…remember,” she answered.

“You don’t remember what?”

She jerked and focused on him as if she’d just realized who she was talking to.

“Let me help you.” He rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand, trying to soothe his own panic and fear as much as hers. “Technically, I have an obligation to admit you for observation. You just tried to kill yourself. But returning to the hospital’s not the answer for you, is it? Not tonight. Not any night until we can find a way to keep what other people are feeling from hurting you.” He might as well put it all on the line. The impossible, implausible thoughts that had been rambling around his mind since Maddie left the hospital. “That’s what happened in the ER, wasn’t it? When you got sick after diagnosing your patient and dealing with Britton’s outburst. All of it…gets inside you somehow.”

A small nod was her only response.

“But… Being around me doesn’t hurt as much, right?” He relaxed a bit after her next reluctant nod. “Then let me help take care of you until we know more. Or are you trying to wind up in a padded cell next to your sister’s across town?”

Maddie and Her Twin Sarah Finally Meet In Their Dreams…

A muffled whimper stalled Maddie’s rant. It was a weak play for sympathy. A familiar combination of tears and self pity coming from behind her.

Spinning, Maddie found the door she’d just entered closed and secured with a wicked-looking padlock. A six-year-old version of her twin sat huddled on the floor in front of it. Sarah had wrapped her arms around her middle. Her head was buried against skinny knees that were bruised and bleeding. She looked as scarped up as Maddie felt, as if Sarah had just run through a vengeful, unforgiving forest.

“Don’t start with the pity party.” Maddie’s warning emerged too soft and young to be her own voice.

She looked down to discover that she, too, was her childhood self. Complete with wearing a duplicate of her twin’s pink and yellow sundress—one of the matching outfits their mother had hand sewn when they were six.

More sniffling filled the playhouse. Sarah’s body shook, then she began bawling. Maddie dropped to her knees beside her sister.

“Stop it!” she scolded in her little-girl voice. “It’s not going to work. I won’t feel sorry for you, no matter how far back you take us. It doesn’t change what you’ve done. What you’ve destroyed. What you’ve let these people do to me. You’ve taken away my life. Again!”

Sarah’s next hiccuping sob halted mid-whimper. Her head jerked up, her expression a pitiful mixture of lost innocence and hatred.

“You?” little-girl Sarah screamed. She exploded into motion and tackled Maddie with an adult’s rage. “It always has to be about you, doesn’t it. This isn’t my fault, you freak. You’re the weak one. You’re the cry baby who couldn’t keep this to yourself. You just had to tell that doctor. You just had to fall in love and drag him into this. Why do you always ruin everything!”

“Get off me!” Six-year-old tactics returned in a rush. Maddie grabbed hair and pulled. Her legs kicked for all she was worth, trying to dislodge her sneaky sister before Sarah could do any real damage.

“Perfect Maddie,” Sarah mocked. She pushed Maddie to her back, sank a knee to the grimy ground on either side of Maddie’s legs, and proceeded to pummel the shit out of her. “Maddie never messes up. Maddie always gets straight A’s in school. And she’s still perfect, while she whines all over the damn place because she got to have her make-believe life for ten years before it started to fall apart. Poor, pitiful, perfect baby…”

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44 Responses to “Dark Legacy Excerpts–Dive In!!!”

  1. Pat Cochran says:

    Thanks for grouping the excerpts together, makes it easier to follow.

    Pat Cochran

  2. Karin says:

    Wow. Great excerpts! Dark Legacy sounds fantastic. I really look forward to reading it.

  3. SHIRLEY SEGO says:

    Dark Legacy sounds very suspenseful…and teasing. I plan to read your book and the part that draws me in ~

    “Maddie and Her Twin Sarah Finally Meet In Their Dreams…”

    Grabs me ….for a Great Read.

    Thank you for having the excerpts grouped to make it easy to read them.

  4. Cynthia says:

    I have read the excerps and now I realy want to read the book. Yes, I am hook.

  5. Patricia Barraclough says:

    Grouping the excerpts together was nice. I’d missed one. Thanks.

  6. MaryEllen says:

    “The nightmares will not win” should be enough to keep any reader going!

  7. Brenda Rupp says:

    “Intrigued?” Actually, he was a smug son-of-a-bitch, just like everyone had said. “Is that what shrinks are calling it now, when you stare at someone as if they’re a juicy journal article you can’t wait to write up?”

  8. leola hardin says:

    i am ill, literally ill. i feel maddie’s confusion and panic. you
    have made her real to me.

  9. Focus on what is important and forget everything else is my favorite pasage

  10. Nathalie says:

    Posting them altogether was a great idea :-)

  11. Stefanie says:

    Can’t wait to read this!!!!!

  12. Catherine Lemanski says:

    Reading all the excerpts together gave me a better focus on the story. Thank you. Can’t wait to read the whole book.

  13. Cara Powers says:

    Wow, great sales pitches all. I would really like to review your book at my blog Ooh . . . Books! I know one of my readers that would buy it. I love fantasy and sci-fi.

  14. Chicki Brown says:

    This is fabulous, and so different for you. I’m fascinated…

  15. Walt M says:

    I know this book will be good. Looking forward to reading it.

  16. Jo Anne Benware says:

    WOW, I can’t wait to read the whole book.

  17. Brenda S. says:

    Looking forward to reading it.

  18. Teresa Balderas says:

    I could NOT stop reading the excerpts. Can’t wait to read the book. Thanks!

    I like this excerpt: “If my career is over,” she challenged, “just man up and say it, then leave me the hell alone.”

  19. susan leech says:

    Loved the excerpts and enjoy all that teasing of my mind they did to me. Do you know how they made me want the book even more..well so much more I entered every contest you have out in hopes to win the book. Is that going the limit or what. ha ha susan L. Have a good day.

  20. earlene gillespie says:

    because our heroine’s problems started a long, long time ago… Generations ago, you might say is the line that draws me in the most. it sets up all kinds of interesting directions the story could go.

  21. Susan Lathen says:

    The excerpt that drew me into the story was in the begining The Prologue : “But there’s a lot Maddie doesn’t know—about the 200-year-old curse on her family, about the shadowy group that wants to exploit the Temple twins’ powers for themselves, about the sexy psychiatrist offering to help her. The only way to find the answers antd avoid being pulled into the abyss of madness is to trust her heart and confront her… Dark Legacy.” This was a combination of mystery & madness.

  22. Kelly M says:

    wow, your book looks like a great read, can’t wait to get my hands on one. Also thanks for the great giveaways, the XOXO purse is so cute!

  23. Candy McCormick says:

    I was on the edge on my seat reading the excerpt from Dark Legacy, your writing is so touching & so real. I love all your books, everyone keeps me enthralled.

  24. Kai W. says:

    the except peek my interest. getting curious to read the book.

  25. Denise Boyd says:

    I really got hooked by “The man saw her–really saw her”. It really makes me want to read and find out how they are connected.

  26. Mina Gerhart says:

    OMG! LOVE the excerpts Anna 8D
    Gotta add the books to my TBR pile (On Top;) )

  27. ThatBrunette says:

    Expensive suited the man. But not as well as the warm, inviting clutter that softened the periphery of his office.

  28. Focus on what is important and forget about everything else- ood message in a great story

  29. Terry rogers says:

    Loved the book. Was not what i thought it would be. You came up with an amazing story so unique which made it enjoyable

  30. Nyla Thompson says:

    OMG This is a must read. The more I read through the excerts the more I gotta have the book. Won’t be long B/4 I’m off to Barns and Nobels. And the Tagua Nut Medallian is “out of this world”.
    Purses with butterflies are so in. Of course I think butterflys are great where ever you find them.

  31. Terry rogers says:

    Unique! Taht was made it so wondeful

  32. Paula Simecka says:

    Very,very deep and wonderful.

  33. catie james says:

    Dang – this one just moved to the top of my wish list!

  34. MrsParks says:

    This was the one I liked:

    Maddie would handle Jarred Keith. Then she’d handle her nightmares, the shadows from her past, and her family’s penchant for instability—alone. Whatever it took to not let the darkness win, the way it had with Sarah…

  35. cindy petrozziello says:

    I liked this excerpt:
    Anger bubbled beneath the calm that people expected
    from Dr. Madeline Temple, ER Trauma Specialist. Her
    twin’s anger and insanity had come only in the dreams
    at first. But echoes of Sarah owned more of Maddie’s
    waking mind every day.

  36. Linda Klein Ward says:

    LOVE IT!!!!!

  37. CeciliaH says:

    Scary when you can’t control your mind or emotions and they actually physically affect another person…creepy!

    Maddie saw a malevolent raven in her mind. Her father’s car exploding. An evil tree swaying. She imagined her fingers around the raven’s throat, squeezing until she was free of the darkness. Really free.

    Die! Sarah’s voice demanded. He has to die!
    Jarred wheezed.

  38. Kirsten says:

    This paragraph intrigues me: There was nothing anyone could do, Maddie finally accepted. The nightmares were going to win. The guilt and the pain. The confusion. Feeling and knowing things she shouldn’t. Other people’s things. The same darkness Sarah had fallen into—the sister no one at St. Chris but this man knew about. Because Maddie had been so determined to believe that there was no legacy of gifts the women in her family couldn’t control. No spiraling need to—

  39. Peggy Gorman says:

    I am now going to have to buy it !

  40. Brenda Hill says:

    WOW!!! and Double WOW!!!! Can’t wait to read..

  41. Debra M says:

    This is a must read!!!

  42. Joyce says:

    Oooh! When the twins finally meet . . . definitely scary to already feel helpless but to feel the helplessness of a child!

  43. Dark Legacy Excerpts says:

    Private Proxies…

    I found a great……

  44. Dark Legacy Excerpts says:

    Proxies For Senuke…

    I found a great……

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