Walk the Tides
an excerpt

Psyche Courtney Marie Field had grown up in what seemed on the outside like a perfect life. Her parents were rich, she had one brother two years younger that she got along with, and her parents were indulgent. But despite all that, Psyche had a secret.

She could walk worlds. She had discovered it when she was eight, accidentally, and by the age of twenty seven had learned to master it. By then, she had also gone through one marriage, estranged her parents, and settled down with a job as a linguistics tutor on Earth at one of the most boring, reputable and perfectly decent collegs. But on Ter, the alternate world, she was Phoenix, one of the best known assassins. And one of the best.

She had heard the stories and songs going on about her. Nobody really knew anything about her except that she had red hair there.

Funny, she reflected grimly as she turned into her driveway, but that’s about all that anyone here knows either. She shut off the engine and got out of the car, walking into the house, not even sparing a glance for the three objects on display on top of her mantelpiece. She knew them already- a garrote, a dagger, and a small, seemingly innocuous pin that had once been dipped in poison so deadly that it had taken five seconds to kill.

The visit with her daughter Eowyn Elaine and ex-husband Paul Field had not gone well. Paul was still arrogant, domineering, and a jerkwad, and El, as she was generally known, wasn’t much better, even if she was only six. She tossed her keys onto their rack and walked into the kitchen. Tonight, she decided, before she went to bed, she would visit Ter for a few hours. At least the time worked with her. She had spent months in Ter and come back to find it the same time in Earth as it had been when she left.

Dragging out peanut butter from the counter cabinet, she yanked honey down after it and then pulled the bread out and put it all together rapidly. As she took her first bite, she glanced at the clock and managed a strangled sound of dismay.

“Crap, crap, crap!” she half-yelled as she turned and ran back to the front hallway, grabbing her keys from their rack. She stopped at the front door. “Wait,” she said aloud. “Was he coming here, or was I meeting him at his office?” She frowned, trying to remember, and then sighed in relief as a small car much like hers pulled up in her driveway and her colleague Martin Scarborough got out.

She replaced her keys and dropped the sandwich into the drawer standing open nearby, on top of a Wheel of Time book and three sticks of licorice, then slammed the door of the drawer shut and opened her door, managing to look complacent, gracious and happy to see him. Not, she thought as she ushered im into the living room. This meeting was not going to be interesting for either of them, even if it was about her second passion, linguistics. Next to fantasy, that was.