The Last of the Red Hot Vampires - By Katie MacAlister Page 0,18
it away from me. I stomped over to the door, and jerked it open. "Leave. Now!"
"And just how do you expect to bend me to your will? Scream? I told you, no one below would hear you over the music."
Anger, frustration, and the suspicion that I had been made to look a fool grew within me, until I thought I would explode with it. I sucked in a deep breath, prepared to rip him up one side and down the other, but before I could, a storm broke directly overhead. Brilliant blue light exploded around the pub, followed immediately by thunder so loud it shook not only the glass in the windows, but could be felt in the walls and floor of the pub. Before the rumble of thunder disappeared, the lights went out, the music of the pub suddenly silenced. The silence was almost smothering in its thickness.
I tipped my head back and screamed for all I was worth. Sarah threw herself sideways and covered her ears as I released every bit of pent-up emotion. It was a scream the likes of which I'd never made before, and one I doubted I'd be able to duplicate.
Sudden voices from below indicated they had heard me.
Theo snarled something in the darkness. I stumbled to the bed, finding and clutching Sarah as she made odd little squeaking noises. Lights flashed in the hallway outside my room, visible through the open door. A shadow a hair darker than the surrounding blackness paused in the doorway for a moment.
"You foolish woman," the Theo-shaped shadow said. "Do you not realize you will need a champion for the trials? To try it alone is folly. You will end up destroying yourself...and me as well."
The pub owner called up the stairs to ask if we were all right, the light from his flashlight flickering and dancing in an erratic pattern on the wall opposite us. I slumped against Sarah, relieved when Theo's shadow merged into that of the hallway, his last words echoing in my mind.
"I will not let you escape me as Hope did."
Chapter 5
"Could you have possibly been any ruder to poor Theo?"
"Shhh. Madame What's-her-face is gesturing for you. No doubt she wants to anoint you or something."
"It's Mystic, not Madame. Mystic Bettina, as you know well. Oooh! She must have picked me to be one of her assistants! Fabulous! I'll be in a perfect position for unbiased observation." Sarah jumped out of her seat and hurried over to where the local medium was standing with two women.
"Very unbiased," I said to myself, then smiled reassuringly at the man on my left as he glanced at me.
He leaned over and whispered, "Is this your first séance?"
I nodded.
"Mine too," he said in a confiding tone, and hazarded a shy smile. "My wife - that's her there with the others - is a member of the local ghost hunter's group, so she's been wanting to come to a séance for a long time. I'm not sure I believe in all this." He chuckled a little, watching me carefully to see if I was going to mock him for his skepticism.
"I'm a scientist by trade, and a natural-born skeptic," I assured him. I dropped my voice a little so the other four people in the room couldn't overhear us. "To be honest, I'm just here to explain to my friend how all the tricks are done. She's one of those people who is ready to give anyone the benefit of the doubt, no matter how unlikely the situation."
"Ah, a true believer," my new friend said, nodding. "There are a lot of those in the ghost hunter's group. I'm Milo, by the way."
"Portia," I said, shaking his hand. "Shall we join forces to bring reason to our loved ones?"
He glanced nervously at his wife, who was approaching the table with the small woman who claimed she was a "world-renowned medium." "Indeed we could, although I hesitate to disappoint my wife. She wants so much to contact her father, you see. He passed on when she was quite young. Still, I've told her that to have so much faith in such things is sheer folly."
"I've found that faith is vastly overrated," I said softly, then turned to Sarah as she slid into the seat next to me. "So are you to hold the ghostly tambourine, or rap on the table at the appropriate time?"
She whapped me on the arm and whispered at me to behave myself.