Moon Shadow (Vampire for Hire Book 11) Read Free

I wasn’t laughing, even when I excused myself to get a McRefill. I’d certainly seen some strange things in my time. Hell, I was the strange thing. And there was the long shadow in his memory. When I returned, I said, “This was a week ago?”
    “Right.”
    “Which is when the second boy disappeared.”
    “That night, in fact.”
    Two boys missing within a week of each other was big news, and the local police chief was under a lot of pressure to find them. The FBI was here, too, working right alongside them. I’d passed two news vans along the way to this McDonald’s. So far, very few clues had turned up. And, certainly, no boys had turned up.
    “Does Lake Elsinore have a history of violent crime?”
    He shrugged. “We have our fair share. Elsinore is a rough and tumble town. A mixture of cultures. Our downtown isn’t quaint or charming. Not for tourists. It’s utilitarian. It’s old. It features bars and bikers and gangs and the homeless. None in great amounts. But enough to cross paths. The lake attracts weekend warriors who drink too much, fight too quickly, and keep our police busy. Someone eventually ends up dead. Usually a fight. Usually over a girl. Occasionally, we have a murder. A body shows up dead and no one knows who did it. It happens. Our city is just big enough, hot enough, and isolated enough to attract enough people who may or may not do something stupid, or angry or vengeful. Or murderous.”
    “So, what would you like for me to do, Roy?” I asked.
    “I-I really don’t know, Ms. Moon.”
    “Please call me Sam.”
    “I don’t know, Ms. Sam. I mean Sam. I grew up on this lake. I’ve lived here my whole life. This is my home. I love this place, and I’m just so pissed off that something seems to be trying to scare me away from my home. I don’t know what I want from you.”
    “You want answers?”
    “I guess so, yes.”
    Crackling, agitated purple flames now coursed through his aura. He sat forward and locked and unlocked his fingers. His right knee bounced. Try as I might, I couldn’t keep the flood of his agitated thoughts out of my mind. He was feeling very strongly that this was all a mistake, that I couldn’t help him, being a city girl and all. He was feeling that he should have just kept his mouth shut, that his business was going to suffer, that I looked kinda cute, that I sure looked pale for a Southern Californian. He also thought that his wife would be jealous if I came around, that he liked me, that he trusted me, that I seemed competent, that I was too small, that Sherbet had spoken highly of me, that Sherbet needed to lose some weight, that the disappearances had something to do with the shadow. He thought if he could just convince someone, anyone, to help, the disappearances might stop.
    I pulled out of his thoughts, and shored up my mental barrier a little longer. Thoughts were living things, strung together to form new sequences, sometimes coherent, often incoherent, especially when someone was upset. And Roy was very, very upset.
    I wanted to tell him that, more than likely, the disappearances had nothing to do with the shadow, except I couldn’t. Not yet. Not until I checked out his story.
    “What does your wife say?”
    Roy shrugged. “Not much. But she believes me, I think.”
    His bouncing knee had picked up its pace, and his glancing eyes had turned furtive. He was beginning to look more and more like a cornered rat. Or, more accurately, feeling more and more foolish, and so, I decided to reach out with my mind, which I did now.
    Relax. Breathe. Good.
    His knees stopped bouncing, and he blinked long and slow. As I reached out to him telepathically, I felt a stirring from deep within. The thing within me loved when I dipped into other people’s thoughts. She especially loved when I manipulated them.
    “I believe you,” I said.
    He nodded, expelled a long stream of air that reached me from all the way across the McTable.
    “You do?” he asked. “You