by Ani Gonzalez
Luanne looked at her sharply. "What unpleasantness?"
Holly gave her a wide-eyed innocent look. "Nothing much. Just a little tremor." She backed toward the staircase. "Gotta go. I need to keep the PRoVE guys in line." She climbed down the stairs. "Good luck."
Luanne sighed, took her laptop out of her bag and placed it on the desk.
Time to get started.
Or maybe not. The words she'd overheard downstairs popped into her head. What had Sheriff Stickley asked the PRoVE guys to research in the occult section? Something to do with moon phases? But why ask the paranormies? There was only one person in town who was an expert in the movements of the moon and stars.
That person was Luanne LaRue.
Should she drop by the station and see if she could help? She wouldn't want them to be misled by the PRoVE guys. They meant well, but their theories were far-fetched and the subtler technical details were lost on them. If she stopped by the station she could offer some assistance and maybe find out something about Black Falls Bridge...
She shook her head. What was she doing? Sure, he'd been pleasant enough last night, but she knew from painful personal experience that law enforcement agents always had an agenda. They wanted to close a case.
No matter the price.
She shouldn't be thinking about sneaking off to help the too-handsome, too-charming sheriff. She should be focusing on writing up her horoscopes.
She turned on her computer and got to work. She'd barely made headway in her Capricorn write-up—the goats were always tricky, which was why she did them first—when she was interrupted. A buxom middle-aged woman with neatly braided gray hair and a fluffy silver sweater was coming up the stairs. She smiled apologetically when she saw Luanne and her laptop.
"Just taking a peek at the new stuff," she said. "You won't even notice me." Her eyes lit up when she saw the portrait over Luanne's desk. "They really did it. That's fantastic."
The woman leaned forward to examine the plaque, and Luanne got a clear look at the identity badge she wore on a lanyard around her neck. It had an alien-head logo and it read "Mary McLure, Xenoarchaelogy Society."
Ms. McLure aimed a pleading glance at Luanne. "Do you mind if a take a picture?"
Luanne shook her head and grabbed her computer. Once she was out of the way. The woman took a selfie with the portrait.
"Awesome," she said, as she fiddled with her phone. "My friends will be so jealous when I post this." She pointed at the picture. "She's a pioneer of science fiction romance."
"Good to know." Luanne lifted her computer and smiled apologetically. "May I?"
Mary stepped out of the way. "Sure. Thanks for letting me take the picture." She glanced around. "I love this town. They have all kinds of cool things like this." Her gaze landed on Luanne's tote bag. "You're the fortune teller?"
"Yes." Luanne hoped she wouldn't ask for a free fortune. Her license only covered the botánica, the PRoVE building, and her home. "That's what I'm working on right now."
Maybe Mary the Xenorchaelogist would take the hint.
"Good for you," Mary said. "I don't believe in that kind of thing, of course."
Great. People who thought aliens built the pyramids scoffed at her profession. Fantastic.
"But that full moon in Sagittarius thing you found was brilliant," Mary continued.
"Thank you," she replied, trying to remember what she'd written about the full moon in Sagittarius. That was this week, wasn't it?
"And I hear you can make good money with the fortune telling businesses," Mary continued. "One of our guys is doing this thing—"
An elderly woman with pink hair and a nebulae scarf climbed up the steps. She was carrying a large pink duffle bag made of quilted fabric. "Mary, c'mon," she whispered urgently. "They're calculating the time of landing and they need you to check the coordinates. Time to get busy."
She gave Luanne a curious glance, then climbed down the steps quickly and disappeared.
Mary waved goodbye. "Gotta go. Looks like I have work to do too. Can't get that landing wrong. Myrtle would never forgive me."
She scuttled down the steps before Luanne could ask her what she meant by "landing."
CHAPTER EIGHT
"LET ME make sure I understand this," Sean drawled.
He was sitting at the end of the Sheriff's Department's battered conference table, surrounded by leather-clad, ghost-hunting bikers. The PRoVE team had brought a laptop computer and hooked it up to a projector. A grainy photograph of a bunch of mangy-looking animals around a pile of metal was now projected onto a wall.
It wasn't the weirdest thing he'd done in his career, but it came close.
He chose his words carefully. "You think mutant raccoons are stealing auto parts to use as ritual offerings to their moon god." He looked at Caine Magnusson, the paranormie leader, straight in the eye. "Does that sound accurate?"
He glanced down at his computer tablet, hoping to find something, anything, that would justify leaving this hellish meeting.
Unfortunately, his inbox was empty. No autopsy report on the Black Falls Bridge guy. No news on the Lucky Ghost scam.
He was trapped in a conference room discussing moon-worshipping rodents. Joy.
Caine shrugged. "They're not raccoons, but, yes, other than that, it's a good summary."
Caine's colleague, Gus, snorted. "They don't even look like raccoons."
Sean picked up one of the reports in front of him. "The official Fish and Wildlife report says it may be a porcyon lotor population suffering from mange, albinism, vitiglio, or a combination of all three conditions." He laid the report down. "That sounds like raccoons."
The paranormie threw his hands up in the air. "All three conditions? Together? That's ridiculous. Why won't people accept what's right in front of them?"
Olivia put her hand to her mouth and Sean suspected that she was trying to hide her giggles.
"Leave it, Gus," Caine said. "It doesn't matter what they are, Sherriff. What matters is that this video is now viral and a lot of people, including the Alien Abduction Survivors convention that's in town right now, think that it's a sign."
"A sign of what?" Olivia asked, her eyes twinkling. "Carburetor hoarding?"
"No." Caine's face was serious. "A sign of an upcoming alien encounter."
Gus shook his head. "It won't be a CE-two or three, Caine. At best, we'll get an anomaly or a fly-by. A CE-one, if we're lucky."
Sean frowned. "What are all these CE things?"
"J. Allen Hynek's UFO classification system," Caine explained. "A CE is a close encounter. An anomaly is an unexplained phenomenon that doesn't rise to the level of a full-fledged encounter, something small like lights or sounds."
"Like in the movie?" Olivia interjected.
"Yes. Like Gus said, we probably won't get to a CE, but even a well-documented anomaly may be worth even more than a CE."
Sean raised a brow. "How many people would be interested in documenting an anomaly?"
Caine shrugged. "Hundreds, maybe even thousands."
They digested the news in silence.
Sean leaned back in his chair, hands over his chest. "And we don't know when they'll arrive. Or where they'll be looking for the anomaly."
Caine shook his head. "No."
That sounded dangerous. Sean had handled big crowds before. The PRoVE guys were actually pretty savvy about crowd control. They kept things fairly organized. A large group of UFO enthusiasts looking for mutant raccoons, however, sounded like a recipe for disaster. He made a mental note to ask the health center about rabies vaccines. They should stock up.
Olivia cleared her throat. "Actually..."
Everyone stared at her.
"We sort of do." She got up and walked toward the laptop. "May I use this?"
The PRoVE intern moved away, and Olivia pressed a couple of keys and opened an Internet search engine.
"I was chatting with one of the tourists and he mentioned..." She typed a couple of words i
nto the search bar. "This."
A familiar green and gold website with the "Madame Esmeralda" logo came up. The post was a long article on "Things to Look Out for This Year." The subheadings mentioned a faraway comet, a bunch of sunspots and...a full moon in Sagittarius. According to the text, the full moon was a sign of a new beginning. New facts would come to light. Unexpected visitors would arrive. The way people saw the world would change. It would herald a new period of renewal and discovery.
They all stared at the screen, befuddled. Even the PRoVE guys looked confused. What did this have to do with aliens?
"What does this mean, Olivia?" Sean asked. "It was published last December."
"I'm not sure, but the guy I talked to said that they think that Luanne has found the key. The aliens will arrive during this full moon. That's this week."
Luanne? Oh, for Pete's sake. The fortune teller was involved in this lunacy?
Olivia paused. "And the Alien Abduction Survivors Club is going to be waiting for them."
Better and better.
"They've been planning it since December?" Caine whispered. "And we didn't know?"
"They're a rogue group," Gus said. "And by that I mean they're complete wackos. We haven't been paying attention to them."
"Thanks to the devil monkey thing, they now think that they're really onto something." Olivia grimaced. "Even worse, the other groups think they're onto something too."
Sean rubbed his chin. "So they're all coming here to hunt our albino raccoons and wait for E.T. to pick them up."
Olivia nodded. "Exactly. We just don't know where they're going."
Sean raised a brow. "That's why we have the country's premier paranormal research team on retainer, isn't it? To find out things like where the loony wannabe alien abductees are going to gather."
He stared at the paranormies. Gus avoided his gaze. Caine scratched his head, looking befuddled.
Caine sighed. "We are researchers. We don't do astrology."
Gus nodded. "It's a pseudoscience."
Well, that was the pot calling the kettle black, wasn't it?
Sean gave them his most unpleasant smirk. "I don't care if it's a misspelled fortune cookie. People believe in it and I have to take that into consideration."
He got up from his chair. "You go out there and call your contacts. Crunch numbers. Chase leads. Do whatever you have to do to find out where this thing is taking place. If something happens to one of these crazies, your business goes down the tubes and so does this town."
They all stared at him.
"So get to it." He grabbed the reports and walked out of the room. Olivia followed behind him, looking awed.
"Wow," she said. "I've never seen anyone talk to the PRoVE guys that way. They pretty much own this town."
"Really?" They reached his office. "They need to start taking better care of it then."
He put the reports on the desk. "If the reporter contacts us again, tell him no comment, and print me the Madame Esmeralda post we just saw."
Sean dragged his hand through his hair and chuckled.
"I'm going to have to talk to my astrologist about this."
CHAPTER NINE
LUANNE WARILY eyed the raw steak in front of her. "Are you trying to bribe me, Sheriff?"
If so, he was doing a really good job. The two large cuts of prime sirloin lay on her butcher block kitchen countertop, flanked by potatoes, fresh asparagus, salad fixings, and sour cream, butter and chives. A bottle of wine sat next to a large cheesecake from New York's most famous bakery.
It was, she had to admit, a princely bribe.
They were in her kitchen, prepping the meal. Sean's offer to cook her a meal had surprised her, and she'd almost turned it down, but in the end she hadn't been able to resist the steak and cheesecake combination.
Sheriff Stickley could be very persuasive.
"Kind of." He slathered dry rub on the steaks. "I have some questions to ask you."
"Oh." That didn't sound good. She grabbed a bowl and started to cut into the lettuce.
Sean chuckled. "I've also been living in a motel for months. A home-cooked meal is a bit of a luxury." He looked around the room. "The place looks nice. Hard to believe that Olivia wrote it up two weeks ago as 'a struggle appears to have taken place.'"
She laughed. "Oh, that. Yes, that was a pretty exciting evening for my resident poltergeist. Luckily, the countertops and cabinets are made of 'pre-distressed' wood, so the texture hides all the nicks and scratches."
He raised a brow. "You weren't hurt?"
"No. I'm never here when it manifests." She peered at the ceiling cautiously. "I think that may be frustrating for the poor thing."
He placed the seasoned steaks on a pan, added the potatoes, and put the pan into the broiler.
"You know when it's going to go haywire?"
"Yes." She chose not to elaborate. He wouldn't believe her anyway.
"How?"
She sighed as she tossed the salad. She'd forgotten that cops never gave up. "I just know."
His eyes narrowed. "Is it like a vision?"
"No." Might as well tell him. Even if he laughed at her method, he wouldn't be able to argue with the results. Since she'd moved in, she'd missed every single poltergeist tantrum. Her record was spotless.
"I did a horoscope for her," she said, covering the salad so it wouldn't dry out.
He frowned. "Can you do that? Even if it's not human?"
"It was human at one time. At least that's what Caine's research concluded." She cleaned the asparagus as she spoke. "I wasn't sure if it would work, but, so far, it hasn't been wrong once."
"How did you get it to work?"
"The PRoVE guys gave me a birth certificate and an estimated time of birth. They searched the hospital records for all the prior owners of the house."
"How many people?"
Geez, was this an official interrogation? Sean seemed to have a lot of questions about her poltergeist. What was going on?
She put the asparagus in boiling water. "Sixty-two."
His eyes widened. "You did sixty-two horoscopes?"
"It wasn't that bad. They were all dead, so I got all null results. Until I did 'Honoria Delacourt, born January seventeenth, nineteen twenty-three at ten thirty-eight p.m.' Her horoscope was still active."
"That's the poltergeist?"
She shrugged. "Seems to be."
"Do you know anything else about her?"
"No."
"Aren't you curious?"
She laughed. "I'm not a medium. I'm not trying to communicate with the beyond. I'm just trying to avoid internal injuries."
Thanks to her talent, she was rarely curious about things. If she wanted to know something, she knew how to go about it. That lack of curiosity sometimes backfired, as was the case with the Wall Street fund that had employed her. Honoria, however, was a different thing altogether. According to her death certificate, she'd been fourteen years old when she'd died.
Frankly, Luanne didn't want to know how or why she'd passed. Happy kids who died peacefully in their sleep did not become destructive poltergeists. If Honoria wanted to have a little fun in her afterlife, who was Luanne to say no? Live and let haunt was her motto.
Sean was looking at her with clear skepticism, but he didn't press the subject. Instead, he picked up a basket of cutlery and went to set the table. She took the asparagus out of the saucepan and threw them into cold water.
They chatted about the town and its residents while they waited for the meat to cook. While she washed the cutting board and knives, Sean opened the bottle of wine and poured. She told him about the new soap business opening next to the botánica. He told her about his first Banshee Creek assignment, a Sasquatch hunt near the lake that went horribly wrong.
Sheriff Stickley was surprisingly easy to talk to.
Maybe she could take advantage of that.
"I heard something happened at Black Falls Bridge. People are very concerned."
; Sean snorted. "I figured news would get around."
She leaned forward, expecting him to elaborate, but no, he didn't say more.
She tried to come up with a way to discreetly elicit more information, but, before she knew it, the steaks were done. Sean took them out of the oven, filling the small kitchen with mouth-watering smells. He cut the potatoes while she put the steaks and vegetables on plates.
It had been years since she'd shared a home-cooked meal with anyone, and this one was delicious. There'd been plenty of lonely ramen cup lunches in the past couple of years, and a few dinners out with Kat and the rest of her Banshee Creek friends, but no home-cooked meals.
She raised her wineglass and took a sip. She liked this, she admitted grudgingly.
Sean put sour cream and chives on his potato and smiled. "Not bad, huh?"
She smiled. "No, not bad at all. Where did you learn to cook?"
He looked a little sheepish. "I didn't. I saw this on a cooking channel last week."
That made her laugh.
"They said it was idiot-proof," he continued with a cocky grin. "So I figured I could try it out."
"The steak is delicious." She raised her glass. "And so is the wine. So, now that you've wined and dined me, tell me," she aimed a level glance at him, "what do you want?"
He sat back and put his utensils on his plate, his face suddenly serious. "I'm not sure. I think it has to do with astrology."
She raised a brow. "You aren't sure?"
He shook his head. "Your analysis of this year's full moon in Sagittarius has the UFO guys in a tizzy. I'm not sure why. Caine says that they don't usually go for the astrology stuff."
"They don't," Luanne agreed, recalling the woman from the library. "I guess it's not sciency enough."
That made him chuckle. "But they seem to think that the Sagittarius find is important. Can you think of why?"
She stared at the dregs of red wine in her glass, trying to think of something. Crap, the drink was already affecting her. That was one of the problems with her gift. It made her ridiculously vulnerable to alcohol.