Kissing the Werewolf - An Izzy Cooper Novel (2 page)

Chapter Two

Death had changed my life, but it hadn’t changed me, which is exactly why I was still doing time, or doing my penance, as Mister Grim called it.

I called it bullshit.

So what if I went to a party or two during my college days. Maybe I did drop the F bomb a little too often, but did that really qualify me for a one-way ticket to Hell?

It would seem the people upstairs thought so.

None of it was my fault.

It was my phone’s fault!

Really, it was my fathead, cheating, no good ex boyfriend’s fault.

At least that’s what I liked to think on those days when everything just seemed to be pissing me off.

The truth was, it was my own fault, even if I didn’t like to admit it most of the time. If I hadn’t been checking my text messages at that moment, I wouldn’t have stepped in front of the truck.

Nowadays, I wouldn’t give Jasper Redding a second thought, but back then, I was checking my messages every ten minutes.

Most of us have been there. We get jilted by some guy who is way overqualified for the label of jerk, but still we cling to the phone and wait for him to call, just so we can ignore his calls, or in this case, his text.

Having five too many margaritas that night didn’t help either, but in my own defense, it had been a really bad week.

Not only had I caught my fiancé sleeping with the wedding planner, the same wedding planner we’d hired to plan our wedding, but I’d finally gotten up the nerve to confront my boss for her underhandedness.

In the two years I’d been working for Brenda Beasley’s law firm, I’d watched her use some downright dirty tactics to get her clients off the hook for crimes they were certainly guilty of.

The last straw was when I watched her tear down a stalking victim on the stand. The case was dismissed, and the young woman attempted suicide that night.

Enough was enough. Working for the Dragon Lady was like accepting blood money. I decided to tell Brenda Beasley what I thought of her.

So there I was, unemployed, heartbroken, and getting ready to cross the street when I get a text alert.

So like an airhead, I step into the street at the same time I look away, my attention solely on digging the phone out of my pocket.

Then with no warning, a horn was blasting my eardrums out. It was a hit and run too. That evil truck was out of there faster than I could absorb the fact that I’d been hit.

That’s the night I met Mister Grim, or as he is better known, the Grim Reaper. It was also the night my time ran up.

Well I didn’t actually meet the Grim Reaper. It was more like I heard his voice, but either way, the sand in my hourglass had just ran out.

It wasn’t fair!

I was only twenty-four years old, and I hadn’t even had a chance to get even with Jasper yet.

So what’s a girl to do?

Well she makes a deal with death.

To be honest, it was Mister Grim who brought up the deal idea. He told me that my time was up, and they’d decided to call my card.

But why was my time up?

I was still young, and I’d always been a decent person, most of the time anyway.

I couldn’t help but disagree with him when he told me it was because I’d been born with a gift that was meant to help others, but I’d squandered it.

That wasn’t true at all, the squandering part.

True, I’d ignored the spirits most of the time, but I hadn’t always ignored my hunches. Acting on my intuition had helped a lot. Well it had helped
me
a lot. Like when I’d had a hunch to stop by my fiancé’s place that night.

Turned out the wedding planner was there, and they were doing more than going over the guest list.

Maybe I’d even used my hunches to choose which slot machines to play while on my one and only trip to Vegas the year before. Okay, so I hadn’t exactly been a saint, but getting run over by a truck and sent to Hell was a little excessive.

So there I was, lying on the blacktop and feeling as if every bone in my body had been shattered.

“Hello Izzy.” The voice seemed to be everywhere at the same time.

At least someone was there, but I couldn’t quite understand why he wasn’t calling for help?

I would have screamed at the guy, except I was choking on the blood running into my throat.

Suddenly there was a cold hand on my arm and all the pain went away. Now I could yell, which is exactly what I did.

“Call for help! I need an ambulance!”

“No need. You are already dead.”

Was this guy insane?

If I was so dead, why could I still hear him, and why the hell was it so damned cold?

“You are going to be given a choice, Izzy. You can let go now and be damned for eternity … or you can return to your life and begin using your gifts the way they were meant to be used.”

“What gifts?”

As soon as the question formed, it was answered instantly.

My hunches and my ghost eyes, as I liked to call the seeing ghosts thing.

“But, if you do choose to go back to your life, you must understand that it will not be the same,” he warned. “You are on lease from Hell. Therefore, you would be one of the fallen, until such time that you have earned redemption.

I had two questions.

Did that make me a demon, or fallen angel … and how in the hell was I supposed to earn redemption?

Turns out that demons and fallen angels are more or less the same thing. Fallen angels just aren’t quite as mean and nasty as demons, plus demons were the fallen angels that had never been given the opportunity to be born into the human world.

As far as how I would do my penance, that was going to be left to me.

So those were my choices. I could go to Hell right then and there, or I could find a way to earn my white wings back.

It was a no-brainer.

I wasn’t quite ready to jump into the fire just yet.

The big problem was going to be the redemption clause. How could someone as naturally sarcastic and opinionated as myself, find redemption, especially since mischief was a mainstay of my nature?

Well Mister Grim wasn’t about to help me with that part. I had to figure it out on my own. That was all part of the deal.

There was a bright spot in all of this. The Angel of Death did tell me where I could find another job.

That would have really sucked to survive death, come back as a fallen angel, and then have to stand in line at the soup kitchen because I was broke and unemployed.

So being the helpful reaper that he is, Mister Grim dropped a name.

The Monster Squad.

They sounded more like a bunch of comic book fanatics, than a group of federal agents, but that’s exactly what they are.

More on that later, but for now, I’ll get back to the part about me feeling as if all the bones in my body had been crushed, and actually they were. It’s a good thing the Grim Reaper can also heal those he sends back.

By the time the paramedics finally arrived, all I had were some scrapes and bruises, aside from the fact that they actually had to start my heart.

I was the miracle girl. How many people got hit by a speeding, three quarter ton truck, and managed to walk away with only a few scratches?

Of course no one realized that my good fortune came at a price, and that price was that I would be sporting a pair of black wings for the rest of my life. Not literally of course, but you get the idea.

Unless I wanted to get another visit from Mister Grim, I was going to have to do some searching for something called the Monster Squad.

The only other clue he gave me was that the Monster Squad was in my hometown of Storm Cove, which happened to be on an island off the coast of Oregon.

That is how my life in the big city came to an abrupt end. If I wanted to earn redemption, and get a job, I was going to have to leave Portland and return to Mystique Island.

So that’s what I did.

You would think in a town as small as Storm Cove, finding something with an odd name like the Monster Squad would be easy as pie. Well it would have been, if that had been their official name.

No such luck. They weren’t about to make things that easy for me.

I spent an entire half a day driving around town, looking for this Monster Squad, but crapped out. Not only had I never heard the name before, and I’d spent the latter half of my childhood on the island, but I had my doubts the town council would even approve a business with that name. It might draw too much attention to things they’d prefer to keep secret.

Like most small towns, Storm Cove was a tight knit community. They didn’t care much for outsiders, but they did like tourists, which is why they played up the old legend of the shipwreck that brought most of the settlers to the area.

The old timers will tell you that in the early 1800s, a ship carrying settlers was knocked off course by a violent storm. The Mystique sank after being pushed close to shore and hitting a reef.

Half the ship’s passengers died, the other half managed to swim to shore.

Tales of sinking ships wasn’t so odd. The unusual part would be the Mystique’s passengers. They were said to be some very unusual people, though exactly what they were was never talked about.

Though most of the people in town are descended from those survivors, no one will admit what it was that was so special about them, but there were rumors.

There was no denying that Storm Cove had an curious history, along with some very unusual residents, but it was still a quiet little town. Big news just didn’t happen here.

That’s why the whole Monster Squad thing baffled me.

In a town where getting a Starbucks or a new movie theater was the news of the decade, I figured finding the Monster Squad would be a cinch, and it was, once I gave up and started looking on the Internet. Even then, all I could find were rumors, but it was enough.

Turns out, the Monster Squad’s official name is the ACMU, which stood for Atypical Crimes Management Unit. The Monster Squad was just a nickname.

The ACMU is an elite, black cell unit of the FBI. Very top secret.

You could have knocked me over with a feather. Who would have guessed there really was an
X Files
team?

There were only a few Atypical Crimes units, and the West Coast unit was based in Storm Cove, which I found a little unusual. As far as I was concerned, it would have made more sense for the unit to be based in Los Angeles, Portland, or even Seattle, but who was I to argue with the FBI?

Maybe we were just weird enough the FBI thought we needed a unit based in town.

Five minutes after leaving the Bayside Grill, I pulled up to the lodge. Finding a place to park wasn’t going to be easy, especially since morning rain had turned the entire parking lot into a mud puddle.

About that time I was really wishing I’d worn my high top leather boots instead of
Keds
, but they wouldn’t have matched my jeans.

Wearing blue jeans and a tee shirt to work was something Agent Fontaine frowned on, but he tolerated it because of my special talent. Communicating with the dead had a place in crime investigations. At least it did if the dead chose to cooperate, and that was a big if. Believe it or not, sometimes the dead didn’t cooperate, which had a way of complicating things.

Getting out of my bright yellow
Mustang
, which I liked to call Lady Luck, I maneuvered my way around the half dozen or so patrol cars and emergency vehicles.

There was mud everywhere. My lady was sure going to need a good cleaning after this. But she deserved the best.

That
Mustang
always got me from point A to Point B safely. I figured as long as I was driving Lady Luck, my chance of getting run over by a truck was greatly reduced. Not that a truck couldn’t go over the top of her, but still, at least I’d have a bit of protection if I were lucky. Naming her Lady Luck probably helped a little too.

Whatever had happened at the lodge, it was a biggie.

The last time I saw the county CSI unit in Storm Cove was when Megan Vandermeer’s husband caught her having a little fun with the next-door neighbor. That was long before I was in law enforcement.

From what I’d heard, it was one heck of a mess. Vandermeer drove right through the bedroom wall with his truck, killing both his wife and the neighbor.

Trucks were just plain evil.

After stepping over several puddles of rainwater, I finally made it to the entrance of Smuggler’s Bay Lodge.

There was a state police officer posted outside the resort’s front doors, and by the look on his face, I could tell he was ready to turn me back. It was times like this that I really liked flashing my FBI credentials.

I only recognized a few of the emergency workers, but finally Sheriff Bourne walked by, and that was someone I knew.