by Ani Gonzalez
"And even if you're a vamp," the deejay continued, "you're probably better off sleeping through this thing. This storm is going to be huge."
Sebastian smiled widely. He was happy to be back, snowstorm and all. Hell, even the eccentric WPRV traffic report couldn't dim his good mood.
After a grueling promotion tour for his latest movie, he was finally home.
He'd bought the cabin years ago, with his first paycheck from the Actors Guild. Well, make that his first paycheck and a whole lot of tips. He'd been young and stupid, and had sunk everything he had into a pile of moldy logs with unreliable cellphone reception.
And it had been worth every cent.
He owed his sanity to this cabin. No matter how crazy his life got—draining junkets, demanding directors, crazy fans—everything faded away when he drove up this road. Sure, the cabin was a dump, with peeling logs, broken down appliances, and an eclectic, some might call it disgusting, mix of second-hand furniture. But those were features, not bugs. When he was holed up in the cabin with his books, it was easy to pretend that Hollywood did not exist.
And right now, he really needed to pretend that the Big One had hit and Hollywood, and everything it represented, had sunk into the depths of the Pacific Ocean.
"So get ready for a nice long snow-in, folks. And stay tuned to WPRV, where we are celebrating Christmas in true Banshee Creek fashion. And now, back to our Talk Radio segment, where our audience was discussing a perennial favorite, our own Virginia Devil Monkey." The deejay flipped a switch and an eerie tune rang out. "Okay, caller one, we're listening."
Sebastian ignored the radio and considered the upcoming snowpocalypse. His cabin had no amenities, except for indoor plumbing and a single power line that, judging by the shrieking winds outside, had probably given up the ghost some time ago. Good thing Banshee Creek Hardware had a wide assortment of ghost hunting equipment, including top-of-the line flashlights and night-vision goggles on its shelves. The store's storm supplies section had been cleaned out, but no one had sprung for the expensive paranormal gear, and he was now the proud owner of five of the most expensive flashlights in existence, a box of pricey séance candles made of pure Hungarian beeswax, and a battery-operated jack o' lantern he'd found in the clearance section. The Halloween leftover was a steal at $2.99.
That, and a couple of supermarket shopping bags stashed in his truck, meant he was ready for the storm. In fact, he was looking forward to it. He needed a couple of days of total solitude, a few precious days to lick his wounds, recover and decide what he would do with the rest of his life
Oh, and he also had to get ready to face his family during the traditional Franco Christmas dinner.
He had some explaining to do.
He knew his family was concerned about him, about the whole Ariel Henderson fiasco, and he would have to reassure them somehow. If he didn't, the whole clan would rally around him, try to cheer him up, and come up with myriad crazy ideas to fix his life.
He shuddered at the thought.
But the storm gave him a welcome reprieve. He could feel his muscles relax as the Range Rover's tires clawed up the last hill. In just a few more minutes he would reach his destination, and then, perfect solitude, absolute relaxation and total peace.
A piercing shriek came through the radio, making him wince.
"Catch one? Catch one?" The deejay scoffed. "No one's ever caught one. How would you catch one?"
He sighed and turned off the radio. WPRV had been an amusing distraction during the endless traffic jam, but, as was often the case with his hometown's paranormal obsessions, a little went a long way.
Finally, the cabin came into view. The familiar shingled roof was covered with snow and the burnished log walls glowed in the light of the SUV's headlamps. He glanced at the small shingled house fondly. Home sweet home.
Although, not quite. He stared in disbelief at the snow-covered car parked in the driveway behind the house. No one dared invade his sanctuary, not his family, not his friends, no one.
He parked the Range Rover and got out, regarding the vehicle warily. Did he have a stalker? The thought was repugnant to him, but he had to consider it. He was no longer an unknown character actor. He now had a blockbuster under his belt and the fan base that came with it.
But why would a fan leave the headlights on and the car door open?
He walked to the car, brushing white powder out of his hair. The snow was coming down pretty hard now, and a large lump of snow sat on the front of the car, as if a branch had dislodged its frozen cargo onto the hood.
He relaxed once he saw the Virginia Vintage Motors license plate holder. Not a fan, then. This was a local. In fact, the car seemed very familiar. He walked to the driver's side, sat on the seat and turned off the ignition. The lights went out and the forest's quiet stillness returned. He grabbed the keys and put them in his pocket, noting the keyring's distinctive "Find Your Forever Home with Banshee Creek Realty" logo.
Definitely a local, probably a friend, maybe even a family member. He considered a couple of names and discarded them. Not that many people frequented the lake in winter. Caine sometimes rode up with his paranormal investigator friends, searching for ghosts and whatnot, but the local ghost hunters favored motorcycles and SUVs, the bigger the better. Caine wouldn't be caught dead driving a Jeep Cherokee. That left only one likely suspect.
His brother Zach.
But this wasn't Zach's truck. Why would Zach borrow an automobile? Realization dawned and he cursed under his breath.
Zach must have driven up in his girlfriend's car. That accounted for the flowery makeup bag he spied between the front seats and the hot pink iPod plugged into the archaic cassette player. It also explained why the lights had been on. His randy brother had been in too much of a hurry to get to the bed. He cursed again, this time in his native Spanish. Zack knew that he wasn't supposed to use the cabin for his romantic trysts. That wouldn't stop Zach, though. Sebastian could build a moat and surround the cabin with electrified fences and that still wouldn't stop Zach.
He wished a thousand painful curses on his baby brother. His perfect mountain vacation was ruined. He wouldn't be able to get rid of Zach and his girl. With this storm, they'd have to stay in the cabin for a couple of days. He slammed the car door and stalked back to his SUV. He felt like a sulky child, deprived of a favorite treat.
He glanced back at the dark cabin. His brother was probably holed up in the bedroom right now with his girl. And he probably had no idea Sebastian was back.
A smile filled with mischief crossed Sebastian's face. He grabbed a flashlight and followed the trail of footsteps leading to the house.
He wouldn't be the only Franco brother whose mountain vacation was ruined.
He reached the porch and peered through one of the windows. The cabin was dark, but the fireplace was lit and he could see a bundle of blankets on the floor.
His brother had made himself at home.
Sebastian put his key in the old lock and jiggled it to get it to open. Finally, he pushed the door open and stepped inside, ready to give Zach a scalding talking-to.
But his foot caught on something and he tripped. The flashlight flew out of his hand and he felt a blanket fall on his head. He lurched forward, tripped onto a piece of furniture and crashed into the floor.
He rolled, trying to minimize the impact, but the maneuver was only partly successful. Pain flashed through his shoulder, and he groaned loudly.
"So yeah, that kind of booby trap may work," he heard the deejay say, his voice dripping with skepticism. "But the problem isn't trapping a devil monkey. The problem is what do you do with it afterwards?"
CHAPTER THREE
WHAT DO you do when your client is lying on the ground, bound in bungee cords, and covered with a striped wool blanket?
Lily stared at her victim, aghast. Her Interior Design teachers at NOVA Community College had not covered this topic. The cabin was dark, but not so dark that she didn't recognize the
tall shape, lying on the floor, or the familiar voice muttering obscenities in Spanish.
"Chlordiazepoxide and a tranquilizer gun," caller number nine said triumphantly.
She reached over and turned off the radio. WPRV had done enough damage for one evening.
At least it was Sebastian lying on the ground. In the dark cabin, with the wind howling outside and the branches scratching at the windows, it had been all too easy to imagine a desperate furry creature clawing at the walls to escape the cold. So, under the circumstances, her ex-boyfriend was actually a welcome sight, even wrapped in wool and trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey.
Sebastian groaned and shook the blanket off. He looked up at her, steel-gray eyes narrowed in fury.
"Surprise," she said weakly.
He pushed himself off the floor, pulling the bungee cords off, and her eyes almost bulged out of her head. Sebastian was built now, built like, well, a Greek god.
A very angry Greek god.
"Lily?" he shouted, dark eyes blazing. "Are you here with Zach?"
She frowned in confusion. That was not what she'd expected. "What the hell were you thinking, Lily?" seemed a lot more appropriate. Although, she wasn't sure she could explain why she'd booby-trapped the cabin door. It had seemed like an eminently reasonable measure after an hour of WRPV talk radio and a couple of bottles of Haunted Orchard's Bloody Hook mixers.
"Zach?" she asked. "Zach must be snow-proofing his pizzeria, or at least he'd better be. If my murals get wet, I'll have his head. Anyway, why would I be here with Zach?"
Her answer seemed to reassure him. He glared at her then bent to unwind the bungee cords tangled around his legs. Lily aimed her flashlight at his limbs, partly to help him free himself from the cords, but mostly to check him out.
Apparently that movie poster wasn't Photoshopped at all. Sebastian had put on a lot of muscle. Her high school beau had always been tall and handsome, with dark hair and gray eyes, but he'd also been severely allergic to gyms, exercise regimes and all organized sports. Something must have put an end to his aversion, though. This kind of body required serious weight lifting and General Patton as a personal trainer.
This wasn't Bastian, her drama-geek boyfriend anymore. This was Sebastian Franco, movie star.
And assault victim.
He pulled out a bungee cord and squinted at it. "So this wasn't Zach's idea?"
His voice practically dripped suspicion but her cider-addled brain couldn't quite understand why they were still talking about the youngest Franco brother.
"Does your brother often booby-trap your house?" she asked, in as reasonable a tone as she could muster. It sounded like an outlandish idea, but, then again, she knew Zach Franco.
He looked at her quizzically. "If you're not with him, what are you doing here?" he looked down at the cords in his hand. "And what the hell is this?"
She considered his words for a second, two different questions with two different, but equally dangerous, answers. It would be best to answer the one less likely to cause an explosion.
"I thought you were the devil monkey," she said simply.
That statement would have been greeted with stark disbelief by any rational human being, but Sebastian was a Banshee Creek native. He looked up at the radio on the mantle and shook his head.
"That station is a menace to society." He looked back at her, clearly exasperated. "The devil monkey doesn't exist, and, even if it did, you have a car. Why didn't you just drive away?"
"The nonexistent thing broke my Jeep," she said, gesturing toward the snow-covered automobile outside the window. "I was trapped. What was I supposed to do?"
"Get in the house, lock the door, and reserve a tow truck for tomorrow morning?" His tone was both reasonable and condescending at the same time. Neat trick. "And maybe turn off the headlamps so the battery doesn't die and lock the car. The devil monkey is a myth, Lily. All the local legends have one common denominator: they aren't real. They're all part crazy ramblings and part genius marketing."
"I saw it," she said stubbornly. "And how do you explain my car? It was working fine a couple of hours ago."
"Your car is so old it plays cassette tapes. That's why it doesn't work. Now how do I get these off?"
He pulled at the cords wrapped around his legs, tightening their grip. She bent to help him.
"I can't believe you don't remember how these work," she said. "We used them when did the scaffolding for Much Ado About Nothing."
"I played Benedick, Lily," he said, throwing a cord to the side. "I had nothing to do with the set design. That was all your stuff."
"Well, this is how we got you away from the zombies," she said, pulling off another cord. "What? Your fancy Hollywood productions don't use bungee cords?"
Another exasperated sigh.
"Strangely enough, Hollywood hasn't jumped into the Shakespeare With Zombies bandwagon." He stepped out of the cords. "Banshee Creek High still has a monopoly on that."
Lily winced. Was that a dig at her decision to give up on her West Coast dreams and stay in Banshee Creek? They'd planned to leave for California together, but she'd chickened out. She'd stayed in Banshee Creek and enrolled at Northern Virginia Community College instead. She'd chosen safety over dreams.
The way you were supposed to.
She steeled herself for an argument. She wasn't an international superstar like Sebastian, but she had a good life, a life she was proud of. She wouldn't let him denigrate that.
But Sebastian did not seem interested in the conversation. He was still trying to free himself from her homemade devil monkey booby trap.
She felt a mixture of relief and disappointment. Why would Sebastian still be angry at the high school flame who refused to follow him to L.A.? He had fame, fortune, and a super-model-gorgeous new girlfriend. Although gorgeous wasn't a good enough adjective. Ariel Henderson was tall, blonde, and so beautiful she'd been picked to play Aphrodite in War of the Gods.
Annoyed, she pulled on a stubborn bungee cord. Sebastian, with his super-successful, picture-perfect life, couldn't possibly be angry with Lily Holroyd, his cowardly ex-girlfriend.
The cord sprung back, and Sebastian was free. He brushed the dust off his expensive overcoat and picked up his flashlight.
"Stay here," he said, turning back to the door. "I'm going to turn on the generator. I mean it, Lily. Don't move an inch. It's dark and you're not familiar with the cabin. You could hurt yourself."
He opened the door roughly. Lily decided not to explain that she was, by now, extremely familiar with his house.
"I'm going with you," she said instead.
He turned back to her, frowning. A couple of snow flurries flew in through the half-open door. "No, you're not. You're staying here where it's warm."
She'd forgotten how bossy Sebastian could be. It was one of his least attractive qualities.
"You can't go out by yourself," she retorted. "That thing could still be out there."
He stared at her, eyes wide with disbelief.
"That thing," he mimicked her tone, "does not exist."
He stepped through the door, closing it behind him.
Lily briefly considered letting him become devil monkey fodder, then picked up a fireplace poker and followed him out. She didn't care what he thought, there was definitely something out there. Maybe it wasn't a devil monkey, maybe it was a hungry bear or a mangy wolf, but it was there.
The snow was coming down hard now, the oversize flakes glittering in the moonlight. She examined the area around the house and was relieved to see no three-toed footprints on the snowy expanse.
Sebastian caught sight of the poker as she stepped off the porch and stared.
"You're going to use that on the devil monkey?" His laughter rang out, shattering the stillness of the night.
"If you keep this up, I'm going to use it on you," she grumbled.
He chuckled as he walked to a small shed in the back of the cabin.
Lily waited, standing in
the snow for what seemed like an eternity. With Sebastian gone, the quiet darkness felt menacing. She eyed the snow-covered trees warily and stomped her feet trying to keep warm. What was taking him so long? She heaved a sigh of relief when she heard a loud grumbling sound and the lights inside the cabin flickered on.
Sebastian closed the door to the shed and glanced at the cabin, looking satisfied.
"There. Let there be light," he said, leading her back to the house. "So, what brings you to this neck of the woods?"
"I had to work," she said, as they trudged through the snow.
A confused expression came over his face. "Work? Here?"
"Your family hired me to remodel your place," she explained, grimacing slightly.
His eyes widened in alarm and he looked up at the house, as if to make sure that it was still there. The sight of the small wooden structure seemed to reassure him.
As well it might. The front of the house remained intact. All the surprises were inside.
"Remodel?" he asked anxiously as he strode to the house, leaving her behind. "My place doesn't need a remodel."
Lily sighed and followed him. This was going to be bad.
He reached the front door, jerked it open, and stepped inside. Lily followed at a more sedate pace, like the condemned marching to the gallows.
She entered the house, almost bumping against his back. Sebastian stood in the middle of the living room, his eyes darting around, focusing on the new bookshelves, drapes and furniture. His jaw was clenched hard. As his face darkened, she came to a stomach-churning conclusion. Sebastian Franco couldn't be angry with Lily Holroyd, the old high-school girlfriend who betrayed him.
But Lily Holroyd, stealth decorator, was an entirely different story.
CHAPTER FOUR
WHAT THE hell had she done with his house?
