An Inner Darkness Book 5 Bay City paranormal

questioning, Sam forced himself to focus on the plans he’d been developing in the past few days for helping Adrian learn to control his abilities. He and Bo could talk about what to do later. Right now, his job was to do his level best to teach Adrian what he could in a limited amount of time.
    “Okay,” Sam began. “Let’s start with some breathing exercises.” Adrian gave him a skeptical look. “Breathing? That’s it?”
    “No, that’s only the beginning. But I’m just now figuring out that I should’ve started with the simple stuff and moved up from there. I started out with the harder things, and only recently found out how much it helped just to learn how to breathe correctly. It would’ve made the past few months much easier if I’d done that to start with.”
    “Um. Okay.”
Adrian didn’t look convinced. Not that Sam blamed him. He wouldn’t have believed such at thing at that age either.
“I know it sounds silly, but I promise it’ll help. Will you try?” For a second, Adrian didn’t answer. Then he gave a hesitant nod. “Okay.”
    “Great.” Pushing to his feet, Sam gestured toward the entertainment center. “Why don’t you find a CD you like and put it on? Something slow and relaxing.” One of Adrian’s eyebrows quirked, making him look even more like Bo than usual.

    “I’ll try to find something.” He stood and crossed to the CD cabinet.

    While Adrian dug through the music, Sam pulled the coffee table out of the way so that the plush throw rug lay bare in the space between the sofa and love seat. He slipped his sneakers off and sat cross-legged on the rug. Across the room, Adrian slipped a CD
    into the tray and pushed play. The soft strains of “Dear Prudence” floated through the air.
“Nice music choice,” Sam observed as Adrian joined him on the rug.
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An Inner Darkness
Adrian shrugged. “I like The Beatles.”
“Me too.” Sam smiled. “Are you ready?”
Another shrug. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Then let’s get started.”
    ***

    Adrian took to the breathing exercises like the proverbial duck to water. Watching him, Sam imagined he could actually see the tension easing from the boy’s shoulders.
    When he felt Adrian was sufficiently relaxed to move on, Sam introduced him to some of the basic techniques for focusing the mind and giving direction to the thoughts. Once again, Adrian picked it up easily.
“Why don’t we stop for now?” Sam suggested when he sensed Adrian tiring. “Bo and Sean’ll be back soon, and you still need to get into your costume.”
    “Yeah.” Uncoiling his legs, Adrian stood and stretched. “Uh, thanks. For showing me that stuff.”
“No problem.” Sam hauled himself to his feet, wincing at the ache in his knees.
“Next time we’ll work on some visualization.” Adrian blinked. “Next time?”
“Sure. You can’t learn everything you need to know in an hour and a half.”
“Oh.” Adrian crossed his arms and studied the rug beneath his feet. “So, you’re gonna keep on teaching me?”
    “Of course.” Moving closer, Sam laid a tentative hand on Adrian’s arm. “I know I’m not your father, Adrian. But you’re Bo’s son, so I consider you part of my family. I’ll do anything in my power to help you and protect you. Right now, that means teaching you to control this new ability of yours. Okay?”
    “Okay.” Adrian gave him a small but hopeful smile. “I’m gonna go get on my costume.”
“All right.” Sam dropped his hand and stepped back. “Yell if you need anything.” www.samhainpublishing.com 91
Ally Blue
    Nodding, Adrian dashed off toward the bedroom he and Sean shared. Sam put the coffee table back, then sat on the sofa just as the door opened and Bo and Sean came in.
    “Hi,” Sam said. “Did y’all have fun?”
“Sean wasn’t too happy with the candy haul.” Bo shut the door and tucked his keys into his jacket pocket. “But he did win a prize for best costume.”
    “Yeah, it was awesome!” Tossing his helmet on the floor, Sean bounded over to Sam and held out a slip of paper with the name of a local electronics store on it. “Look, I got a gift certificate.”

    Sam studied the paper. “Wow, twenty-five dollars. That’s great, Sean.” Sean nodded, grinning ear to ear. “It was cool. The stores at the mall don’t have such good candy, though. All I got was Sweet Tarts and Dum Dums and stuff like that. No chocolate at all.”
    Sam laughed. “Maybe you’ll get