I Messed Up Christmas (A Ghost & Abby Mystery Book 2)

by Jo-Ann Carson

  “We were out in the forest enjoying the moonlight and I got jumped. It was a draugr. Elif pulled him off of me and threw him against a tree. You have to admire the strength and speed of vampires.”

  They have shiny teeth too, I thought, but I didn’t say that. “What happened next?”

  “Elif snarled. I swear that’s all he did. But a vampire snarl is something to behold. My whole body shivered, and the draugr confessed.”

  “Confessed?” I tried to breathe.

  “He apologized for jumping me. Said he was hungry. That made Elif snarl louder. He considers me his snack, after all.”

  E-ew. Just e-ew. I nodded.

  “The draugr said he’d go back to sucking goat blood.”

  “The poor goats,” I said.

  “Elif’s nose started twitching. I have no idea what that means, but the draugr talked faster and faster. He told us he stole the angel, because he hated the town, Christmas and, well, angels. He thought being on earth would be fun, but it was too hard to live here. All he wanted was to go back.”

  That didn’t explain the ransom demand. “Did he say what he did with the angel?”

  “Elif released him at this point and he slinked onto the ground and skittered away. I called after him, but he had no interest in hanging around.”

  “So the draugr may still be in the forest.”

  “Yes.”

  “Guess I’m going draugr hunting.”

  “Vampire hunting? On the full moon? On solstice. Alone?” Joy’s dry tone cracked.

  Yeah, it sounded like a dumb idea to me too, but what choice did I have? That’s my life, a series of no-other-choices. Sheesh. At least I knew about draugrs. How much harm could a vampiric beast with bad breath cause me?

  10

  Rock'n Round the Christmas Tree

  I swung by home for dinner. I needed to de-mud and see my kids, who would be back at the manor by now. Their sweet faces are the best motivation I have for getting on with things. They mean everything to me.

  As my battered old mini slugged its way up my winding driveway, and the neighbourhood hounds howled, I expected to feel relieved. But nothing was normal. Should I expect anything in my life to be normal? The gravel road was lined by cars and trucks. News of my shower had clearly got around.

  “I’m home,” I yelled as I opened the un-locked door. Jonathan, my seven-year-old skateboarder, got to me first and gave me a peanut-buttery kiss.

  “What happened to you?” he said.

  “Do you like the tree?” I asked. It lay on the floor of the main room to my right. It was perfect, as in big, green and fluffy. My heart sped up.

  “Mommy, Mommy.” Jinx, my freckled-faced five-year-old jumped me next. “Can we decorate it? Can we? Can we? I want to make gingerbread men.” Her eyes were as wide as saucers.

  Harvey, one of the dock guys, walked passed us. He nodded. “Thanks for the shower. You need more shampoo. I’ll bring some by later.”

  “Oh, okay, thanks.”

  I felt a tug at my leg. Jane, my three-year-old, wanted my attention. I bent down and hoisted her up onto my hip, wondering, not for the first time, if having children attached to me would eventually twist my spine, but loving it all the same.

  Jillian, my cousin, came last. A petite woman with pink hair (today) and fiery blue eyes. “What happened to you?” she said. “No, hold that thought. Come into the kitchen. The coffee’s hot and I think there’s an empty chair.”

  “You think there’s an empty . . .”

  “You’re the one who opened the door to the community.”

  “Oh, right. I guess I should have told you.” I hadn’t thought about that, but here she was rolling along with my crazy life. “I love you.” Sometimes that’s all there is to say.

  “Back atcha. And you don’t have to apologize. I think it’s great you’re sharing this big old house with others.”

  The coffee tasted better than any coffee I had ever had. I swear. Hot, rich and did I mention hot. As it slid down my throat, I felt human again. Or at least witchy-human. I told her about my day, an abbreviated and sanitized-of-all-magic version.

  “Uh-huh.” Jillian leaned back and scrunched her nose. “You’re leaving something out.”

  “Like what?” I used my most innocent-sounding voice, but I suck at lying.

  “Like how did the tree just appear? And who is the hot Italian guy with the mesmerizing eyes who keeps coming around to talk to you?”

  “Oh, that.” I took a long, slow drink of my coffee. “I had the tree delivered.” Which was sort of true. “You must have missed the delivery man.”

  “I was sitting in the living room when it poofed in front of me. I swear it poofed. Trees aren’t supposed to poof.”

  Burned. Time for a distraction. “And Dante? Well, Dante is interesting, isn’t he?”

  “Interesting? Tell me more. You’ve lived here two years and not dated a single guy. Who is he and where did you find him?”

  I so wanted to fill Jillian in on my real love-life, but I couldn’t. The only ghost she believed in was the Holy Ghost. When we were kids we would share spooky stories at sleep-overs, but she never believed, even for a moment, that a person could stick around after their body died. A shame really. She was missing a lot of the fun in the cove, and I couldn’t share with her a good chunk of my new life. Although I had tried to edge her into my new reality, it never worked. She refused to believe in anything she couldn’t see or touch. I pushed muddy hair out of my eyes. “Can this wait until later?”

  “Oh, yeah, sure.” She laughed. “I’d wish you a good shower, but I know the hot water ran out twenty minutes ago.

  “Noooo!” I had been fantasizing about the feeling of hot water washing away all the muck that clung to me like a second skin.

  True enough, the shower was cold, and dirty. I ignored both and got clean. My only alternative was jumping in the ocean, which at this time of the year would turn me into an icicle pretty quickly. I threw on clean jeans and a blue sweatshirt, my standard outfit for all occasions, and headed down for dinner as the smell of tuna-surprise wafted up the staircase.

  The kids chatted non-stop about Christmas decorations and Santa. I tried not to sink in my chair. I felt like such a bad mom. Talk about messing up Christmas? I had spent more time chasing an angel-napper than I did preparing their holiday. The conversation turned to the Christmas Eve singalong in the town square. I promised I’d take them to that. It was the least I could do.

  But when would I get their presents? The clock was ticking.

  As dusk settled into the landscape, I gathered my energy. Fighting a draugr wouldn’t be easy, especially alone. I wished Eric would turn up. Shimmer into my life, like the old days. But I had to get ready. Jill offered to take the kids home with her. She wanted the tree-top thief caught, and said it was the least she could do.

  Back in my office at the teahouse, I looked over the notes I had made from my first case. After the diamond caper ended I wrote about everything that had happened and I added an appendix which covered different aspects of the experience. The first one was headed “Draugrs.”

  I had written: “They are vampiric beasts from the age of Vikings that rise from the dead to acquire treasure. They like to suck the blood and souls of humans, have supernatural energy and abilities. One of their favorite things to do is haunt people in their dreams.” Yeah, I was about to take on a blood-sucking dream-walker that would be stronger and faster than me.

  And they smell. Truly awful. Like dead meat, because that is what they are: dead human meat. I cringed at the memory of being near them.

  The ghosts that hung out at the teahouse had been patrolling the town for draugrs every night since I had brought them back into this world. I could ask for their help, but I wanted to handle this on my own; or at least mostly on my own. I left a written note for Leroy the NY cop who organized the ghost-patrols, telling him what I knew.

  Now I needed a plan. Find, capture, delete. Oh, if life
were only that simple. Maybe my witch abilities would help. Sparky chuckled softly in my head. Yeah, I had to agree. I hadn’t mastered the basic witch stuff. This morning when I used a spell to make my kids beds, one flipped upside down. Who knew what mess I might create if I tried to fight a supernatural beast?

  Still, it could be my back-up. Great! Now I had two back-up plans and no up-front plans.

  Think. Think.

  If I were Miss. Marple I would have an iron-clad plan, with an English accent, concocted as a result of my acute observations and analysis of seemingly normal people who hid their dirty deeds. If I were Sookie Stackhouse I would be flying forward with a league of supernats, driven by emotion and a sassy southern accent. If I were Nancy Drew I would use logic in an innocent, young-American, girly way. I’m not any of them. While I am nosy, I’m not great at analyzing people. I spend way too much time wondering what to feed my kids to be that smart. While I can run on emotion, I don’t have the sass to make that work, or a legion of vampires. And I’m not logical, innocent or young enough to do a Nancy thing. Besides, none of them had faced a draugr. I had to figure this out on my own.

  Wait a minute. Wait a Sunset Cove paranormal minute. I was looking at this all wrong. I could buy a new angel, one that looked like the original. Sentimental tradition was not worth my life. I had alerted the ghosts, so they could find the beast and deal with it. Or maybe, just maybe, Eric would turn up and help me. In the meantime, I would buy an angel.

  I couldn’t face the draugr on my own. I shouldn’t. It would be suicide. I folded my arms across my chest and growled. I hated feeling helpless. There had to be a way. Maybe if I took one look around town.

  I flipped open my laptop. On Amazon I found an angel that looked okay. It wouldn’t replace the history, and it didn’t look quite as angelic as the first one, but if I didn’t succeed the town would have something. The price made me stop breathing for a second, but I clicked the buy button.

  What weapons should I take? Normal vampires can be killed by wooden stakes, but not draugrs. The only way to kill them was to seal them in their graves so they could not escape again. Or . . . I winced as my stomach fell to the floor. I didn’t want to. I really didn’t want to do it again. But it was the only way I knew. I needed to use the potion.

  The magic potion sat in my locked drawer. It had worked on two draugrs, but I was reluctant to use it again. I called it Potion Number One, because it was my first potion; the potion that turned on me and made me a witch. Yeah, yeah, Dante said it was more complicated than that, but I know I wasn’t a witch before I touched that potion and I became one after.

  I opened the drawer, donned plastic gloves and took one of the two vials. I also took my unlicensed gun, though I’m not sure what I planned to do with that.

  Thunder broke above my house. Great! Just what I needed: horror-movie weather.

  Outside the snow fell. The full moon, partly covered by dense cloud cover, gave an eerie glow to the landscape. I swallowed and ran to my car. Managing the lock with my gloved hands proved difficult, but I got in.

  Where the heck was Eric? What would happen if the potion attacked me again? What could it turn me into this time? What could be worse than being a witch?

  “Heh!” said Sparky inside my head. “You’re getting to like it.”

  Yeah, maybe I did like it. What’s not to like? Witchy fingertips, a cranky voice in my head that calls me Blondie, and Dante. Yes, there was Dante.

  I took a deep breath and started the car. I had to find the angel.

  11

  O Holy Night

  Armed with Magic Potion Number One, I drove the streets of Sunset Cove. There aren’t many. One loop around town took ten minutes. I looped again and again. On the third loop I saw him, or at least the shadow of someone large that could be him.

  I parked at the corner of Maple and Arbutus, an area of town away from the view of the beautiful cove, as close to industrial as you could find in our small town. Lined with small commercial enterprises that sold appliances, hardware items and sewing notions, among other things, it drew people during business hours. Awnings covered a good portion of the sidewalk, shielding visitors from the rain. Welcome signs sat in the windows. Behind the small buildings were giant evergreen trees, mostly cedar, but a few Douglas fir as well, swaying gently in the ocean breeze.

  My footfalls squeaked in the snow and echoed in the deserted streets as I ran towards the vacant lot where I saw a dark figure. About the size of half a football field, the lot had been for sale as long as I had lived in the cove. The ground was uneven and riddled with broken glass and garbage strewn by careless people.

  In the darkness I could barely make out anything. My eyes would adjust soon, so I focused on controlling my breath. How the heck did I plan to get the potion on a draugr’s forehead?

  I smelled him before I saw him. That distinct eau-de-rotting-flesh stench filled my nostrils and I struggled not to gag. The potion was actually a healing potion, I reminded myself. Giving it to him would help him escape into a normal death. It would fix him.

  Yeah, right. Like every monster wants to be fixed.

  I froze as the smell grew, and I sensed his presence closing in.

  “Look what we have here.” He had the voice of a vampire in an old movie. “Dinner?”

  I turned towards the sound. “I’m Abby from the teahouse. Remember me?”

  “Yes, you were the one who released me.” In his arms he held the angel.

  “Yeah, that would be me.”

  “The one with the Viking boyfriend.”

  “Yup.”

  “Where is he?” The monster moved closer, six feet of decaying flesh laced with maggots and the eyes of a killer. He licked his lips.

  I had found him, but I had no idea what to do next. Lots of heroes in the movies have no plan and it works for them, but it wasn’t working so well for me. “Eric the Viking is around. I expect him to turn up any second.” In my dreams, this was true.

  His eyes narrowed. “What do you want, breather?”

  What had Dante said? I needed to embrace my wicked witch. Something like that. As he moved a step closer I raised my right hand and pointed at him. “Stay,” I said. A fire ball flew out of my hand and hit him in the chest.

  I hadn’t spoken in Latin, or used any exotic, witchy-sounding words that rhymed. It wasn’t something I had practiced. It wasn’t something I was sure I could do. How did I know I could throw thunderbolts? I just knew what I wanted him to do and to my shock he did just that.

  “Uh,” he mumbled as he struggled to move. Sparky laughed.

  “Stay put or the next one will burn your balls.”

  He stopped struggling.

  Taking a deep breath I moved closer and opened the vile in my hand.

  “Be careful this time,” warned Sparky.

  “Lie down,” I commanded, as there was no way I could reach his forehead and apply the potion with him towering above me. He didn’t move. Crappola. I had to do something. I used my fire-bolt hand to singe his scalp and repeated my command.

  This time he lay down.

  “Good boy. If you don’t tell me the truth, I’ll curse you.”

  He shivered.

  “Why did you steal the angel?”

  “I don’t like them.”

  “But other people do. Give it back to me. It means a lot to people, and it’s Christmas.”

  “I’m pagan. I don’t care about your tinsel-laden celebration of Christ.”

  I swallowed. “So what do you care about?”

  “Revenge.”

  “On who?”

  “On the gods and the angel choir and the whole celestial realm.”

  About which I knew little. Hmm. “Okay, and how does taking a fake tree angel get you that?”

  He groaned. It wasn’t a nice sound, and it accentuated his stinking-bad breath. “It’s not like I thought about it. I returned to Sunset Cove looking for fresh blood and look for my friend. That’s when I sa
w the angel. It made me mad. Deadly-mad. So I took it.”

  “Scratched an itch, huh?”

  His half-there half-not brows slammed together. “You’re weird.” He sat up.

  I’m weird? A draugr is calling me weird? “Lie down.”

  “No.”

  I made a fist, focused my energy and threw another fireball. Holy tamole, it was twice the size of the first one. The draugr crumpled to the ground. I walked over and took the angel from his arms.

  Did I really want to use Potion Number One again? My throat constricted, making breathing difficult. I couldn’t stand over the draugr forever. Undoubtedly he would regain consciousness, or whatever vampiric beasts have.

  Silently I prayed to all that is holy, in both genders to be politically correct, as I tipped the bottle. Thick blue liquid sparkled with bright-pink bubbles as it hit the air and landed silently on the decaying man’s forehead.

  Immediately he started convulsing and smoldering. A vile purple smoke rose from his body. He screamed in terror.

  I kept pouring and the last drop slipped upwards and slid beneath my plastic glove to touch my hand, just like the last time. An electric shock rocked through my system, I blinked, and poof, something happened. I knew with the certainty of my next breath. I knew something transformational had happened to me, again, but I didn’t know what.

  The draugr burst into flames. His cries died to a whimper as his body turned into ash. I took a deep breath.

  “Not bad, Blondie.” The sound startled me.

  Beside the ashes appeared a lynx. Could a draugr turn into a wild cat? Good grief, that was all I needed.

  “No, Blondie, it’s me.”

  I stared. “Sparky?”

  “In the fur.” She smiled at me and I swear her eyes sparkled. “I am your familiar.”

  I hugged the angel. What next?

  12

  Mistletoe

  As if on cue, Eric shimmered into view. He took one look at me, the lynx and the ashes and smiled. “You don’t need saving.”