Witch of Christmas Past (12 page)

After totally enjoying a big bowl of cold cereal, I called Ayden to let him know I was back, and to find out how many more of Mystique Island’s citizens had stepped into the
Twilight Zone.

Ayden picked up on the second ring. “Where have you been?”

“Umm … you could say hello before you start the chewing out process,” I suggested.

“Where have you been? We have been looking all over for you.”

Apparently a hello was too much to ask for. “I told you what I was doing, remember?”

“Your grandmother and Zane Dupree have been back since Friday night.”

I had completely forgotten people would notice that everyone was back, except me, although there wouldn’t have been anything I could have done about the situation. It wasn’t as if Mr. Grim asked for my permission to transport me to another dimension.

Explaining to my boss where I’d been wasn’t really an option at the moment. It would be far too entailed and personal.

“I’ll explain later, but I do have some information that could be of use in our grave robberies.”

“What’s that?” he asked, with what I thought sounded like wariness.

“It would seem that we have another time traveler from Victorian London. We discovered a witch living in that time period, and she’s handing out tickets to twenty-first century, Mystique Island.”

“Do you have any idea who it is?” he asked.

“Well, all I have is a name right now. There is no way of knowing who he is pretending to be in the here and now. We do have one advantage though. I can look up some historical information on him. Maybe there will be a photo or some other information that can help us identify him.”

“And what makes you think this time traveler has anything to do with our case. Maybe he’s minding his own business?”

“That would be a first,” I snorted. “I believe these grave robberies started about the time he popped over to this side.”

“Well it’s Sunday anyway,” Ayden sighed. “Take a day off … maybe see what you can dig up on the Internet.”

I was more than happy to take him up on his suggestion and work from home, but first I had some housecleaning to do, and dinner plans. Now that I was back in my own reality, I was definitely going to go out and get a hot meal. 

* * *

Life was good, at the moment anyway.

My stomach was full after eating a semi-hot meal of takeout chicken from the Bayside Grill. I decided to spend my Sunday evening binge watching one of my favorite TV series.

I loved the twenty-first century!

I had my laptop ready to go. It was time to get down to business and do some good old-fashion investigating.

Kicked back in my recliner with my computer in my lap, I started running the name, Rosston. Too bad there were tons of them in the London area. Of course, after 1883 there wouldn’t be a record of the Rosston I was looking for. After that year, he would have vanished.

I figured anyone who was determined to move permanently to another time period was probably eccentric enough that people would have noticed him. Therefore, the old news publications would be a good place to start.

I spent the next couple hours scouring through the various London newspapers, searching for anything out of the ordinary that might point to our time traveler. Finally, something caught my eye.

Man Arrested for Grave Robbery!

Investigators from Scotland Yard discovered the name of the man suspected of opening several graves of the recently departed and removing their corpses. The man’s identity was discovered when he was followed from Highgate Cemetery after committing one of his dastardly deeds. Franz Rosston and his brother, Alfre, immigrated from Germany over a decade ago to attend medical school. At that time, the brothers took up residence in the Whitechapel District.

When investigators arrived at Mr. Rosston’s residence, he was missing. Neighbors claim that Alfred Rosston died from consumption two months prior to the older Rosston brother’s macabre offenses. Up until his wicked affair at Highgate, Mr. Rosston is believed to have been a good citizen.

There was a picture of Franz Rosston printed above the story, but to me the image looked more like a blob of ink wearing a hat.

I was fairly certain that I’d discovered the identity of our time traveler. He’d been a medical student, on top of a suspect for grave robbery. Not only that, but he’d disappeared from London at the appropriate time.

But there was no one on the island by the name of Franz Rosston. Even if he were using a fake name, as far as I knew there were no German immigrants. Unless he’d been practicing a lot, our Mr. Rosston would have a German accent.

I’d hoped that catching our time traveler would be easy. In fact, I was so optimistic about it, I’d imagined that it would be a matter of seeing his mug in a newspaper article and I would recognize him as the guy who ran the butcher shop, or maybe even the hot dog truck at Founder’s Park.

The ink blob picture could have been anyone. About the only thing I could make out was that he appeared to be in his forties and had dark hair, but there was no way to tell if his hair was dark brown, dark red, or maybe even purple.

During the nineteenth century, body snatching wasn’t that unusual at all. Fresh cadavers were taken from their graves and sold to medical schools, and according to the news articles, Mr. Rosston had been a medical student.

Was it possible he had skipped into the twenty-first century just to avoid arrest? That seemed a little drastic to me, but then again, I had never been on the verge of going to prison for stealing bodies.

As it appeared I would not be getting any more information from the Internet, I switched off my computer. In any case, my eyes were so tired they were burning. It would seem it took more than one day to recover from time and dimension travel.

Shutting the laptop, I forced my way out of the chair, but at that moment my eyes strayed to the oak bookshelf against the wall. The top shelf is where I kept all my classic editions, such as Bram Stoker’s
Dracula
, and Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein
.

What if Franz Rosston was a semi modern version of the fictional,
Doctor Frankenstein
?

If our time travel suspect were trying to reanimate corpses, it would explain the blown transformers and electrical surges.

And if someone was trying to do something like that, the perfect location would be the old ship graveyard. It was close to the power plant, and very isolated, especially in December.

The only thing in that direction, other than the ship salvage yard and the power plant. was the state park, which was all but closed down. Tourists didn’t tend to visit state parks during the winter.

Now that I had a pretty good idea what our time traveler’s MO was and where he was operating, I tried to concentrate on the drama unfolding on the TV, but I was too tired. As I drifted into a deep sleep, the love lives and trials of my favorite TV witches and vampires unfolded.

Come morning I was really going to be glad for On Demand TV, but at the moment, I needed to sleep.

I could have blamed my strange dreams on the fact that I was sleeping in a recliner, but they seemed a little too strange to attribute to just that.

Images of beautiful ball gowns and shadowy figures danced through my dreams, and always, just beneath the surface, there was the knowledge that I could lose him at any time.

Defying all natural law, I actually felt great when I woke to the new day. Oversleeping wasn’t a problem on account of my recliner not being a great place for sleeping.

After a shower and a change of clothes, I felt like a new woman. I attributed my high spirits to the fact that Granny would be with us for Christmas, plus I was on the verge of solving another case.

The bit about Mr. Grim and Zane I kept buried, at least until I could find a way to solve that particular problem.

I’d practically gone through hell to do it, but soon we would wrap up the case. Of course, not everything was all roses and sunshine. Once we figured out how this mad doctor was brainwashing citizens, and I was sure he was, it would be hell on earth when Annabelle found out she’d been dating Skeet.

Instead of calling in to tell the boss man that I knew who our perp was and how to find him, I decided to just show up early and announce it in person.

My morning was going perfectly until I unlocked Lady Luck and slid behind the driver’s seat. As soon as I glanced in the rearview mirror, I saw Julius hiding out in my backseat.

I twisted around to face him. “What are you doing in my car?”

“I had to have some place to sleep.”

“What’s wrong with your apartment at the Mermaid Inn?”

“That grim old bastard knows where I live,” he replied with a shrug.

I pressed my lips together, displeased with him for invading Lady Luck, on top of the fact that he seemed to be on the run for some reason. I wasn’t so sure I believed that bit about him not knowing what Mr. Grim wanted.

“Well, is there somewhere you want to go? I am on my way into work and we are probably going to be making a bust today,” I informed him.

“Is that so?” he laughed. “In that case, I think you should be asking me to come along with you. Without your witchy power, you are practically helpless.”

“Far from it.” I rolled my eyes.

“Really?” He arched one of his dark brows. “If you tap into your demon juice too much more, you’re going to turn into a lizard.” He motioned to my hands.

When I glanced down at my hands, my heart jumped into my throat.

“What happened?” I gasped. “I haven’t tapped into that power since I was in 1883.”

My fingernails were a sickly greenish-brown color, as if there were reptile scales beneath them.

How had I missed that when I dressed for the day?

“You must be doing it subconsciously. It is possible that your life force is beginning to fade, and you have to draw on that power to stay alive,” Julius offered his thoughts on the matter.

Demon juice would explain why I felt great when I woke up, in spite of having a terrible night in my recliner.

“Damn! What do I do about it?” I asked, still staring at my grotesque nails.

Julius shrugged. “Now why should I help you, when you don’t care about helping me?”

“It’s not that I don’t want to help you. I just don’t think there is much Mr. Grim can do to you. After all, you are already dead and going to Hell. How much worse can it get?”

Sitting back, Julius folded his arms. “I don’t know, but I have no intention of finding out.”

“I tell you what … the next time Mr. Grim shows up, I’ll ask him what he wants to talk with you about?” I offered. “That’s the only thing I can think to do?”

“And you’ll let me hang out with you until you find out?” he pushed.

“Sure.” I nodded. “As long as you don’t come in my bathroom or bedroom when I’m not dressed,” I paused. “On second thought … don’t enter my bathroom at all while I’m in there.”

“We have a deal,” he said, sitting forward. “What you need is an amulet or some kind of object that has been witched with an energy spell. As long as you have that object on your person, you’ll draw life energy from it, instead of from your Hell power,” he whispered.

“Why are you whispering?”

“I’m quite sure the dude downstairs doesn’t want you to know about this … and its kind of my job to lead you to destruction, not help you prolong it,” he explained.

“You say that like I’m not going to beat this thing.” I frowned.

“Well, you haven’t exactly been going in the right direction.”

“What do you mean by that? I’m always working.”

“I haven’t heard you sing a single Christmas Carol this season?”

He had a point, but it wasn’t because I was a Scrooge, I was just extremely busy. “I don’t think singing Christmas songs will save me.”

“You never know.”

Now wasn’t the best time to tackle my lack of Christmas spirit, at least I had a lack of it according to Julius, I changed the subject. “But what to I do about my hands now?”

“Put on a pair of gloves,” he suggested.

Totally great!

It wasn’t as if I lived in Alaska. The only gloves I had were a pair of brown knit gloves Uncle Aaron had given me for Christmas when I was ten. They were embellished with cowboys and Indians.

I still wasn’t’ sure if he’d given me the gloves to be mean, or if he’d actually thought I was a boy?

No wonder I didn’t dress girly most of the time. It was all Uncle Aaron’s fault.

“I’ll be right back,” I told Julius.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Finding the gloves wouldn’t be too difficult. I had them stuffed in a box at the top of my closet, which was where I kept all my keepsakes. I found them after emptying half the box.

Figuring there was no time to put everything back, I saved it for later.

It was a tight fit, but I managed to get the gloves on. No doubt I was going to get some strange looks, but wearing little boy gloves was probably a little better than letting everyone see my weird and ugly fingernails.

By the time I was backing out of the driveway, I felt way more confident. After we wrapped up our case, I’d pay Granny a visit and get her to witch something for me with a life energy spell.

* * *

When Julius and I entered the office, Ayden and Tim were already at their desks.

“Hello guys! Isn’t it a great morning?” I sang out.

Ayden looked at me as if he were wondering who I was.

“What’s with the new look?” Tim pointed to my gloves.

“Nothing,” I came back, perhaps a little too defensively. “I just had a chill this morning.”

“Then why aren’t you wearing a coat?” Tim persisted with his questions.

I threw him a, mind your own business, look. “Why I’m wearing gloves is not what we need to be talking about.”

Giving up on my gloves, Tim turned his attention to Julius. “Are you doing another ride-along?”

“You could say that.” My guardian demon settled in the chair in front of my desk, getting comfortable by putting his feet on my desk.

As I walked by, I pushed his feet off. “Julius just wanted some company.”

“There isn’t anything new on the grave robberies, “ Ayden informed me.

“On the contrary … I have a lot of new information,” I announced.

Tim looked away from his computer and was all ears.

I gave them the short version of how my night went, leaving out the parts about the vampires on TV, and my demon nails.

“So do we need a warrant to search the shipyard?” I asked.

“It would be best if we had one.” Ayden nodded. “But that could take a few hours. The judge is playing Santa on the ferry that goes back and forth to the mainland. We’ll have to get his signature after one of their return trips. I think the next scheduled arrival is about noon.”

“While we are waiting, Julius and I could go down there and do some looking around,”

I suggested.

I preferred to be in the field doing something, as opposed to sitting at my desk and Ayden knew it.

“Not a bad idea. Maybe Tim could ask around some of the cafes. If there is someone new in town, the waitresses would probably be the first to notice,” Ayden said.

“I can do that.” Tim nodded. “As long as Julius is riding with Izzy, I’m fine.”

“Hey! That was uncalled for.” Julius frowned.

“Really?” Tim stood up. “I found four empty beer bottles on the back floorboard of my car. What do you think would have happened to my FBI credentials if the sheriff had noticed those bottles when he pulled us over?”

“Julius!” I gasped. “Why would you do such a thing?”

Julius shrugged. “I’ve been having a rough time of it lately. In any case, you were the one who forgot your turn signal.”

“Well, if it is any consolation, the sheriff would have probably just handed you a smiley face pin,” I told Tim.

“How did you know that’s what he did?” Tim frowned.

“Because I got mine a few days ago.”

Sheriff Bourne had been extremely wacky lately. I suspected he was a victim of brainwashing, just like Annabelle. Normally, he’d have locked both of them up if they’d been caught with an open container.

“Okay, kids … enough with the bickering. It’s time to get to work,” Ayden announced.

I turned my attention to Ayden. “Oh, that reminds me … how did the ride-along with Delia go?”

Ayden looked away. “It went fine. Delia is very intuitive.”

Hmm, now the wheels in my head were turning. I suspected there was something significant lurking beneath those words, but knowing my boss, pushing him for info would get me nowhere.

I also let the subject drop because it really wasn’t any of my business, although I was burning with curiosity.