There'll be Hell to Pay (Hellcat Series Book 6) by Sharon Hannaford

mind earlier was now flying around at dizzying speed.
Closing her eyes, she began, one by one, to face each fear and
place it carefully into a box inside her mind, visualising putting
a heavy lid on each one and moving to the next until finally the
frantic buzzing of thoughts inside her head had gone still.
Trinity’s calm voice instructed her to relax each muscle in her
body one by one, and she followed the instructions, slipping into a
semi-meditative state with surprising ease.
    “ Now, Gabrielle, I need you to think of your mother’s ring.”
Trinity’s voice was far way but clear in the quiet of her mind. She
allowed a picture of her mother’s hand wearing the dainty white
gold and diamond ring to fill her mind. “Once you have a picture of
it, think of what the ring means to you and what it means to your
mother then allow those emotions to fill you.” The image in her
mind was crystal clear; her mother’s hand betrayed her age, the
first signs of wrinkles as the plumpness of youth receded, and a
few age spots where once pale, unmarred skin had been. Gabi hadn’t
taken the time to think of her mother aging before. And what it
meant. Her father hadn’t reached the age where it had become a
consideration, but now the stark reality of human-speed aging hit
Gabi in the chest. She had grown used to living amongst those who
aged slowly or not at all.
    “ Have you got the image in your mind, Gabrielle?” Trinity’s
voice brought a halt to her meandering thoughts and she refocused
on the ring itself. “I need to meld my mind with yours now. I’m
going to take your left hand in mine.”
    Gabi felt the
cool touch of the Magus’s fingers around her hand. She concentrated
on the ring, thinking of the day her mother had married Evan. It
had been a quiet ceremony with a handful of friends from both
sides. The morning had begun with rain and grey clouds, but by the
time the official ceremony was over and they left the tiny church,
the sun had come out. Her mother had looked radiant, a decade
younger than the grief-burdened woman Gabi remembered from her
teenage years. She allowed the happiness of the day, the relief
that she no longer had to worry about her mother and sense of right
in the world to infuse her, pouring the memories into the image of
three sparkling diamonds in a classic setting.
    “ Gabrielle, I need you to lower your mental defences. Your
walls are too strong for me to pierce.” Trinity’s voice sounded
less calm, more like she was under some kind of strain, and the
fingers clasping Gabi’s left hand had gone rigid.
    “ Oh, sorry,” Gabi whispered. She’d begun strengthening her
mental defences after Mariska had cast a magic ward against her,
using her own mind to hold her immobile while Dantè tortured her.
She’d honed her walls with Julius’s help until even he couldn’t
break through if she didn’t allow him in. She’d probably surprised
Trinity with the strength of them. Again she used mental imagery to
visualise creating a doorway through her defences. Non-physical
stuff had never been a strength of hers; giving it a sense of
physical presence had been the breakthrough she needed. She opened
the door to the outer edges of her psyche, she didn’t think Trinity
would try to intrude further than Gabi wanted her to, but there
were things in her head that no one else needed to see or
experience.
    She felt the
gentle wash of Trinity’s presence flow through her doorway, a vast
difference to the time Athena hacked into her mind to destroy
Mariska’s vile ward. She hadn’t been able to shield Athena from her
own physical agony, so the two of them had suffered together for
the moments it took Athena to unravel the spell. Somehow that
shared pain had been the catalyst that finally abolished the
unspoken animosity between the two of them, but Gabi had been too
far gone in pain and blood loss to realise it at the time. She
focused on a mental image of the ring and felt Trinity flow in