by Ani Gonzalez
"I understand," Mary said. "Don't forget to prepare for the encounter. The meditation ritual that you gave Larry was fantastic. It relaxes you and opens your mind to new experiences. You two should try it."
"We will." Kat stood up, sweeping her flowing scarlet skirt out of the way. "C'mon, Luanne. I have to open the botánica early."
"Thanks for everything, Mary," Luanne said, getting up as well. "It was a lovely evening."
Mary grinned. "Wait until tomorrow night. That's going to be a blast."
As Luanne and Kat exited the room, a group of PRoVE members in black leather vests walked in. A rotund man with a white beard raised his hand. "Greetings."
It was Gus, one of Caine's lieutenants. The AASC members turned around expectantly.
"Er, sorry to interrupt." Gus raised a white page covered with symbols. "But we have some questions about these calculations."
"Now they get here?" Kat sighed as they passed the group. "Just our luck. We're leaving just as the party gets started."
The voices grew louder as they walked toward the front desk. Kat was right. Things seemed to be heating up in the Van Helsing room.
"Do you need me to take you home?" Kat asked when they reached the front doors. Unlike Luanne, Kat had a car, and, keenly aware of Luanne's transportation woes, she often offered to give her friend a lift.
Tonight, however, there was no need.
"Actually," Luanne said, blushing. "I have to talk to you about that."
CHAPTER TWENTY
"YOU SEE," Luanne said, standing in his doorway in her bohemian party dress, "someone checked season four out."
"What are we talking about?" Sean dragged his eyes up and tried to keep them focused on her face. It was a difficult task because the neckline of the patterned wrap dress she was wearing was insanely low. It didn't help that the dress was knotted together tightly around her waist, giving her the look of a sexy gypsy pinup.
"The television show," she explained, clearly exasperated. "Honoria expects me to come home with seasons four and five of Supernatural, and I can't."
He struggled to make sense of her words. "Because someone checked them out of the library?"
"Exactly. I asked the PRoVE guys if they had the videos in their collection, but all I got were snarky comments about demon-hunting underwear models." She grimaced. "She's going to absolutely destroy the house. She won't touch the television. So, at least there's that."
"Sorry to hear that." He scratched his head. "Do you want me to do something about it?"
He wasn't sure what he could do, frankly. He couldn't arrest a poltergeist, and sending a patrol would be kind of useless. He could use his deputization power and ask PRoVE to look into it, but that wouldn't do Luanne any good. She didn't need grainy, night-vision selfies.
"Yes..." She blushed and looked down at the floor. "I kind of need a place to sleep tonight."
That's when he noticed the duffel bag next to her feet. It was Luanne's trademark gold color and it had the words "Madame Esmeralda-Professional Know-It-All" stenciled in green. Like all of Luanne's marketing materials, it was glamorous and amusing at the same time.
But the smile on his face wasn't due to Luanne's copywriting skills.
She licked her lips nervously. "I thought maybe I could crash here." She aimed a nervous glance at him. "But I can call Kat, if you'd rather I didn't."
"No need." He reached down and grabbed her duffle bag before she could change her mind. "Welcome to Chez Worcestershire."
She gave him a relieved grin and stepped inside the room. "I think you mean Winchester."
"Whatever." He closed the door behind her and threw the duffle bag on the floor next to the bed. There, now she couldn't leave.
Luckily, she didn't seem to be plotting a daring escape. Instead, she leaned against the wall, slipping off her high heeled sandals with a hearty sigh.
"I'm so glad that's over," she said, kicking her strappy gold shoes to the side. "That was seriously the worst party ever. I hope the PRoVE guys managed to liven it up." She shook her head, red curls tumbling around her shoulders. "They didn't even have alcohol. Well, except for that yucky green punch."
"Your refreshments situation didn't improve much when you entered this room. I can't offer you much except apple pie. There's Skagit beer in the fridge, and, weirdly enough, a ton of whisky in the minibar."
Luanne walked around the room, admiring the car photographs on the walls. "That makes sense. It's all stuff from the show." She ran her fingers over an 80s boom box, then grabbed the cassette tapes stored neatly next to it. "This is fantastic. I wish Honoria knew about this room. She'd probably move in."
"Can ghosts move?"
She shrugged. "Who knows?" Then she frowned, apparently thinking about it. "Actually, Caine probably does or maybe Kat." A smile crept slowly over her face. "I should ask them. There may be a way to convince Honoria to find new lodgings."
"Doesn't your rent go up if that happens?"
Her face fell. "Yes, it would. So much for that idea."
"Maybe I can copy some of the decor." She grabbed a box labeled "Baby's Favorite Tunes." "A little music might keep her quiet." She looked through the cassette tapes and picked one out. "'Romantic Mix'? Sounds intriguing."
"That may not be a good idea," he said. "I'm not sure Honoria needs romance in her afterlife."
She chuckled. "Not for her, silly. For us."
She put the tape in the cassette player and the opening of REO Speedwagon's "Can't Fight This Feeling" rang out.
Sean groaned. "No, not this song. No way."
Luanne's lips curved into a slow, sexy smile. "Yes, this song."
Her red hair glistened in the lamplight. She wrapped her arms around him, and the touch made his muscles clench.
"I don't dance," he said, as she moved to the song's rhythm.
Her smile didn't waver. "You do now."
He chuckled at that and wrapped his arms around her. They danced slowly, her body pressed tightly against his. The music grew louder and more melodramatic. Luanne started to sing along.
Good heavens, the song was dreadful. It was classic '80s crud.
But something about it felt right. Maybe it was the red-haired enchantress, or her tight dress, or the fact that they were dancing and laughing as if they'd done this forever.
But something definitely felt right.
She reached up and kissed him. Her lips were pure fire and he was burning, burning...
And then his phone rang.
"No," Luanne muttered against his lips.
He broke the kiss reluctantly. "It's Olivia's ringtone. That means it's work. I have to get it."
Luanne groaned in disappointment as he walked over to the bedside table and picked up the phone.
"Sheriff here."
"You have to get down here," Olivia hissed into the phone. "There's a brawl downstairs."
Sean sighed. "A fight downstairs? Are you serious?"
"Yes," Olivia replied, using her no-nonsense cop voice. "The PRoVE guys came in and asked some question about an event happening tomorrow. The UFO people didn't feel they had to share information, but the paranormies aren't taking no for an answer. There's a lot of shouting and one of the UFO guys threw a plastic flying saucer at Gus. This is turning ugly."
Luanne's brows raised. She stepped forward to listen in.
"Caine should know better than this," he said.
"He's not here," Olivia replied. "That's the problem."
Crap. That meant no adult supervision.
Sean grabbed his leather jacket and headed for the door. "I'll call him. He needs to keep his guys under control. Meanwhile, call for backup."
He hung up the phone and shrugged into his jacket. "Sorry, love. I'm needed downstairs."
"They're fighting already?" Luanne asked. "That's pretty fast, even for PRoVE."
"Did you see them come in?"
She nodded. Excellent, he had a witness. Maybe he could get some background info.
"How many were there?"
"About half a dozen guys from PRoVE. They didn't look angry when they came in. The UFO group had," she paused to calculate, "sixty maybe seventy people."
Great. Enough numbers to cause serious damage. Gus and his crew were outnumbered, but he knew that wouldn't faze them. PRoVE attracted bikers and veterans. They knew how to fight.
"What did the paranormies do, exactly?" he asked.
"They kind of spread out." She paused as if trying to remember. "Gus had a piece of paper—I think it was a computer printout—and he said he had some questions about it. They didn't seem hostile."
"You said there was no alcohol at the party?"
"Not really. Just a gross-looking glowing punch with strange things floating inside. I didn't try it."
"Were people drinking it?"
"Oh, yes." She shuddered. "It smelled like fermented gasoline, but it was very popular."
Better and better. Whatever these guys had been drinking, it was hellaciously strong.
"Thanks." He opened the door. "Stay here. I'll be downstairs if you need me."
He kissed her, then turned to go. She grabbed his shoulder and stared at him. Her eyes took on an eerie, unfocused look.
"No." She let go of him. "I don't need to warn you. You're going to be okay."
"That's reassuring." He walked out. "See you in a bit."
He walked down the hallway, wondering how he was going to break up a paranormie-UFOlogist fight.
This was definitely a first.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE DOOR to the motel room closed and Luanne sighed with relief. Her talent could be a pain in the butt sometimes, but this wasn't one of those. Sean was going to be alright tonight. The fight, such as it was, would be over soon. Gus and his crew would have no trouble handling a bunch of drunk UFO enthusiasts, and by the time Sean got there, it would be all over.
She grabbed her bag and dumped it on the bed. Sean would be gone for a while, so she had plenty of time to take a shower and change. She took out her toiletries bag and her nightgown. The silky teal confection was a botánica raffle prize—Beach Blanket Bingo with Goddess Yemanyá—she'd won weeks ago. She hadn't had an opportunity to use it yet.
Until tonight
She threw the gown on the bed. It landed on top of a pile of papers and one of the sheets fluttered and fell to the floor. It had a fanged silhouette in front and the words "Lucky Vamp" scrawled on top.
She bent to pick it up, then grabbed the rest of the papers. They were all different versions of the Lucky Ghost scam and Sean had scrawled dates and locations on them. The scam was older than she'd thought and it had pretty much criss-crossed the United States.
She squinted at the flyers. Sean had written out numbers on them too. They seemed to be the amounts of money collected by the scammers. Added together they came to a couple of million. Mere chicken chow by the standards of her Wall Street bosses, but a sizable amount for normal people.
Who was doing this? What was the money for?
No wonder Sean was concerned. This thing was bigger than they'd imagined. Someone was making a pretty penny here. They'd been smart too. Individually, the small scams were not big enough to alert law enforcement, but collectively they made for significant revenue.
She peered at the Lucky Alien paper. Sean had scribbled some notes on the margins. Colorado-Arizona-New Mexico. Older targets. William Darling.
Darling? Wasn't that the name of the dead man from Black Falls Bridge? Did Sean think that there was a connection between that death and the Ponzi scheme? That would be horrible. Financial scams were one thing.
Death was another.
If only there were some way to figure out who was behind this.
Maybe there was.
She moved the nightgown out of the way and took the flyers. They all had cartoonish images of supernatural creatures, not just ghosts and vampires, but also witches, zombies and other things that went bump in the night.
She turned the flyers on their backs, cleared her mind, and shuffled them.
Divination was a very flexible craft. You could foretell the future with pretty much anything. Ancient Romans, for example, used animal entrails. That was something she would never do, but, truthfully, she could if she wanted to.
She could read pretty much anything.
Even flyers.
She closed her eyes and laid them down on the bed in a modified cross pattern. This was a fairly obscure spread, used mostly for confusing situations where it was important to discern between reality and illusion. It was an excellent choice for when you were trying to figure out what was happening, rather than what was going to happen.
Like right now.
She considered the results, reading the cartoon drawings as she would read tarot symbols. Her eyes were immediately drawn to the vampire, a predatory symbol. She would have related that symbol to the mastermind behind the scam, who was definitely preying on his victims.
But the flyer was reversed. So the person behind the scam wasn't a predator, or at least didn't consider himself as such.
She skipped over two flyers and focused on the one on the far right, the goal position. She would have expected a symbol of riches in that spot, but, instead, she had a pretty pink faery, which stood for dreams and aspirations of a world beyond.
She tapped her chin, thinking hard. How about the money? What stood for money? Not the ghost, and definitely not the zombie, but what about the jack o' lantern?
That might work. It was full of candy, not coins, but it was still a type of loot. And it sat smack in the middle of her spread, which was the right position. The witch flyer was in the energy spot, which also made sense.
Someone was sitting on a whole lot of money, he didn't think of himself as a predator, he wanted the money to achieve a dream of some sort, and he was committed to achieving that.
She picked up the papers and shuffled them again, then she did a standard three-card spread—past, present, and future.
Vamp, Pumpkin, Faery.
That was self-explanatory. The scam master would succeed. He would reach his goal.
She focused on the spread, trying to see exactly how that would happen.
Then her phone rang. She leapt to her handbag and took out the phone. It was Sean.
"Hey, is everything okay?" she asked breathlessly.
"Yes, it was over by the time I got here."
She breathed a sigh of relief. She'd known he'd be safe, but it was still nice to hear it.
"What happened?"
"Gus heard about the supposed alien encounter tomorrow night and felt left out. PRoVE likes to be involved in all the weird stuff in this town, so they were upset that they weren't invited to meet the aliens."
"Oh, for Pete's sake."
That made him laugh. "Exactly. I'm not sure how I'm going to write this up."
"So that was what the fight was about? Close encounter etiquette?"
"Not exactly. Someone called Larry thought the PRoVE guys were going to steal his props. I'm not sure why, probably because of the green punch. That concoction is apparently ninety percent agave tequila. It's so strong, it's practically a fire hazard."
No wonder she hadn't been tempted. She hadn't been able to drink tequila since that fateful night during her last college spring break, when she'd found herself in a committed relationship with the hotel's salmon-pink porcelain toilet.
"He landed a mean right hook on Gus. One of the PRoVE guys caught it on tape. It's really spectacular. Larry can hit pretty hard."
"It's over then."
"Not for me. I have to take these guys in and get their statements. Gus isn't going to press charges, but I still have a ton of paperwork. I won't be back for a couple of hours."
"That's too bad."
"I agree. Make yourself comfortable. I'll be home as soon as I can."
"Take care."
He hung up and she put the phone back in the bag. Time to go back to her sp
read.
The moment was gone. The flyers were sheets of colorful paper once again. The reading was over and she knew it wouldn't come back. She gathered the papers up and piled them neatly on the bedside table.
Sean wouldn't be back for hours. She might as well take a bath and rest, maybe watch some television, maybe a cute cartoon or a mindless reality show. It would be nice to watch something that didn't involve demons and vintage vehicles for a change.
She grabbed her toiletry bag, then paused. She glanced back at the pile of flyers again.
Maybe, just maybe, she'd been going about this the wrong way.
She concentrated on her main concern, Sean. She pictured him in her mind's eye, standing, tall and straight, in his leather jacket. Then she picked up a flyer.
This was a simple divination device—no muss, no fuss—just one question and a single object to focus on.
She opened her eyes and stared.
The picture on the flyer was a coffin.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
"LOOK AT me, Larry."
The red-haired man's head swiveled as he focused on Sean. His hair was wild and disheveled and a large bruise was forming on the side of his face. His eyes scanned the room nervously.
Sean couldn't blame him for looking around. The decor of the motel's business center, he'd been told, was based on an X-Files set, the Lone Gunmen's van. It was both uncomfortable and distracting.
"Tell me what happened," he ordered, shifting on the vintage steel chair, trying to relieve the cramp on his leg.
A red flush covered Larry's face. "I want a lawyer. Mary has a firm on retainer. I want to call them."
Sean stifled a sigh. These guys had lawyers on call? Not suspicious at all. "Listen, it was a minor scuffle, and Gus isn't going to press charges. Can you just tell me what happened, so I can get it down and we can all go to sleep?"
"Lawyer," Larry repeated, looking mulish. "Now."
Sean shrugged. "Fine, call your counsel. We have it all on tape anyway." He made a note on his file. "You can go now."
