Free La Vida Vampire by Nancy Haddock Page B

Instead, I puzzled over Cat and why she’d been nearby tonight. Again. Why so much weirdness happening when I was just really getting my afterlife together? What happened to normal and predictable? I tell you, I couldn’t wait for the new moon to pass. I’d never missed my ability to purposely psyche out information like I had in the past two days. Even when I only got sporadic bits and pieces of answers, it was better than this exhausting game of guessing what the heck was going on. Good thing tomorrow was Wednesday bridge club. I needed the relaxing competition of a rousing game. For the first time in ages, I was asleep as dawn broke.

    Bridge ran promptly from seven to nine with socializing at six thirty. By five forty-five, I was dressed in black jeans and my scoop-neck cobalt knit shirt with black sandals. A dab of makeup, my hair in a braid, and I was ready. We were meeting at Shelly Jergason’s in Crescent Beach. I stopped for gas on the way, cringing at the price and the fumes that rose from the tank.
    Shelly, in fact, had invited me to join the club, and we ’d met because of the Vampire Protection Act. One of the strict provisions was that vamps had to take a Human Lifestyle Appreciation class, then participate in some sort of community activity. A garden club, library guild—the organization didn’t matter as long as we interacted with mortals. I’d met Shelly at the Historical Society and mentioned in passing that I was learning to play bridge on the Internet—a game that evolved from whist, so it wasn’t that hard for me. Next thing I knew, she called me to substitute a few times, and when one of the ladies went back to nursing on the night shift, I joined as a full-fledged member. Traffic was light, so I arrived at Shelly’s early. Jenna Jones blew in right behind me in her red power suit, her mouth in high gear as usual.
    “You would not be lieve the new clients I’m trying to find houses for!” Jenna paused dramatically in Shelly’s huge kitchen, then dropped her purse on a rattan barstool and fluffed her short hair. “And the creepiest thing happened on the way back from my closing in Palatka. I swear it must be the full moon.”
    “New moon,” Maybelle Banks corrected. She’s the grand dame of the group. Sixty, dabbles in astrology, and cracks a wry wit.
    “What?” Jenna asked with a blank look at Maybelle.
    “It’s the new moon,” Maybelle said, “not the full.”
    “Whatever!” Jenna said. “I’ve shown this one woman every darned house on the island, and she’s not—” She made quote marks with her fingers. “—feeling any of them. And the man I’m searching for! He’s in California now. Says he grew up here but can’t decide if he wants a place downtown or on the beach. When I mentioned property on Vilano, he had no idea what I was talking about. Vilano Beach has been called Vilano for a long damn time, and this guy doesn ’t sound over forty. How can he not know where Vilano is?”
    Goose bumps broke out on my arms as Jenna ranted about her California client, but I had no clue why. The nearly dark moon messing with me again? The Gift resurging?
    “That explains your difficult clients,” Shelly piped in, “but what’s creepy about Palatka? There’s not much but farm country between here and there.”
    “Exactly!” Jenna exclaimed yet again. “I stopped to look at a property another client asked about. Some land with a shack on it. Well, I found the road tunneling through this tangle of trees and vines, but when I got to a clearing, there ’s no shack, no nothing but empty land in a ring of trees.”
    We all waited expectantly. Shelly ran out of patience first. “And?”
    “When I turned the car around, I happened to glance in the rearview mirror, and the shack was there !”
    “Faeries,” Maybelle deadpanned. “They don’t want the place sold, so they hide the shack when you’re looking straight on for it, reveal it when you’re not.”
    Jenna