Kissing the Werewolf - An Izzy Cooper Novel (8 page)

At first he didn’t say anything. He just stared at me with hungry eyes, which for some reason made me feel like dinner, or a sex goddess. At the moment, I wasn’t sure which.

“Why did you do it?” he finally asked.

Okay then. I had no idea what he was talking about.

“Do what?”

“Did it really mean so little to you that you don’t even remember?” Pain and anger twisted at his handsome features.

“Really Elias … I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“That summer we spent together. Don’t you remember any of it?”

I was so not getting it. “Umm … I remember chasing after you all over the island, but other than a little kiss while we were standing on the beach, I didn’t think we had anything together.”

I was pretty sure what we’d had together, if anything, was all one sided, as in my side.

Turning away from me, he studied the teapot clock that hung on the kitchen wall. He wasn’t saying anything, which I found really disturbing.

On account of the uncomfortable silence, I decided maybe I should say something more. “Seriously Elias … that’s how I remember it.”

When he turned away from the clock, I could actually feel his dark - turbulent gaze settle on me.
“So you don’t remember me asking you to marry me … to share your life with me? You don’t remember that you just stopped writing? You never gave me a reason … the letters just stopped.”

There have been very few times in my life that I was speechless, and this was one of them.

Had I somehow been sucked into an alternate reality, and now all my dreams were coming true. It may be a little belated, but all things considered, late was better than never.

How could two people’s recollection of the same thing, be so vastly different?

Elias was convinced his version of that summer was the correct version.

But that was impossible. If I’d had some hot and heavy romance with Mister Elias Moreland, I damn sure would remember it.

Wouldn’t I?

There could be some possible variables in my recall of the events that summer, but I preferred not to think about it just now. When I had time to ponder the illicitness of my juvenile love life, or lack of it, I would try and figure out why it was I didn’t remember this hot love affair that I supposedly had with the man of my dreams.

Right now I had urgent business to attend to, such as chasing down someone who resembled Frankenstein.

The next thing to do would be to make a quick pit stop at home to pick up my phone. It was exactly where I’d left it, charging on the nightstand in my bedroom. There were several missed calls from both, Ayden and Tim.

I figured I’d better return Ayden’s call first, on account of him being the boss man. The phone rang twice before he answered.

“Where are you?” he demanded.

“Umm … well when I went into the office today, everyone was gone and there were no instructions left for me … so I kind of just did some poking around on my own,” I explained, hoping I sounded convincing enough that I wouldn’t have to elaborate.

To my surprise and pleasure, he didn’t ask any further questions concerning my
whereabouts. Instead, he made more demands.

“Well you need to get to the Sandbar, ASAP!”

“Okay … what’s up?” I asked, already on my way out the door.

“I’ll fill you in when you get here.” The line went dead.

Well how rude was that
?

I just might start hanging up on him, and then we’d see how Mister Smarty Pants Fontaine liked it.

* * *

Again, the Sandbar’s parking lot was full of vehicles; unfortunately for Annabelle, they were all police vehicles.

All this murder and chaos had to be killing business.

When I walked in, Officer Parker, the only cute cop employed by the Mystique Island Sheriff’s Department, pointed to Annabelle’s office.

“Thanks,” I said, adding a smile.

He returned my smile, but it was forced. This was my first clue that something was very wrong. Not just regular, another homicide wrong, but something very very wrong.

As soon as I knocked on the door, Ayden pulled it open. There were only four people in the office, and Annabelle wasn’t one of them.

Jeb was there, sitting on Annabelle’s metal desk with one butt cheek. Tim was sitting next to Nick Watson, the guy who cooked for the Sandbar, and doubled as a dishwasher. He looked shaken and white as a ghost, which wasn’t a major change for Nick.

Nick Watson was naturally pale, add that to his tall - willowy frame, and he always appeared as if he were just getting over the stomach flu.

Nick had been one of Annabelle’s best friends while they were in school. After graduation, Nick ran off to the big city, like most of the younger generation tended to do. And like most, he ended up right back on Mystique Island, broken and disillusioned. The outside world didn’t mesh well with the secrets most of us had.

And Nick had secrets, I was sure of it.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

Ayden turned to Nick. “That will be all. We’ll be in touch.”

Nodding, Nick got up and practically ran out the door, which was totally out of character for him. Sure, we hadn’t been as close as he and Annabelle, but we were still friends. Usually he had a hello for me, and sometimes even some kind of crazy story. Mostly his stories were trumped up tales of the time he’d spent on a commercial fishing vessel, but they were interesting.

“What’s all this about?” I asked again. “Where’s my sister?”

When Ayden and Tim shared one of their looks, which usually meant they were keeping something from me, I knew I’d better sit down.

This I did, even before the boss man could command me to do so.

“Annabelle’s missing,” Ayden told me, and quickly added. “But this time there’s a witness. I’m not sure the witness is all that reliable, but he did see
something
.”

“Who … Nick?” Not being a complete idiot, I’d managed to put two and two together fairly quickly.

Ayden nodded.

Clasping my hands together in my lap was the only way I could stop them from trembling. “What did he say? Who took her? Why isn’t anyone out looking for her?”

There was another look that passed between Ayden and Tim. These secret looks were really starting to get on my nerves. “Why don’t you guys just tell me what’s going on? I can handle it. I’m a big girl.”

Well maybe not so much, but how was I going to get my sister back if they wouldn’t even let me in on what was going on?

“Nick Watson claims that he was in the kitchen, preparing salad for when the dinner crowd started coming in, and that’s when he heard Annabelle scream. When he went to look for her, he saw someone carrying Annabelle out the back door,” Ayden explained.

“Well did you get a description of the suspect?” I asked, half expecting him to tell me that the suspect had an uncanny resemblance to Frankenstein.

Ayden nodded. “This is where his account gets questionable. He says that all he saw was the suspect’s back, but it looked like a mummy.”

Okay then. That was completely random, and there was even a slight possibility that it topped Elias’s Frankenstein sighting.

Had everyone on the island lost their freaking minds?

“A mummy … as in the black and white movie? That kind of mummy?” I asked, party because I wanted confirmation that Nick had now joined the ranks of, totally nuts, instead of just a little weird.

“That’s what he says?” Ayden sighed.

Jeb cleared his throat to get our attention. “To tell the truth … we’ve had several weird calls the last couple of days. Just yesterday we responded to a report of some monster in the Blue Fin Pond. Apparently it chased the Findley twins out of the water. We chalked it up to the overactive imagination of kids, but then we responded to an assault. Mary Beth was accosted, by what she alleges was a one-eyed alien monster, while she was closing up the library last night.”

All I could do was shake my head. Out of all the things I’d heard and witnessed in my lifetime, which was one heck of a lot considering my background, this had to be the most insane.

“You don’t actually believe any of this, do you?

No one responded, which was not a good sign.

It was official. I was the only sane person left on the island.

Maybe someone had slipped LSD in the coffee this morning? I’ve always been a little suspicious of the Kennedys. That was the family who own the Bayside Grill. Maybe they were pushing drugs and slipping them into their food so the entire town would start hallucinating?

Old lady Janet Kennedy did have that weird twitch in her left eye. It could be a sign that she was a tweaker, and having some serious withdrawal symptoms.

The Kennedys being some kind of drug cartel was as good a theory as I’d heard so far, in my opinion anyway.

“Also, the forensics team found this near the back exit.” Tim held up a clear plastic baggie with some strips of material inside. “We’re going to have this rushed to DC to get an analysis on it.”

I knew that even with a rush order, getting the results could take a couple of days. That could be too late.

“Maybe we should send a sample to the university on the mainland,” I suggested.

Ayden had a thoughtful - brooding look on his face, which meant he was actually considering my suggestion.

Nodding, he turned to Tim. “You go ahead and get this to the Archeology Department at the university. I’ll call ahead and make sure there’s someone available to get this done.”

Suddenly I had a disturbing thought. “Why wasn’t I informed first thing? Annabelle is my sister; I should have been called right away. Has anyone told Granny and Aaron?”

“They know.” Ayden nodded. “By the time we informed them, you’d already left. I didn’t want to panic your family, so we didn’t say anything until we knew what was going on.”

Jeb stood up, removing his backside from my sister’s desk. “I’m thinking we should impose an island wide curfew … just until we figure out what’s going on. Whatever it is … we need this killer or killers stopped before the Bicentennial this weekend.”

Unable to sit still any longer, I jumped to my feet. “I don’t know how much good that will do. Some of these incidents took place before the sun went down.”

“She’s right,” Ayden put in.

It was so awesome to hear Ayden say I was right, for a change. It would have been cause for celebration, if my sister weren’t missing, and we didn’t have a bunch of monsters overrunning the island.

Since Ayden thought I was right about at least one thing, I thought it might be a good time to push one of my theories. “As long as we are on the subject of the Bicentennial Celebration, has anyone considered the possibility that this might have something to do with the curse?”

All I received for my effort were a lot of blank stares.

“Remember the old Indian curse, and the rumors about this island being some kind of sacred ground, or portal?”

“Are you losing it?” Ayden frowned.

“Well I don’t see where that’s any crazier than a mummy, or the Frankenstein monster,” I shot back, realizing my mistake too late.

“Frankenstein? What are you talking about?” Tim asked.

“Nothing.” I shook my head. “Just adding some color to the theory.”

I hated lying, but a promise was a promise. On the bright side, now I could encourage Elias to come forward with what he knew, and then maybe Ayden could clear him from the suspect list.

Of course it was still a possibility that Ayden would arrest Elias for the murder of Dale Simmons, unless we could find another person of interest.

“This could have something to do with witchcraft and the curse!” I blurted, finally putting words to what had been playing on my mind since Elias’s Frankenstein story.

“Well there’s no shortage of them type on this island, that’s for sure.” Jeb said in a dry - cynical voice.

It was obvious that Jeb wasn’t too fond of witches since Granny put a spell on his prom date.

“It makes sense, in a crazy sort of way. Granny said there could be someone channeling the island’s power.”

Ayden was scowling at me, which meant he didn’t like something I’d said. “Have you been discussing this case with your grandmother?”

“Well kind of … umm pretty much,” I admitted.

“Hmm … we’ll discuss this later. For now, Tim needs to get on that ferry to the mainland, and we need to organize a search party.”

With it being three in the morning, it was no wonder I barely had the strength to fall into bed, let alone push myself into the shower, but I forced the issue. I wouldn’t get a wink of sleep without a shower. It was one of those things you got conditioned to as a child that never left you. It wouldn’t matter if we were in the middle of an apocalypse, and I was half dead, I had to have a shower and brush my teeth.

With my hair still dripping, I crawled into bed. No doubt I would have a bad case of bed head come morning, but I just didn’t have the energy it would take to stand in front of the mirror and blow dry my hair.

We’d searched the island for hours, and not only was there no sign of Annabelle, but no monsters either.

It was an island for hell’s sake. How many places were there to hide a kidnap victim?

We were missing something significant, I was sure of it. Things just weren’t adding up.

If I kept thinking about Annabelle, I wouldn’t get any sleep at all, and I needed sleep to function.

I couldn’t help but wonder how those TV cops could stay up for hours, drink a dozen pots of coffee, and still manage to shoot straight enough to bring down the bad guy?

This was something else I’d have to add to my to do list. Find out how to stay awake for days, and still be able to hit a running target from hundreds of feet away. Damn, those TV cops were awesome.

I wasn’t too worried about Annabelle just yet. My sister and I had always had some kind of connection between us. Since we were old enough to walk and talk, there had been this emotional connection. We could sense the other’s emotions.

When I’d first come back from the dead, I’d been a little worried that I might have lost that connection with Annabelle, but now I could be sure I hadn’t.

I was still picking up on her emotions. My sister was irritated as hell, and confused, but I hadn’t felt a lot of fear yet. The important thing was that I could feel her, which meant she was still alive.

If that wasn’t enough to keep me awake, there was always my Elias amnesia. Just like everything else that was happening, this strange and mysterious relationship, that had apparently escaped my memory, didn’t make any sense.

There was just no way it could be real. I would have remembered walking away from the love of my life … unless I’d been witched. That was always a possibility.

But if so … who would do something like that, and why?

* * *

Sleep didn’t bring me any answers, but it did bring on a pounding headache, which grew worse as the gummy candy ringtone pierced my eardrums.

Why I’d thought it was cute enough to put as a ringtone, I had no idea.

Resisting the urge to hurl the phone across the room, with the hope that by doing so, the song would somehow change to just an annoying buzz, I groped for the offensive piece of technology and put it to my ear.

I was still trying to push the answer button when I realized it was upside down. Without opening my eyes, I managed to get it upright.

“Hello,” I croaked.

“Did you want some breakfast this morning?” Tim asked.

“Hmm … no, but some coffee and aspirin would be appreciated.”

“Did you hit the bottle last night?” Tim sounded worried; as if that was something I actually did on a regular basis. Sure, I might tie one on every now and again, but not often enough to call for that kind of attitude.

“No … and I’m offended that you would even suggest I’d do such a thing, with my sister gone, and monsters overrunning our town?”

I wasn’t sure how convincing I sounded, but I hoped it was enough to ward of further questions. Not that I had anything to defend myself against, but a migraine might develop if I had to answer any stupid and needless questions so early in the morning.

“Sorry,” he apologized. “You just sound a little hung over.”

I felt hung over.

“Maybe I sound like that because you keep waking me up at insane hours of the morning,” I accused, though it might be a mite unfair of me, especially since Tim had been holding my hand a lot of the time. It was his way of helping me keep my job.

“Sorry. I guess I’m just tired,” I added. Tim was a good guy, so I didn’t want to sound like too much of a bitch.

“That’s okay. If you’ll come and open your door, I can help you out with a cup of ambition.

Now he was talking.

Not bothering to put a robe over my pink bunny pajamas, I slipped into my trusty turtle slippers and stumbled to the front door.

As soon as I swung open the door, I was ready to tackle him for the Styrofoam cup he was holding, but I thought better of it. Instead, I gave him a quick peck on the cheek before snatching the coffee out of his hand. I hoped the kiss would make up for my lack of manners.

“You are such an angel,” I told him, just before taking a big whiff of the coffee, in the hopes it would help to get my heart pumping.

The subject of angels made me think of Julius. I hadn’t heard from my guardian demon in a couple of days, which wasn’t really that unusual. But still, when there was something going on, he tended to make an appearance.

Maybe I’d have to stop by his apartment. How or why a demon needed an apartment, I had no idea, but I figured it might be time to pay
him
a visit for a change.

“Are you okay?” Tim asked.

“Sorry … come in,” I told him, before turning toward the kitchen and the coffee maker. One cup might be enough to keep my eyes open, but I had a feeling this was going to be one of those days when I might need two or three pots of the go juice.

“Did you get any sleep last night?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he nodded. “Slept in the lobby of the Social Science building. “I take it there was no luck with the search last night?”

Shaking my head, I tested the coffee. It wasn’t too hot, but still warm enough to be good. I took several quick swallows, but it still took a minute for the caffeine to work its magic.

“Are you okay,” Tim asked again.

“Yes, just coming back from the land of the dead. Sorry.”

“So I haven’t talked to Fontaine yet. What happened last night?”

“We got a search party together and search most of the island, but we didn’t find a thing,” I explained, my mouth dipping into a frown.

“Maybe she was taken off the island,” he suggested.

“No … I can still feel her. If she’d been taken off the island, the connection would be weaker. Someone has to be hiding her in a place not accessible to a search, like their house maybe.”

“And no sign of monsters?” he asked, a cockeyed grin lighting up his boyish features..

“Nope … no monsters.”

“Well I have some news,” he informed me.

That’s when I realized I hadn’t offered him a seat. It wasn’t that I was being forgetful, or rude on purpose. I was just accustomed to Julius, who would sit whether he was invited to or not.

“Have a seat.” I motioned to a kitchen chair.

Tim sat down and placed his coffee on the table. “The Anthro Department was able to test the sample and found natron powder. They will have to carbon date a sample to find out how old the linen is, but the natron powder is telling.”

My knowledge of ancient Egypt was about as extensive as my knowledge of physics, which meant I knew next to nothing.

“Sooo … what does all that mean?”

“It means that so far, it looks authentic. Natron powder is a mixture of sodium compounds usually found around lakes west of the Nile River. It’s what the ancient Egyptians used to help dry and preserve the body, prior to wrapping it. We won’t know how old the sample is until they finish with the carbon dating though,” he explained.

I couldn’t help but wonder how likely it was that a killer would go through so much trouble, just to make it appear as if he were some kind of old mummy. Probably not too likely,
but yet it all seemed real enough. This led me back to Granny’s, witchcraft combo curse, theory.

It was time to take a closer look at the witches on the island. I could immediately scratch Granny off the list of suspects. My grandmother didn’t have a mean bone in her body. Now I wasn’t too sure about Uncle Aaron. He had his weird moments.

“I do have an idea,” Tim interrupted my thought process, which for some reason reminded me that I had a headache.

“What’s that?” I asked, as I was searching the cupboard for a bottle of aspirin.

“We could hire a paranormal investigator  … you know, maybe as a consultant.”

Tim was brilliant. Why hadn’t I thought of that one?

Although I couldn’t quite understand what an island full of witches and other odd folks would need a paranormal investigator for, I was up for it.

That’s when it dawned on me that I hadn’t had any connection to the crimes at all. Not even a pop in from the victim to ask about our progress, or to inquire as to which way they had to go to find the light.

This not only wasn’t good, it was just plain odd.

A paranormal investigator sounded good.