Shadows in the Sand (A Finn McCoy Paranormal Thriller Book 2) Read online

  “Jesus!” he exclaimed, turning to see a drenched Amanda staring at him. “You damn near gave me a heart attack!”

  “Sorry. You see anything?”

  “No, but I—“

  “What?”

  McCoy turned his head and stood still, as if listening intently. After a few seconds, he turned back to Amanda and shrugged.

  “There was something here. I felt it. But it’s gone now, whatever it was.”

  “Are you sure?”

  McCoy concentrated for a moment, then shook his head. “Nothing. I couldn’t quite get a bead on it. It was almost like a cross between demon and Fey.”

  Amanda shivered. “That wouldn’t be good.”

  “You’re telling me. C’mon, let’s get inside before we both catch pneumonia. I want to make sure Nan’s okay.”

  Amanda followed McCoy around the corner and up the stairs to the back deck. Light spilled through the sliding glass doors, dispelling some of the grayness of the day and promising warmth and shelter. McCoy eased up to the glass and peered inside. There was no sign of Nan, but everything inside appeared to be neat and in order. McCoy rapped loudly on the glass and stood beside Amanda, both of them looking like miserable, half-drowned poodles.

  There was no movement from inside the house. McCoy waited a few seconds, then knocked again.

  “Maybe she’s not home,” said Amanda.

  “Where else would she be? She’s expecting us.”

  “There wasn’t a car parked in the driveway. She could have run out to the store.”

  McCoy shook his head. “She keeps it parked in the garage across the street.” He tried the door. It slid open.

  “Finn! We can’t just go walking in!”

  “Shhhh!” McCoy was already stepping into the house. He grimaced as his wet shoes squeaked on the hardwood floor. He wished that he’d had the presence of mind to grab his knapsack when he’d left the car, but it was too late now.

  Reluctantly, Amanda followed him inside. They entered into a large open area which served as both a den and dining area. The kitchen sat off to their right, and directly across from them was a hallway which presumably led to the bedrooms and bath. Since it was immediately obvious that no one was in either the den or the kitchen, McCoy started toward the hallway.

  “Finn,” Amanda hissed.

  McCoy didn’t shush her this time; he simply ignored her. Creeping as quietly as he could with wet shoes and a bad leg, he made his way toward the dark hallway. Outside, the storm was reaching a magnificent crescendo. If someone were being murdered in one of the rooms near the back of the house, McCoy would have had a hard time hearing it over the raucous weather. Still, he inched into the hallway, certain that something was amiss behind one of the closed doors. Though he no longer sensed the evil presence he had felt earlier, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something bad had happened.

  McCoy paused in front of the first door he came to and listened. He could hear nothing over the howling wind and pouring rain. He resisted the urge to call out to Nan; if there was something bad in the house, he wanted to retain the element of surprise. He peeked back over his shoulder to see Amanda still standing in the den. Good. He didn’t want her bumping into him again at an inopportune moment.

  Turning his attention back to the door, he reached for the knob and gave it a slow twist. As quietly as possible, he eased the door open to reveal a spacious bedroom. It was obviously a guest room, possibly the one that he and Amanda were to stay in. Nothing seemed to be out of place, so McCoy gently shut the door and moved down the hall to the next one.

  The next door opened to a bathroom, unoccupied and therefore currently uninteresting. McCoy moved further down the hall to where two doors stood opposite of each other. He moved to the one on the left and put his hand on the knob. The cool metal gave off no unusual vibrations, so he felt fairly confident as he twisted the knob and pushed the door open.

  Later, when McCoy tried to remember the exact sequence of events that followed, he found them to be nothing more than a jumbled blur. He did remember a high-pitched, unearthly wail followed by the sudden appearance of a miniature she-devil. The imp deftly avoided his clumsy attempt at a block and moved with an uncanny speed to his injured leg, at which point she proceeded to give him a swift and deceptively powerful kick.

  After that, there was mostly blackness interspaced with Amanda’s screams and what sounded like an army’s worth of feet stomping around. At some point, just before he blacked out for good, McCoy could have sworn he heard a little girl’s voice say, “Oh, shit.”

  Chapter Seven

  “For the thousandth time, Mister, I’m sorry.”

  McCoy grunted and glared at the pint-sized assassin. His leg throbbed unbearably, and his head was trying desperately to catch up. Apparently, he’d hit it on the floor when the bloody miniature Amazon had felled him.

  He was currently recuperating in a large, overstuffed recliner. His poor, mangled leg was kicked up on the recliner’s footrest, while his good one dangled over the side of the chair. He took his gaze off the demon child and inspected his straw hat, which had suffered some minor crushing damage during the melee.

  “I thought you were that thing,” the girl explained. “How was I to know it was just some old guy?”

  “If I could get out of this chair, I’d make you think old guy, you murderous puddle-jumper.”

  “Finn!” Amanda came out of the kitchen carrying a cold beer. “Don’t talk like that. Prucilla was just trying to protect Nan.”

  “That’s right,” said Nan, who had followed Amanda into the room. “This little angel saved my life. If she hadn’t been here, I’d be a goner by now.”

  McCoy grunted noncommittally and took the beer that Amanda handed him. Though grumpy from the pain he was currently in, he was intrigued by the little spitfire named Prucilla. He had gleaned enough from Nan to realize that Pru was not your run-of-the-mill little girl. She was obviously sensitive to the paranormal, and she might prove to be quite a bit more.

  Plus, she could single-handedly take down a grown man.

  “You say this—thing—looked like a man?” McCoy asked Nan.

  “More like some kind of Greek god. I remember thinking that. To tell the truth, though, it’s all pretty fuzzy.”

  “It wasn’t a man,” the girl said.

  “Okay then, Nancy Drew. What was it?”

  The girl shrugged. “I don’t know. But it wasn’t a man, and it wasn’t a ghost.”

  “Are you sure about that?” McCoy asked.

  “Listen, Mister, I’ve seen plenty of ghosts in my time, and it wasn’t a ghost.”

  “You can call me Finn.”

  “I like McCoy better.”

  “Fine. McCoy it is. What about the man you followed from your aunt’s place. Was he a ghost?”

  “Yeah, that was a ghost. He led me down here, then he fizzled out, I guess.”

  “Fizzled out?” asked McCoy.

  “He ran out of energy,” Pru said, rolling her eyes. “Shouldn’t you know this stuff? Nan said you’re a ghost hunter.”

  Amanda failed to stifle her laugh, becoming silent only when McCoy shot her a death look.

  “I’m not a ghost hunter,” McCoy said flatly. “I … handle problems. I don’t go running around with cameras and fancy meters.”

  “Well,” Pru said, “I hope you’ve got some idea of how to handle this. That thing felt bad. It felt worse than bad.”

  “The first thing is to figure out what we’re dealing with,” McCoy said. “That’s Rule Number One. You can’t clean up a mess until you know what’s causing it.”

  “Good luck with that. Nan, did you get a hold of my mom?”

  “She and your aunt are on their way. They should be pulling up anytime.”

  “How mad did she sound?” Pru asked, wincing.

  “She’s just glad you’re safe, honey.”

  “You don’t know my mom. I’ll be grounded until I’m eighteen, at least.”<
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  “Wouldn’t hurt my feelings,” McCoy mumbled, rubbing his leg.

  “I know your aunt Karen,” Nan said. “I’ll come up with something, try to smooth things over.”

  “That’d be great, Nan.”

  “Nothing about sea-demons who look like male models, though,” McCoy warned them. “We don’t want to cause a stir. Not yet. Until I can get a handle on this, the fewer that know, the better.”

  Pru gave him another eye roll. “Like I would say anything like that to my mom. She doesn’t know about ghosts or demons or anything like that. She’d put me in a rubber room.”

  “So no one knows about what you can see?” McCoy asked.

  “Besides you three, no.”

  “Smart girl. Trust me, you’ll be happier if you keep it that way.”

  “I think they’re here,” Nan announced. “Come on, Pru. I’ll walk you to the car.”

  “Thanks.” Pru started to follow Nan out of the room, then stopped and turned around. “No hard feelings, McCoy?”

  “My leg will hate you forever. The rest of me will come around.”

  Pru smiled and looked at Amanda. “It was very nice to meet you.”

  “And it was nice meeting you, Pru. Come back and see us before you head home.”

  “It’s a deal,” Pru said. “If my mom doesn’t kill me, that is.”

  After Pru and Nan went outside, Amanda walked over to McCoy and gently rubbed the elevated leg.

  “You going to be all right?”

  “I’ll live. Kinda hard to stay mad at that kid for long.”

  “She is a firecracker,” Amanda agreed.

  “I think she’s also got the makings of a damned good handler. If she lives long enough.”

  “She’s that sensitive?”

  “I believe so, yeah. Maybe one out of a hundred-thousand people are that fine-tuned to the paranormal. Nan’s lucky that the kid showed up. I mean, what are the odds?”

  Amanda shuddered as she thought of what would have happened if Pru hadn’t been there. As much as she hated to admit it, McCoy had been right all along about Nan being in danger.

  “Even though Pru’s young,” McCoy was saying, “she’s been around the block, so to speak. She’s seen ghosts and demons, and probably most of the other usual suspects, as well. The fact that she didn’t recognize whatever was after Nan means that it’s not one of your everyday entities. And that’s probably not good.”

  “Okay. Where do we start, then? Other than just waiting around for it to show back up, I mean.”

  “I’m not sure. I’ve got an idea, but I want to think on it a little more before acting on it.” McCoy gently lowered his bad leg and gave his knee a few trial flexes. “Right now, I vote we get our things out of the car and get out of these wet clothes. My underwear’s starting to cling in places I really wish it wouldn’t.”

  “Good to know,” Amanda said as she helped McCoy out of the recliner.

  Thankfully, the storm had grown tired of the island’s company and had decided to move on to greener pastures. They made it back down to Amanda’s car just in time to see a white sedan pull away from the curb, a subdued-looking Pru looking forlornly at them through the back window.

  “How did that go?” McCoy asked Nan, who was walking back up the short driveway.

  “I don’t think she’ll get the death sentence. Her mother wasn’t terribly happy, though. We came up with a story about meeting on the beach and deciding to take shelter at my place when the storm hit, but it sounded lame even to me, and I was the one selling it.”

  “Better a lame story than the truth. In this case, at least.” McCoy opened the trunk of Amanda’s car and grabbed one of his bags. Nan would have none of it, though, and literally pushed him out of the way.

  “You’ve got an injured leg,” she fussed. “Besides, you’re my guest. I’ll help Amanda with the bags.”

  “I’m not an invalid.”

  “Never said you were. I said you were my guest. Now move aside or I’ll get my attack girl back over here.”

  “Okay, you win,” McCoy said, raising his hands in surrender. He backed away, leaving Nan and Amanda to divvy up the luggage. There wasn’t a lot of it, anyway. He walked over to the dunes and studied the churning ocean. Earlier, he had mused about the sea’s hypnotic effect, but now the crashing of the waves seemed to be more of a warning than a lull. The ocean’s tranquility had transformed into an aura of danger and malaise.

  “Finn!” Amanda called from the corner of the house. “You’ll catch your death out here in those wet clothes! Come on inside!”

  McCoy was turning back to the house when something out in the water caught his eye. It was just a shadowy glimpse, nothing more substantial than a dark spot in the greenish water, and when he turned back to look more closely, it was gone. It could have been anything, and it could have been nothing. A simple trick of the light on the water. Nothing more.

  He told his gut that.

  His gut, understandably agitated at being fed a line of bull, simply snorted sardonically. And reminded him that there was an issue with some chili cheese fries that needed to be addressed.

  ***

  The female was furious. It had been centuries since the last time they’d failed to capture their prey, and that had been due to the fact that people had actually believed then, and were thus more wary than they were now. The man and the girl-child were proving to be unexpected obstacles, and as such, needed to be dealt with quickly and decisively.

  The child would not be a problem. She was sensitive, yes, but she was inexperienced. Trapping and disposing of her would require little effort.

  The man, on the other hand, would be harder to deal with. He was older and wiser, and would not be so easily duped into letting his guard down. He apparently also possessed some magic, as evidenced by the fact that he had been able to block their efforts to further delay his arrival.

  Still, he could have no idea what he was dealing with. He might figure it out, given enough time, but time was something that the female had no intention of giving him.

  She looked at the male, as fine a specimen of their species as had ever been produced. For all that, though, he was still just a male. The perfect bait, but of little use for anything else. With his limited intelligence, he never questioned any command, but he also could not be relied upon to function with any degree of competency unless she was right beside him telling him what to do. He simply did not have the ability to adapt to a change in plans, and that is why they had missed their chance with the woman. When the girl-child had interfered, the male had hesitated, unsure of what to do next. And that indecision had cost them their victim.

  But back to the man. His threat needed to be ended, and soon. And the best way to do that was to approach it the way they would approach anything else: lure him in, and then finish him. The male would be useless as bait against the man, but there were other ways.

  Signaling for the male to follow, she began to swim out into the deeper waters.

  There were preparations to be made.

  ***

  McCoy and Amanda, having showered and changed into dry clothes, joined Nan at the dinner table just as the shadows outside began to lengthen. The storm clouds had given way to partly cloudy skies and the wind had died down, though the air was cool and still tinged by the hint of moisture. Amanda had donned shorts and a bright yellow windbreaker. McCoy, seldom anyone’s fashion role model, wore his usual jeans and denim shirt.

  McCoy’s thoughts had been consumed by the thing he might or might not have seen in the water, but once he entered the dining area and caught a whiff of the meal Nan had prepared, he found that he was ravenous. All thoughts of ghosts and evil apparitions fled as he plopped down at the table, as did the memories of greasy fries and tasteless muffins.

  “You’ve outdone yourself, Nan,” McCoy said as he piled his plate full of grilled fish and vegetables. “You shouldn’t have gone through so much trouble. Really. But, since you did, I’
m gonna eat.”

  “Pin your ears back and dig in,” Nan said, using a phrase they’d grown up with in the mountains. “I hadn’t planned on cooking, but I don’t really feel like going out right now.”

  “He’ll have no trouble doing that, believe me,” Amanda said. “Nan, you have a lovely house.”

  “Thank you. I love it here. Pete and I always dreamed of living here. Well, me more than him, probably.” Nan laughed softly, but there was a sadness in it. “Now that he’s gone, it’s all I have left.”

  “I was really sorry to hear about Pete,” McCoy said. “He seemed like a good man.”

  “He was the best. I wish you could have met him, Finn. You two would have gotten along like brothers.”

  McCoy nodded and shoved some more food into his mouth. He didn’t know what to say. Like a lot of other mountain men, he had as much tact as a wounded badger. Serious talk such as this left him feeling awkward and uncomfortable.

  Nan, sensing McCoy’s unease, moved the conversation to a different topic.

  “Do you have any idea what that thing was?” she asked.

  “Not a clue,” McCoy admitted around mouthfuls of food. “Whatever it is, though, I think the ocean is its home. That would explain why I haven’t run into anything like it before.”

  “That fact alone should help to narrow down the list of suspects,” Amanda said.

  McCoy nodded. “Yeah, it’s a place to start, anyway. Something else. Nan, did you try to use your phone before we arrived?”

  Nan shook her head. “Not since yesterday evening. The first time I used it today was when I called Karen Stallings about Pru.”

  “But it was working fine then?”

  “Yes.”

  On a hunch, McCoy pulled his cell out of his shirt pocket and dialed Nan’s number. Her phone rang almost immediately. McCoy pushed the END button and stared thoughtfully at his phone.