Moon Island (A Vampire for Hire Novel), Page 3

  “Of course,” said Allison. “Everyone knows of her mom. At least, everyone down at the shop.”

  I wasn’t sure which “shop” she was referring to, and before I could ask, Tara was already coming toward us. She certainly did not inherit her mother’s stature nor build. Like I said, she was shaped more like me. Short and a little curvy.

  Earlier, Tara had agreed to allow Allison to join me as my assistant. I was certain she wouldn’t agree, but Allison had seemed confident that Tara would. To my surprise, my client had indeed agreed, telling me that, although these yearly reunions were generally for family, sometimes friends or significant others did join in.

  I introduced the two, and we all climbed in. I took the front seat and Allison the back, and as the SUV pulled away, Allison leaned forward through the seats and said, “So, is the Space Needle really a needle?”

  “Okay,” I said. “Now you’re being annoying.”

  * * *

  As the 5 Freeway wended and twisted its way through the tree-lined suburbs outside of Seattle, Tara, Allison and I had a crash course in friendship.

  According to Tara, no one was to know that I was a private eye, or that Allison was my assistant. This wasn’t a murder investigation. Not officially. This was a family reunion, on a remote island, during which I would pretend to be a friend, although I would be secretly snooping my ass off.

  Luckily, I’m damn good at snooping my ass off.

  We decided to give me a fake name, too. After all, it wouldn’t do having a nosy family member Googling my name and finding my agency’s website. So, we decided that being old college chums was best, chums who’d recently met again in Seattle and were only now catching up. Allison was my visiting friend, who got invited along for the weekend getaway.

  So, we spent the remainder of the time in the SUV boning up on Tara’s college. It turned out she’d gone to UCLA, and graduated with a degree in psychology. I was going to pretend to be a college dropout. Allison pointed out that someone with enough snooping skills could verify that I, in fact, never went to UCLA. So, we decided to give me a very generic name.

  Samantha Smith.

  In fact, being Samantha Smith for a three-day weekend might just be a welcome relief.

  And maybe a little fun.

  Especially as we approached the glittering emerald city, whose skyline matched the beauty of any skyline anywhere, and as we did, I received a text message from my son.

  Tammy’s reading my mind again, Mom.

  I sighed and dashed off a quick text to my daughter: Quit reading your brother’s mind, booger butt. And make sure you do your homework.

  Chapter Eight

  The drive through Seattle was far too quick.

  Admittedly, I wanted to stay and explore. The Space Needle, to Allison’s dismay, was not a needle, but an orange-topped, UFO-shaped disc that looked less like a needle and more like a giant alien probe.

  Still, the city was brilliantly lit, packed with nice cars, and restaurants seemingly everywhere. I could see why Frasier would want to live here. A light rain was falling, which, from what I understood, was as common as sunshine in southern California.

  Vampire weather, I thought.

  Soon we were eating up the miles north of Seattle, while Tara and I continued to hash out our fake history together. We created parties we never went to, the names of boys we never met, and classes we never took together. A fake history. An iron-clad history. Allison quizzed us as we drove through a city called Mukilteo—a name I never did seem to pronounce correctly—and drove onto a ferry with service to an island called Whidbey.

  “We’re in the car,” said Allison, sticking her head out the window, “but we’re on a boat, too.” She sounded perplexed.

  “Yes,” said Tara, looking at me and giving me a half smile. “A ferry, actually.”

  “A car on a boat,” Allison said again, shaking her head. “What will they think of next?”

  “You’ve never been on a ferry before?” asked Tara.

  “I’ve never been on a boat before,” said Allison. “Do these ferries ever sink?”

  “Often,” said Tara.

  Allison pulled her head out of the window. Her reddish cheeks had quickly drained to white. “How often do they—wait, you’re messing with me.”

  “Sorry,” said Tara, giggling a little from behind the wheel. She winked at me. “I couldn’t resist. My bad.”

  “No worries,” said Allison. “I’m a kidder, too. Must run in our family.”

  “Excuse me?” asked Tara. “Family?”

  Allison popped her gum. “Yup. We’re like eleven cousins removed.”

  “Oh, really?” said Tara.

  “Yup, I’m also distantly related to Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Genealogy is a passion of mine.”

  I rolled my eyes. Tara smiled, uncomfortably.

  Allison went back to sticking her head out the window, the way a dog might, as the ferry continued across the Puget Sound. The waves were choppy, but the ferry handled them with aplomb. We were in a long row of cars, many of which were filled with tired-looking men and women, all dressed nice, and all clearly returning home from work on the mainland.

  When the ferry docked in a city called Clinton—and once Allison had taken her seat like a good girl—we followed the long line of cars off the ferry and onto the island.

  A gorgeous island, no less.

  “There’s trees everywhere,” said Allison. “And I mean some big-ass trees.”

  I was suitably impressed, as well, and after we stopped at a cute little coffee kiosk—at which I politely declined a cup—we continued north up the island, wending and winding our way through endless trees, stretches of beaches and luscious farmlands.

  The drizzle of rain followed us, but there was no traffic on this island. Just a few well-spaced homes, a few well-spaced cars, endless greenery...and a delightful lack of sun.

  We passed cities called Freeland and Greenbank and a bigger town called Oak Harbor. Up we went over a majestic bridge called Deception Pass that made even my mouth drop. Allison ohed and ahed, and Tara seemed genuinely pleased to see our stunned responses. The bridge apparently connected one island to another, and arched high above roiling currents.

  I felt almost as if I had taken flight, so high were we above the foaming waters below.

  The bridge came and went much too quickly for my taste, as we wound our way ever north to another charming town called Anacortes where we parked the SUV and boarded a smaller boat.

  Smaller, but not by much.

  Chapter Nine

  I was standing near the prow, doing my best not to lift my arms and shout that I was the Queen of the World. Or, perhaps more accurately, Queen of the Underworld.

  I stood there, holding onto a post, and stared out at the rolling sea. Heavy fog hung low over the water. The sea itself was slate gray and seemingly impenetrable. At the most, I could see down only a few feet. Nothing seemed to exist near the surface. No dolphins nor seals nor killer whales. The Puget Sound seemed devoid of life. Just a vast expanse of churning, dead, gray water, a barrier between islands. A great moat, perhaps.

  Which didn’t make it any less beautiful. On the contrary, I lived a dozen or so miles from the ocean, so it wasn’t often that I found myself bouncing along a fast-moving boat, through a heavy fog, hundreds of feet above the ocean floor.

  Tara was sitting with the captain, and Allison was below deck, battling seasickness and failing miserably. Last I heard, she was introducing herself to the tiny metal toilet attached to the main sleeping quarters below deck. The boat itself sported a bedroom, a living room, and a galley. The boat was cozy and was captained by a smallish man with a biggish beard. He could have been Ahab in another life. Or perhaps even the white whale.

  With that thought, I thought of Ishmael. No, not the Ishmael from Moby Dick. Ishmael who had been, at one time, my guardian angel. And who was now...I didn’t know.

  An interested suitor? Maybe, maybe not.
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  I didn’t know much, but I did know one thing: my life was weird.

  Sometimes too weird.

  Sometimes I wanted to bury my head in the sand, or leap, say, from this boat, and drift to the ocean floor and exist in silence and peace, with the crabs and bottom feeders. Except I couldn’t run away from what I was, or what my children had become. What they had become because of me.

  Suddenly, panic and dread and a crushing fear filled me all over again.

  Breathe, Samantha.

  I did so now—slowly, deeply, filling my useless lungs to capacity with air that I didn’t need—at least, not in the physical sense. Emotionally, maybe.

  As I focused on my breathing, as the cold air flowed in and out of my lungs, in and out of my nostrils, I had the distinct sensation of being out of my body. I hadn’t planned to be—who planned that sort of thing, anyway?—and hadn’t even expected it. One moment, I was concentrating on keeping calm, focused almost entirely on the process of breathing, and the next...

  The next, I was...elsewhere.

  Not literally, for I could hear the roar of the boat’s motors, the wind thundering over my ears, the water slapping against the hull. Yes, I could feel and hear and smell, but I was not there. Not in the boat.

  Then again, maybe I really was nuts and was sitting in some insane asylum. Maybe the doctors had just given me my latest dose of zone-out meds.

  Do not be so hard on yourself, Samantha Moon.

  Was that my voice? Had I made it up? I wasn’t certain. I did know that the sound of the ocean and the boat and the wind seemed to be fading even further away. Although I felt detached from my body—hell, from reality—the voice was, to say the least, a welcome sensation.

  Very good, Samantha Moon.

  The thought was not my own, I was certain of it.

  No, not so much a thought as a voice whispered just inside my ear. I was very familiar with such telepathic communication...but this communication seemed different somehow. It almost seemed to come from inside of me—and around me and through me, all at the same time.

  A good way of looking at our communication, Sam.

  I was also certain I’d heard the voice before, as I’d sat upon a desert ledge, back when I’d let my mind drift and found myself in a deeply meditative state—and in the presence of something very loving.

  And seemingly all-knowing.

  All-loving, Samantha Moon.

  I continued holding onto the post as my knees absorbed the rising and falling of the boat. But I wasn’t on the ship. No, not really. I was elsewhere. Above my body. In a place nearby but not nearby. I struggled for words, searching for an explanation to where I was. To what was happening to me.

  Let’s call it a frequency, Samantha. You are in a higher frequency.

  I don’t understand.

  You will, someday.

  The boat dipped deeply, no doubt plunging into a trough, but I effortlessly kept my footing, my balance. Even in a deeply meditative state, my uncanny reflexes were working overtime.

  In my mind’s eye, I saw myself standing before something big. No, not just something big. The biggest. The biggest of all. The Universe, perhaps. There was movement, too. Planets were rotating. No, not just planets. Whole solar systems, galaxies and universes were rotating. I saw stars being born and destroyed. I saw whole universes collapsing and birthing. The Universe was alive to my eyes, as surely as if I was watching a hive of bees at work.

  I was certain that I was watching the Universe from the perspective of something much greater than me.

  You are seeing it through yourself, Samantha.

  No, I thought, and felt myself shaking my head back on the boat. I am seeing it through God. The eyes of God.

  Correct, Samantha.

  How I saw this, I didn’t know, where I was, I didn’t know. I seemed outside of space and time, all while standing here on the boat’s prow, cutting through the fog and mist and now a light drizzle upon the Puget Sound.

  But you said I was seeing it through my eyes, I asked the voice in my head. The voice that I was beginning to think was God.

  Correct again.

  I don’t understand.

  Yes, you do, Samantha.

  Perhaps I did know. I’d heard the voice all my life but had never really understood it. Until now.

  It’s because I’m a part of you, too, I thought.

  Very good, Samantha.

  I was next given a glimpse of something that had never occurred to me before, not until now. I’m not just a part of you, I thought, but you are me.

  Very good, Sam.

  I am you, experiencing life.

  Very true, Samantha. As are all people, all things.

  But, why? I asked. You are God, why experience life through me? I am nothing. I am a blip in the universe. All of us are blips.

  And what if you had access to the sum total of all blips, Samantha? Billions and billions of blips?

  I would have access to, well everything.

  Indeed, Samantha Moon.

  Why are you talking to me now? I asked.

  Because you are much more than a blip, Samantha.

  And now I saw, through another glimpse—or perhaps this was an epiphany—that I was no greater or smaller than others in our world. But because of who I am, or what I was, I had an open channel to God. To the universe. To the spirit world in general.

  You’re talking to me now because I can hear you, I said.

  No, Sam. I’m talking to you now because you are listening.

  Footsteps slapped behind me, and I snapped back into my body and gasped when I saw the captain swing down below deck. He saw me and nodded and, although I tried to smile back, all I could see were worlds being destroyed.

  And worlds being born.

  Chapter Ten

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” said Allison. “And, for you, that’s saying something.”

  “Gee, thanks,” I said.

  But the truth was, I had seen a ghost.

  Not a ghost, I thought. God.

  I shook my head again. The boat had docked along a floating pier. The three crew members were busy securing the vessel, using a system of ropes and, apparently, rubber tires that acted as buffers between the hull and the wooden pier. All of it seemed more complex than I could comprehend. Especially considering my mind—or soul—had been far elsewhere.

  To the far edges of the universe, in fact.

  Lordy, my life is weird.

  Allison wasn’t looking too swell herself. In fact, she looked, I suspected, as pale as myself. Why I still looked pale these days, I didn’t know. After all, thanks to the medallion that seemed to be permanently embedded just beneath my skin, I’d been able to head out into the sun for the past few months now. Glorious months.

  You’re pale, I thought, as I reluctantly accepted the hand of one of the shipmates who helped me across the gangplank, because you’re dead.

  I didn’t feel dead, of course. I felt alive. And, when the sun went down, more alive than I’d ever felt in my life. Ever.

  Once on the pier, as we followed Tara and a few other passengers—passengers that Tara knew and who were, I suspected, relatives—Allison caught up to me.

  “Seriously, Sam, what’s wrong?” she whispered in my ear. I couldn’t help but notice her breath smelled of vomit. Blech. “You look...out of it.”

  “I’ll tell you about it later,” I said over my shoulder.

  She was about to fall back behind me when her eyes suddenly widened. “God?” she said, obviously reading my thoughts—thoughts that I had left open to her. “You talked to God? Seriously?”

  “If not, then a heck of an imposter.”

  “So weird.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  And with that, Allison turned her head and just made it to the edge of the pier before she heaved what little remained in her stomach.

  * * *

  “As you can see, this is a private island,” explained Tara Thur
man.

  She was driving behind a motorcade of Range Rovers. There were three in total, including our own. The road wasn’t paved, but it was the next best thing—smooth. Allison seemed to appreciate the smooth part, although she was still looking a little green.

  “I feel green,” she whispered to me, reading my thoughts.

  Our strong connection was surprising even me. I suspected that, coupled with her own psychic intuition, our telepathic link was particularly sensitive, thanks to the exchange in blood.

  “You bet your britches,” she said.

  “Will you quit doing that?” I whispered to her.

  “Excuse me?” said Tara from behind the wheel.

  “Oh, nothing,” I said, mentally pushing Allison out of my thoughts. “You were saying about the island?”

  Tara, who was focused on the dirt road and the caravan in front of us, hardly seemed to notice this particular conversation between Allison and me. Instead, she nodded, clearly proud of the island.

  “Like I said, the island has been in my family for nearly one hundred years. It was first purchased by my great-grandfather, who built the home. My grandfather inherited it, and spent the last thirty years of his life here. The rest of us have used the island on and off for vacations and getaways and reunions.”

  I nodded. We were surrounded by massive evergreens, each rising high above the car windows, effectively blocking out the sun, which I was always thankful for. Yes, although I existed somewhat comfortably in the light of day, I always appreciated deep shade.

  Must be the ghoul in me.

  The island itself seemed to be primarily surrounded by cliffs and bluffs. So far, the only sandy beach had been where the boat had docked, where the row of Range Rovers had been waiting.

  “Are there any bears on the island?” asked Allison from the back, poking her head between the front seats.