Painted Pathways — Melinda VanLone

Sometimes the only way out, is through. When a young woman opens a mysterious box of paints, she opens a pathway to worlds she didn't know existed and evil that has haunted her past and threatens her future. Lark Previn moves to New York City to become an artist and leave the shadows of her past behind. But when a box of magical paints arrive in the mail, they help her connect with a long forgotten ability. Visions that tantalized her as a child awaken a need to create. Her paintings breathe, as though she's captured places that actually exist, even though she knows in her heart that Mystic's Carnival is nothing but childhood fantasy she can't help but hope that somehow she might find a way to go there. Lark isn't the only one looking for a way to visit the carnival. The Shadowman begins to haunt each canvas. He wants her ability for his own and he'll stop at nothing to get it. She wants to hide, but trying to out run the past has only led Lark into a downward spiral of danger. The only way out is to become who, and what, she really is, before the Shadowman claims her.