by Ani Gonzalez
Then he reached over, grabbed her close, and kissed her. The kiss was warm and sweet and way too short.
"I'm off at five," he said. "We could cook again. How do you feel about chili?"
"Chili sounds great," she breathed. "But I'll have to take a rain check. The AASC convention starts tonight with an opening night gala, and Kat and I are going."
His face grew stern. "Why would you two go to a UFO party?"
"The town is trying to be supportive. Kat says we'll get bonus points with the Historic Preservation Committee if we help out the groups bringing in tourists. They may even let us," her voice dropped to a whisper, "put up a Madame Esmeralda neon sign in front of the botánica."
Sean looked unconvinced. Hey, getting walk-in clients was no picnic if she couldn't advertise. She'd been fighting for that sign for weeks.
He shook his head. "Be careful. I know they sound like kooks, but we don't know what they're up to yet." His phone buzzed and he grabbed it quickly and put it to his ear. "I'm on my way. Make sure they don't touch anything."
He opened the door. "You owe me a chili dinner, lady. Don't forget."
"I won't."
"And be careful," he repeated, walking out the porch.
She watched him walk out the house and climb into his car, his parting words ringing in her ears.
Oh, she'd be careful all right. The AASC was definitely up to something. She wasn't the one in danger, though.
Sean was.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
"WE DON'T have burglaries in Banshee Creek," Rafe Santos, the owner of Virginia Vintage Motors, asserted. "Ever."
"So I've heard," Sean replied, scanning the crime scene. One of his deputies was taking pictures. Another one was inspecting the doors and windows.
It certainly looked like a burglary. Virginia Vintage Motors was located in a low-slung building from the nineteen fifties with aquamarine and yellow trim. A large neon sign with the shop's name stood in front, and the office, storage room, and garages were in the back. The lock to the shop's storage room had been broken and there were spare parts scattered across the floor. It looked like someone had swept through Rafe's auto parts inventory looking for something specific.
"What did they take?" Sean asked.
"Carburetors mostly, and a couple of other engine parts.
"Resale value?"
"Some, but not much. They left the Jaguar and Aston Martin parts, and those would fetch the most money in the open market. It makes no sense."
"Maybe they weren't sure what they were looking for." Sean inspected the shelves carefully. Rafe specialized in restoring old vehicles, so his inventory was specialized. Your run-of-the-mill car thief would be unable to resell most of these parts. "Or they were looking for a particular item, maybe on commission."
"Or," Rafe Sr., an old Cuban gentleman with gray hair and piercing dark eyes, entered the room. "they were collecting items for a ceremony."
"Ay, Papi," Rafe sighed. "Don't start."
"It has happened before," Rafe Sr. said. "They did it in seventy-two, eighty-one, and eighty-six. Same thing. They need the metal."
"For what purpose?" Sean asked.
Rafe Sr. shrugged. "Who knows? We always find them in a field somewhere, neatly piled up."
"That was thirty years ago," Sean countered. "This has all the markings of an amateur burglary."
"The parts will show up." Rafe Sr. patted his son's arm reassuringly. "They always do."
As Rafe Sr. left the room, Rafe and Sean stared at the mess on the floor.
"If the parts show up," Rafe mused. "it would save me a lot of money, not to mention the insurance paperwork."
"You don't believe—"
"They didn't take any of the cars," Rafe continued. "The big money is in the cars."
Sean sighed. "Fine, I'll have my guys look around." He wasn't looking forward to wasting time and resources on a wild goose chase. "Any idea of where 'they' would go?"
Rafe shook his head. "The PRoVE guys would know."
Great, he'd have to interview Caine and his team. Just great. "Fine, but we'll take some pictures and collect some evidence here first. You know, in case it wasn't the mutant raccoons collecting their ritual offering."
"Sure," Rafe said. "Just make sure you talk to Caine."
"Oh, I will," Sean took out his phone. "I will."
The PRoVE leader picked up the call. "Caine here."
"Can you grab a couple of your guys and meet me at Vintage Motors? There's been a break-in."
"It wasn't us," Caine replied quickly. "We wouldn't do that to Rafe."
Which begged the question of who they would do it to. But that wasn't his problem right now. "I'm not accusing you, Caine. I'm deputizing you. The guys here say that there have been three other break-ins and the stolen goods were found in a field somewhere. Check your archives and see if you have anything on that, then meet me here."
"'If we have anything?'" Caine asked in an offended tone. "Of course we have something. If it was weird and it happened in Banshee Creek, we have a file on it."
"Excellent," Sean replied. "I look forward to reading it."
He hung up and turned to Rafe. "See if you can figure out what's missing. We'll give the list to PRoVE and also check it against the local fences."
Rafe nodded and went to work followed by Sean's team. Satisfied, Sean headed for the front office. He wasn't surprised to find it untouched. The shop had little cash, so there was no reason to burglarize the office. The money was in the cars and parts.
The front office was a time warp, with blue and yellow linoleum tiles and a pink Formica counter. Framed certificates and newspaper clippings hung on the walls. The shop's awards included "Best Restoration Work" and "Second Place at the Virginia Antique Car Truck and Bike Show." Rafe and his dad took their work seriously.
So why would they blame the break-in on the mythical devil monkeys?
He walked through the office, the garages, and the parking lot, trying to figure it out. Nothing looked out of place. The robbers had headed straight for the storage room. They hadn't bothered with anything else, not the cars, not the financial information in the back office, not the expensive equipment in the garages.
Just the auto parts in the storage room.
He was still trying to figure it out when Caine burst into the room, carrying a bunch of manila folders.
"Here you go," he said. "Virginia Vintage Motors break-ins. Three of them were verified."
Sean opened the files. There were newspaper clippings, PRoVE memoranda, and transcribed interviews. The photos of the ransacked room looked very familiar. It was the same scenario that had greeted him earlier that morning.
He kept on reading. Rafe Sr. was correct. The parts had been found in three different locations around town. Luckily, the PRoVE guys kept stellar records. They had a list of stolen parts from each break-in, a survey of each location, and interviews with everyone involved. Their memos, however, were difficult to follow, with tons of disparate theories that included witch familiars, aliens, and arcane cryptofauna.
He grabbed the lists. They looked very similar. The robbers seemed to take the same items each time. "Check these with Rafe and see if they took the same parts last night."
Caine nodded.
"Then check these locations. Maybe they'll leave the goods in the same place."
Caine shook his head. "They always pick a different site."
"Are they related in any way?"
"Not that we can figure out. Gus had a theory about Stonehenge and the Mayan Calendar." He pointed to a hand-drawn map covered in arcane writing. "But it didn't pan out."
Sean considered the map. "The locations seem pretty spread out. How much manpower can you round up?"
Caine stroked his beard thoughtfully. "On a devil monkey hunt? A couple of dozen."
Sean was impressed. "That many?"
Caine grinned. "These critters are always fun, and everyone is really intrigued by the whole 'deputiz
ation' thing."
"Oh." Maybe making the paranormies temporary law enforcement agents wasn't such a good idea.
"It would help if we got badges," Caine continued, his eyes glinting. "My guys would love that."
Oh, yes. The deputy thing was definitely a bad idea. Unfortunately, he was stuck with it now. "I'll see what I can do."
"Great. I'll go check the lists then." Caine left the office and headed for the storage room.
Sean was left alone, staring at an old file. Was he really deputizing a paranormal investigations group to look for auto parts stolen by mutant raccoons?
Apparently, he was.
He stared at the map. If he were a quasi-intelligent trash-collecting mammal, where would he stash his loot? He didn't know.
But maybe someone else would.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
LUANNE GROUND her teeth in frustration. If she heard "Wayward Son" one more time, she would lose her mind.
She sat on her desk, trying to concentrate on Cancer's work troubles. They had Venus in the second house and Mars in the sixth, which was seldom a good development. The crabs had to avoid office romances until the seventeenth. This was tricky to draft.
Unfortunately, she couldn't concentrate. The television was turned on full blast, and she couldn't turn it off without eliciting a full-blown tantrum from her spectral housemate.
For the first time in a hundred years, Honoria was officially crushing.
And it was insanely annoying.
Luanne had to work on these horoscopes before the AASC meeting tonight. They had to be done by the end of the month, come rain or shine.
She put on her headphones, opened the music program in her computer, and clicked. This was it. If this didn't work, nothing would.
Enya's otherworldly music rang out through the headphones, and Luanne focused on the chart in front of her. The maudlin strains of "Orinoco Flow" drowned out the TV and she was able to focus on her work.
She'd finished Cancer and was moving on to Virgo when she realized that something was wrong.
Her computer was shaking.
Wait, her desk was also moving. Was it an earthquake?
She looked around. The lampshade was trembling and the pillows were practically leaping from the sofa. This was extreme behavior, even for Honoria.
Luanne scanned the room, trying to figure out what had set her ghost off. They had no visitors. The mailman wasn't due for another hour. The neighbor's dog wasn't barking. What could be the problem?
The one thing that was weird was the television, which kept playing the same scene—a demon hunter taking his shirt off, over and over again.
Luanne groaned as understanding dawned. She was dealing with a raging case of teenage ghost hormones.
This was the last straw. She couldn't work under these conditions. A poltergeist was bad enough. A hormonal, teenage poltergeist with a severe case of celebrity crush was unbearable.
She unplugged her computer, put it in her bag, and headed out of the house. She grabbed her denim jacket on her way out, ignoring the slippers she'd left near the entrance, which jumped up and down as she exited the house.
Anything, even a library teeming with UFO fanatics, was better than this.
She crossed the porch, ignoring the thumping noises behind her, and headed for Main Street. The day was bright and cool, and the streets were fairly crowded.
They seemed to have a fair number of tourists in town. She felt tempted to head to the botánica to do some impromptu card readings. She could use the money.
But tarot readings had no expiration date. Her horoscopes, on the other hand, turned into pumpkins on the first day of the month.
She headed to the library. The day was gorgeous, so the library would likely be empty. She'd be able to get her work done.
Her plan was flawless. The library was peaceful and quiet and she was able to snag her usual spot in the divination book section. She waved to the picture of a glum-looking Nostradamus and placed her bag on the chair.
Time to work.
A stack of books sat on the desk. She grabbed them and placed them on the book cart, then stopped, staring at the book on top. The title was "Death Omens: Riddles from the Beyond" by Ravenstar Morningsun, and the cover was a gleaming silver-foil skull.
She grimaced and reached for the book. This wasn't mere coincidence. But shiny silver skulls, really? Fate could try to be a little more subtle.
She opened the book and read the introduction. Ms. Morningsun promised to document the history of death omens and provide a modern guide to their interpretation. The table of contents listed common omens like the dopplegänger, the shadow, the black dog...
And death of a loved one.
Luanne sat and read. Then she grabbed another book, Changing the Future: The Stars Aren't Set in Stone, and read that one too.
Before she knew it, it was noon, and she'd read through most of the library's people-who-see-bad-things-happen section. Most of it was unhelpful advice echoing the "Appointment in Samarra" paradox: Everything you try to do to avoid fate will merely hasten it.
Not at all what she needed right now.
She sat, staring at the shiny skull on the book cover. The sunlight streamed through the window, making it gleam and glisten like a beacon.
She turned the book over to hide the cover.
"I'm sorry," she heard Holly Hagen whisper behind her.
Luanne turned and saw Holly leading Mary the Xenoarchaelogist and a young red-haired man up the aisle. The dreaded Myrtle, pink-haired scourge of fortune-tellers everywhere, followed behind, carrying her ever-present bag. Luanne didn't know the redheaded man, but something about him seemed familiar.
"These are all the research materials we have," Holly told Mary, looking flustered. "If you didn't find what you were looking for, then we don't have it."
Holly looked up and saw Luanne. Her face lit up instantly.
"Oh, you're here." She smiled in relief. "Maybe you can help them. They're trying to do some astrology calculations."
Myrtle looked skeptical. "I don't know. Tarot girl didn't seem too—" But Mary elbowed her in the ribs and she went quiet.
"You did the xenoastrology presentation yesterday," Luanne said to the red-haired man, finally placing him. "That was really impressive."
"He also did the gold-based fuels and interstellar travel ones," Mary added. "Larry is a bit of a prodigy."
"He is certainly very passionate about his interests," Holly said, between clenched teeth. "Well, I'll leave you to it."
She walked away quickly and Larry handed Luanne some notes. "I've been doing some calculations based on my xenoastrology theory." He pointed to a bunch of numbers. "This is my chart, based on the Terran constellations."
Luanne nodded.
He pointed to another chart. "This is a chart from Wolf one-zero-six-one-C. I used the NASA website to estimate their constellations and compensated for the traveling distance."
"Which could be thousands of years," Mary said gently.
Larry bristled. "I said I compensated for it."
Myrtle rolled her eyes and sat down on one of the reading chairs, looking bored. Luanne glanced at the calculations, pages and pages of them. It was an insane amount of work.
Absolutely crazy.
"The numbers work for the three abductions documented in Banshee Creek and for the devil monkey ritual hoarding phenomena of seventy-two, eighty-one, and eighty-six."
"You did a great job, Larry," Mary noted soothingly.
"But the last batch of numbers are all wrong. There should be another ritual hoarding event soon, but I can't find it anywhere."
"Maybe no one noticed it," Mary said.
Larry shook his head. "No, this would have been the biggest one. It would have made a splash."
He was becoming very agitated. Myrtle gave a big yawn.
"Can you check his numbers?" Mary pleaded.
Luanne looked through Larry's calculations. The data looked fami
liar and she realized that she'd replicated some of these results two days ago, when Sean asked her for help. Larry was needlessly complicating his model.
She pointed to a number. "Here's your hoarding event. It happened last night."
And, she suddenly realized, it was probably the break-in that Sean had left to investigate this morning. She looked at Larry with newfound respect.
Larry's eyes lit up. "The hoard could still be up."
Mary looked skeptical. "But how can we find it?"
"The same way we found the others." He scribbled some notes on a fresh page. He stared, frowned, and crossed out some numbers. Then he glared at the paper.
Luanne tried not to sigh. Once again, he was making this too messy. She'd reached the same result with a lot less angst and no differential calculus.
She stretched out her hand. "Let me try."
Larry gave her the pad and she plugged in a bunch of numbers.
"Do you have the Banshee Creek map?"
Larry took a crumbled piece of paper out of his pocket. Luanne took it and plotted her numbers. A couple of minutes later she had a pair of coordinates.
"Here you go," she said.
"Brilliant," Larry exclaimed, laughing.
He flinched as a loud, shushing noise came from the direction of the reference desk. Holly was losing patience.
"Absolutely brilliant," Larry whispered, barely able to contain his excitement. "Let's go check it out."
Mary grabbed Luanne by the arm. She barely had time to grab her bag before they dragged her through the library. Together, they made their way to a silver van with a large flying saucer drawn on the side. The letters AASC were stenciled over the saucer, and the words "Support, Succor, Sustain" were written underneath.
Oh, for Pete's sake. These guys had a support group?
The van had two rows of seats and a customized back panel with computer screens and arcane devices. The walls were covered with maps with locations marked in different colors. Mary headed for the driver's seat, and Larry sat in the back, inputting numbers into a keypad. Myrtle set her bag down on the floor and sat down on the bench, clearly resigned to her fate.
They had the air of people who had done this before. Luanne, however, sat in the passenger seat, feeling confused.