Life Guards in the Hamptons

by Celia Jerome

  Raves for the Willow Tate Novels:

  “This is a fun zany romantic Hamptons fantasy with the lead couple (Willy and Grant) heating up the sheets with enough energy to keep Long Island warm in the winter.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “Willow Tate is back with another crazy adventure. You’ll love her feisty attitude as she tries to stick to her ‘no men’ creed with her newest partner. Laugh-out-loud funny! Readers will be in stitches.”

  —RT Book Reviews (RT top pick)

  “This is a fresh new take on the fantasy world mingling with our own, with a bit of supervillians and true love thrown in. For someone who likes paranormal, but wants a new twist, this is the perfect read.”

  —Parkersburg News and Sentinel

  This light-hearted urban fantasy series, which is what used to be known as the Unknown style of fantasy adventure, stood out for me with the very first book and the third is the best yet. Willow Tate is an illustrator who can bring magical creatures into our world by drawing them, in both senses of the word. Her latest is a fire wizard, which leads to a series of magical mishaps involving fire, until the secretive organization that deals with these things sends a man whose presence suppresses fire. But that leads to all sorts of new complications. There’s a bunch of quirky subsidiary characters, amusing plot twists, and Keystone Kops type mayhem. This is definitely not a series you want to lump in with the majority of recent urban fantasy, and it’s guaranteed to bring a smile to your face.”

  —Critical Mass

  “The world-building is the best part of Trolls. The people and places come alive; the fantastical back-story is unusual and fascinating; and the whole of it is definitely something new and extraordinary, and a welcome break from vampires and were-creatures.”

  —Errant Dreams

  “In fine, small-town mystery fashion, Paumanok Harbor is full of quirky people, many with odd little magic talents… . It’s a fun adventure; Willow’s an engaging character … charming series.”

  —Locus

  “This is a well-written, cute series that is on the very lightest side of the urban fantasy genre—almost chick-lit light, really (but without the shoe shopping)… . The author definitely captures the sense of place in both Manhattan and the Hamptons. This is an entertaining and amusing series that would make a perfect beach read.”

  —Fang-tastic Ficiton

  DAW Books Presents CELIA JEROME’s

  Willow Tate Novels:

  TROLLS IN THE HAMPTONS

  NIGHT MARES IN THE HAMPTONS

  FIRE WORKS IN THE HAMPTONS

  LIFE GUARDS IN THE HAMPTONS

  SAND WITCHES IN THE HAMPTONS

  (Available October 2012)

  Life Guards

  IN THE

  HAMPTONS

  A Willow Tate Novel

  CELIA JEROME

  DAW BOOKS, INC.

  DONALD A. WOLLHEIM, FOUNDER

  375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

  ELIZABETH R. WOLLHEIM

  SHEILA E. GILBERT

  PUBLISHERS

  www.dawbooks.com

  Copyright © 2012 by Barbara Metzger.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Cover art by Daniel Dos Santos.

  Map by Pat Tobin.

  Map concept by Bob-E.

  DAW Book Collectors No. 1587.

  DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  If you purchase this book without a cover you should be aware that this book may have been stolen property and reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher. In such case neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Nearly all the designs and trade names in this book are registered trademarks. All that are still in commercial use are protected by United States and international trademark law.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-64247-4

  First Printing, May 2012

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

  PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

  To old friends and new readers.

  Thank you for believing in me.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to:

  Carole Pruzan, as always

  Richie Etzel for nautical assistance

  Jeri Seiden for Taz and Tino

  Brett Bausk for the pictures

  Anne Bohner for being a great agent

  Russell Pulick for technical support

  Donna Etzel for Axel

  Jane Liebell for the music

  Dawn Berkowski for cheering

  Sheila Gilbert, Debra Euler, Josh Starr, and Marsha Jones at DAW for taking such good care of my books

  Robin Strong at the Montauk Library for help with the maps

  And the Friends of the Montauk Library for being friends

  Celia Jerome lives in Paumanok Harbor toward the east end of Long Island. She believes in magic, True Love, small dogs, and yard sales.

  You can visit Celia at www.celiajerome.com

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  CHAPTER 1

  CRAZY THINGS KEPT HAPPENING in the Hamptons. I had nothing whatsoever to do with any of them. I swear.

  The new nutso stuff wasn’t my kind of crazy, like ten-foot trolls and telepathic horses and pyrotechnic lightning bugs from a secret parallel universe.1 The latest events weren’t the usual East End insanity either, with billionaires claiming they owned the beach so no one could walk along the ocean, or some do-gooder causing a riot by throwing surfcasters’ striped bass back in the water, or the government allowing people to rebuild houses on land destroyed by hurricanes and storms, when they’d only fall in the ocean at the next big blow. Those were irrational, but not unusual.

  Nope, what they now had on the South Fork of Long Island was a surprising off-season crime spree: a bank robbery in Southampton, another in Wainscott; jewelry store heists in Sag Harbor and East Hampton; stickups at the American Legion Hall in Amagansett during a fund-raising dance and at a pub quiz in Springs. No one could remember so much crime in the area in so short a time, especially in mid-September. Even the dumbest thief had to know how effective roadblocks could be, with only two roads, Montauk Highway and the Sunrise Highway, leading across the Shinnecock Canal and a clean escape off the Island. What made it odder w
as how no witnesses saw getaway cars. No one recognized the robbers’ voices or accents, or could identify their clothes, only the black ski masks they wore. The people whose watches and wallets were taken couldn’t say how many thieves, how tall, what sex.

  Mass amnesia? I loved it, especially since no one in Paumanok Harbor could blame me the way they usually did. I sat cozily in my New York City apartment, minding my own business of writing and illustrating graphic novels for young adults, getting updates from family and friends.

  They’d made the six o’clock news tonight, though, after the latest natural disasters. This time a million dollars went missing from the bank account of East Hampton Township, in which the Harbor was the smallest village. Cyber-embezzlement, they said, and called in the FBI. When my book characters—totally products of my imagination, I used to believe—suddenly sprang from my computer to life here on Earth, I had to call in the guys from DUE, the Department of Unexplained Events. Their agents created more chaos in my life and my head and my heart than any five trolls or felons.

  Not this time.

  My hero stayed on the page, hot and honor-bound, while men in suits and shades chased up and down Route 27 looking for bandits. Spenser Matthews was too busy hiding his real, otherworld identity and fighting evil to care about a crime spree on Long Island. Hell, if he were real, no beaches would be coated with oil.

  The pod of dolphins that swam near East Hampton last week herding the late summer swimmers back to shore had nothing to do with him. Or with me. So what if my super-powered Spenser’s alter ego was the sea god M’ma, protector of oceans and nurturer of his symbiotic minions? M’ma’s buddies were magical lantern beetles, not ordinary bottlenose dolphins. Okay, not so ordinary when they swam east and wrecked the fall surfing contest in Montauk yesterday by upending every board until the surfers gave up and got out of the water.

  Odd, but not my problem. Neither were the first-ever tornado in Watermill, the purple pumpkins in Bridgehampton, or the new tick disease found only on the East End, to say nothing of the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions across the globe. Finding a companion for Spenser Matthews, in the tradition of Batman’s Robin or Superman’s Lois Lane, was my problem. I refused to think about who the real Matt Spenser—the veterinarian who’d won naming rights by being the highest bidder at a benefit auction after Labor Day—was spending his time with. I’d given up men again. Or still.

  I had my own sidekick, a six-pound, three-legged, attitudinal Pomeranian named Little Red. He didn’t like being in the city, on a leash, smuggled in and out of my rent-controlled, no-pets apartment like a take-out meal in a tote bag.

  Too bad. I lived in Manhattan, not Paumanok Harbor. I only went to the country when my mother needed someone to take care of her elderly rescue dogs. With the summer season over, my cousin Susan cooked fewer hours at her uncle’s restaurant, so she could watch them. Of course I missed the clean salt air, the bay beaches a couple of blocks away, the quiet nights with no sirens or horns blowing. And Matt.

  “We’ll go back when I finish the first draft,” I told the dog, who was licking his toes. “The weather will still be nice enough for long walks—” Little Red got carried, mostly, “—and there’ll be less traffic, too.” And maybe by then Matt Spenser wouldn’t look at me as if I had two heads or spoke in tongues. I couldn’t blame him, not after the night he saw the real M’ma, a being from the hidden world called Unity, not my imagination. M’ma broke a million sacred rules to trespass here, and broke a million of our physical laws to metamorphose from a lump of decaying whale-like blubber into a fiery winged god that threw me a kiss good-bye before diving into the bay.

  Neither Matt nor I, nor anyone else who happened to be out in the salt marshes that night, could ever forget the scene. Only a handful of spectators could actually understand it. No one would let me tell Matt about forbidden contact with the otherworld, not when he was no kind of esper, and an outsider in Paumanok Harbor besides. The agents from DUE wanted to wipe his memory clean, or worse.

  He was our veterinarian, I shouted at them. And he swore not to tell anyone what he’d seen. I trusted him. They should, too. Who’d believe his absurd account anyway? No one.

  They weren’t convinced. Protecting Paumanok Harbor and its secrets had priority over one untalented, unpsychic, unimportant individual. Surprising them and myself with my emotional reaction, I started screaming.

  “He is important! He saved my dog. He helped me protect M’ma when the rest of you were too busy putting out fires. He believed me!”

  I threatened to tell the world about the Royce-Harmon Institute for Psionic Research myself if they stole Matt’s memory or harmed him in any way. They let him go, but it was too late. I knew Matt worried about his sanity. Or maybe he just believed I was the crazy one. I worried about that, too.

  So I left.

  Leaving Paumanok Harbor with its small-town gossip, its oddball inhabitants, and my guilt about Matt took a weight off my shoulders. Unfortunately, most of the weight settled around my butt and belly. Yeck. That was another reason I stayed away from the Harbor: my cousin’s four-star cooking and the leftovers she brought home from the restaurant, plus the jams and fresh bread from my grandmother’s farm stand. Not that Manhattan didn’t offer every kind of takeout and food truck, but I could be more disciplined here.

  So I ate another Oreo and went back to work looking for a sidekick.

  The real Matt Spenser was an animal doctor. My Spenser Matthews owned a pet shop, maybe in Massachusetts or New Jersey, somewhere on the ocean, of course, so he’d be close to his alternative environment. He’d carry birds and fish and little furry creatures and a couple of slimy ones, too, but only adoptable dogs and cats from the local shelters. If he had puppy mill dogs for sale, my animal-rights crusading mother would kill me.

  I sketched Matt—that is, Spenser—with a parrot on his shoulder. Too piratical. A ferret? Adorable but smelly, and where would it go when he transformed into the sea god? A fish? He couldn’t very well carry a bowl around with him, and no hunky guy talked to goldfish. A lizard? People would think he sold insurance.

  Frustrated, I put on the ten o’clock news. The Hamptons made the headlines again. This time two restaurants in Noyac got hit, the tills emptied along with the patrons’ pockets. No one saw anything but ski masks. The dolphins were back in the news, too. This time with video. They’d left the surfing beach at Ditch Plains and headed east to the Montauk Lighthouse. They knocked surf casters there off the rocks and pushed them to shore, then they went after the spearfishing scuba divers, in teams. One grabbed the spears, another disconnected the air hoses, while two more grabbed the guys by the flippers and towed them in backward.

  “I guess the dolphins are tired of sharing their suppers and their territory,” the newscaster said with a nervous laugh. “But people are being warned to stay out of the ocean. These animals are big, and getting more aggressive, although they have not harmed anyone yet. Furthermore, the oceanographers remind us that they are a protected species. Injuring or harassing one of the sea mammals is a federal crime and the laws will be enforced. Scientists from NOAA, the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Cape Cod are all monitoring the pod and its unusual behavior.”

  He flipped a page on his desk. “Speaking of unusual, there’s still a reason to go out to the Hamptons, despite the no-swimming ban and the crime wave. An extremely rare, endangered shore bird has been spotted in tiny Paumanok Harbor, on the north side of the South Fork of Long Island. The pink-toed Patagonian oiaca is so rare and reclusive we don’t have a clear picture to show you, but several experts have identified the species.”

  I turned off the TV. “We’re not going back there any time soon,” I told Little Red, “so you better get used to your wee-wee pads. Traffic will be at a standstill and the whole town will be filled with telescope-toting birdwatchers. At least the restaurants and delis will do good business.”

&nb
sp; Red didn’t care about rare birds, traffic, or tourists. He wanted to go o-u-t. Like on a leash, downstairs, in the dark, with plastic poop bags, where people yelled at you if your dog pissed on the straggly petunias around the pollution-stunted trees in their tiny squares of dirt.

  Maybe Paumanok Harbor had its good points, like Mom’s fenced-in yard and floodlights, with my relatives living across the street and down the block. Except one of my relatives was a witch, and I wasn’t altogether sure about the rest of them.

  “All right, all right, I’ll take you out. Stop barking before we get reported to the tenants’ association.”

  By the time I’d put on shoes and combed my hair, taken the Pomeranian in his tote down the three flights of stairs, around the corner where none of the neighbors could see him, then waited for him to find the perfect spot so I could clean up the filthy gutter, then do the whole trip in reverse, it was too late to get back to work.

  “Come on, we’re going to bed. I’ll get more done tomorrow after a good night’s sleep.”

  Except I didn’t get a good night’s sleep. Something kept nagging at me. Not the pink-toed Patagonian oiaca that I couldn’t find on the Internet or in my bird books, not the search for a likable cartoon companion, not even Little Red’s snoring. I rolled over again.

  The dolphins and the robberies were someone else’s responsibility, I reminded my weary self, not mine. Susan assured me the old dogs at my mother’s house were doing well. Why not, on Susan’s leftovers? I untwisted my nightshirt.

  I had time on my deadline and money in the bank. I threw off the covers.

  Dad in Florida had a new girlfriend, and Mom said she’d found homes for most of her retired greyhounds. Little Red snarled when I shoved my extra pillow away and threw myself facedown on the mattress.

  What the hell was bugging me?

  Frigging chiggers, that’s what.

  1Trolls in the Hamptons, November, 2010; Night Mares in the Hamptons, May, 2011; Fire Works in the Hamptons, November, 2011.