Fantastical Island (Old School Book 2) Page 9

  She nodded. “I assumed so, too. The price is higher.”

  “They probably do want them alive. Mistakes happen.” Cait spoke up. She didn’t ask to see the photos on the phone, which suggested Otis had already shown them to her. She’d had time to think about the mass poisoning. “Naomi, aren’t island populations sometimes different to mainland ones?”

  “Yes.”

  Cait’s voice was soft, yet clear and incisive. “Then maybe the Catalina jackalopes are more susceptible—have less resistance—to the mint poison. After all, they wouldn’t be exposed to it ordinarily. Otis says jackalopes avoid the town, and hence, its gardens.”

  “But poison is poison,” Naomi objected. “If the hunters left the mint—”

  Otis interrupted. “No, what the Carpathian hunter told me was that in small amounts mint affects jackalopes the same way cats respond to catmint.”

  “They get high,” Corey said, understanding. “And in this instance, they overdosed and died.” He looked at Cait. “They were more susceptible. The hunters wanted to make them easy to catch. Instead, the mint hit them too hard. It killed them.”

  Naomi relaxed into the rocking motion of the swing seat to think.

  “I left the jackalope bodies where they lay,” Otis said. “It’s a remote spot. They shouldn’t be found before the hunters return—and I didn’t want to raise the hunters’ suspicions by giving the jackalopes a sea burial.”

  In other words, he’d have thrown them off a cliff.

  Naomi stiffened. “Was the jackalope burrow near the sea?” At Otis’s nod, she turned to Corey. “All the locations where fantastical creatures have been taken are accessible by sea. I know this is an island…”

  “But it’s an issue.” He frowned. “If the hunters are arriving and departing by boat, they could be coming from the mainland.”

  “They still have to be familiar with Catalina Island.” Naomi gripped her hands together, twisting one over the other.

  Corey covered her hands with one of his. “They’ll be listening for rumors and problems on the island,” he reassured her. “Our plan has the same likelihood of success as it had before.”

  She turned her right hand palm up to grip his.

  “What’s the plan?” Otis asked.

  “We’re going to trick the hunters into revealing themselves.” Corey outlined their idea of a fake mothman. “The lighthouse light isn’t on again till Friday, when the bulk of the tourists return for the weekend, but we can’t wait till then. The dead jackalopes are proof of the high price of the hunters’ activities on the island.”

  Naomi shivered. “There could be other dead jackalope burrows.”

  He put an arm around her.

  Neither Cait nor Otis raised an eyebrow at their closeness.

  “I can switch the lighthouse light on,” Corey said.

  “Someone will see you.”

  Everyone except Cait jumped at Iovanius’s ghostly voice. The Roman poltergeist materialized on the veranda. He’d obviously been eavesdropping. His plucked at his toga, adjusting it over one shoulder. The garden was dimly visible through his spectral form.

  Cliff the behemi trotted toward them.

  “I’ll have to be stealthy,” Corey said to Iovanius.

  Cliff flew up the veranda steps and came across to nudge Corey’s booted feet.

  “It’s too early for dinner,” Corey told the behemi, which squealed.

  “I am stealthier than you.” Iovanius folded his skinny arms.

  “Well, you are a ghost.”

  Naomi saw Cait’s eyes widen. “Can you see Iovanius?” She waited for Cait’s no, which she expected. “But can you hear him? He just said he’s stealthier than Corey.”

  “I didn’t hear him,” Cait said.

  Naomi fished the amulet out from beneath her shirt. “I can see and hear Iovanius, so the amulet is wired for sound as well as sight.”

  “All glamours, it seems,” Cait agreed.

  “Would you like to try it?”

  Cait shook her head. “The amulet is yours.” Which didn’t mean that Naomi couldn’t lend it, but Cait’s tone was oddly final.

  Naomi couldn’t deny she was relieved to keep the amulet on.

  Corey was scratching Cliff’s head and quietly bickering with Iovanius. Apparently, the way to engage a poltergeist’s assistance was to refuse to request it. Iovanius quite obviously wanted to be part of the trickery planned for the lighthouse, but Corey was ignoring all of the ghost’s attempts to get him to admit that spectral assistance would be useful, if not vital.

  “I can fly your flap-flap fake creature around the lighthouse.” Iovanius’s lower lip stuck out. Two thousand years, and not too old to pout.

  “So can a drone or wires,” Corey said. “Since you were eavesdropping, you must have heard my ideas.”

  “Your ideas stink.”

  Naomi choked on a giggle. “Sorry. Tickle in my throat.”

  “We all need a drink.” Otis hauled himself up from his chair. “And I might as well start dinner. We’ll eat in.”

  “I don’t eat.” Iovanius was still pouting.

  Otis scowled at him, his reputed impatience with ghosts on display, before he decided to ignore Iovanius. “Then I think Cait and Naomi should grab their gear and move in.”

  The two women stared at him.

  “We’re a small group,” Otis said gruffly. “Who knows who the hunters are or how desperately they want to stay hidden. If something goes wrong, our forces shouldn’t be split up. There’s plenty of room at Bunyip House. I’ll tell people that Cait’s an old friend of mine.”

  “Emphasis on old,” she said ruefully, but she looked more alert. Maybe not happy, but not with the lurking sense of loss that had enveloped her yesterday.

  Yes, company would be good for Cait.

  Naomi tried to keep her face expressionless. The island’s rumor mill would accept Cait as Otis’s old friend, but it would be gleeful in identifying Naomi as Corey’s “new friend”. Moving in with a guy she’d just met—which was how things would look—was moving fast by anyone’s definition.

  “You’d have your own room.” Corey sounded a bit uncomfortable, too. By the concerned look in his green eyes, he was worried about her reaction rather than island gossip.

  His clarification of separate rooms got a surprised grunt out of Otis, and Cait’s eyebrows flew up.

  “I didn’t think otherwise.” Naomi tried for dignity as she jumped up from the porch swing. She’d forgotten Cliff waited by Corey’s feet, and she tripped over the behemi, teetered precariously, and dropped into Corey’s lap.

  He laughed.

  “We’ll get dinner started,” Cait said, and herded Otis inside. The screen door closed behind them.

  “Staying together does make sense,” Corey muttered against her hair. He wrapped his arms loosely around her.

  “I know.”

  He kissed his way along her jawline and found her mouth. “And there’ll be no more throwing yourself at me because I’m hopeless at resisting temptation.”

  Her laughter was stolen away by his kiss.

  “I’m still here,” Iovanius shouted. He descended to muttering. “Kissing in front of me. Teasing me with what I can’t have.”

  Corey stilled. “I’m sorry.” His apology sounded and felt sincere. He ran a hand down from the crown of Naomi’s head to her shoulder, gently urging her aside till he could see Iovanius. “And I would like your help with the lighthouse trickery.”

  “Really?” Iovanius’s head jerked up, no longer studying his sandaled feet.

  “Really. Naomi can tell you that I considered asking for your help. What is your range from the gladius?”

  Range? Naomi puzzled over the question. He had to mean how closely tied Iovanius was to his sword. Would they have to bring the sword to the lighthouse?

  “A half-mile.”

  “Half a mile?” By Corey’s tiny jerk of response, that was an impressive distance for a haunting. “Wel
l, that makes things easier. I can carry your gladius with me rather than hide it in the lighthouse. It won’t take me long to rig up something that resembles a mothman from a distance. We can try it out tonight, while the rumor is still growing and people are curious. Then, tomorrow night, the hunters are likely to be in position.”

  “Unless they’re suspicious,” Naomi said soberly. “The lighthouse light isn’t scheduled to go on weeknights.” It was the one weak point of their plan, but they needed a focal point for their activities so that the hunters were drawn to one spot.

  “They will not be suspicious,” Iovanius declared. “They will be awed by my dazzling mothman’s flight.”

  Corey quirked a humorous eyebrow at her. “So now you know.”

  Iovanius didn’t hear him. The ghost had struck a pose and was busy declaiming his brilliance. “I, Iovanius, will save the fantastical creatures of Catalina Island.”

  Chapter 6

  Naomi crouched beside Corey in the shelter of a clump of mock orange bushes that grew against the stone wall that enclosed the yard of the abandoned lighthouse keeper’s cottage. Although the lighthouse had been maintained after its decommissioning, the two-room cottage had been left to decay. The glass had gone from its windows and huge gaps yawned in its roof. It was amazing that any roof remained at all given the violent storms that hit the island.

  Corey gave Iovanius his final instructions. “The light is electric. I’ve turned on the power at the fuse box.” He’d had to pick the padlock on the box to do so, but he’d proven surprisingly adept at the task. “You need to hit the blue switch once.”

  “You’ve told me three times.” It was odd to see a ghost bouncing from foot to foot, but being a ghost at least seemed to keep Iovanius’s toga from slipping despite his vigorous motions. He was bursting to be up and doing.

  Corey stuck to the plan. “I have the mothman kite here. The wind is strong enough that I’ll fly it up to you where you wait on the lighthouse roof. We need to conserve your strength.”

  Bouncing from foot to foot was hardly conserving Iovanius’s power, but sheer excitement seemed to intensify his form. He appeared more solid.

  “Don’t let anyone see you,” Naomi said, involuntarily.

  “I am a ghost, woman! Only freaks see me.”

  “Thank you very much,” she muttered.

  Corey hauled them back to the plan. “When you’ve caught the mothman kite, I’ll cut the line. Flap it around the lighthouse two or three times—”

  “I shall act like a moth assaulting the light.”

  Corey inhaled deeply, clearly reaching for his self-control. “Then fly the kite out to the ocean. The rip will take the kite out to sea. I don’t like littering but that’s our best option.” He’d already told Naomi that he worried how much paranormal energy Iovanius had, and whether it would give out abruptly. They couldn’t risk anyone finding the fake mothman. “Are we ready?”

  Cait and Otis were safely back at Bunyip House. Responsibility for setting the lure to capture—or at least, identify—the hunters rested with Corey and Naomi. And Iovanius.

  Iovanius blinked out of sight, then shouted from the catwalk at the top of the lighthouse. “Go!”

  Corey released the mothman kite into the wind. He’d carefully calculated their position before settling by the wall. The rumor he’d started with Janelle and Roy seemed to be doing its work. A golf cart and a bike waited at the end of the walking trail, and a dozen or so people lingered at the base of the lighthouse. Its door was locked.

  The fake mothman soared upward, riding on the wind blowing in off the ocean. The thin fishing line unwound from the reel Corey held. As the kite rose equal height to the lighthouse, Iovanius switched on the light.

  Someone at the base of the lighthouse gave a shout and rattled the door. “It’s locked!” The male voice carried on the wind. “So, who turned on the light?”

  “Look!”

  The small crowd scattered, running back from the lighthouse to gaze upward.

  Naomi had to admit Iovanius was doing a fabulous job of manipulating the mothman kite. He fluttered its wings, swooped and dived with it, looped and used the lighthouse light to cast dramatic shadows. “It looks like a moth,” she whispered.

  Peering through the mock orange bushes, she watched people point their phones and take photos.

  Iovanius soared upward one final time, then zoomed out along a beam of light to vanish over the ocean.

  Naomi expected him to return boasting and demanding praise for his actions, and she’d give it to him. He deserved accolades for his role as a mothman puppet-master.

  But minutes passed and he failed to return.

  She glanced at Corey. It was too dark in the shadow of the mock orange bushes for her to read his expression, but he nodded as if in agreement with her unspoken concern.

  “Let’s go,” he whispered. “The shock is wearing off and people are starting to search for how the trick was done.”

  Which they wouldn’t find, thanks to Iovanius’s assistance.

  Using the cover of the bushes to hide their departure, he boosted her over the stone wall, then led the way through the darkest shadows till they’d circled around and were heading back to town.

  “Stop.” Iovanius appeared in front of them. A ghost couldn’t be out of breath, but he gave the impression of being harried. “I think I found your hunters.”

  Naomi’s heart jumped and jiggled in her chest. She had a hundred comments and questions, but couldn’t get one out before Corey asked the pertinent question.

  “Where?”

  Iovanius pointed back toward the lighthouse but on the opposite side to the derelict cottage.

  “There’s a bird hide there,” Corey whispered to Naomi. He looked around. They were on a narrow trail back to town, one that led not from the lighthouse but from the hill behind it. “Wait here.” And when she would have protested. “Please.”

  She subsided. One person and a ghost would make less noise than two people. And if the hunters sneaked past Corey, she might be able to identify them. Of course, for that they’d need the moon to rise. The same moonlessness that had made their mothman more effective now worked against them.

  They hadn’t thought the hunters would have already heard the rumor and be in place to observe the mothman. Had the kite fooled them? If Corey missed his chance to identify them, would the hunters return tomorrow night?

  As Corey slipped away, following Iovanius’s spectral form, Naomi retreated to the shelter of a sprawling fig tree.

  Stalking animals for research purposes had taught her how to wait silent and relaxed, yet alert. But tonight was different. Tonight their “prey” was human and it could be dangerous. Corey could change role from hunter of the hunters to the hunted. It was a confusing sentence, but Naomi understood what she meant. She was worried.

  She thrust her hands deep into her jacket pockets and stared toward the lighthouse. Its light still shone. The plan had been for Iovanius to switch it off again to add another layer of mystery, but he’d been distracted.

  Was he right? Had Iovanius found the hunters of fantastical creatures?

  Corey returned, walking down the trail without attempting to hide. The moon was rising, lightening the night. “They’ve gone,” he said to Naomi. “They had a pickup parked. One from the hotel.”

  “The hunters are hotel guests?” She felt her jaw drop. Somehow she thought of hunters as rough, tough survivalists. Not people who appreciated clean sheets, soft beds and room service.

  “Not guests,” Corey said grimly. “Janelle and Roy.”

  “Huh.” She froze, one foot in the air, stunned. Janelle, curvy, obnoxiously cheery and cute, couldn’t be a hunter. Roy seemed possible, especially when she recalled his expressionless brown eyes. She lowered her foot. “But why did Iovanius think they’re the hunters?” She looked around as she kept pace with Corey’s swift stride. “Where is Iovanius?”

  “He depleted his energy store and vanish
ed. He’ll be back, maybe even tomorrow night. He’s a stronger ghost than I anticipated. As for why he suspected Janelle and Roy, he was curious why the two of them were concealed in the bird hide and swooped down in time to hear Roy say, ‘Can you imagine how much Svenson would pay for a mothman?’”

  “Oh.” That was pretty damning evidence, especially added to the couple hiding themselves rather than joining the small group of would-be mothman sighters at the base of the lighthouse.

  The lights were on in the lower floor windows of Bunyip House, indicating that Otis and Cait were waiting up. Neither of them knew who Roy and Janelle were, and Corey could only provide limited background.

  He sipped hot chocolate with a dash of whiskey in and frowned into the flames burning in the ornate fireplace in the parlor.

  The warm drink and its sweetness melted some of Naomi’s cold. It wasn’t just that the wind off the ocean had been an icy, blustery blast. Putting ordinary faces to the unknown hunters of fantastical creatures was confronting in its reminder that the animals she sought to protect, others sought to exploit. Wildlife workers everywhere faced the same trauma and, sometimes, overwhelming odds.

  Whereas I have allies.

  Corey had pushed up the sleeves of his sweater. Firelight played over his skin and exaggerated the grim lines of his face. “Roy and Janelle arrived on the island toward the end of last summer. She has a job at the hotel. She’s a receptionist there. He has a boat, which he anchors outside the harbor.”

  Otis snorted.

  “Yeah,” Corey agreed with the nonverbal comment. “We’ll get to that point. Roy picks up work as a casual handyman. That’s how I met the couple. He and I were one of the emergency repair teams during an early fall storm. He’s an efficient, capable worker.” From Corey, that was praise. “I suspect that his competence would extend from carpentry and sailing to hunting and trapping.”

  “And his boat gives him the means of smuggling the fantastical creatures off the island,” Otis rumbled.

  “Or holding them until he has a shipment to sell on.” Corey drained his mug of hot chocolate and put it on the mantelpiece. “The few time I’ve sailed past his boat, the Buccaneer, music has been blasting loudly from it.”