Starstruck: Episode Two, The Disappearance of Becca, New Edition: Starstruck, #2

By R T Green

Some people will tell you they have fairies at the bottom of their garden… Mia and Becca have little aliens at the bottom of theirs!

The Starstruck series tells the story of Mia, Becca, and the six little people who change their lives. It's a contemporary fairytale with a kick, something a little different, and very much for adults only!

Check out the full Starstruck story at the rtgreen website. 

 

This is Episode 2: The Disappearance of Becca –

Mia Haines perfectly-planned, perfectly-predictable life is now a thing of the past. If being reunited with the woman she'd always loved but never realised wasn't unexpected enough, discovering six little people who'd lived secretly in her house longer than she had was a double-whammy of a shock to the system. All in the same weekend!

So at the conclusion of Episode One, she'd smiled ironically to herself and mentally torn the Haines Ten Year Plan into minute pieces. But for now at least, life is settling into a surreal kind of normality. Becca's demons are fading away, and plans for the foreseeable future are being made.

It's not going to last. Three days before Christmas, a demon of a completely different kind rears her beautiful, dangerous head. And when Becca disappears, the Voyagers are all too aware they're the ones responsible. A heartbreaking decision has to be made, but even that may not be enough to save her life...

 

* Starstruck does contain scenes of a sexual nature.

 

Enjoy!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wise Owl
• Release date: Apr 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201725907

R T Green

The RTG mission in life is simple... to not be like everyone else! ‘Going Green’ has taken on a new meaning, in the book world at least. Whilst we applaud the original meaning (ebooks are a perfect way to promote that) we also try to present a different angle to it. The tendency these days is that if you don’t look and read like everyone else, you don’t sell books. Maybe there’s some truth in that, but we simply don’t do it. The RTG books have been described as a ‘breath of fresh literary air’, and, by those discovering us for the first time, ‘unexpectedly good’. We know many readers prefer the same-old same old, and that’s fine. It’s just not what you get from the RTG stable. Those who know about such things said it would take five years to become a proficient author... I scoffed at that. They were wise. It took six. It’s one reason why even today we remodel existing books, and will always do so. Right from the early years the stories were always good, but were put into words less well than they could have been! These days we have several series and a few standalones, the hit Daisy series most popular amongst them. In everything we do, the same provisos apply – Never the same book twice. If we can’t think up a good story, it doesn’t get written. The RTG brand is about exciting and twisty plots, a fast pace which doesn’t waste words, and endearing (sometimes slightly crazy) characters. We can never please everyone, but it works for us, and, it seems, for those who appreciate our work. Enjoy! Richard, Ann and the RTG crew

Book preview

STARSTRUCK

EPISODE 2

The Disappearance of Becca

R  T  GREEN

RTG Logo.png

Other books...

The Starstruck Series -

Starstruck: The Prequel

(Time to say Goodbye)

Starstruck 1: Somewhere to Call Home

Starstruck 3: The Rock

Starstruck 4: Ghosts, Ghouls and Evil Spirits

Starstruck: The Combo – books 1-3

The Raven Series –

Raven: No Angel!

Raven: Unstoppable

Raven: Black Rose

Raven: The Combo – books 1-3

The Daisy Morrow Series:

The first one – The Root of All Evil

The second one – The Strange Case of the Exploding Dolly-trolley

The third one – A Very Unexpected African Adventure

The fourth one - Pirates of Great Yarmouth: Curse of the Crimson Heart

The fifth One – The terrifying Tale of the Homesick Scarecrow

The sixth one – Call of Duty: The Wiltingham Enigma

The seventh one – Christmas in the Manor Born

The eighth one: The Shanghai Shadow

The ninth one – Some Like It Tepid

The tenth one – Waltzing Matilda

The eleventh one – The Wiltingham Incident

The twelfth one – The Pointing Finger

The thirteenth one – Here Comes Santa Claus!

The fourteenth one – The Witch of Scraggy Bottom

The fifteenth one – The Coronation Complication

The Throwback Prequel: When Daisy Met Aidan

The Box Set – books 1-3

The Second Box Set – books 4-6 plus the Prequel

The Third box set – books 7-9

The Sandie Shaw series:

Book 1 – Murder at the Green Mill

Book 2 – Christmas in Chicago is Murder

Book 3 – An American in Windsor

Book 4 – Springtime in Chicago

Book 5 – Murder on the Miami Express

Book 6 – The Family

Book 7 – Murder Most Olympic

Book 8 – Two Sisters, One Ghost

Book 9 – The Sergeant, the Flapper and a Crossword

The Mega Box Set – books 1 - 6

Red Mist –

Season 1

Episode 1: Falling

Episode 2: Phoenix

Episode 3: Jealousy

Episode 4: Fearless

Season 2

Episode 5: Phantom

Episode 6: Desperation

Episode 7: Unbreakable

Episode 8: Evermore

When Billionaires Collide

Somewhere Only She Knows

Timeless

Ballistic

Cry of an Angel

The Hand of Time

Elsie: Mean Street

Wisp

Copyright © 2023 R T Green

All rights reserved.

CONTENTS

AN INTRODUCTION TO STARSTRUCK

Chapter 1

The Next Morning

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 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Starstruck, Episode 3 – ‘The Rock’

A Short Taster of Episode 3:

Would you like a free mega-bundle?

The RTG Brand

AN INTRODUCTION TO STARSTRUCK

Some people will tell you they have fairies at the bottom of their garden...

Mia and Becca have little aliens at the bottom of theirs!

Once upon a time in London...

OK, MAYBE NOT. ONCE upon a right here, right now might be more appropriate. Our fairytale is very much of the technological age, but still contains all the elements from the tales of a bygone time.

We’ve written the Starstruck series as a contemporary fairytale with a kick... and strictly for adults only! Those of you who read me will know I like the unexpected. Starstruck sure fits that description!

Mia and Becca’s fraught and emotional love story is blended with a big dose of adventure and fast-paced action, most of it brought about by six little people who come from a place far, far away...

What we now call fairytales were originally written a very long time ago, in dark ages when things we now look upon as shocking were considered perfectly acceptable. In more recent times, the tales were sanitized and watered down to make them suitable for children, the original scripts far too gruesome and horrific to be told to youngsters.

But full of blood and gore and sexual depravity as they were, they were penned to send a message. The innocent girl treated badly, the beautiful queen banished from her lands, evil ogres who never thought twice about committing heinous acts, wolves in sheep’s clothing, handsome princes who expected nothing less than to own the fairest in the land...

Sound familiar? Of course, many of our favourite stories are modern versions of very old tales. But with Starstruck, We’ve tried to do something a little more outside the box, and bring these traditional elements into a modern, urban setting. We’ve avoided the blood and gore, but most of the other fairytale elements are there.

‘The Disappearance of Becca’ is the second episode of the Starstruck series.

Each episode can be read as a stand-alone book, but they are chronological, telling the story of Mia, Becca, and the six little people who change their lives forever. So to get the full ‘Starstruck’ experience, it’s perhaps best to read them in order!

The Prequel is available too. ‘Time to Say Goodbye’ is a shorter novella, and goes back to tell the tragic story of why the Voyagers had to leave their home, and how they only just escaped with their lives.

Please let us know what you think of the series, and as always...

Enjoy!

Richard, Ann and the RTG crew

Chapter 1

The Next Morning

THE CRISP, WHITE LIGHT of a frosty morning streamed through the open window. Mia stirred, and forced weary eyelids to part. Her left arm, draped across the top of the duvet, felt cold. It was hardly surprising, with the window still wide open after the Voyager’s unexpected return a few hours earlier.

Cold arms aside, the bed felt like it was centrally-heated. She glanced over to Becca, fast asleep beside her, and reached out a hand to gently caress her bare shoulder. She pulled it away quickly, a little shocked. She was soaking wet, and felt like she was on fire.

Mia closed her eyes again, and leant back against the headboard as her eyes misted up. She knew exactly why the bed was centrally heated. The woman she loved was back in her life, and that had brought with it a host of overpowering emotions... but had also come with more than one issue Becca couldn’t resolve on her own.

She was going to need all the help and support she could get.

Then the harsh reality of right there kicked in. Monday. Sunlight? What time was it?

She tried to focus on the red digits of the clock on the bedside table, blinked to clear her vision, and then wished she hadn’t. Eight-fifteen? The lab was a half-hour away by tube, her start-time eight-thirty. There wasn’t a hope in hell of making it... another late arrival was guaranteed. She leapt out of bed, then remembered the Voyagers and their hull-mounted cameras were back in the bedroom, and hastily threw the gown around her naked body.

As the warmth of the shower water cascaded over her, she leant back against the coolness of the tiled wall, and an ironic smile creased her face.

What happened to the nice quiet life in her nice quiet bolthole?

By anyone’s standards it had been an epic nine days. By Mia’s standards, it was nine days of totally unexpected, completely unplanned, life-changing, panic-inducing earthquakes. Discovering Becca and the hell she was living through was epic enough. Twenty-four hours later she’d discovered six tiny tenants had secretly been living in her house longer than she had, and then proceeded to save one of them from the clutches of a lowlife drug dealer who thought all his Christmases had come at once...

Those things just didn’t happen in Mia Haines carefully-planned life.

Didn’t being the operative word.

The one year anniversary of buying the house occupied only by her and her best friend Jamie had turned into the ceremonial tearing up of the Haines Ten-Year Plan, and the acceptance there were now actually nine people living there.

Nine and a half, if you included Jamie’s boyfriend Toby, who seemed to spend half his life there.

She grabbed the towel, and began drying herself off, but couldn’t seem to stop shaking her head in a disbelieving kind of way. Last night the six little aliens Becca called the Voyagers had left forever to go find their folks. Forever lasted six hours, and then they were back. Most likely, forever.

And Becca? Mia’s heart began to thump in her chest, and her eyes mist over again. The moment she found her sleeping rough on the streets of London was one of those moments that would stay with her until the day she died. The sheer horror of discovering the girl who once had everything had then lost it all... because of her... was something she would never truly get over.

And the sheer intensity of the feelings that having her back in her life had brought with it was still a body-shock she was fighting to cope with.

Mia Haines didn’t do high emotion.

Didn’t being the operative word.

She padded back into the bedroom, wrapped in the towel. Becca was sitting up in bed, trying to smile as their eyes met.

‘You were burning up in the night,’ Mia said quietly.

‘Yeah, I... I’m still getting used to a warm bed... with someone else in it.’

‘Bex, I know why it was. You might see me as little miss prim-and-proper, but I’m no fool.’

Her head lowered. ‘I don’t see you like that, not anymore. But you’ve got to admit this last week has kicked your middle-class butt well and truly into a tale of the unexpected. Welcome to Bextopia!’

Mia leant over, and kissed her lovingly. ‘And you have to admit it’s a very nice middle-class butt, urchin. So stop trying to change the subject.’

‘I wasn’t. I know I need help. And... and somewhere to live. I can’t stay here forever.’

Mia hastily threw on some clothes as they spoke. ‘Tonight, when I get back. We’ll talk stuff through. Right now I should have been in work ten minutes ago.’

‘So get your awesome middle-class butt on that tube then, and stop wittering,’ Becca grinned.

Mia kissed her again, and headed for the door. ‘Will you be ok?’

‘Hey doctor, I’m a big girl now. And I’ve got six people to keep me company!’

Starstruck Technologies didn’t get the best out of one of their senior technicians that day. Mia couldn’t seem to hold a train of thought any longer than a minute, let alone create the final specification logs for the space vehicle ST had designed to collect the millions of tons of space debris floating around the Earth just above the upper atmosphere.

Another issue that had been building up for the last five years, and needed urgent action to make better.

It wasn’t the best of timing. The specs had to be sent off to NASA by the close of play that day, and as mid-afternoon clicked by she was still hours away. It was looking like a late one, on the very day she needed an early one.

Her boss called in to the lab, on a visit from the main ST base in Cambridge, checking to make sure the project was running smoothly. Three sentences into the conversation, he could see all was not well. ‘Everything ok, Mia?’ he asked.

She hesitated. ‘Sure... some of these calculations are a bit trickier than I expected.’

He smiled. ‘That’s not quite what I meant.’

‘There’s... just a couple of things at home I need to sort, that’s all.’

He frowned a concerned look to her. ‘If we weren’t on such a tight schedule here, I’d tell you to go home, but...’

‘It’s ok. I know I’m facing a late one.’

‘Sorry. If you need a little time off after this is finalised, please take it.’

‘Thanks, Bill. If I need to, I might just do that.’

Mia called Becca, told her it would be a late one, and she’d be home as soon as she could. Then she went back to forcing her brain to concentrate on work-related matters... which for the first time ever were getting in the way of home-related matters.

_ _ _

Just before six, Jamie walked in with Toby in tow. He found Becca stretched out on the sofa, staring at a TV screen she really wasn’t seeing. He sat down beside her, and took her hand.

‘Hun?’

‘Jamie... hi... what time is it?’

She’d clearly not even realised he was home, and he knew why. ‘Almost six. Not feeling so good, darl?’

She tried to pull herself together. ‘I’m ok. Just tired.’

It was the truth, partly. He knew nothing about the six secret residents and the epic adventure which had contributed to the lack of sleep, and she and Mia had decided it was best to keep it that way. Jamie’s inability to keep mega-secrets was a risk they couldn’t take.

But he did know the signs of cold turkey when he saw them. ‘You hearing the cluck cluck of tiny frozen feet, Bex?’

‘What if I am?’ she retorted, a defensive kind of anger lacing the words.

‘Then you should let your two favourite uncles give you what you need.’

‘Drugs?’

He shook his head, and glanced up to Toby as their own private telepathic link kicked in. They answered as one.

‘Alcohol!’

‘Huh?’

‘Get your glad-rags on, sweetie... we’re hitting the town.’

Chapter 2

‘I HATE CHRISTMAS.’

‘No you don’t.’

‘I do... did... maybe still will...’

It was something of an alcohol-induced mumble, Becca’s head resting sideways on arms stretched out across the bar top.  Jamie reached out a hand, and brushed the black hair from her face. ‘Sweetie... this year we’ll make it special, that’s a promise.’

‘Really? So I’m not going to be lonely this Christmas?’ The words were getting slurred, as the guy’s alcoholic remedy did its job. Becca wasn’t thinking about drugs anymore. But unfortunately it was a different matter when it came to festive songs.

‘Not gonna be lonely this Christmas...’

Jamie grinned. Toby chinked his glass of amber nectar against Becca’s, and said in his native Australian accent, ‘Hey sis, it’s Christmas... you can cross me off your wish list.’

She giggled. ‘Might have known you’d think of a RuPaul song. Oh... ohh...’

‘Ohh?’

‘You were handsome, you were pretty, queen of New York City...’

‘Now she’s singing The Pogues at us?’

‘Well it is a fairytale... of New York, admittedly.’

‘Pissed and still hilarious.’

‘The boys of the NYPD choir were singing Galway Bay...’

Toby laughed, and decided if he couldn’t beat her he’d join her.  ‘And the bells were ringing out

for Christmas day...’

Jamie threw his hands in the air. ‘It’s six weeks to Christmas. Oh what the hell... ‘You scumbag, you maggot, you cheap lousy faggot...’

Becca dropped her arms around their shoulders, and raised the decibel level... ‘Happy Christmas your arse, I pray God it's our last...’

A few people were looking round, one or two slightly amused, others not so impressed. Jamie clamped a hand across Becca’s mouth. ‘Maybe not so loud, darl?’

‘But I want to be a karo... karakote... karaoke machine...’

‘No you don’t. And maybe we’ve had enough. Mission accomplished, I think?’

‘Jusht one more? I’ll shing quietly...’

Jamie glanced up to Toby for a telepathic answer. He shook his head and asked the barman to refill their glasses. Becca did as she promised, and reduced the volume.

‘I’ll ha ha have a blue, blue Christmas without you...’

‘Oh dear, dear,’ grinned Jamie. ‘Melancholia here we come.’

The head slumped back to the bar top. ‘Do you know where I spent last Christmash?’

‘Sweetie, I hate to think.’

‘In the gutter... well, almost... sitting behind a big blue wheelie bin, sniffing Christmas cheer...’

‘Ok, let’s not go there. How about a bit of Slade? ‘Are you hanging up your stockings on the wall...’

Becca looked up, and smiled. ‘I have got a wall now, haven’t I? Oh, but I don’t have a stocking...’

Jamie kissed her on the cheek. ‘Uncle Jamie will get you one... the biggest, brightest stocking you’ve ever seen. That’s a promise.’

Her eyes filled with tears. ‘You’re such a lovely fairy godmother... Toby is so lucky...’ The head slumped back onto the arms.

‘I think it’s time to hit the road,’ said Toby.

Jamie nodded, eased Becca to her wobbly feet, and threw her a sympathetic smile. She let out a giggle, and then sang a line in her huskiest Chris Rhea... ‘Driving home for Christmas...’

‘I keep telling you, it’s not Christmas yet.’

‘So why are you shinging Christmash shongs?’

‘Actually, it was you who... oh, never mind.’

Mia walked into the house just after nine. No one was there. Nobody human anyway. She asked the Voyagers, but they hadn’t realised they were alone. A call to Becca’s phone made it jump around on the coffee table next to her. Jamie wasn’t