About the Book
Sitting in her plush Manhattan office, Carrie Phillips receives a distraught phone call from her British friend Roxanne, an artist who lives on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia. Roxanne is afraid someone is trying to kidnap her and thinks the attempts might have something to do with a mysterious trust that she has been living on for years. As the girls follow the money trail, they discover that Roxanne’s Benefactor has a deep and insidious interest in both of their fates. The Benefactor offers a tempting deal but the price must be paid in blood. His need for control knows no bounds and only their courage and deep bond can keep them from succumbing to his sinister plans. When Roxanne goes missing, Carrie must prevail against the Benefactor’s stupendous wealth and paranormal powers or pay the ultimate price.
Download Reading roup discussions
Download First Chapter
Scenes
Learn more about the places in the book. Click on the locations below.
Sion, Switzerland
It appeared that they had landed in a small airport; it appeared deserted, and the lights were dark. As soon as they were out of the helicopter, they were ushered into a waiting Mercedes limo. The helicopter rose and disappeared. Again, Carrie, Lydia, and Roxanne sat in the back while Julian joined the driver upfront. There was a second car for Daniel and Jahfire.
No one spoke. As the limo pulled onto the highway, Carrie looked for clues to their whereabouts. She finally saw a sign that read Sion, and she realized they were still in Switzerland. She thought back hard over her Swiss geography. They had flown to the southwestern part of the country. Sion was the oldest town in Switzerland, located in a valley surrounded by the huge Alps. It was the capital of the canton of Valias. It was the site of many amazing archeological finds and had been inhabited since Neolithic times.
“We’re in Sion … I haven’t been here in forty years!” Lydia exclaimed.
“Where?” Roxanne asked rather listlessly.
“Sion. The town has two castles, Castle Tourbillon and Chateau de Valere, that stand guard over the valley. I came here once with the Benefactor. This canton was always against outsiders so he must have had relatives here. I went sightseeing in the castles while he saw to business.”
Lac St. Leonard
“Isn’t this beautiful? Lake St. Leonard was only discovered in 1943. It is the largest underground lake in Europe. Of course, it was not opened to the public until 1949, after the war. This lake has an extraordinarily high vibration,” the Benefactor said.
“What do you mean by that, Dad?” Julian asked.
“The lake vibrates at a rate of 14,000 Bovis Energy Units. You probably don’t know that the Bovis scale was developed in the 1930s by a French physicist, Anton Bovis. It measures, shall we say, life force. Humans have a vibration around 6500 Bovis Units. Anything above that is life enhancing and anything below that may be called negative energy. Therefore, this lake vibrates at more than twice the rate of a human being. Bovis discovered the scale while researching the great pyramids of Egypt,” he said.
After fifteen minutes, the little boat veered off and stopped before what seemed to be a solid rock wall. At the bottom, Carrie could see a black hole. The submersible tilted forward easily, and they appeared to be descending down a narrow tunnel. “My father built this tunnel decades before the Lake was officially discovered. We knew of the lake from old family writings. Our family has lived in this valley since medieval times.”
St. Lucia
“Honestly, I think it was all that time we spent with Jahfire and his friend Mervin. Although I had been to the island many times, I had always stayed in the resort with the rest of the tourists. Roxanne had fallen in love with Jahfire and he took us out of the resort and into the real island. We visited small villages, ate local food and drank spice rum, went fishing in a small boat at night-all kinds of things you can’t do in New York City. Jahfire dove for lobsters and cooked them on the beach for us. Mervin picked mangos out of the tree- I had no idea people could climb trees like that. I soaked in a warm waterfall that was heated by a volcano. That trip was an incredible experience for me of getting to know the local beauty of St. Lucia.”
Singapore
“Then she saw her destination. Hurrying toward a small temple at the end of a pathway, she could see a glow from the lights inside. She ran as fast as she could, picking up the nightgown and flying down the path. She stopped at the entrance and peered inside. The room was a small shrine. On the flat altar lay the body of a woman, her belly swollen with child. She was dead, lifeless eyes staring accusingly. Behind the body, a large statue of a warrior kept vigil.”
