The Moonlight Monsters Detective Agency Volume One

The Moonlight Monster Detective Agency

Volume One

By

Maggie Harper

Copyright © 2011 Maggie Harper

First Published by Thompson, Joyce,
MacGowan
Publishing Group 2011

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transferred in any form without prior written permission from the author or her representatives. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, living or
dead,
is entirely coincidental.

Contents

Foreword

Blood Oath

High Spirits

Hells Bells

Sand Wedged

Full Circle

Foreword

Wow, what can I say about this series that will properly convey my newfound joy at having discovered it? Maybe that’s it’s given me the emotional wherewithal to drag myself out of bed before five pm (on weekdays anyway)? Or perhaps that it has instilled me with the courage to finally face my fear of competitive arctic skinny-diving? Well ok, maybe not quite as extreme as those examples, but you get the drift…

Seriously though, the Moonlight Monsters Detective Agency is really something special and if you’re holding it in your hands right now then I honestly envy you for what you’re about to experience. I was lucky enough to get an early read on these stories from Shane over at TJM Publishing and I’m not ashamed to admit that I devoured each one as greedily as a hungry German on Bratwurst Morning as soon as they came out. In Tina, Sam et al, Maggie Harper has started one of the most exciting takes on the supernatural mystery angle since Mulder and Scully shared that first kiss and the X Files went stale for the next four seasons or so. Not like that kept any of us from watching though, right?

Anyway, without further ado, here’s volume one of the Moonlight Monsters Detective Agency. You’re in for quite a treat. And I’ll stop talking now.

 
– Andrew Green

Andrew Green is the author of the
Godsmacked
series published by Thompson, Joyce,
MacGowan
Publishing Group.

Blood Oath

‘Ok Tina, you can do this.’

Tina Peterson inched her feet a few more steps across the black and white linoleum floor of the office staff kitchen. The smell was unbearable. At the other side of the room was an oven, a fridge and a long counter on top of which was perched a microwave oven – the source of this particular terrible stench. Its inside surface had been sprayed completely black from whatever horrible, otherworldly object had exploded within and it was impossible to see anything through the glass door.

Tina stepped forward. Her fingers were squeezed tightly around her nostrils, yet somehow the smell was still getting in.

‘Come on,’ she whispered, ‘just walk over there, pull out the plug and bag the thing. This should be child’s play to you. After all, you’re the one who singlehandedly faced down the Nefarious Allegiance of
Kaco
-Moon last summer. Just do it Tina…’

She moved closer. The effluvium was making her eyes water and her skin was starting to sting. With a flash, she clamped her free hand over her mouth. ‘Oh Jesus, I think I’m going to be sick!’

At that moment, the huge Russian figure of Boris Rachmaninoff burst into the room. ‘
Tvoyu
Mat
!’ he roared, ‘what is this terrible smell!’

Tina looked up and gestured frantically towards the microwave. ‘It’s one of Ernie’s damn space-pies,’ she said, ‘get it out of here and down to the garbage, will you?
Before I throw up.’

Boris, who just so happened to be a werebear – as in a man who sometimes turns into a bear – rushed forward and snatched the machine up off the counter as though it were no heavier than a bag of feathers. Superhuman strength comes in handy sometimes. Grumbling a spew of curse words in his native tongue, he ran to the window and dropped the microwave down the garbage chute. With a crash it landed in the skip below.

‘Boris looked down at the alley through the window. ‘I suppose we’ll have to put some kind of chemical treatments on there. That little
Svoloch
better have something to do the job, before some poor hobo starts rooting around and gives himself a damn seizure.’

Across the room Tina was slowly regaining her composure. She shook her head. ‘That’s it, Boris,’ she said, ‘next time we’re getting
two
microwaves – and Ernie has to keep his one in the basement…’ She sighed. It was supposed to be lunchtime, but she’d lost her appetite now for good. Oh well, she thought, all in a day’s work at the Moonlight Monsters’ Detective Agency.

Tina was part demon.
An eighth-demon to be precise – on her mother’s side – although the family didn’t really keep in touch with that strain of relations these days.
Which was just fine as far as Tina was concerned.
While not all of the demon breeds could be said to be
truly
evil (and there were actually nearly as many of them as there were mammals on Earth), they were all certainly strange. Very strange, in fact, and Tina had never been comfortable with that part of her heritage. But then that was America, she observed – everybody’s people had come there from somewhere and she saw herself as being essentially no different than anybody else who abstained from following the Orthodox culture and traditions of their forefathers.

And anyway, she was still human at a ratio of seven to one, so she wasn’t really all that different to any other normal citizen of Moonlight City. Certainly she looked no different – with her long brown hair and cute, slightly-bookish spectacles – and outside of her work with the Detective Agency, she lived a private life that was typically human. Some might even say it was boring, since Tina spent most nights doing little more than curling up with a good mystery novel and her cat Gabriel for company.

No, it was only on the inside where her magical traits had manifested themselves. For one thing Tina aged at no more than a fraction of the rate of most people. She was twenty-nine, but she looked like a young twenty-two and would probably stay that way for at least another ten years. She was only glad that she’d aged relatively normally up until the hormonal deluge of adolescence had passed. She shuddered to think of what it would be like trying to celebrate her thirtieth birthday with a body that still looked twelve years old. That’s how it had been for her mom.

Besides the extended life-expectancy, Tina Peterson was also gifted with psychic abilities. Mainly telepathy and mild telekinesis, to be precise, and that’s what had attracted her to the Moonlight Supernatural Detective Agency (AKA the Moonlight Monsters’ Detective Agency, as it was affectionately referred to by those in the know). Sure, it would have been easy to hitch a free-ride with powers like hers, but Tina was the kind of person who’d rather give something back. Though sometimes she still wondered if she’d made the right choice…

‘Man,’ she said, plugging in the summer fan to help clear out the smell, ‘that’s the last time Ernie’s making food up here. I know this is supposed to be an equal opportunities workplace but I’ve just about had enough of this crap.’

‘Agreed,’ Boris grunted and then opened the fridge to collect his own lunch of raw beefsteak.

‘Well at least you’ve still got your appetite,’ Tina said, ‘me – I mightn’t eat till after Christmas at this rate.’

‘You know I get cranky if I don’t get my meat,’ Boris shrugged and started tucking in.

At that moment Ernie the Egghead – the agency’s IT guy and three-foot alien grayling – maneuvered his way into the kitchen on his electronic walking pod (think, tiny wheel chair with legs). ‘Hey!’ he called, ‘where’s the microwave gone? I had my lunch in there…’

Ernie the Egghead, whose real name was all but unpronounceable by the human tongue, had crash-landed in the desert outside Las Vegas in nineteen eighty-five. He’d been on a voyage of self-discovery across the Universe starting in the Horsehair Nebula, and had been long out of communications range with his home planet by the time he reached Earth. For better or for worse, that meant he was stuck here for good.

Well Ernie had a mind for math that would have made Kim Peek blush and he soon crossed paths with a relentless gambler and high-roller from the strip who knew just exactly how best to put the alien’s mind to work. Together they made a cool fortune for two whole years before the agency finally got wind of the racket. When they intercepted the gamblers Ernie was given a choice: either he offer up his gifts for the service of the agency, or they hand him over to the US Government where he’d probably spend the rest of his life in a glass cage getting poked with sticks. When it was put to him like that, Ernie was happy to comply.
 

‘What do you mean it smelt terrible?’ Ernie demanded, ‘it smelt delicious! That was one of my favorite mothers’ recipes, I’ll have you know. My third mother –
Xccooonnnnnnchccchhhhcamupppppa
the Vast and Honored.’

‘Well save it for home in future,’ Tina warned, ‘coz to me and Boris it smelt like a horse that crawled under a bridge to die – ten years ago Goddamn it!’

Ernie stared up at her with his big almond eyes and shrugged his wrinkly grey shoulders. ‘Yeah, I know,’ he said, ‘like I said: delicious.’

Tina rolled her eyes and sighed.

‘Anyway,’ Ernie continued, scuttling further into the kitchen on his mechanical little legs, ‘something’s come up. I just got word from the Institute that there’s a new undesirable in town…’

‘Oh yeah?’
Boris asked.

‘Yeah.
Sam Parker’s the name. Guy’s a vampire from London – not to mention a two-bit conman besides. He just moved in last week and now he’s setting himself
up
across town as some kind of paranormal Private Detective.’

Ernie reached into the little box-compartment on the front of his walker and took out a glossy photograph. He handed it to Tina.

She considered the roguish face beneath a mop of scruffy blond hair for a second before passing the picture to Boris. ‘Huh,’ she said, ‘well he
is
kind of cute, but if he’s trying to practice without a license then he has to go.’

‘So this vamp’s downtown then?’
 
Boris asked.

‘Yeah,’ Ernie said, ‘guy’s rented himself a little basement office over on Moreland Street. Chance’s are with money he procured through devious means.’

‘We’re on it,’ Tina said, ‘anything to get out of this damn kitchen. Still smells like a sewer in here…’

Boris shrugged and made a move for the door.

‘One more thing,’ Tina said, turning back to face the little alien, ‘we had to chuck the microwave down the garbage chute, so you better get that quarantined before it raises any suspicions.’

Ernie’s eyes lit up.
‘Oh yeah?
Maybe I can still salvage my lunch then.’

‘No. You know you can’t go out there without a chaperone. Send Lonny the cleaner to do it.’