Paranormal Investigations 3: Don't Open After Dusk

By EH Walter

Leo survived the last Fae attempt on her life, but something is wrong and her friends and time-travelling daughter are worried about her. She doesn't seem to remember everything that happened at New Year.
Starbucks also have a problem - vampires have set up next door and are getting hooked on caffinated blood...

• Language: English
• Publisher: EH Walter
• Release date: Apr 8, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476470405

EH Walter

EH Walter is from Hampshire, but now lives in North London where she lives the impoverished life of a writer. Follow her on Facebook or Twitter to be kept up to date and have the chance to contribute names for characters.

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Paranormal Investigations 3

Don't Open After Dusk

- WORK IN PROGRESS -

EH Walter

Copyright 2012 EH Walter

Smashwords Edition

Cover by Tirzah L Goodwin at http://acleverwhatever.blogspot.com

Discover other titles by EH Walter at Smashwords.com

Paranormal Investigations 1 http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/101392

Paranormal Investigations 2 https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/113147

White Christmas - a short story http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/114199

Fallen http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/26601

Paperbacks available at http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/ehwalter

Smashwords Edition, License notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Dedication

Dedicated to all the lovely people at the Fforde Ffiesta who have never ceased in their support of PI. Your encouragement means more to me than words can express, so how about a book dedication instead? You know who you are.

Please note this is work in progress and is being posted at I write. Find me on Facebook to join in the creative process!

Chapter 1: Pissed Wiccans

It turns out Monica Brown was pretty pissed at her husband's death. Not so pissed at his screwing someone from the Job Centre (they were into swinging, or so I was reliably informed), just the fact he was dead and his life insurance policy was void because he had taken his own life. Don't get me wrong - I had nothing to do with his death, he had been sectioned and locked up at the time - but since he was there because of an attempt on my own life I took the blame.

That's quite a gun you've got there Monica, I said in what appeared to be rather a light hearted manner - inside I was a bit more of a squealing wreck. I bet it could do quite a bit of damage - eh?

She blinked blankly and looked at the cold steel of the gun - down the barrel to be precise which proved how unfamiliar she was with weaponry, and then back at me. Her expression was worryingly vacant. He's dead. She repeated.

So you said when you burst in here ten minutes ago, waving that gun in my face Monica. You then proceeded to inform me it was all my fault and revealed some rather intimate details of your marriage which I could have happily lived without thanks.

I wanted you to understand.

I do. You told me you enjoyed swinging as it put the pizzazz back in things after many, long years of marriage. You also told me you won't get a penny from the insurance. Somehow that is also my fault? I mean seriously, Monica - he did slash my wrists and try to kill me. I've got the scars to prove it, do you want to see them? To be honest the scars were very light thanks to some fairy healing magic courtesy of Jamie and his rather lovely, but self obsessed, lips.

You were never one of us!

You're right, Louise Scragg paid me. I thought she wanted me to protect your solstice, but in fact she wanted me to be your husband's last victim. They were in it together. They are the criminals, not you. I think you're just opening yourself up to more trouble here.

I'm just so angry! I knew that Wicca, for him, was just an excuse to sleep with younger women, but I accepted that. For me it was something deeper and now he's ruined it. How can I praise Mother Earth ever again? How can I show my face at our coven after all that has happened?

Trust me, I said, he believed. He believed so much he was willing to sacrifice myself and Luisa for the chance of what he believed to be strong magic.

Luisa was his first victim and one of the original founders of the coven.

Magic doesn't exist.

Hmm, last year I would have agreed with her. Well, I certainly didn't believe in Wiccan magic. That we could agree on.

Your husband seemed to believe that the ancient pagans had magic at their finger tips and that the ritual he enacted would return it to you all. That was as close to the truth as I could explain to a human - heck, she didn’t even know fairies existed and that her husband had succeeded in opening the gateway to their world. Of course, after that they had no use for him.

She sat down in Rose's chair. Rose herself had been frozen in fright mid-prune of a begonia and was hovering timidly over by the window. Monica had better not fiddle with the height of the chair or make a move on the biscuits or Rose was likely to spring into action like the shady Ninja she was.

Sobbing loudly Monica threw her head into her arms on the desk. I took one step towards the gun but she sprang up, eyes red. Don't move!

I thought it wise to obey. May I sit down? I'm getting rather tired.

Stay exactly where you are!

Very well. What exactly do you want, I mean other than my death and I can't see that winning you more than a hefty prison sentence?

She waggled the gun around for a bit. Hmm, methinks, there was a hole in the argument here - she didn't know what she wanted other than to show me how angry she was and possibly inflict some damage. Was that going to work in my favour or against me?

Sinking back into the chair she sighed. I just want you to know how angry I am.

Check.

I want to feel I am doing something about my husband's death.

I could understand some of her pain, true I had never lost a husband or fiancé, but I had lost my father and that had hurt a bunch.

Well Monica, you're certainly being proactive here. Perhaps it's not me you're angry with and you need to channel your feelings of anger towards your husband who really was the murderer here?

She blinked. He was the murderer, wasn't he? she looked at the gun again as if seeing it for the first time. Then she looked at me with growing horror. Throwing down the gun she stood and physically shook herself together. You're right. He's the complete bastard here. She straightened her clothes, brushed down her skirt. My apologies Miss Fey. Is it possible that we could forget his had ever happened?

Consider my mind wiped.

Thank you.

Meek and demure she slipped out the office quietly and even pulled the door closed behind her. The gun remained where it had been abandoned on the reception desk. I watched Monica leave and then looked around the office. It bore no trace of the drama of the last fifteen minutes, although I could feel my heart pacing away at a rather heightened rate.

I saw the closed and locked door of my silent partner and felt a small sense of unease that I couldn't understand. Rex hadn’t been seen for some while, which was hardly a surprise.

Rose blinked, her pruning scissors snapped shut and a shoot of the begonia leaped dramatically to the floor. You have the oddest friends, she said and then bent to pick up the fallen shoot. Cradling it in her hands gently, she cooed as most people would over a baby chick or a newborn puppy.

I grabbed a biro off the desk and, poking it through the trigger hole on the gun, lifted the nasty metal object into the air. Walking over to the ancient, iron filling cabinet I opened a drawer, noisily squeaking on its ancient hinges, and plopped it inside slamming the drawer shut afterwards.

Are you feeling quite alright? Rose asked me as she gently buried the amputated shoot in a fresh pot. Her eyes were intent on the burial.

Yeah - why?

The gun... she said without quite meeting my eyes, it doesn't make you... remember...?

What was she talking about? I didn't often get guns thrust into my face. And if I did, I was sure I would have full recall. It's not the kind of thing you forget.

I think perhaps we need a cup of sweet tea, I told her and flicked the kettle on to boil. I knew one human friend, Katie, who would lynch me for not drawing fresh water but since she lived in Fareham ninety eight miles away by the sea, I figured I was safe. To me, it didn't make much difference - but maybe that was crap London water, 98% clay.

Putting two mugs out ready I foraged for tea bags and sugar, which seemed to be an encrusted lump in the bottom of the container. We rarely used sugar, getting most of our Sucrose based nutrition from biscuits although I drew the line at rich tea. I'd use a rich tea as a weapon before I ate it. They were so hard it would probably make quite a dent.

What time are you meeting Jude? she asked pleasantly. My spidey senses tingled, Rose was never that pleasant to me - she was a belligerent secretary at best.

I'm meeting her in High Barnet in an hour.

Jude was going to be my daughter. I don't mean I was going to adopt her or anything - in the future she was going to be my daughter as in I was going to meet someone, shag them and give birth to her nine months later. It seemed a little incredulous to me at present, since I had been single for a very long time... in fact I couldn't remember the last time I'd actually had a relationship. They were obviously very forgettable affairs. In my family, you see, we could travel through time and place - but my late father was the only one of us who had any control over it. I slipped at times of high danger with no control. I had once ended up in a river. Jude seemed to take after me as she had turned up a few weeks ago having gotten stuck in time. I didn't know what had caused her to slip in the first place, she had promised the older me not to reveal anything about my future.

I had been hospitalised recently (thanks to Brian Brown and the dodgy fairies he had made acquaintance with) and Jude, who had been sleeping on my sofa, had been forced to wear my clothes. I had promised myself as soon as I was fit enough we would go shopping, hence the trip to the shops. I'm sure all the clothes looked to her like they belonged in a museum, but at least I could find her some that fitted.

I made the tea, sweetened with sugar scrapings, and passed a cup to Rose. She was looking at me oddly. This wasn't like Rose at all, if she ever looked at me it was with disappointment, not... sadness.

Should I call the police? she asked tentatively, stirring her tea in a large circle. She withdrew the spoon and tapped it with a tinkle on the side of the mug. I realised I had mindlessly made her tea in a mug decorated with a toast logo and not her usual bone china cup and saucer. I waited for her to chastise me. Nothing. She sipped pleasantly, although the thick mug looked ungainly in her refined hands.

I glanced at the metal filling cabinet now concealing the weapon. Better not. I think she was just temporarily screwy. I don't think she'll disturb us again. It would do well not to involve the local police in my life again - recently they had me pegged as a murderer - until I almost became a murder victim, that is. I was almost dead too, until a kiss from a fairy gave my ancient genes enough fuel to keep me going until medical help arrived. Yes, best not to worry DI Sarah Finn and the Barnet police service with that one.

I sipped my tea, but it didn't calm my heart beat. Although I knew I should be calm, there was some kind of panic fighting within me that was a little hard to understand, it felt a little like I was going mad. To calm myself I took my tea and went to the window, gazing out across the lumps and bumps of north London-come-Hertfordshire. I mean, it wasn't all bad - my life. Shitty job aside. I had friends, of a sort, and before my wrists got slashed and I woke up in hospital several weeks later my rather gorgeous silent partner, Rex, had asked me out on a dinner date so that was something to look forward to. Not that I had seen him since then - he gave off an air of being the jet setting type. Still - a dinner date was a positive move for my life, wasn't it?

Tea drunk I abandoned the mug and collected my bag to head off to meet Jude in High Barnet. She was slightly pissed at me, you see - without any idea of how long I was going to be hosting my future daughter and not wanting her education to suffer - I had made her enroll at the local school. She hated her school uniform, she hated the 'old fashioned' people she had to share a classroom with and more than anything she hated the fact the teachers made her write by hand - with a pen! Her arrogance at the whole 'ancient' curriculum hadn't exactly endeared her to the teachers and I, her 'big sister', had been called in on a couple of occasions already to have serious chats about her 'attitude'. I couldn't blame the girl, she was out of time (which time she could not elucidate on for fear of changing the future) and didn't know when she would get back. We must seem like cave men to her.

I got off the bus outside The Spires shopping centre and soon spotted Jude hanging out underneath the entrance, her hands deep in her pockets and a scowl etched deep on her face. A group of teenagers were snickering at her, their body language resembling something you might see in the zoo or South African bush. I knew prey when I saw it and I didn’t like that it was my pretty daughter.

Let's go shopping, I said to her.

I don't feel like it.

The gang of teenagers laughed. They may not have even been laughing at Jude, but you know how paranoid teenagers get.

Fuck off you Neanderthals! she screeched at them, Let's go Leo. she said to me and grabbed my hand. She was finding it easier adjusting to a young mother than I was a teenage daughter.

You need a frappuccino, I said and guided her into Starbucks. The shopping would have to wait until she calmed down.

They are such wankers! she burst out, still angry. A middle-aged woman in the queue frowned at her for her choice of language, so being a grown up type of girl Jude stuck her tongue out at her. "You can't believe this mu... Leo, but at my school I'm popular. Here I'm a freak."

Well, it can't harm you to see how the other half live. Walk a mile in a geek's shoes.

Inside I'm laughing at them. I tell you - when I get home I'm going to look them up and see what pathetic lives they've got.

Maybe that's why they don't like you - they know you're laughing at them. And to be fair, some of them might have really good lives in the future. They can't all be teenage-slut-mums and shelf stackers. I bet some of them have wonderful lives.

I doubt it, they're a bunch of tossers.

There was no arguing with a mardy teenager, so I didn't bother and turned my attention to the drinks menu. I smiled sweetly at the moody Welsh barista which always pissed her off nicely so every time I came I was even nicer to her. Jones the Welsh barista rolled her eyes at me and gritted her teeth to ask my name in that annoying way that someone in head office in Seattle had thought a really good idea. I gave her a different name every time.

Peppa Pig, I said and she scrawled on the cup 'Pig'. Well at least, unlike her, I wasn't covered in some rather hideous love bites that even her foundation couldn’t completely cover. Tacky. I had thought only teenagers let people burst blood vessels in their necks.

Jones frowned even deeper when Jude requested a 'skinny soy caramel coffee based frappuccino with extra whip'.

I almost expected to see Al, my guardian angel, here - as this was where I had first seen him. Al was a pretty crap guardian angel to be honest as he hadn’t shown up the one time I had asked for his help. He had also made it clear he did not like me and thought it would be better for the world if I were dead. Charming, eh? However he was not to be seen.

Jude was still ranting about teenagers, littering her language with swear words.

Do you swear like this to the older me? I asked as I waited for my drink to be prepared. Jones the barista was also swearing, only one coffee machine appeared to be working and a monster sized queue was building up behind us.

No, Jude said, her voice still sharp with anger, but you're not to know that, so whatever.

I think I preferred the swear words to the flippancy of 'whatever'.

"Look Jude, can you at least pretend to calm down? I'm not one of