Onyx Webb: Book One Read online

  ONYX WEBB: Book One

  Diandra Archer

  ONYX WEBB, BOOK ONE

  Copyright © Richard Fenton & Andrea Waltz 2018

  All rights reserved.

  Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a data base or retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher or authors.

  DISCLAIMER:

  This book is a work of fiction. And while some real locations, historical events, company names and easily recognizable public figures have been used, the story is strictly the product of the authors’ imaginations. Beyond that, any names and/or resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Digital ISBN: 978-1-947814-00-4

  Lust for Living Press is an imprint of

  COURAGE CRAFTERS, INC.

  Visit Our Webb-Page

  www.OnyxWebb.com

  Contents

  Photo

  From the Journal of Onyx Webb

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  From the Journal of Onyx Webb

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Quote

  Episode 2: The Girl in the Mirror

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  From the Journal of Onyx Webb

  Chapter 31

  Quote

  Episode 3: Lily Dale

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  From the Journal of Onyx Webb

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Quote

  ONYX WEBB

  Self-Portrait, Pencil on Paper

  From the Journal of Onyx Webb

  I want to be alive again, feel wind blow through my hair.

  Take a deep, glorious breath, have my lungs fill up with air.

  I even want to feel the pain as thorns draw drops of blood.

  Run outside in a pouring rain, dance barefoot in the mud.

  What good is hearing music when you cannot sense the beat?

  What purpose does passion serve for a soul that feels no heat?

  Why pray for more tomorrows when your present is such hell?

  Why hope to one day fall in love if you have no heart to swell?

  There was a time when I believed that I would do it all—

  Climb the Eiffel Tower; walk China’s long Great Wall.

  Dance on my wedding night, in the arms of the perfect man,

  But life did not turn out that way, for fate had other plans.

  What good is one more day on Earth? I ask myself again.

  I know that I was happy once, yet cannot remember when.

  Why continue on this way, doing nothing but survive?

  Why stay among the living, simply dying to be alive?

  -Onyx Webb

  Crimson Cove, Oregon

  Chapter One

  Episode 1: The Story Begins…

  Near St. Louis, Missouri

  August 5, 1904

  Every train car was packed, every seat taken, with still more people standing in the aisles. Onyx was wide awake with anticipation, the excitement of the fair coursing through her veins like electricity. She reached up and tapped her father on the shoulder, but the big man was sound asleep. Onyx reached up and poked her father again, harder this time until Catfish opened his eyes and smiled.

  “When do we get there, Papa? Are we close?” Onyx asked.

  Catfish Webb gazed out the window of the train and could see the pale shades of sunrise—pink and yellow and orange—painted on the horizon. “Soon, child, soon,” the burly French Cajun muttered. “Now close your eyes and…”

  “Tell me again about how you and Mama met,” Onyx said.

  “I told you all ‘dis already, Jitterbug.”

  “I know,” said Onyx, “but tell it again! Please?” There it was, the one word Catfish was powerless against, and they both knew it: please.

  “Very well, child, if it is a story you want, a story you shall have,” Catfish said. He shifted in his seat and looked down at Onyx, her eyes wide and waiting. “Your daddy was out in the swamps, ten miles or more. I finished setting my traps and was lookin’ for a patch of dry ground on which to sleep…”

  “And then you saw the light, right?” Onyx interrupted.

  “Who tellin’ this story, you or me?” Catfish asked. Onyx moved her thumb and forefinger across her lips as if zipping them shut and holding back a giggle until Catfish continued.

  “Very well, then. As I was about to say, your daddy saw a light through the trees, off in the distance, and I went to see who was goin’ there. When I got closer, I saw it was a band of ‘travelers,’ what people call Gypsies. They were singin’ and dancin’ up a storm, and in the middle of ‘em all, there stood the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen.”

  “It was Mama, right?” Onyx said softly.

  Catfish nodded, lost for a moment in the memory. “Yes, it was Jofranka, your mama. And she saw me, too—looked right at me even though I was a hundred yards away peeking through the trees. She waved her hand as if invitin’ me to join them, which your daddy surely did. They were nice to me, fed me up a nice supper, and let me stay for the night.”

  “And then…” Onyx prompted.

  “And then the next morning I asked your mama if she might want to take a walk with your daddy…”

  “Like a first date?” Onyx asked.

  “Yes, child, like a date. We walked and talked for what must have been that entire day, ‘cause the next thing I know it’s nighttime again. We did this every day for almost a week, singin’ and dancin’ and walkin’ and talkin’ and then I just did it...”

  “You asked her to marry you, then and there,” Onyx said, finishing the sentence.

  “Yes I did, Jitterbug. When you find the one, you just know. She said yes, so long as I could get permission from Loiza, the ‘King of the Gypsies.’ Without this man’s permission, she could not leave the band. So I made him an offer…”

  “You gave him your catfish traps, right?”

  “Yes, each and every one, ‘cause you can always get more fishin’ traps, but you can’t always find yourself another perfect woman. And that’s how your mama and I became man and wife.”

  “And then I was born and Mama picked my name and called me Onyx, right?”

  “Yes, the name Onyx was your mama’s choice.”

  “But you call me Jitterbug because I’m always moving around and never standing still, not even for a second.”

  “Yep, child, you are just like a jitterbug lure, dancing and gleamin’ in the water, doing everything you can to attract attention, just like now.”

  “Tell me again where Mama is now. Up in heaven, right?”

  “Yes, Onyx, Mama is up in heaven…”

  “Sin
ging songs and waiting for us to join her, right?” Onyx asked.

  “That’s right, singing songs and dancing around in circles, making big giant swirls in the clouds,” he said, turning his head to look out the window, the sky now filled with dark shades of red and orange and wisps of pale blue. “Now get some rest, child. We be in St. Louis soon enough, and we gonna need all the energy we can muster, so many wonderful things to see, so many things they got to do up there.”

  “Tell me a ghost story, papa, and I promise I’ll go to sleep,” Onyx said curling into a ball on the wooden bench and placing her head in his lap.

  “Very well,” Catfish began: “It was a dark and stormy night…”

  “No, the other one,” Onyx said.

  “You want the scary one?” Catfish asked in mock surprise. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes! Tell the one where the woman is being chased in the woods by the wolves!” Onyx said. “I won’t have bad dreams, I promise.”

  Catfish nodded and began again: “It was late at night and the moon was full, with wolf bane hanging from the trees, when off in the distance the woman could hear the howling of wolves…”

  Catfish looked down and saw that his young daughter was already fast asleep, which was a good thing since Catfish had no earthly idea how the story ended—they’d never gotten that far. He ran his fingers gently through his daughter’s hair and wondered where Onyx’s mother really was.

  He hated lying to her, but there were some things he simply couldn’t tell the child.

  Not yet, at least.

  Catfish hadn’t closed his eyes for more than a minute when the dream began.

  Jofranka is lying in bed—her pregnant belly rising and falling with each labored breath—her skin gray, the color of ash. “We knew this was possible, André,” she says. “Loiza warned us.”

  “No,” Catfish says, his voice pleading. “You can do this, you hear me? You are gonna be just fine, the baby gonna be fine…”

  “Onyx,” Jofranka says.

  “What?”

  “Onyx—that should be her name,” Jofranka says. “I want you to name her Onyx.”

  “We’re having a baby girl?” Catfish asks. “Our baby is going to be a girl?”

  Jofranka nods then gasps in excruciating pain, becoming so transparent now that Catfish could almost see right through her.

  “Tell her how badly I wanted her,” Jofranka manages through gritted teeth. “Tell her that I loved her… make sure you tell her… make sure…”

  “What can I do?” Catfish pleads. “Tell me, Jo. There must be something—”

  “Give her my red keepsake box… when she’s old enough to understand. And tell her she is not to have a child, André!”

  “No, no, you gonna be here. You can tell her…”

  “Promise me,” Jofranka manages when the contraction subsides. “Promise me.”

  Catfish nods, tears streaming down his face as he accepts the truth—he is about to lose his wife, and there is nothing he can do to stop it.

  Jofranka cries out as the next contraction begins. “This is it, Jofranka, you can do this,” he says. “You do this, okay? You push hard as you can and it will be done, just this one last time.”

  Catfish could see the baby now, making its way out of Jofranka toward him. He reached down, placed his hand beneath Onyx’s head. “Push, Jo! Push!”

  Jofranka’s final scream is ear-piercing, animal-like, as Onyx emerges into the safety of Catfish’s large hands. “My God, she’s so beautiful, a girl like you said. Look, Jo, at what you have done!”

  Catfish lifts Onyx for his wife to see. But she is no longer there, having transferred what little energy she had left to produce her child.

  Then Catfish awoke as he always did.

  His face wet with tears.

  Chapter Two

  Burbank, California

  December 23, 1971

  Juniper Cole should have been nervous. After all, it wasn’t every day that someone got to go on the Johnny Carson show.

  But, being only eight years old, she didn’t fully grasp the importance of the situation. Besides, she had the greatest shield any young girl could ask for—she had Quinn.

  “Don’t worry, June, you’re gonna be great,” Quinn told her. And if Quinn said she was going to be great, then she would be.

  Quinn was Juniper’s protector.

  And it didn’t matter that he was only twelve years old. As far as Juniper Cole was concerned, Quinn was God. And like God, Quinn was always there. Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said for her parents.

  Quinn stood by Juniper’s side as Mr. Carson introduced her to the studio audience, referring to her as a “child prodigy,” whatever that meant.

  The only thing Juniper knew was that she liked to play. She loved the vibration of the notes as they rose from the giant instrument and filled the room with sound, and marveled at how her fingers somehow knew where to go next as they danced across the ivory keys.

  When the red curtain pulled back, Juniper made her way across the stage to thunderous applause, which still confused her since she hadn’t done anything yet. She took her seat at the large grand piano, then smiled and waved as she’d been taught to do since her first public performance at the age of three.

  Juniper counted to five in her head, allowing the room to go completely silent, then ran through her checklist:

  Make two tight fists…

  Open fingers and stretch them out…

  Relax fingers completely…

  Place fingers on keys in starting position…

  Form a dome with fingers curved…

  Breathe in…

  Breathe out…

  Be magnificent.

  Chapter Three

  London, England

  January 10, 2010

  The size of the crowd outside the BBC Broadcasting House, in the heart of London, would have made most people think the Pope was visiting. But the gender of the crowd (at least 95 percent were female) and the average age (somewhere south of 25) told another story.

  A line of London police officers did their best to maintain order, but when a white Mercedes Benz stretch limousine approached and pulled to a stop at the curb, all hell broke loose. The crowd surged toward the limo, and when the rear door swung open and a gray-haired BBC executive emerged, the group groaned.

  They did not know that the idol they were waiting for—twenty-three-year-old Koda Mulvaney, heir to the billion-dollar Mulvaney real estate fortune—was already inside the studio, having entered through a secret underground entrance an hour earlier.

  “Let’s start with the question everyone wants the answer to,” BBC Sunday Morning Show host Shelly Steele asked in a thick British accent. “What’s it like to be the sexiest man alive?”

  “Tiring,” Koda Mulvaney said with a smile, followed by a slight laugh.

  “Well, that would explain why you look a bit like something the cat dragged in.”

  “You’ve got a lot of great clubs in London,” Koda said through a forced smile. “It would be impolite to not make an appearance.”

  “Interesting choice of words,” Steele said flatly.

  “Clubs?” Koda asked.

  “No, I meant appearance,” Steele said. “I hear that some celebrities—Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, for example—command fees of $10,000 and up to grace a club with their presence. Do you charge a fee for your appearances?”

  Koda realized, a bit late, that this wasn’t going to be a friendly interview. Steele had a reputation for being tough, and it was clear she’d taken the gloves off—and taken them off early at that.

  “No, I do not charge a fee, Ms. Steele,” Koda said through clenched teeth, knowing he should leave it there but somehow unable to stop himself: “My family has made $10 billion in the real estate business and charging a fee would be a bit crass, don’t you think?”

  “Let’s talk about the profile People did on you,” Steele said in an instant change of direction as
she reached down and lifted a copy of the magazine from the glass table that separated them. “It says that your net worth is somewhere north of $2 billion, though you’ve never worked a day in your life. You usually sleep until mid-afternoon in a new city every day, and it goes on to say you broke off your engagement to Savannah socialite Mika Flagler two years ago, and it says you celebrated your twenty-third birthday partying with pals Kanye West and Channing Tatum at the Monaco Grand Prix and…”

  “I know what the article says,” Koda said, cutting her off. “Is there a question in my future? If so, I’d be thrilled if you got to it before I hit my twenty-fourth birthday.”

  “The question is: Why do you think women find you sexy? Is it because of your money, your looks, or charming personality?”

  “Gee, I always thought it was the jet,” Koda said to the laughter of the studio audience.

  “Ah, yes. Your private love-nest in the sky,” Steele said, pouncing on the opportunity.