Broken Souls (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 2) by D.W. Moneypenny Page A

father.”
    “I bet your mother will figure it out. She’s a very smart, sensitive lady. Give her time. This isn’t something you have to fix right now.” Ping leaned back and tried to brush away the brown dust on his belly. “I’ve got pumpkin pie ingredients all over me.”
    “You’ve got a smear of flour on your face too.” Mara smiled and wiped his cheek with her thumb.
    “Thanks. That’s one item on your list of issues. What’s next?”
    “I can’t seem to fix anything anymore.”
    “What do you mean? I see satisfied customers coming out of here all the time. A lot of them stop by the bakery for coffee or a snack, carrying all manner of gadgets.”
    “Oh, things are getting repaired, but it has more to do with metaphysics than mechanics. Everything I touch seems to repair itself.” She pointed to the front of the shop. “That big grandfather clock out there? I called Mr. Mickleson and asked him what he thought was wrong with it, and he told me that his grandson had been playing inside the waist—where the weights and pendulum hang— and several pieces had been knocked out of the mechanism. He said he had forgotten to send along the broken parts and would stop by in the morning.”
    “Yes, and?”
    Mara’s eyes widened. “Ping, it’s already fixed. It’s working. All I did was wind it and look at it with a flashlight. Missing parts replaced themselves out of thin air.”
    “I’m not sure I’m seeing the problem. I told you that I thought your technical ability was tied into your metaphysical powers.”
    “How would you like to spend all day having pies and cakes pop out of your oven without you having to first mix the ingredients and put them in to bake?”
    “With business the way it is lately, that might not be such a bad thing.”
    “Ping, I want to take things apart, figure out what’s wrong and fix them, with my hands and tools, not with this ability. I don’t want things to just fix themselves. Where’s the challenge in that?”
    “As I see it, there are two ways you can approach this. One would be to accept that your metaphysical ability is another tool in your tool kit that you use to repair gadgets. Things aren’t just repairing themselves. You are repairing them through this extraordinary gift.” Mara opened her mouth to protest, but Ping silenced her with a raised finger. “Or you could work on better mastering your ability so that you can control when these things happen. You should be able to control what you do and when you do it.”
    “How do I do that?”
    “Practice, Mara. Practice. You’ve got to work with your abilities. Learn to use them, how to turn them on and turn them off. That will take practice and patience.”
    “Patience seems to be a theme with you this evening.”
    There was a loud pounding coming from the front door of the shop. Mara jumped up to answer it. “That must be Bohannon.”
    “What about the radio?” Ping asked.
    Mara stopped and turned. “We’ll have to talk later. And I want to get into this dragon business of yours too.”
     

CHAPTER 14
     
     
    Mara backed away from the front door to allow room for Detective Bohannon to hobble into the shop on his crutches. He held a laptop computer under his arm, pressed against one of the crutches, and seemed to have trouble maintaining his balance.
    “Why don’t you let me carry the computer, Detective?” Mara said, stepping forward and slipping it from under his arm. “If you could close and dead bolt the door, Mr. Ping and I are sitting here in the back.”
    “Thanks, Ms. Lantern.”
    “Please call me Mara. That way I won’t feel like I’m participating in a police interrogation. That is, unless I am.”
    “Mara then. You can call me Bo. And, no, this is not a police investigation, only a confused guy trying to understand what is happening.”
    Ping stood up when they entered the back of the shop. “Confusion is our specialty, Detective,” he said and pulled out a chair. “Please