Fantastical Island (Old School Book 2) Page 4

  “I’m aware that the island has a high level of paranormal energy,” he said neutrally.

  “And the fantastical creatures sustain it. Magic is released as their glamours decay and they renew them. The problem is that no one quite understands how their individual glamours interlock. It’s an aspect of the island’s ecology that hasn’t been studied.”

  He wasn’t interested in scientific questions.

  But she frowned at him as if he was missing a crucial point. “The island is facing a catastrophe. What I’m scared of is a tipping point. The hunters are scooping up the easiest caught prey first, but at what point does the absence of these creatures’ glamours expose the next potential prey? Plus, the creatures tend to congregate, irrespective of species. Find one and it’ll lead you to the next. I suspect that congregating enables them to reinforce each other’s glamours, but as one species is ripped out—”

  “There are holes in the glamours that hide them all. The hunters will scoop them up.”

  Her voice was sad. “The island will never recover. Mundane wildlife will remain. But the island won’t be a magical hotspot any longer.”

  He considered the threat in silence. Scientific talk of unique ecosystems didn’t move him, but the thought of losing the creatures that had enriched his childhood and still delighted him did. The world needed magic, especially the wild kind.

  “I could be wrong.” Her agitation showed in how she rolled the amulet fast between her palms. She didn’t seem aware of doing so. “Nature is resilient. Enough ambient magic may linger after the hunters depart for other fantastical creatures to reach here and repopulate the island, but…Catalina is benign. The fantastical creatures here are either friendly to humans or ignore them. Well, the krakens’ whirlpools aren’t kind, but they’re considered a natural hazard. If the island is stripped bare and then repopulated, it’s likely that the tougher, nastier-natured fantastical creatures will be the first to establish themselves. The jackalopes will probably return, but I’d expect ahuizotl to arrive and prey on them. It might be worth it, though, since the ahuizotl would be some defense if the hunters returned.”

  “Ahuizotl?”

  “A cross between a dog and a monkey, but with three or more arms. They live in caves and drown their victims. As an island, the opportunities for drowning their victims are all around. They’d be my most likely pick for recolonization.”

  “Wonderful,” he said ironically and drove not to Naomi’s boarding house, but to his own home. “We need a plan.” Everything was better when a man had a plan.

  Chapter 3

  Naomi jumped out of the vintage pickup. The vehicle’s charm almost made up for its poor suspension. Almost. Her bare feet touched the cool, smooth cement floor of the old garage. She held her wet sneakers and socks in one hand.

  “You can leave them on the veranda. Cliff won’t eat them,” Corey said.

  The behemi was nowhere in sight. The backyard had a golden glow. Nothing magical, just the colors of sunset. The glow deepened the yellow of the Californian poppies growing in the wide, shabby garden bed beyond the lemon tree. Long shadows elongated across the yard.

  Corey sat on the veranda steps and kicked off his wet boots, stripping off his socks and leaving both by the back door.

  Naomi set her shoes beside his.

  He’d said that they needed a plan to save the island’s fantastical creatures, and she agreed, but she had a feeling their plans might diverge. When she’d had only suspicions as to the hunters’ activities, she’d vaguely thought of gathering evidence and passing it on to someone more qualified to cope with potentially violent hunters. People who illegally trapped and traded in living creatures were likely to have few scruples.

  However, that was when she had no allies on the island. Now, she had Corey, and instinct told her that he would want to handle this himself.

  Could they?

  Excitement stirred in her. This was how life had been in the Wild West, when people solved their own problems.

  Corey was like that. He radiated competence and independence. He didn’t look to pass off problems. He solved them, just like he kept the old pickup running smoothly.

  A man who worked with his mind and his hands, and cared about his island home. Oh, yeah. She had a crush on him, if it wasn’t already something more. She respected him.

  Unaware of her mental swooning, he held the back door open for her. “What would you like to drink? Orange juice, mineral water, beer?”

  “Water, please.” She was thirsty. Accepting his invitation, she entered a wide corridor with a narrow staircase to her left and two doors to the right. One door stood open to reveal a laundry with the same black and white checkerboard tiled floor as the corridor. The other door was closed. Beyond it, the corridor dog-legged to end at a large kitchen.

  The kitchen exuded a relaxed welcoming vibe. It was comfortable without in any way being fashionable. Oak cupboards matched the big oak table that commanded most of the space and the floor was Spanish tiles worn to a mellow rusty red. The fridge was twenty, maybe even thirty years old, and noisy.

  Naomi felt instantly at home. She sat down at the table as Corey poured them cold water, drank, then topped up both their glasses. He smiled at her and she smiled back, happy in such an ordinary moment.

  One violently broken as a sword hurtled through the air and embedded itself in the oak table between them. The hilt vibrated with the force of the strike.

  Naomi screamed and scrambled back. Her chair clattered as it toppled to the floor.

  “Uncle Otis!” Corey shouted, angrily. Bizarrely, the violent intrusion of the sword didn’t seem to scare him. Where Naomi scrambled away, he leaned in. “Uncle Otis!”

  Nobody answered him. The house was silent.

  He wrenched the sword out of the table. “Damn. I’m sorry about this,” he apologized to her. “Uncle Otis!” He held the sword casually, point directed at the floor.

  The air next to him shimmered.

  Naomi retreated till her back hit the wall.

  The shimmer strengthened and took form. Within seconds, the ghost of a Roman citizen had materialized in the kitchen. She looked from it to the abandoned glasses on the table. Was there something in the water?

  “Otis has departed the house,” the ghost said.

  Naomi gulped.

  The ghost’s features grew clearer. He was young—no, not a young ghost. An old ghost, but in the form of a young man. He’d been perhaps nineteen or twenty when he died. He was shorter than Naomi, slender, with an aquiline nose and dark brown eyes that were half hidden by floppy black hair. He wore a toga. “Otis left me here.”

  “That’s what he does,” Corey muttered. “When he picks up a ghost by accident, he leaves them for me to deal with.”

  The ghost folded his arms. “I am Iovanius. I am not a thing to be ‘dealt with’.”

  “You threw a sword through the air, damaged the table and scared Naomi. That makes you a poltergeist and unwelcome.”

  “Take it up with Otis,” the ghost said. “He brought me, here. Wherever this place is.”

  “Catalina Island,” Naomi said faintly. “America. Have you heard of America?”

  Iovanius snorted. “I am not an idiot. There are many American tourists in Milan. They are loud.”

  “Uncle Otis is always doing this,” Corey said to her, a hint of apology in his voice. “He buys a reputedly haunted object so that he can study the paranormal energy that surrounds it, and he forgets to confirm that it’s not truly haunted.”

  “He bought my gladius in Milan. He got into a bidding war with a very rude Canadian woman.” Iovanius edged nearer to Corey—or nearer to the sword Corey held.

  Naomi vaguely recognized the word gladius; only because it was so much like the word gladiator. The sword Corey held must be Roman. It was a short sword, short enough that it could be used as a knife in a fight. The hilt appeared smooth and unworn. Either it was a ceremonial sword, or Iovanius had died before he
could use it much.

  “You are not getting this back,” Corey said sternly to the ghost, raising the gladius. “You can’t be trusted with it.”

  Iovanius darted for the glasses on the table.

  “If you break anything in this house, I’ll take your gladius out to sea and drop it where it’ll never be found again.”

  Iovanius staggered, hands clutching at his toga. “You wouldn’t!”

  “I would.”

  Naomi found Corey’s determined response incredibly attractive. The ghost might have freaked her out, but he was calm and in control. He was authoritative even as he looked island casual. She stepped away from the wall to his side.

  He put an arm around her and smiled reassuringly. “Don’t worry. Uncle Otis does this far too often. He’s a legend in ghost and hauntings circles, which is ironic given that he finds ghosts a nuisance. He pretends to a fascination with them because stories of haunted places and objects are a way of tracking down his real passion: paranormal energy.”

  “You mean, your uncle collects ghosts on his travels the way other people collect a bout of flu?”

  Corey laughed.

  Iovanius glowered. “I am not a sickness. I am a citizen of Rome.”

  “Uncle Otis gets into fights with ghosts. He resents them ‘hogging’, as he puts it, all the paranormal energy of an object he’s bought. He wants to study the energy. The ghosts, on the other hand, argue that they are the paranormal energy and he should get lost. There are always arguments. I’ve learned that it’s just easier if I handle the ghosts.”

  “You are not going to ‘handle’ me. In fact, give me back my gladius,” Iovanius demanded, but he stayed prudently on the far side of the kitchen table. For all his ghostly freakiness, he seemed wary of Corey and his threat to throw the sword into the ocean.

  “Are ghosts attached to the objects they haunt?” Naomi asked. “I thought they haunted places.”

  Corey nodded. “Sometimes the objects they haunt are huge, like castles, but a sword or a pistol or some other object of violence is quite common.”

  Her eyes bugged out as she stared at Iovanius. “Is this the sword that killed you?”

  Corey shifted beside her, suddenly restless in a way that suggested his unease with the idea that he held a murder weapon, even if it was for a murder that happened around two millennia ago.

  “No! It is my gladius. I did not suffer the shame of being killed by my own weapon.”

  “Then why are you haunting it?” she asked.

  “I don’t have to tell you.” Iovanius turned his back on them.

  She looked a question at Corey. Can you explain Iovanius’s behavior?

  He shrugged. No.

  An antique dresser occupied part of the kitchen wall. Old magazines, newspapers, and what looked like the innards of a clock, crowded its upper shelves. Corey opened a drawer. It was one of those junk drawers that every kitchen generates like magic. But this was a large version, and he laid the gladius on top of the junk and closed it.

  Iovanius ignored the activity and continued to pout at the far wall.

  Naomi slipped the amulet out of her pocket, struck by a sudden thought. “I never believed in ghosts. No one I know does. But I wonder if we just can’t see them.” She passed the amulet to Corey.

  As the amulet left her hand, Iovanius shimmered and vanished. She touched the amulet as it lay on Corey’s outstretched palm. Iovanius reappeared. “Now I see him.” She lifted her fingers from the amulet. “Now I don’t.”

  “Ghosts are glamoured?” Corey murmured, his green eyes intent and a faint frown line between his eyebrows. “Which is why Uncle Otis and I see them all the time, but other people only catch glimpses.”

  “Possibly.” She picked up the amulet, and the broken ends of its silver chain dangled.

  Iovanius had angled around so he could watch her and Corey.

  Corey ignored the ghost. He flicked the dangling chain with a scarred fingertip. “I said I’d fix this. Now’s a good time.”

  It is?

  He wriggled his eyebrows, just a little.

  She had an overwhelming urge to giggle, but obviously he was trying to convey some message without speaking in front of the ghost. She cleared her throat, choking back her incipient laughter. Hysteria, it had to be. Either that, or Corey made her feel incredibly safe, safe enough to laugh even with a ghost present. “That would be great. Thank you.”

  “My workshop is behind the garage.” He clasped her hand and led her out of the house.

  “Are you sure we should leave Iovanius alone in there?” she whispered as they crossed the yard. Shadows had claimed it. It wasn’t nighttime yet, but it was near. Somewhere, jasmine grew. The romantic scent hung heavy on the air.

  “The ghost won’t do anything. He’s bound to the gladius. The last thing he wants is to have it vanish into the depths of the ocean.”

  “Would he go with it?” She was curious. “Or can he, you know, cut ties and go…well, to heaven?”

  “I don’t know.” Corey unlocked a solid door at the rear of the garage. He pushed it open and flicked on lights. His workshop was a tidy space lined with cupboards and shelving with a massive table taking up the center of the floor. The table had parts strewn on one end, but the impression was of tidiness and efficiency.

  He collected tools and switched on a desk lamp on the counter by a window. “Generally I can negotiate a solution with the ghosts. They can be a bit emotional when they first arrive on the island. They don’t seem to cope well with change.” He paused a moment, frowning. “I hadn’t thought of that before. They’re obsessive personalities. Maybe that tendency to fixate is why they stick around to haunt an object.”

  She perched on a bar stool and put the amulet with its snapped chain in front of him.

  “Thanks.” He gave her a brief smile.

  “You’re doing me the favor.” But in trusting him to repair the amulet, she was trusting him with the most important thing she owned. Without the amulet she wouldn’t be able to see the rocs or behemis or even ghosts. “I never expected to meet a ghost.”

  He grimaced ruefully. “I hadn’t realized Uncle Otis was back. This is his house. His parents built it in the 1930s.” Corey’s great-grandparents. “I spent a lot of time here as a kid, back when my Gran lived here. Since I love the island and the house is huge and Uncle Otis is mostly away, it suits us both for me to live here. I take the ferry to my studio in Long Beach. It’s a better commute than most people have.”

  “Unless you get seasick.”

  “Cast iron stomach.” He patted his flat stomach before concentrating on soldering the broken links of the chain together.

  “Can your uncle Otis see through glamours?” It sounded as if he could. To hear tell, the man argued with ghosts. But she wanted to check.

  “Yes. I’ll tell him about the hunters on the island. It might actually be a good thing that Uncle Otis is home. He has a lot of connections. I don’t have contacts in the paranormal or magical field, but there must be a government authority that can handle hunters of fantastical creatures.”

  “I have a friend.” Naomi thought of Olga’s hush-hush assignments. “I think she works for some secret government agency, although she’ll never confirm it. Her story is that she works for a senator, but I’ve never heard of an aide doing the things Olga does. We could give her the evidence we collect against the hunters to pass on to her contacts.”

  They stared at one another. Naomi cracked first. “The thing is, I don’t know if I want to alert the government to Catalina Island’s status as a hotspot for fantastical creatures.” There, she’d said it. She was willing to go rogue. Well, not rogue, but she was willing to handle this situation independent of the authorities.

  Silver melted as Corey considered his response. “I’m not saying I’m a big fan of the government. Any bureaucracy runs the risk of harboring nutcases and people who’d sell their own mom for a dollar. But when you publish your survey of the island
’s creatures—wherever it is magical research is published—then the government will undoubtedly be monitoring the publication.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not publishing my study. I have private funding and my report will go into a private library. May I?” She indicated the amulet.

  He nodded distractedly. “The chain’ll be hot.” He watched her pick up the amulet. “Is it rude to ask who is providing the funding? You said a friend found you the amulet, so you’re not working in complete secret.”

  The amulet’s stylized owl was a vivid reminder that some secrets weren’t hers to tell. She tapped its beak with a fingertip. She kept her promises. “I don’t mind you asking. You want to protect the fantastical creatures of your island. I promise you that the organization funding my research isn’t interested in the creatures, and definitely isn’t interested in exploiting them.”

  She set the soldered chain swinging, letting the air cool it. “I came to the island to study the impact of environmental change on fantastical creatures. If populations were naturally declining, the next step would have been to determine the wider impact of those declines, strategies for intervention, and whether to intervene. The key factor would have been which creatures were affected and how dramatically.”

  It was work she was passionate about. She mightn’t have magic, she mightn’t be anyone important, but she believe that everyone had a role to play in handing on a world not only fit to live in, but good to live in, to future generations.

  She smoothed her thumb over the silver owl. “There are a number of hotspots for fantastical creatures around the world. Kakadu, in Australia. Numerous places, some with old temples, in the Amazon. Antarctic and Arctic circles. Africa has varied ecological niches.” She shook her head. The list was too long to elaborate all the special places on the planet. “I chose Catalina Island because it had been overlooked. It’s right next to Los Angeles, but no one notices it as a magical spot. It hides in plain sight.”