Mystics

While most 17 year old girls battle with pimples, baby fat, hormones, and embarrassment, along with all the other horrors, the Mystics come of age growing into supernatural powers that have sprouted in the New Age hothouse of Ashland, Oregon. Confronted with challenges like the kidnapping of Immigrant High School’s most popular girl, the assault on the heroine Jasmine’s boy friend, and a terrorist attack on their city, the Mystics bond together, forming a paranormal A team that has the magic to overcome the threats to their classmates, themselves, and the town they love.
Learning their psychic skills, surrounded by kids who don’t really get the potential in the arsenal of the Mystics, and a few adults who have their own telepathic gifts, the book chronicles the evolution of the group’s mysterious talents and the bonding together required to make them a force no one would intentionally cross or they might find themselves kissing the porcelain throne.
A thread that binds the three Books within Mystics is the maturing relationship between Jasmine, the Tarot Card reader and intuit, and her love interest, Noah. While Jasmine struggles with the normal insecurities of a high school junior, she’s thrilled by the chance to build on her strong connection to Noah, a long distance runner and amateur flirt with lines that would mortify most teenagers. Besides being a track star, Noah has some mysterious surprises for Jasmine, making him valuable in the missions of the Mystics.
While Jasmine is the quasi leader of the Mystics, Karley, the Rastafarian, provides gentle guidance and clarity, surprising because of her belief in Jah and spiritual use of weed. Her powers aren’t helped by dolls, bones, candles, or incense, but come from her link to Zion, the promised paradise of her faith. Often, she seems to be napping in the midst of the chaos around her. It becomes obvious over the pages of the book, nothing could be less true. The struggle to understand her Rasta accent frustrates the Mystics, while her meanings are unambiguous and her guidance crucial.
All of the Mystics are attractive, well above average in the looks department. Simbi, the Haitian voodoo queen, is the one who flaunts her beauty, using it to corral the all-state quarterback and get most everything she wants even without the magic in her trinkets. Her face and body aren’t her main contribution to the Mystics. It’s her ability to conjure spells and see things in the fog of the offerings she makes to her loas, or gods. There are many loas in her beliefs, mostly covering the natural world and the dead. While Simbi turns the head of nearly every boy or man she passes in her tight skirt and stiletto heels, she’s more than an object for their desires and fantasies. Her enemies find that out the hard way, while her friends struggle to understand the words of her combination French and Haitian Kreyol.
The fourth Mystic is Vesta, the Wiccan witch, who would have burned at the stake in past centuries, but now uses her tools that include costume jewelry, beads, candles and much more to summon her gods. The teachings of her faith require a great respect for nature and the earth, not black magic. Those traditions also give her abilities to influence events around her and see the possible outcome of her actions. Besides the magical skills she possesses, and the total blackness of her look, Vesta does not tolerate anything she feels is artificial or phony.
Throughout the three Books included in Mystics, Jasmine’s love for Noah intensifies and takes up more of her thinking. Jasmine fights the teenage obsessions that influence her behavior, the developing feelings for Noah paralleling the maturity in the strengths of the Mystics. While she feels responsible for addressing the evil that confronts her, she wants to spend time with Noah more than anything else, testing the boundaries of her first real relationship. The question becomes is he real or one of the Tarot symbols she deals from the Deck?
By the time their junior year ends and summer begins in Camelot, also known as Ashland, the Mystics have joined together, even if they might not like each other. Their relationships are filled with normal teen girl jealousy, even if they are aware they are being childlike and “normal.”