Kissing the Werewolf - An Izzy Cooper Novel (3 page)

“What happened, Jeb?”

Jeb tapped the oversized cowboy hat he wore anytime he had his uniform on. “Hello Izzy. How’s your grandmother doing?” he asked, a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.

It was just like Jeb Bourne to take care of the hellos before getting down to business. Of course it was also like Jeb to ask about Granny right after his initial hello. Jeb and Granny had been high school sweethearts, and he still hadn’t gotten over her.

According to Granny Stella, Jeb was quite a looker back in the day. He still wasn’t bad for his age, though his hair had long ago turned gray.

“Granny is doing good. What happened here?” I asked again.

Cocking his head to one side, he fixed me with laughing blue eyes. “Well Agent Izzy … can’t see as why your boss wouldn’t have filled you in on the details.”

“It’s Special Agent Cooper … remember?” I corrected.

Jeb didn’t mean any harm. He was just having trouble coming to terms with the fact that a young whippersnapper, such as myself, was actually a federal agent.

“True enough,” he chuckled, and then glanced down at the clipboard in his hand. “The cleaning staff arrived this morning and found Dale in his office … deceased,” he added in a hushed tone, as if it were some kind of secret.

Dale Simmons was one of the hotshots of Storm Cove. That was because the Simmons family was one of the town’s founding families, and they were filthy rich.

The Simmons family didn’t impress me much. Most of the families in town were descended from the founding fathers, but the Simmons family did tend to forget that part. In other words, they thought they were several steps up from the rest of the population.

They also happened to own the Smuggler’s Bay Lodge, along with several other business establishments.

“Agent Fontaine is back there now.” Jeb pointed toward a hall that led to the resort’s administrative offices.

I nodded. “Thanks Jeb. I’ll let Granny know you asked about her.

The blood drained from old Jeb’s face. “That’s not necessary. I’m sure I’ll see her around town.”

I quickly turned away so that he wouldn’t see my smile. No way was Jeb going to say a single thing to Granny, even if he did run into her. They hadn’t spoken in decades, though they would both ask about the other any chance they got.

The feud between Jeb and Granny was well known in Storm Cove. According to the town gossips, the two of them had a fight just before their Senior Prom. Jeb got angry with my grandmother and took Millie Brodrick to the prom. Granny was so irate, she witched Millie, who lost all her hair within a few days. It took months for it to grow back.

There was no way to know how much of the story was true. If it had anything to do with Jeb Bourne, Granny refused to talk about it.

I found Ayden and Tim Lehman in Dale’s office.

Judging by the crime scene, Dale had put up one heck of a fight. Either that, or the perpetrator liked destroying things. The place looked as if it had been hit by one hell of a hurricane.

My boss was so engrossed in examining the victim, he didn’t even look up to acknowledge me.

Ayden was a walking contradiction. He had the body of a male stripper, and the looks of a Greek god. Along with that, he had a head of blond hair that any woman would love to run their fingers through, but he hid his assets behind black business suits, and stuffy haircuts. I only knew what he looked like out of his disguise because I’d been fortunate enough to run into him at the gym.

Actually, what happened was that I let my natural curiosity take over and I’d followed him to the gym.

Of course, Agent Fontaine might call that stalking, along with the rest of the world, but as long as no one knew, I was good.

Ayden was kneeling next to the victim, examining Dale’s fingernails with a gloved hand.

“What do you have?” I asked, as I managed to keep my eyes averted from the bloodier aspects of the crime scene, like the head that had been completely removed from the body.

Sighing, Ayden dropped the victim’s hand. “They found him at 6:00 this morning. Myron estimates time of death at just after midnight.”

Myron was the ME, and the strangest guy in town, at least as far as I was concerned. You’d have to be odd to play with corpses to begin with, but he was really strange.
Myron liked to dye his hair black, and wear eyeliner. Not only that, but he would paint his fingernails black. This wasn’t so bad if you were into the Goth scene, but add that to the dead body thing, and he was definitely creepy.

Doing my best to block out the disturbing image of Myron hovering over a corpse, I asked,
“So there were no witnesses? How did the perp get in?”

Ayden shook his head and pointed to the shattered window where Tim was bagging some kind of evidence he’d pulled from the windowsill.

“This is obviously the point of entry,” Tim answered for Ayden. It looks like whomever did this, came right through the window. He didn’t just break it, he plunged through it.”

“Whoever did this is one sick puppy,” I muttered. “Death by decapitation! Yuk!”

Tim arched one brow, barely noticeable behind his black, plastic framed glasses. “Actually, the subject ripped the victim’s head off.”

“Are you serious?” I gasped.

Tim nodded. “Take a look. There are still dangling tendons and skin.”

Tim was all brains and no brawn, but he was the sweetest guy I knew. No matter what the temperature outside, he always wore slacks and a long sleeve shirt to work, which was a little odd since his sandy blond hair was much longer than the FBI dress standard.

“Are you picking up anything?” Ayden asked.

What he was really asking is if Dale’s ghost was hanging around.

I shook my head. “Either he went straight into the light, or he’s not talking.”

“Nothing at all?” Ayden frowned.

“Hold your horses and give me a minute,” I said, drawing my brows together so that they would know I was getting ready to attempt communication, or at the very least, listen in a little.

One of the few perks of being a fallen angel was that I could sense negativity, and sometimes even see things that had happened, or might happen. My ability to communicate with the dead was just something I was born with, but it came in handy too.

Closing my eyes, I focused on the night before, but I wasn’t getting a thing, not even a whisper or a moan.

Maybe seeing Elias at the Bayside Grill had knocked something off kilter? No doubt my head was still spinning from the encounter, though I didn’t usually have problems with my personal baggage interfering with work.

Giving up, I shook my head. “I’m not getting anything at all.”

Ayden’s frown deepened.

For some reason, he tended to forget that my abilities weren’t connected to some kind of spiritual, around the clock ATM. I couldn’t even use any witchery to help me see what happened.

That was another side effect of coming back from the dead as a fallen angel. It stripped me of my natural born witch juice. I was still irritated with Mister Grim for that one, on account of my plan to witch Jasper in order to get even.

Sure, witching someone to get even was wrong, but that was my natural wickedness shining through.

“Sorry,” I shrugged, hoping Ayden wouldn’t decide to give me the boot. My talent for crime scene visions and my ability to communicate with the dead were the only reasons the Bureau hired me in the first place. It sure wasn’t my expertise with handling firearms. I still had to be reminded to bring along my Glock, which I didn’t have on me at the moment.

Ayden turned his attention to Tim, who was in the process of bagging something. “What did you find?”

“I’m not sure, but it looks like animal hair.”

“Izzy and I will go back to the lighthouse … you head over to the Medical Examiner’s office … after you have the hair sample sent for DNA analysis. Have them check it against the victim’s DNA,” Ayden instructed.

Tim nodded, which resulted in his glasses sliding down his nose. “Will do,” he said, pushing said glasses back up.

I was a little confused by Ayden’s instructions, and I wasn’t afraid to say something about it either. “Why would you want the DNA compared to the victim’s?”

“Let’s go,” he motioned with his head. “I’ll explain at headquarters”

That need to know baloney was one part of my job I was having some trouble coming to grips with. The FBI was closed mouthed with most information. I was given information on a need to know basis only. Ayden said it was because it was classified, but I wasn’t buying it. I was told only what I needed to know on account of me being the new kid on the block, and a fallen angel. He just wasn’t so sure he could trust an agent who was really on lease from Hell.

Headquarters, or as we liked to call it, the lighthouse, was located in the basement of the lighthouse on Shipwreck Point. The Federal Government owned the property, but permitted the Mystique Island Historical Society to operate a gift shop on the main floor, while they stuck us in the basement.

We were a Black Cell unit, so no one was supposed to know about us, though a lot of people in town did, except me. I’d been totally clueless until my brush with death, but that was most likely due to the fact that Annabelle and I hadn’t come to live in Storm Cove until we were in junior high.

Our mother was a native islander, but we were still outsiders. Unless you went to preschool on the island, you were an outsider.

Besides, why waste money on a serviceable office when they could stick us in a crumbling and haunted lighthouse?

The haunting of the Shipwreck Point Lighthouse was one bit of town history that I became acquainted with the hard way. Sure, I’d heard rumors about the lighthouse, but never gave it a second thought until my run in with Muriel.

I met Muriel on my first day working with the Atypical Crimes Management Unit. She’d strolled, or more accurately, floated to my desk and stood there, staring at me with her dead - haunting eyes for at least an hour.

With it being my first day on the job, I already had enough to deal with, so I did my best to ignore her.

After about an hour of the staring, I couldn’t take it anymore.

Looking up at her, I asked, “Can I help you with something?”

Muriel’s jaw fell and she quickly dropped her evil - brooding spirit façade. “You can see me?”

I nodded. “Can’t you see I’m trying to work? What do you want?”

The ghost didn’t really have an answer. She’d grown so accustomed to haunting whoever caught her interest, she no longer remembered why she was doing it.

Turns out that Muriel was the ghost that haunted Shipwreck Point Lighthouse.

According to town legend, she disappeared in the 1950s, while picnicking with her friends on Shipwreck Point.

Kids being kids, Muriel and her friends spent some time exploring the abandoned lighthouse. Later she returned to the lighthouse to search for a purse she’d misplaced, but she went alone.

She was never seen again.

Muriel couldn’t remember what happened to her, but Dorothy Bell knew everything about the lighthouse. She was the president of the Mystic Island Historical Society, and she also managed the lighthouse gift shop.

When I got around to asking her about it, Dorothy filled me in on all the mysterious details.

Apparently when Muriel’s friends started searching for her, they couldn’t get in the abandoned lighthouse, though it had been open just a short time before.

That was back before it had been restored and put on the National Register of Historic Places.

The authorities searched for days, but never found her, alive or dead.

I suspected Muriel’s body was hidden somewhere in the lighthouse, possibly in a wall, though I couldn’t explain why her remains hadn’t been discovered when the property was restored in the 1970s.

The 70s were some high times, so maybe the workmen were just too blitzed to notice anything weird or unusual.

Most of the townspeople were convinced Muriel had fallen victim to another Shipwreck Point ghost.

As legend had it, in the late 1800s, some old fishing boat captain was murdered by his crew, not too far from Shipwreck Point. Just like Muriel, his body was never recovered. There were frequent sightings of the old captain, especially on the west side of the island, but I hadn’t seen him yet.

The locals called him Captain Marsh.

The Marsh family was another founding family, and were a wealthy - seafaring people, which is why everyone assumed that the ghost captain must be someone from that family.
It was a natural assumption, considering there had been several captains in the Marsh family over the years.

When I pulled into the parking lot near the lighthouse, Ayden’s black SUV was already there, and so was Muriel. It was the first time I’d seen her outside the lighthouse.

Muriel was still wearing the same yellow dress and matching hair ribbon she’d been wearing over seventy years ago when she’d disappeared. In her time, she’d have been a doll with her little pointy nose, and the long blond hair she kept pulled back in a ponytail. She even had those fifties bobby socks.

I thought she was a bit dated, but apparently Muriel didn’t see anything wrong with wearing the same clothes for decades.

“What are you doing out and about?” I asked the wispy apparition that was Muriel.

It would seem she couldn’t get quite as solid outside the lighthouse. Another reason to assume her body was hidden somewhere inside.

Every once in a while you’d come across a ghost that was hopelessly attached to their body.

But there was a reason she’d ventured outside. Something was wrong.

If a ghost could actually be frightened, this one was.”

“I heard about the Simmons murder,” she blurted out.

“Really?” I was astounded, but only until I remembered how fast news travels in Storm Cove. She must have overheard someone in the gift shop talking about it.

“Julius came by here looking for you,” she whispered.

Boy did I have news for her. Julius was a demon, and he could find me anywhere. It was his job.

He’d probably stopped by for the sole purpose of scaring her. Julius and Muriel didn’t get a long too well. She was the perfect victim, and Julius loved victims.

Oh well. I’d deal with Julius later. Right now I was curious as to why Muriel was so upset. The dead usually took things in stride. Even mass murder would barely raise an eyebrow.

“Yeah, Dale was found dead this morning. But what has your panties in such a knot?” I asked.

“I saw him again,” she said, a cryptic note in her voice.

“Saw who?” I asked.

“Captain Marsh,” she replied with a haughty roll of her eyes.

The significance of seeing Captain Marsh was lost on me.

“So,” I said with a shrug of my shoulders. “People see him all the time.”

Muriel shook her head. “They just
think
they see him.”

“But you know for sure you saw him?” I was doubtful.

The dead got confused easily. Some didn’t even realize they were dead, and if they did, they may or may not know how they got that way.

But I had to give credit where credit was due. Muriel seemed pretty lucid for a ghost.

She nodded her semi-transparent head. “It’s just like last time.”

Now I was curious.

For some odd reason, Muriel was connecting hotshot Dale’s murder with seeing Captain Marsh.

“What does seeing the ghost of Captain Marsh have to do with Dale’s murder?” I asked.

“He’s so scary,” she muttered, as if she hadn’t even heard me.

I assumed she was talking about the captain.

“Muriel! What’s the connection?” I was running out of patience, and I didn’t have a lot of those these days. I’d never been a patient person to begin with, and now that I’d been granted my black wings, I ran short of patience faster than my sister could switch boyfriends.

“I remember the night before I came out here with my friends. I’d just taken a shower and was brushing my teeth. That’s when I saw him in the mirror.”

Well this was an interesting development. She’d gone from remembering almost nothing, to recalling her shower the night before she was murdered.

Shaking my head, I started for the lighthouse. Muriel followed me.

“I still don’t see the connection,” I told her.

“There was a murder that night. It was all over the news when I got up the next morning. A janitor at the high school had his head ripped off.”

That stopped me in my tracks. “Did they ever find out who did it?”

“I don’t know … I kind of got killed that day?”

There it was again, the rolling of the eyes, as if she were talking to a particularly dense child.

“But there have always been stories. People go missing, or end up dead whenever the captain makes an appearance,” she reminded me.

“Hmm … interesting.” I continued through the parking lot. Muriel was still with me.

“Do you see the connection now?” she asked.

“I do, but I’m not sure how helpful it is. The dead rarely commit murder,” I told her, as I stepped onto the little sidewalk near the lighthouse and took a right. The entrance to our office was in back. The location did help keep tourist curiosity at bay, but hadn’t really provided the kind of secrecy the FBI was hoping for.

“He’s really scary.” Muriel repeated her earlier assessment.

“I’ll look into it,” I promised, and I would.

She was right. There was an obvious connection, though I couldn’t quite see what it was yet.

Muriel disappeared, which was just as well. It had a tendency to get on the boss man’s nerves when Muriel and I held conversations in the office. I think it just bothered him that he could only eavesdrop on one side of the conversation.

* * *

ACMU headquarters was simple, at least by FBI standards. We had our computers, tablets, projectors and whatnot, but it was simple.
Just two large rooms tucked away in the basement of the lighthouse. Our desks and computers were in one of the rooms, while
the second housed a small lab that Tim could use to get a quick look at something, if we couldn’t wait for an analysis report from DC.

I really would have preferred the top floor. The view from the lighthouse was awe-inspiring, but not so much from the basement.

When I entered, Ayden was scrawling notes on the whiteboard. Next to his notes there was a photo of Dale Simmons.

“Tim back yet?” I asked.

“No,” he replied without bothering to turn around. “I sent him to interview the Simmons family. We do have the preliminary results on the hair analysis though. What Tim found was animal hair, but it doesn’t belong to Dale.”

“Why would you think otherwise?” I asked, openly skeptical of his judgment, which I was sure wouldn’t sit well.

I was wrong.

Instead of his usual scowl, he actually smiled. “I guess this is one of those, need to know, situations.”

Hot damn! He was cute when he smiled.

I admit, thinking about my boss in that way was going way over the top. My only excuse being that it had been months since I’d broken it off with Jasper, and a girl can only go so long before the crazy started to set in.

Doing my best to keep things in perspective, I banished all thoughts of seeing Ayden naked, but then I started thinking about Elias, and that was even worse.

“I would say so, especially if it has to do with my job,” I came back, making sure to add a touch of sarcasm to my voice.

Sighing, Ayden took a seat at his desk. “Well with your mother being a member of the Osborne family, I’m sure you must know that a lot of the people in Storm Cove aren’t exactly average.”

Was he trying to say the Osborns were weird?

“Yeah, I know,” I shrugged.

Of course I knew the people in Storm Cove were not exactly normal. In fact, the abnormalities extended to the entire island.

I did resent his reference to my maternal family. Witches weren’t odd … at least not too odd.

On the other hand, it was true that Mystique Island had its share of strange individuals. Everyone knew about the werewolf packs, and other high strangeness on the island. Nearly all of it could be traced back to the original settlers.

Annabelle was definitely convinced, but then again, my sister had always embraced the strange and unusual.

“There are two packs of wolves on the island.”

“You mean werewolf packs?” I interrupted, feigning shock. It was best I appeared as normal as possible in Ayden’s eyes. He didn’t exactly embrace the high strangeness of Storm Cove, or my family background.

Ayden nodded. “The Simmons family belongs to the Storm Cove pack.”

Nodding, I fought off the urge to fill in the blanks for him. “What about the other pack?”

“Well that would be the Gypsy pack, from on the other side of the island.”

My mouth dropped. “No kidding?”

Roseland was a little settlement on the west side of the island, known to locals as Gypsy Camp. They called it that because that’s exactly what Roseland started out as. The people who settled Roseland weren’t descended from the original shipwreck, but from a band of roving Gypsies.

In the early 1900s, a group of gypsies arrived on the island. The townspeople ran them out of Storm Cove. With nowhere else to go, they set up camp on the other side of Mystique Island, and had been there since.