“Oh,” Lacey said blankly. “How is Mrs. Fitzpatrick doing?”
“She’s mad at Sheriff Buchanan,” Jonah replied, referring to the dead widow and original sheriff of Magic from the early 1800’s. “Seems there was a lot of people out near the cemetery last night and he didn’t do nothin’ to stop them.”
“People?” Lacey asked in confusion. “What kind of people? More spirits?”
“Nah, these was livin’ ones,” Joseph replied. “They was there when we stopped by. They asked us all kinds of stupid questions, but we didn’t tell them nothin’, did we Jonah.”
“Nope,” Jonah said, drawing his fingers along his lips as if he was zipping them closed. “Not a thing. We didn’t tell them about the aliens or the spaceship or nothing.”
“Aliens… spaceship?” Lacey repeated faintly, her hand going to her throat as it tightened in fear. “Who… what did these people look like, Joseph?”
“You’ll see them in a minute. We came to warn you to get dressed and to hide him,” Joseph said, nodding at Frost. “They look like the government men from the movies.”
“Yeah, they’re all dressed in suits and wearing sunglasses and driving big black cars,” Jonah said with a roll of his eyes. “They’re so stupid. They thought we couldn’t see through their disguises, but Mrs. Fitz had already warned us about them poking around the cemetery.”
“Sheriff B. says if they don’t get lost soon he’ll get a posse together to scare ‘em off,” Joseph added with a grin. “Hey, Dusty, you wanna help ‘em? Sheriff B. said Jonah and I could watch.”
Dusty lifted his head and looked at Joseph. His snout was covered with bits and pieces of food from his breakfast. He chewed for several long seconds before he snorted.
“I can sit on one of them. It worked on him,” Dusty replied calmly, jerking his large head at Frost. “He squealed like a girl.”
“You stepped on my balls,” Frost snarled in a low voice.
“Enough,” Lacey said with a snap of her fingers when both boys began to snicker. “Dusty, back to normal, my good pig, no more talking for you. Joseph, I need you and Jonah to go warn Theo that we have trouble… serious trouble coming,” Lacey snapped out as she ran her hand through her tousled hair.
“Theo don’t remember him,” Joseph replied.
“Doesn’t remember…?” Lacey started to say with a frown as she turned to look at Frost. “How can he not remember you? I handed you to him and the spell was only to last a few hours. He should have seen you.”
“He did,” Frost said with a nasty look at the boys. “I removed his memory.”
“You… how?” Lacey asked incredulously.
“I have… had a device that erases the memories of those who stare at it. It is sometimes necessary to use it,” he replied uncomfortably.
“What do you mean had?” She asked suspiciously. “Where is it now?”
“I don’t know,” Frost replied in frustration. “I had it in your local law officer’s office, but it was gone by the time I got here. I must have lost it when those two were transporting me in that dangerous contraption they called a bicycle.”
Lacey impatiently blew a strand of her hair away from her face. Her eyes turned to the window when she heard Ginger barking. Panic swept through her before she breathed in a calming breath. She could do this.
Her parents had walked her and her sisters through practice drill after practice drill when they were younger on how to act normal if anyone came sniffing around. She just needed to act cool, calm, and if that didn’t work, she’d turn them all into mice. Shaking her head at the last thought, she sent a stern look at the boys.
“Boys, go get Theo,” Lacey ordered. “Tell him what has happened.”
“Should we tell him about the alien or not?” Jonah asked.
“You’d better not for now,” Lacey replied as she hurried over to the window. “Can you two make it without being seen?”
“Of course,” Joseph said in a superior tone before he snapped his fingers.
“Oh!” Lacey breathed as two very small mice, one wearing a tiny black top hat, scurried out the back door. “Tory has no idea how much trouble she is going to have with those two.”
Frost decided it was better to keep his opinion to himself on the matter. He jerked when he felt the soft material that suddenly covered his chest. He looked down and discovered he was now wearing faded blue trousers and a dark blue shirt. His feet were encased in the same type of boots that Jonah had been wearing.
“I don’t think I will ever get used to you doing things like this,” he muttered, staring at her slender figure now clad in clothing similar to his.
“You have to admit it comes in handy sometimes,” she said with a mischievous smile.
His eyes darkened as he remembered her removing all their clothes last night with just a snap of her fingers. He forced his mind back to the task at hand when Ginger’s barking grew more agitated and the horses and mule joined in. He followed Lacey as she hurried into the living room to look out the front window.
Chapter 13
Jones Redman’s stared at the small group of buildings in the distance as they drove down the long, winding road leading to A Touch of Magic Animal Shelter. He didn’t need to pull up the copy of the file on his laptop to know about Lacey Adam. There wasn’t much to know. She was a twenty-eight year old widow running a not-for-profit shelter for abandoned and abused animals that she had started six years before with her husband who was now deceased.
How she made enough to live on wasn’t his concern. The reason he was here was because of the automated-response email that he received yesterday morning forwarded from CSTEI. Two unidentified objects had broken through the Earth’s atmosphere within hours of each other. What made them worth checking out was that they both had a controlled trajectory and had landed in the same area. The problem, he discovered, was that the ‘same area’ was a huge fucking desert filled with rocks and canyons.
He had been reassigned to the lower levels of the Government's version of Purgatory after a mission that went bad. For the last five years, he had sat in an obscure office in Washington, D. C. reading one ludicrous report after another shoved into decaying boxes left over from the 1950’s in the Department of Paranormal and Extraterrestrial Division as he waited out his time until retirement.
An interesting phone call six months before had suddenly made his job more interesting. He didn’t give a fuck about UFO’s, but that anonymous call several months back had led to a profitable business opportunity with a research complex in California.
Doctor Alice Barker was one of those crazy scientists who had devoted her entire life to the search for aliens. His research on her showed that her father had been one of the scientists at the fabled Area 51. A military man, he had raised Alice after his wife died from brain cancer. Alice had followed in her father’s footsteps in everything, but his military career. She had been turned away based on psychological reports pertaining to a series of mental breakdowns she suffered during her late teens/early twenties.
He thought back to the phone call he had received shortly after the email arrived yesterday morning. He could appreciate the military’s caution in drafting her. While her IQ might be off the charts, so was Alice Barker’s mind.
“You need to get out there and find what landed,” Alice ordered. “This information could be the breakthrough that I have been waiting for.”
“What? Didn’t the couple from Seattle work out?” Redman remembered asking. “They were what… shape-shifters or something.”
“Werewolves,” Alice replied. “They were a waste of time. They turned out to be nothing more than a couple of stupid kids playing dress up.”
“Were?” Redman had asked, sitting forward. “I take it the police will be looking for two more missing bodies.”
His fist had clenched the phone in triumph. He could hear the cash register ringing in his ears. His years as a Special Agen
t had fine-tuned his ability to pick out details others missed.
“I need you to find whatever fell and bring it to me,” Alice replied coldly, ignoring his statement.
“New Mexico is a big place, Miss Barker,” Redman replied, leaning back in his chair and turning to look at the map that CSTEI had included. “It would take one man months, if not years, to cover it alone. Especially without the proper equipment.”
“I’ll have my team meet you in Albuquerque,” Alice told him. “They will have any equipment you will need.”
“And if I actually find anything?” He had asked cynically. “What then?”
“Bring whatever you find to me and I will take care of the rest,” she had replied.
“If I find anything, it will cost you more,” he said.
There had been a long pause at his demand. His lips curved when he heard the heavy sigh on the other end of the line. The veiled threat in his voice had been received and understood.
He had been met at the airport. By the time they made it to the area marked as a likely area of impact, three additional SUVs with armed men had followed them. They had searched through most of yesterday morning and well into the night.
He had not expected to find anything and they hadn’t, but there was something there. The equipment kept going nuts with positive readings, but the signals had been all over the place, making it impossible to narrow in on what was causing it. Then, this morning, two very unusual boys had appeared at the old cemetery between the outskirts of the town called Magic and Lacey Adam’s Animal Shelter.
Redman had a gut feeling something was going on. The boys had said they were visiting the graves and hadn’t seen anything unusual. He didn’t believe them and had ordered one team to follow them when they left.
“Team Four still has no location on the two boys,” one of the men in the back seat said, leaning forward. “They are searching along the road.”
“Tell them to continue searching,” Redman ordered as they pulled up to the front of the house. “I want to have another talk with them.”
His gut never lied to him. The two boys had been heading in this direction when they suddenly vanished. The two men in Team Four swore that the boys had been there one minute and gone the next.
“… Even their footprints disappeared,” one man had grunted. “Only tracks left were from some mice.”
*.*.*
Lacey pressed her lips together as swirling waves of red dust filled the air. Three large, black SUV’s drew to a stop in front of the house. No one got out of the vehicles until the dust had settled back down.
Great, she thought with dread. They either are smart or are checking out the place first. Either way, it didn’t bode well for her peace of mind.
Turning, she glanced nervously at Frost. Her gaze roamed over him critically, assessing if she should hide him, disguise him, or if he would be fine the way he was. He was tall, at least six four, but not unusual. It was his width that concerned her. He was extremely muscular, but again he could pass as being a fitness nut or just big from hard work.
She was starting to think everything would be alright until she looked into his eyes again. It suddenly dawned on her that they glowed with a soft, iridescent blue. She could give him sunglasses, but the moment he removed them it would be obvious that he wasn’t human.
“Frost, your eyes,” she started to say when the sound of footsteps on the front porch distracted her. “Hurry, go to the bedroom.”
“I will stay in the back room,” he replied as a knock sounded on the door. “I will not let them harm you, Lacey.”
“It’s not me that I’m worried about,” she whispered. “Go.”
Lacey watched as he nodded sharply and turned on his heel. She waited until he had disappeared before she gripped the doorknob with a shaking hand and schooled a calm look on her face. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door as the man on the other side started to knock again.
“May I help you?” She asked politely.
*.*.*
Jones Redman looked at the slender, dark-haired woman standing in the doorway. The reflective sunglasses he wore hid his eyes as he scanned her. Her hair was tousled and her face was flushed. There was a slight redness along her jaw and on her neck. There was more than just her here.
He cleared his throat before speaking. It was a signal to the others to spread out and search the area. He noted the nervous look she cast as she watched the other men with him begin moving in different directions before she returned her gaze to him.
This time, her lips were pressed tightly together in annoyance. He also noted that she did not open the screen door separating them. He would bet his retirement that she was hiding something from the way she crossed her arms and glared at him.
“My name is Jones Redman, Mrs. Adams. May I speak with you for a few minutes,” Redman asked her.
“You can speak all you want once you get your men back in their vehicles,” Lacey replied coolly. “This is my home, Mr. Redman. I run an animal shelter for lost, abandoned, and neglected animals. It is not safe, nor is it appropriate, for your men to be out unescorted.”
Redman’s lips curled up in a cold, stiff smile. “They will be careful, I assure you,” he responded.
“Careful or not, I don’t take kindly to strangers running around my property without my permission,” Lacey retorted. “Call them back.”
Redman reached up and removed his sunglasses. His dark brown, almost black piercing eye regarded her coldly. He knew he was intimidating with his sunglasses on. Without them, he was even more so.
Thick scarring near his left eye pulled the red misshapened skin around the edge of his eye socket. His left eye was clouded with a milky color, a dramatic change from his right eye. He had given up wearing a patch. A patch made people comfortable, almost fascinated. The real truth of his eye made them feel uncomfortable, threatened.
“I work for the Government, Mrs. Adams,” he said, reaching into his right front breast pocket and withdrawing his credentials. “I am investigating a disturbance near your property.”
“So why aren’t you near my property instead of on it?” Lacey asked testily. “There is nothing unusual here except the animals that have been dropped off by people who don’t give a damn about them. Now, I’ll ask you just once more to please have your men return to your vehicles.”
Redman’s mouth tightened at Lacey’s resistance to be cooperative. He carefully replaced his identification in the pocket of his shirt. He couldn’t see anything behind her because she kept the front door partially closed behind her. It was clearly obvious there was something she did not want him to see.
“Mrs. Adams,” Redman murmured in a quiet voice. “If you are in trouble, please just nod your head. I assure you that we can help you.”
*.*.*
Lacey’s lips twitched and she raised an eyebrow. Jones Redman had no idea that she was the last person who would need his or his men’s help. Relaxing her grip on the door, she calmly stared back into the man’s blank face. It was obvious he thought his looks would intimidate her. She wondered what he would think if he knew what some of the residents of Magic really looked like without their glamour.
“Mr. Redman, I am not in trouble nor do I need you or your men’s assistance. I am trying to run an Animal Shelter. This is my business. You are interfering with it at the moment. My first concern is for the animal’s safety and comfort. Your men wandering through their home is the only thing troubling me at the moment,” Lacey calmly explained.
She was about to add more when she saw a man pulling open the door to the barn. Anger surged through her at the same time as Ginger growled menacingly. Fear burst through her when she saw the man pull his weapon from his hip.
“What the…,” she started to say, opening the screen door. “Don’t you dare!”
Lacey pushed open the screen door and shoved past Redman. Hurrying down the steps, she broke into a run as the ma
n aimed at Ginger who was slowly moving forward as the man backed away. She cried out when rough arms grabbed her as she came even with one of the SUV’s.
“Ginger, no! Go to your babies,” Lacey called out loudly as she struggled to break free of the grip on her arms. “Go, girl. She has puppies. She is only protecting them.”
Time slowed as the man tripped on one of the many toys lying in the yard. A small flash of golden fur streaked out of the barn, heading toward Lacey and the agent holding her at the same time as Ginger lunged for her wayward pup. The agent, thinking Ginger was attacking, fired his weapon as he fell. Lacey screamed as Ginger yelped and staggered to the side.
“Stop!” Redman yelled at the same time as the agent holding Lacey cried out as Little Bit sank her teeth into the calf of his leg. “Shit! I said stop!”
Lacey shrugged off the hand that frantically reached for her at the same time as he twisted to try to shake Little Bit off of him. She barely heard his surprised curse as she ran to where Ginger was now lying on the hard-packed soil. A large, dark red stain covered the front of the Golden Retriever.
Lacey fell to her knees beside the still body. Tears coursed down her cheeks as she carefully touched the soft fur. Her hands trembling violently as she assessed the damage. A low, wounded cry tore from her throat as she realized the bullet had pierced Ginger’s heart, killing her instantly.
“No!” Lacey cried in sorrow as tears blurred her vision. “No!”
Chapter 14
Frost listened from where he was standing in the bedroom as Lacey talked quietly with the man at the door. He leaned his head back against the wall when the man identified himself as some type of law man, probably for the government. It seemed much longer than the actual mere minutes it really was as Lacey heatedly ordered the man off her property.
He wished he had the items attached to his utility belt. He needed to make sure his transport had not been discovered. Hell, he needed to see how much longer it would be until it self-destructed. It would not be a good thing if the government found it. It would be much worse if they found it and it exploded.