Starlight Dreams

Sheriff Daisy Parker urges everyone to remain calm but asks people to avoid going into any secluded area alone. If anyone has any information regarding this crime, please contact her department immediately.

I sighed. The only good news regarding the case was that Faron Collinsworth’s lieutenant, Elroy Zastratha, was off the suspect list. After the scare of being considered a potential murderer, Elroy had taken pains to always have an alibi. In fact, he was hanging around with friends so much that he was beginning to annoy them. And then there was the fact that the last three murders had happened when there was no way he could have done it.

“Breakfast?” Fancypants asked, flying down from the top of the china hutch. The dragonette had grown in spirit during the past month, though not much in size. But he was ensconced in my life now and it felt like he had always been with me. He landed on the table beside me. “You’re up early,” he added.

“Yeah, I couldn’t sleep. I woke up at seven-thirty and decided to get dressed and take a walk. Great-grandma Morgance is driving down today to stay for a while.”

My great-grandmother had shown up the second week of August and, other than a phone call, I hadn’t had a chance to see her yet. In fact, I’d only met her once—when I was five and my father died. She’d flown over from Scotland for the memorial service and the cord cutting ceremony.

I didn’t remember much about that day, or about her except that she had flame red hair like I did, and she was both beautiful and terrifying. I wasn’t sure whether she seemed so imposing because I was five years old and had lost my father, or whether it was an actual memory.

“Is your mother coming with her?” Fancypants had already met my mother. I’d finally allowed Catharine to come visit when I had my cast on. She’d been so worried that I couldn’t refuse her. I loved my mother, but we butted heads. She still wasn’t happy that I’d relocated from Port Towsend to Starlight Hollow, a forty-five-minute drive away.

“I don’t think so. From the subtext of my mother’s messages, I don’t think they’re getting along well. Great-grandma never objected to the marriage, but she and my mother are very different.” I pushed back my empty latte mug and stretched. “What do you want for breakfast?”

“Sausage? Eggs?” Fancypants daintily licked his paws. Dragonettes cleaned themselves like a cat, except they had more mobility with that long slinky neck. “By the way, the top of your china hutch needs a good dusting.”

“How about I give you a dustcloth and you do it?” I opened the fridge and pulled out the sausages and a carton of eggs. Dragonettes ate a lot during their first year, and he ate more than I would for breakfast. Which was saying something, given I could pack it away.

“Oh, shoo. I don’t do—”

I snorted. “Housework? That’s all well and good if you decide to run off to the wilds, but if you live under my roof—”

“You live by my rules,” Fancypants said with a huff. Steam puffed from his nostrils. He’d finally learned how to prevent accidental flaming hiccups. Now most of his automatic reflexes simply produced steam, which cut down on the fire risk.

“Exactly. Here.” I handed him a microfiber washcloth from the counter. “Go dust while I cook.”

He gave me the stink eye, but he took the cloth and flew up to the top of the china hutch. I turned back to the stove, where I tossed fourteen sausage links in a pan over medium heat—six for me, eight for him. I whipped up six eggs and added some grated cheese. I’d start them when the sausages were ready.

As I stared out the window, my phone dinged. It was my best friend, Bree Loomis.

hey, i have a question. do you have time to come over and check something out? i don’t know how to explain it, but something’s going on that’s making me nervous.

I glanced at the clock. It was eight-thirty.

can i come over at nine after i eat breakfast? are you at work? my great-grandmother will be coming today from port townsend at noon.

sure. i’ll be a little late to work today. i don’t open till ten anyway, and it takes me ten minutes max to drive down to the shop. see you in half an hour, and thanks.

I turned the sausages, then added water and covered them to finish steaming them. Bree was always so levelheaded and capable that any time I sensed something amiss in her world, I worried. Hell, I worried enough when she led expeditions out into the wilderness.

I scrambled our eggs and divided them onto two plates—one Fancypants’s special plate, and one my own. After adding the sausages, and two pieces of toast each, I set them on the table. “Breakfast awaits, your highness!”

He peeked over the edge of the china hutch, a dust bunny attached to the top of his head. I started to laugh and he frowned, then flew down to land by his plate.

“And what’s so funny?”

“You’ve become one with the dust!” I snapped a quick picture and then turned the phone so he could see it.

“Oh good heavens.” He hurried to wipe off the dust, chuckling. “I don’t need a meeting of the minds with lint.” His eyes lit up as he saw his plate. “Ooo! That looks good, thank you.”

He rubbed his hands together and then flew over to the sink and washed them before returning to the table to eat. He was a fastidious little creature, far more prim and proper than I was, but somehow we worked together. It had been an interesting six weeks or so, watching him grow into his personality. At first, he’d been new to the world and mostly asking questions, but now he seemed fully acclimated. It was easy to imagine him wearing a bowler hat and carrying a walking stick.

Our bond had grown, too, and now, I couldn’t imagine being without him. I cherished the fact that Fancypants had chosen me, and I was determined to live up to the honor.

“I’m headed over to Bree’s in about twenty minutes. Do you want to go along?”

We had tried to keep Fancypants’s existence private, but that hadn’t lasted long. So, we were cautious, and he seldom went out with me.

There were wicked men in the world willing to pay a high price for a dragonette. But most of the captured creatures died when the poacher tore them away from their bond mate. Dragonettes in the wild were rare and they chose their people, not the other way around. Trying to force a bond on a dragonette was akin to mind-rape. Usually, the dragonette perished under such circumstances.

Several of my customers had seen him, and word spread, and now most of Starlight Hollow knew that Elphyra MacPherson, the owner of the newly opened Silver Thorns—a magical apothecary—had bonded with an earth dragonette.

“All right. I like Bree and I feel safe at her house,” he said.

“I know, and I’m glad, especially since she’s my best friend. Eat while I go turn on the sprinklers.” I headed out the kitchen door and over to the raised herb beds.

The plants were thriving, burgeoning out of their beds as though I’d pumped them full of growth hormone. They felt happy and content, although I could sense they were thirsty. We were in the hottest month of the year and, while the temperatures on Hood Canal seldom rose above eighty during August, the plants still needed regular watering. I set the sprinkler where it would hit all four beds and turned it on. Then I turned on the drip irrigation hose that ran through the little kitchen garden I’d also planted and headed inside.

Fancypants was ready to go. I grabbed my purse and keys and, locking the door behind us, slid into my car. The Chevy Equinox was midnight blue—one of my favorite colors—and it handled the terrain around the Olympic Peninsula with ease. Fancypants flew into the back and settled down. As I started the ignition and eased down the long, graveled drive to Oak Leaf Road, I thought back to how my life had changed in eight months. Hell, even in the past two months.

***

My name’s Elphyra MacPherson, and I’m a witch. I moved to Starlight Hollow, Washington—a town of three thousand people on the edge of Dabob Bay—around eight months ago. Originally from Port Townsend, which was three times the size of Starlight Hollow, I left my home and plans behind after my fiancé was ruthlessly murdered by a vampire while I was forced to watch. The trauma of sitting there helplessly, watching the torture, and then watching the rats move in for the remains left me with a serious case of PTSD.

Unable to face life in the town where the love of my life had been murdered, I packed my bags, took the trust fund that my father had left me, and bought three acres and a cottage in Starlight Hollow. I moved, applied for my business license to open up the shop of my dreams, and turned my back on the past. Or rather, I tried to. But the past has a way of coming back to haunt you if you don’t have closure, and my past intrudes in my thoughts every day.

Being near Bree helps—she’s been my best friend since high school. My neighbor May, a lovely old witch woman, and her son Bran, are delightful. May’s become a role model, and Bran and I date occasionally. I’m also dating Faron Collinsworth, the King of the Olympic Wolf Pack.

Balancing the two is proving difficult, but I like them both and they know about each other. Unless something happens to disrupt that delicate balance, I’m good with the way things are. I hadn’t thought of dating until they came into the scene, but when the spirit of my fiancé showed up and told me to move on, to let him go, I finally faced the facts: the future isn’t waiting for me to be ready. It’s coming regardless of how I feel.

***

Bree lived about two miles away on Salmonberry Drive, a side street off Thoroughfare Drive. Thoroughfare Drive was the main street that ran north to south through Starlight Hollow.

True to its name, Salmonberry Drive had several empty lots covered with salmonberries, and I had managed to gather enough to make twenty pints of jam during May and June. The bright orange berries were endemic throughout the Pacific Northwest. Now, in mid-August, the bushes sat berryless, but their foliage was still green and bushy with leaves. The canes were covered with prickles, but they weren’t as painful as blackberry thorns.

I passed three lots on either side, pulling into the fourth driveway on the left. Bree’s house was a single-story house—a rambler. A large shed sat to the left of the house against the fence dividing her lot from her northside neighbor. The house was painted a pale gray, and the yard was spotless. Bree loved doing yard work, and she kept her lawn and gardens immaculate. It wasn’t a cookie-cutter suburban lawn that looked like AstroTurf. No, the lawn was neat, with patches of flowers laid out across the sprawling grass. A large weeping willow filled the front yard, giving a southern gothic feel to the house.

I rang the bell and instantly heard barking. That had to be Atlas, her black Labrador retriever, and Oscar, her husky. Both were loud but well-trained, and in good physical shape. She took them with her when she was out scouting locations for expeditions, and she also took them with her during the actual trips. They provided an extra measure of protection, and generally made her female clients feel safer on the women-only expeditions.

A moment later, I heard her telling the dogs to get back, and she opened the door and waved me in. Atlas and Oscar knew me, but they weren’t sure about Fancypants, who was sitting on my shoulder. He flew up toward the ceiling and they took off, barking their silly heads off.

“Sorry, I didn’t think about the dogs’ reaction to Fancypants. I can ask him to—”

“Don’t worry. They’ll adapt, but for now, let me put them into the backyard.” She paused, then said, “That’s what I wanted to ask you about, anyway.”

“The backyard or the dogs?” I asked, following her through the living room. Bree had an eclectic design aesthetic. Her snowboard hung on one wall, next to a couple framed shots of her when she had been twenty, when she had won the Rainier Aerial Freestyle Competition. The next year, she had crashed during a practice to uphold her title. Instead of one bone breaking, it had been seven fractures in her left hip, leg, and ankle. Bree had recovered but was never able to compete again.

Against the other wall, shelves covered the wall from floor to ceiling. They contained neat, tidy rows of books as well as a few knickknacks. It looked like she had raided Target or Walmart and stocked up on minimalist vases, single silk roses, and an assortment of river rocks.

She whistled twice. Both dogs immediately quieted and sat down. She whistled again, then said, “Yard.” The dogs stood and trotted into the kitchen. We followed, to find them sitting by the back door. Bree opened it. They continued to wait, although they looked like they were straining to keep still. “Attention!” The dogs stood. “Go!”

They bounced out, yipping as they raced around the yard, chasing each other.

“Do your neighbors ever complain?” I asked. “About the noise?”

“I have one neighbor to worry about. To the left is a berry lot, to the right everybody’s dead. Across the street, Mrs. Clary is deaf as they come. To her left and right, the neighbors also have dogs, and they don’t complain.”

Bree lived next to a graveyard. It was small—about two acres—and overgrown. Nobody took care of the graves anymore. It had been established sometime in the late 1800s and most of the inhabitants had taken up residence before 1950. Their families were gone—dead or moved on—leaving the headstones as the only proof that at some time, the dead had truly belonged to the living.

“Do you have any crackers?” Fancypants asked.

“You’re kidding. You’re still hungry after that breakfast I fixed?”

He nodded, rubbing his belly.

Bree crooked her finger. “Come on, I’ll get some for you.”

Fancypants followed her back into the kitchen. A moment later she returned without him. “He’s busy eating a box of Ritz crackers.”

“I love those,” I said. “So, what’s going on? Your texts sounded worried.”

“I am worried,” Bree said, motioning for me to take a seat on the back steps with her. She had a small porch, barely large enough to act as a landing for the five steps leading to the yard. But the steps were wide enough for two people to sit on.

“Why? What happened?”

“First, can you sit here for a bit and then tell me if you sense anything?” She was so concerned that it worried me. Bree could take care of herself and if something happened to interrupt that confidence, it was time to be worried.

I nodded. “All right.”

I held out my hands. As I let my conscious mind drift into a trance state, I moved through the layers making up the world around me. There was the conscious layer—the mundane layer, so to speak—that we all lived in. This was the layer where we went to work, met with friends, shopped, and drove and interacted with all that seemed concrete.

Below that were other levels of existence.

Next came the level permeating nature, where the elements settled into form: into the ocean, lakes, and rivers; into the volcanoes, wildfires, and the warmth of the sun; into the mountains, plants, and animals; and into the gusting breezes, the tornadoes, the very air that filled our lungs.

And there was the shadow layer—existing on the ethereal and astral planes, where dark and light were muted into so many shades of gray that it was impossible to count them. Here were monsters of the mind that could also destroy the body, nameless nebulous forms that offered us strength, or sucked the life out of us. Here lurked the Shadow People, and the creatures that came in from the far reaches of the void. And here were the Celestial Beings, who could wound mortals with their blinding light as easily as the Shadow People did with their inky darkness.

And yet, another level—the level of spirits who were moving toward the Veil. Here were the ghosts waiting for closure, the haunts who were so angry over losing their lives that they couldn’t see all that awaited them on the other side of the Veil. Here were the undead—the vampires who lived in a perpetual twilight.

And so, the count went on. How many layers existed? I didn’t know. But they all belonged to the web that stretched through the universe to connect everything and everyone. And on that web were intersections where we could see into the vast realms that spread beyond time and space.

I let my vision drift. Figures appeared in the graveyard. I could see them easily from where I sat, but none stood out to me. They wandered around the grounds, stopping now and then to add another spirit to their group. After a few minutes I shifted my focus, listening to the light breeze, to the birds announcing their plans for the day. The heat was coming—it would be warm later, and any rain was a long ways away. No storms lay on our horizon, only a procession of summer days.

I moved on to the animals, but there were no surprises there, either—and no sense that anything was up. Except…the dogs stood on alert, even while they played. I walked over to where they were tussling over a knotted towel. They looked at me expectantly, so I knelt and called them over.

As they crowded in, eager to play, I stroked their backs and tried to sense what they were focused on. I found myself drifting into their thoughts. At first I saw warm, fuzzy images of Bree, then their treats and toys, of each other…there was even a cozy thought of me. But beneath all that was worry—concern. Beneath all their happy thoughts was a low-level awareness of being watched. Of needing to protect the yard more than usual. Shadows crept around the perimeter of the yard.

Atlas and Oscar suddenly bayed as a whirlwind sense of danger broke through their thoughts and splashed against me like a cold shower of water. I did what I could to find out what was going on, but the fear was all that I could latch on to, and after a few moments I stopped. I was disconcerting the dogs, and I didn’t want to stress them out.

“What is it?” Bree said, walking over beside me.

I threw the knotted towel and the dogs bounded after it, once again their happy-go-lucky selves. “I don’t know, but the dogs are picking up on some sort of danger. It’s coming from the graveyard. So, yeah, there’s something out there, focused on your house. You need to be cautious until we pinpoint who’s behind it and whether it’s deliberately directed at you, or you’re just in the crosshairs.”

“Wonderful,” Bree said, crossing her arms. “That’s the last thing I need—an invisible voyeur.” She glanced around, uneasily. “What should I do?”

“For now, keep alert. Lock your doors. I’ll help you ward your house. I think that’s all you can do.” I hated saying that, but it was true. The cops wouldn’t laugh her off—they knew all about the invisible worlds around us—but neither would they be able to do anything. It was hard enough prosecuting a corporeal stalker, let alone an elusive spirit.

As she played with the dogs, I turned back to the graveyard. I needed to explore it, but I didn’t want to until I had someone with me, and I knew Bree didn’t want to go. Regardless of the strides I’d made, I was still terrified that I might run into a vampire.

Bree and I returned to the kitchen, where I found Fancypants, lounging in a food coma. He burped, apologized for eating the entire box of crackers, and then followed me out to my car. It was time to get going on the day.