October saw the release of Dead of Night, book 3 in the Nephalem Files. Right now, I’m in the middle of putting the series through a promotional wringer that started today. For the unforeseen future, Sparked is available to download free on most stores for free.
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You can also download the next two books, Vampire for Hire and Dead of Night for free with your Kindle Unlimited Subscription.
– 1 –
“Here’s the mail, Boss,” Stacy said as she placed the stack of envelopes on top of the growing mountain on the corner of my desk.
“I don’t assume there’s any good news?” I grabbed the new additions to the pile and thumbed through them. All bills. Over half of them well past due at this point. That’s the problem with my line of work. It’s not every day someone wanted to hire a paranormal investigator like myself.
I would’ve considered another line of work, but the only other thing I was cut out for was being a cop. I had nothing against police in general, just a dislike the ever growing amount of politics that went into the job.
Not to mention they require you to carry a gun. I’ve made it thirty-three years without touching one, I planned to make it at least seventy more.
Even with the lack of work, I couldn’t see myself doing anything new. The old world was all I knew though it helped I was an upstanding member of the community. It’s not as secretive as some would have you believe.
“Still no sign of the check from the Robinson case?”
She shook her head and quickly exited the room. I couldn’t say I blamed her. After two months I figured they would have paid me by now. I also had the tendency to verbally take out my aggression on the nearest target, which happened to be her more often than not.
This one wasn’t her fault, the Robinson case was doomed from the start. Courtney Robinson called in a panic insistent that her neighbor was a vampire. Her only evidence to the fact was that he was always out of his house at night and slept during the day. When I suggested that he might just work the midnight shift somewhere, she flipped her lid. But she was still insistent that I come down, so I hopped on the first plane to Tallahassee to make her happy.
She picked me up at the airport shortly after I arrived, complete with more evidence. By the time I looked over the stack of photos I was ready to fly back home. Her sole evidence of him being a vampire was how he sparkled in the sunlight while he was outside barbecuing over the weekend. A surefire sign she had watched Twilight one too many times. Vamps don’t sparkle in the sun, they burn. No amount of makeup or sunblock will change that.
I give the movies credit, they get quite a few things right about them. Like how they operate in packs that tend to oppose each other, though their hatred of werewolves is grossly overstated. The two species don’t go out of their way to help each other, but they don’t generally hate each other either.
As I suspected, her neighbor did have a night job working at a gas station on the other side of town. I didn’t even have to tail him to get the information. I just did what every good neighbor should have done before freaking out and asked the man.
Him sparkling in the sun was another matter entirely, but was another easy one to spot. He was recently divorced and had his seven year old daughter over for her bi-weekly stay. A week before the picture, his shower had went out in the house. Thanks to his schedule and the fact he had his daughter over for the weekend, he hadn’t had time to fix it. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem, but his daughter had a thing for glitter bombing her bathwater. I didn’t ask to see the tub, but I’d bet he is still cleaning up the mess today.
It took all of twelve hours to solve the case, and I spent eight hours of that sleeping, which is probably why she is refusing to pay.
Paranormal investigation isn’t about the money. It would be easy to drive all over the country and milk these people for everything if I wanted to, but that wasn’t my style. Thanks to the cases like Mrs. Robinson, I tried to only take the serious calls. Even if it meant I had to live on rice and noodles for a few extra days.
And deal with the collection calls.
“Any calls while I was out?” I shouted loud enough for the neighbors at Subway to hear through the poorly insulated walls.
“Is there ever?” She said before shutting the door to my office. Her standard response to the question. Some people think I’m crazy for putting up with an office assistant that treated me the way she does, but those people don’t know the truth. Out of all the people I’ve tried at the position, she was the best. There wasn’t even a close second.
Being a skinwalker didn’t hurt her case any either. Having someone who could look like someone else without the use of magic was a definite plus.
With a lack of calls, I sat down at the computer to try to find something local. Craigslist, for all its problems, was a goldmine once you learned how to spot the hoaxes. The pay for the jobs was lower than what I got on one of my calls, but any money was better than zero right now.
It took a while, but I found a post asking for help finding a dozen missing sheep on a farm just north of Moberly, Missouri. It wasn’t my ideal type of job, but lost animals tend to be easy to find or explain. Either they wandered off the farm somewhere close, or they got taken by a predator of some type.
With a job in mind, I reached for the phone just in time for it to ring.
“Raymond Gilmore, paranormal investigator. How can I help you?”
“Is this the same Raymond Gilmore that shot ole James Lucas in the ass while elk hunting in Montana?”
I stifled a laugh. That was a memory I had nearly forgotten, which should tell you how often I take vacations. “It was an arrow,” I said, hiding my embarrassment. I’ve never been great with projectiles I didn’t create, but I couldn’t turn down the trip. It’s not every day you get invited on a trip on someone else’s dime.
“He couldn’t walk for a month,” Trevor said through his booming laughter. “His wife wanted to murder you for that. Remember the messages?”
“I deleted them a few months ago.” Thirteen of them. All in the span of two days. She must have called me every dirty name in the book three times over by the end. I wanted to apologize to her for it, but I could never grow the nerve to dial her back.
“Those were the days,” he said, calming down.
“I know you didn’t call me to reminisce.” Trevor hadn’t called me for nearly four years, right after the last time we worked together when he was a detective for the Kansas City Police Department.
That case was special, but for all the bad reasons. Trevor called because they were dealing with a serial killer in the city who was targeting women. That isn’t the type of job I’m normally keen to jump on, but this wasn’t your normal murderer. Each one of the women had six different pentagrams carved into their skin on various spots on the body.
Neck.
Forehead.
Each wrist.
Back.
Chest.
Generally, that’s a sign someone is planning on summoning something unnatural to the world.
Usually from hell.
Thankfully, this guy didn’t have a clue how to do the ritual properly. But it still took a few weeks to get him off the streets.
“You free to handle another case?” he asked. “I know it’s been a while since we talked, but I have a good one for ya.”
“That depends.” I said. “We aren’t talking about more ritualistic murders, are we?”
Trevor laughed. “Nothing like that. We’ve had a rash of single car accidents that aren’t making any sense. Three days in a row we have had four fatalities on the same stretch of highway.”
“Bad weather?” That’s my first assumption, knowing how people like to drive when it rains.
“Sunny and in the eighties,” he said. “The coroner believes they are all suicides.”
“I hate to say it, Trev, but the coroner is probably right.” Suicides rarely make sense. Nothing humanity is capable of really does. How else can you explain how everyone finds something positive to say about a gunman who kills a dozen people in a crowded shopping mall. They never point to the problems with the person either, only referencing some external cause, like video games. The signs are always there, some people become really good at ignoring them until it is too late.
“I hear ya, Ray. If it was one guy I would agree. But we are talking about four deaths the exact same way in less than seventy-two hours.”
“The world is full of copycats. All it takes is one bizarre news story and all the crazies come out at once to play. The first guy pulled off his death and gave the others an idea to try it.”
“Nothing about these guys screams suicidal,” he said. “Good family lives. No major financial problems. They were all in good health before the accidents…”
I hesitated with my response knowing he would argue with me until I either gave in or hung up the phone.
Everything about this case screamed mundane. If I wasn’t talking to Trevor I would have either hung up or referred him to the local authorities by now.
“What’s it going to take to get you here?”
“Price has gone up since we last worked together.” Normally I’d tell the caller I’m not as cheap as they are expecting, and it isn’t. My services were highly valuable to the right people, and I expected to be compensated accordingly.
“Two thousand just to drive out there and another thousand a day from there. If the case goes to court, you will have to cover the cost of my attorney and another five hundred for each day I’m there.”
“It has gone up,” he said. “I’ll tell you what, Ray. We’ll double it. How fast can you get here?”
That escalated much more quickly than I imagined. Something told me I needed to raise my prices when I work with other departments, or at least talk to Trev about how much they usually pay for outside consulting.
“That depends. Where are you at these days?”
“Boulder, Colorado.”
“I’ll pack a few things and see you tomorrow.”