by J. R. Rain
“Turn it back!” Chandelle said, alarmed.
He hastily touched #4 and hit the bar. That was a modern city scene.
“You got the wrong number,” Chandelle said nervously. But now she wasn’t quite sure which was the right one.
He tried #5. That was an ugly plain of brush and tree stumps. He touched #6, and the oak trees returned. They stared at each other. “This is really strange,” Penn said.
Chandelle didn’t care to advertise how foolishly alarmed she had been when they almost lost the original setting. “We had better try the front door knob,” she said tightly.
He tilted his head. “Are you sure you’re up to it, dear?”
“I don’t dare avoid it. If the front changes too—” She shook her head, not finishing. This nice house had become frighteningly complicated.
They went to the front. That number was #73. Penn reached slowly for the panel, visibly set himself, and reset it to #74. They peered out the pane.
The city had changed. It remained a metropolis, but the street and buildings across it were different.
“More?” Penn asked.
“Turn it back.”
He touched #73, and the familiar street returned. He withdrew from the panel as if it had become hot. They retreated to the living room couch and sat down. Penn put his arm around her back, and Chandelle put her head into his shoulder and cried. It was her way of handling extraordinary tension.
After a bit she disengaged. She had recovered some of her equilibrium. She dug into her purse for a hanky and patted her face. “What do you think it is?”
“Something well beyond anything we know.” He looked shaken. “So maybe those are all images outside, with enough play to really seem real. But I don’t think so. I think they’re real. Which means this house is something really special. Whoever built it has technology we’ve never seen.”
“But why?” she asked plaintively. “Why do all this, and just set it out for rent?”
“I’d sure like to know. Oh, would I like to know!”
She nerved herself, and spoke. “There’s only one way to find out.”
He nodded. “Rent it.”
“Do you want to?”
“Honey, I don’t want to upset you—”
“You want to rent it. Because we had a deal: one month in the city, with its culture, the way I like it, and then a month in the wilderness, roughing it, the way you’ve always dreamed. That’s all available right here, depending on the door we use. And we have undertaken to take Llynn off her family’s hands for a while. I think this house will interest her, and that’s two thirds of the battle. Maybe she’ll forget to be so wild.”
“Yes. I have the feeling that everything we have known in life so far pales into insignificance beside this. We are being offered a chance to explore—to investigate, perhaps, the universe.” He looked at her, the doubt manifest. “But do you really want to?”
She took a deep breath. “Definitely. Remember, my name means ‘Candle.’ It is better to light it, than to curse the darkness.”
He kissed her. “I can’t say you won’t regret this.”
“I know. But I’m curious too. And the first month’s rate is right.” She got up and walked to the phone. As she brought the receiver to her ear, she heard the beeping of automatic dialing. A programmed phone?
“Dunbar Reality, Karen speaking.” It was their Realtor.
“Chandelle Green here. We’re at the house. We want to rent.”
“Excellent. I was afraid you wouldn’t. But do you mind telling me—”
Chandelle avoided that by interrupting her. “This house has everything! The owner forgot to remove—”
“No. It is stocked for your convenience. Everything there is for you to use. Come to the office and we’ll give you the permanent key.”
“Thank you,” Chandelle said faintly. “We’ll be right there.” She hung up the phone. “It’s done. We just have to pick up the regular key. And we can use everything.”
Realty Check
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Moon Dance
Vampire for Hire #1
by J.R. Rain
Chapter One
I was folding laundry in the dark and watching Judge Judy rip this guy a new asshole when the doorbell rang.
I flipped down a pair of Oakley wrap-around sunglasses and, still holding a pair of little Anthony’s cotton briefs in one hand, opened the front door.
The light, still painfully bright, poured in from outside. I squinted behind my shades and could just made out the image of a UPS deliveryman.
And, oh, what an image it was.
As my eyes adjusted to the light, a hunky guy with tan legs and beefy arms materialized through the screen door before me. He grinned at me easily, showing off a perfect row of white teeth. Spiky yellow hair protruded from under his brown cap. The guy should have been a model, or at least my new best friend.
“Mrs. Moon?” he asked. His eyes seemed particularly searching and hungry, and I wondered if I had stepped onto the set of a porno movie. Interestingly, a sort of warning bell sounded in my head. Warning bells are tricky to discern, and I automatically assumed this one was telling me to stay away from Mr. Beefy, or risk damaging my already rocky marriage.
“You got her,” I said easily, ignoring the warning bells.
“I’ve got a package here for you.”
“You don’t say.”
“I’ll need for you to sign the delivery log.” He held up an electronic gizmo-thingy that must have been the aforementioned delivery log.
“I’m sure you do,” I said, and opened the screen door and stuck a hand out. He looked at my very pale hand, paused, and then placed the electronic thing-a-majig in it. As I signed it, using a plastic-tipped pen, my signature appeared in the display box as an arthritic mess. The deliveryman watched me intently through the screen door. I don’t like to be watched intently. In fact, I prefer to be ignored and forgotten.
“Do you always wear sunglasses indoors?” he asked casually, but I sensed his hidden question: And what sort of freak are you?
“Only during the day. I find them redundant at night.” I opened the screen door again and exchanged the log doohickey for a small square package. “Thank you,” I said. “Have a good day.”
He nodded and left, and I watched his cute little buns for a moment longer, and then shut the solid oak door completely. Sweet darkness returned to my home. I pulled up the sunglasses and sat down in a particularly worn dining room chair. Someday I was going to get these things re-upholstered.
The package was heavily taped, but a few deft strokes of my painted red nail took care of all that. I opened the lid and peered inside. Shining inside was an ancient golden medallion. An intricate Celtic cross was engraved across the face of it, and embedded within the cross, formed by precisely cut rubies, were three red roses.
In the living room, Judge Judy was calmly explaining to the defendant what an idiot he was. Although I agreed, I turned the TV off, deciding that this medallion needed my full concentration.
After all, it was the same medallion worn by my attacker six years earlier.
2.
There was no return address and no note. Other than the medallion, the box was empty. I left the gleaming artifact in the box and shut the lid. Seeing it again brought back some horrible memories. Memories I have been doing my best to forget.
I put the box in a cabinet beneath the china hutch, and then went back to Judge Judy and putting away the laundry. At 3:30 p.m., I lathered my skin with heaping amounts of sun block, donned a wide gardening hat and carefully stepped outside.
The pain, as always, was intense and searing. Hell, I could have been cooking over an open fire pit. Truly, I had no business being out in the sun, but I had my kids to pick up, dammit.
So I hurried from the front steps and crossed the driveway a
nd into the open garage. My dream was to have a home with an attached garage. But, for now, I had to make the daily sprint.
Once in the garage and out of the direct glare of the spring sun, I could breathe again. I could also smell my burning flesh.
Blech!
Luckily, the Ford Windstar minivan was heavily tinted, and so when I backed up and put the thing into drive, I was doing okay again. Granted, not great, but okay.
I picked up my son and daughter from school, got some cheeseburgers from Burger King and headed home. Yes, I know, bad mom, but after doing chores all day, I definitely was not going to cook.
Once at home, the kids went straight to their room and I went straight to the bathroom where I removed my hat and sunglasses, and used a washcloth to remove the extra sunscreen. Hell, I ought to buy stock in Coppertone. Soon the kids were hard at work saving our world from Haloes and had lapsed into a rare and unsettling silence. Perhaps it was the quiet before the storm.
My only appointment for the day was right on time, and since I work from home, I showed him to my office in the back. His name was Kingsley Fulcrum and he sat across from me in a client chair, filling it to capacity. He was tall and broad shouldered and wore his tailored suit well. His thick black hair, speckled with gray, was jauntily disheveled and worn long over his collar. Kingsley was a striking man and would have been the poster boy for dashing rogues if not for the two scars on his face. Then again, maybe poster boys for rogue did have scars on their faces. Anyway, one was on his left cheek and the other was on his forehead, just above his left eye. Both were round and puffy. And both were recent.
He caught me staring at the scars. I looked away, embarrassed. “How can I help you, Mr. Fulcrum?”
“How long have you been a private investigator, Mrs. Moon?” he asked.
“Six years,” I said.
“What did you do before that?”
“I was a federal agent.”
He didn’t say anything, and I could feel his eyes on me. God, I hate when I can feel eyes on me. The silence hung for longer than I was comfortable with and I answered his unspoken question. “I had an accident and was forced to work at home.”
“May I ask what kind of accident?”
“No.”
He raised his eyebrows and nodded. He might have turned a pale shade of red. “Do you have a list of references?”
“Of course.”
I turned to my computer, brought up the reference file and printed him out the list. He took it and scanned the names briefly. “Mayor Hartley?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“He hired you?”
“He did. I believe that’s the direct line to his personal assistant.”
“Can I ask what sort of help you gave the mayor?”
“No.”
“I understand. Of course you can’t divulge that kind of information.”
“How exactly can I help you, Mr. Fulcrum?” I asked again.
“I need you to find someone.”
“Who?”
“The man who shot me,” he said. “Five times.”
3.
The furious sounds of my kids erupting into an argument suddenly came through my closed office door. In particular, Anthony’s high-pitched shriek. Sigh. The storm broke.
I gave Kingsley an embarrassed smile. “Could you please hold on?”
“Duty calls,” he said, smiling. Nice smile.
I marched through my single story home and into the small bedroom my children shared. Anthony was on top of Tammy. Tammy was holding the remote control away from her body with one hand and fending off her little brother with the other. I came in just in time to witness him sinking his teeth into her hand. She yelped and bopped him over the ear with the remote control. He had just gathered himself to make a full-scale leap onto her back, when I stepped into the room and grabbed each by their collar and separated them. I felt as if I had separated two ravenous wolverines. Anthony’s fingers clawed for his sister’s throat. I wondered if they realized they were both hovering a few inches off the floor. When they had both calmed down, I set them down on their feet. Their collars were ruined.
“Anthony, we do not bite in this household. Tammy, give me the remote control.”
“But Mom,” said Anthony, in that shriekingly high-pitched voice that he used to irritate me. “I was watching ‘Pokemon’ and she turned the channel.”
“We each get one half hour after school,” Tammy said smugly. “And you were well into my half hour.”
“But you were on the phone talking to Richaaard.”
“Tammy, give your brother the remote control. He gets to finish his TV show. You lost your dibs by talking to Richaaard.” They both laughed. “I have a client in my office. If I hear any more loud voices, you will both be auctioned off on eBay. I could use the extra money.”
I left them and headed back to the office. Kingsley was perusing my bookshelves. He looked at me before I had a chance to say anything and raised his eyebrows.
“You have an interest in the occult,” he said, fingering a hardback book. “In particular, vampirism.”
“Yeah, well, we all need a hobby,” I said.
“An interesting hobby, that,” he said.
I sat behind my desk. It was time to change the subject. “So you want me to find the man who shot you five times. Anything else?”
He moved away from my book shelves and sat across from me again. He raised a fairly bushy eyebrow. On him, the bushy eyebrow somehow worked.
“Anything else?” he asked, grinning. “No, I think that will be quite enough.”
And then it hit me. I thought I recognized the name and face. “You were on the news a few months back,” I said suddenly.
He nodded once. “Aye, that was me. Shot five times in the head for all the world to see. Not my proudest moment.”
Did he just say aye? I had a strange sense that I had suddenly gone back in time. How far back, I didn’t know, but further enough back where men said aye.
“You were ambushed and shot. I can’t imagine it would have been anyone’s proudest moment. But you survived, and that’s all that matters, right?”
“For now,” he said. “Next on the list would be to find the man who shot me.” He sat forward. “Everything you need is at your disposal. Nothing of mine is off limits. Speak to anyone you need to, although I ask you to be discreet.”
“Discretion is sometimes not possible.”
“Then I trust you to use your best judgment.”
Good answer. He took out a business card and wrote something on the back. “That’s my cell number. Please call me if you need anything.” He wrote something under his number. “And that’s the name and number of the acting homicide detective working my case. His name is Sherbet, and although I found him to be forthcoming and professional, I didn’t like his conclusions.”
“Which were?”
“He tends to think my attack was nothing but a random shooting.”
“And you disagree?”
“Wholeheartedly.”
We discussed my retainer and he wrote me a check. The check was bigger than we discussed.
“I don’t mean to be rude,” said Kingsley as he stood and tucked his expensive fountain pen inside his expensive jacket, “but are you ill?”
I’ve heard the question a thousand times.
“No, why?” I asked brightly.
“You seem pale.”
“Oh, that’s my Irish complexion, lad,” I said, and winked.
He stared at me a moment longer, and then returned my wink and left.
Moon Dance
is available at:
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About the Authors:
Piers Anthony is one of the world’s most prolific and popular authors. His fantasy Xanth novels have been read and loved by millions of readers around the world, and have been on the New York
Times Best Seller list twenty-one times. Although Piers is mostly known for fantasy and science fiction, he has written several novels in other genres as well, including historical fiction, martial arts, and horror. Piers lives with his wife in a secluded woods hidden deep in Central Florida.
Please visit him at www.hipiers.com for a complete list of his fiction and non-fiction and to read his monthly newsletter.
~~~~~
J.R. Rain is an ex-private investigator who now writes full-time. He lives in a small house on a small island with his small dog, Sadie, who has more energy than Robin Williams.
Please visit him at www.jrrain.com.