Playing With Vampires - An Izzy Cooper Novel Read Free

if I could spot anything out of the ordinary. Sure enough, she was hovering in the shadows, just beyond the reach of the lights.
    With her small - dainty frame and short blond hair, she kind of reminded me of a slightly oversized doll, the kind of doll that was always smiling.
    But she wasn’t smiling now.
    Polly looked scared and confused, which probably explained why she was only able to manage a partial manifestation. This wasn’t unusual. When someone dies violently, their spirit tends to suffer some damage after separating from the body. This is even worse if it happens quickly.
    “I’ll be right back. I need to check out something,” I told Tim.
    “Okay.” He nodded.
    I could feel Tim’s eyes following me as I made my way down the alley. Tim was a great guy, and smart, but he still seemed to have some trouble coming to grips with my way of doing things, namely talking to ghosts. The fact that he couldn’t see who I was talking to, only made it worse.
    Turning my back to the group of police officers still processing the scene, I focused on the apparition that seemed to be trying to merge into the side of the dirty brown brick building that housed the Storm Cove Pawn Shop.
    If I were a ghost, I could think of tons of places I’d rather hang out than embedded in dirty bricks, but those on the other side of death didn’t seem to have strange quirks like that.
    “Polly! Can you hear me?” I asked, trying to keep my voice as low as possible, but still be heard.
    There were some on the island who were aware of my gifts, but most just thought I was a little off my rocker. It was best to keep it that way. The last thing I needed was to become the local communication device to the other side.
    With so many witches on the island, you’d think more people would be able to talk to the dead, but it didn’t work that way. Even for witches, communicating with the dead was a rare talent.
    Polly’s ghost didn’t seem to be aware of me. She was just staring ahead, her eyes wide with fright, her mouth open in a silent scream.
    It had been my experience that when a ghost was in this condition, they were stuck in that last moment of they were alive. Trying to communicate with Polly while she was in this state would be a waste of time.
    But my conscience nagged at me. I hated leaving a spirit in this condition. “Polly … it’s me, Izzy … from the Quick Stop.”
    No reaction at all, not even so much as a shifting of her eyes.
    “Well I’ll be back,” I promised.
    And I would. It was a possibility that after a few days she’d snap out of it and I’d be able to point her to the light.
    Sighing, I turned back to the crime scene.
    Ayden was still examining the body while Myron hung back, waiting for the police to do their job.
    Myron Schaffer was the Mystique County Medical Examiner, and just about the strangest person on the Island. He died his hair black and he was fond of wearing eyeliner.
    Aside from his autopsy reports, it was difficult to get two words out of him.
    Every time Myron showed up at a crime scene, part of me suspected he was the perpetrator. My thoughts may have involved a bit of stereotyping, but I couldn’t help it. Anyone who looked like a goth reject, and preferred to work with dead bodies, had to have something wrong with them.
    It was this line of thinking that pushed me in his direction. I figured maybe it was time I had a few words with Mister Myron Schaffer.
    “Hello Myron.”
    He acknowledged my greeting with a nod, but said nothing.
    “So what’s your preliminary report?” I asked.
    I was sure Myron already had some idea how the victim was killed. He was always the first to take a look at the body.
    “Her throat was cut twice, nearly to the spinal cord. First the subject cut her throat from left to right, and then to the left again,” he explained, running his index finger across his own throat to demonstrate.
    I could have done without the visual, but I kept that part to myself. There