Maggie on the Bounty (7 page)

"S
o what you have is a vampire
problem," I explained to Julio. 

We were back in his office.  It was
almost nine o'clock and he still hadn't left for the day.  Looked like the
paperwork on his desk was multiplying like bunnies.  Colored folders and typed
labels were everywhere.  He patted his sweaty pate with a Kleenex and shook his
head, "Vampires?  Well, clear them out and let's get this place haunted
again."

"It isn't quite that
simple," I explained.  "There is a portal in your swimming pool's
dressing room and I don't think I'm going to have much luck closing it."

He leaned forward, pointing his fat
finger in my face. "If you expect to make any money at all from this deal,
you'll seal it up.  Are you or are you not one of the best world walkers this
side of the boundary?"

Okay, he had me there.

"Listen, if there is anyone
who can do it, it'll be me, but I don't know if I can do it," I
explained.  "There's a rogue world walker who is going to open up anything
I close."

"Well, get that world walker
to stop."

"Again, not as easy as you're
making it sound.  And that also doesn't fix the problem that you have a massive
illegal portal someone is building in the basement of your ship."

"Well, close that up,
too."

"That's like asking someone to
close up the Colorado River."

"Well, Hoover built that damn
dam and it seems like it is doing an okay job."

"They didn't build the Hoover
Dam in 48 hours."

"That's all the
time you've got," he replied, going back to the stack of papers on his
desk.

"I'm tripling our
salary."

"WHAT!" Julio roared. 
That got his attention.

"And you're lucky I don't
report you for maintaining an illegal portal without notifying The Other Side
authorities," I threatened.

"I didn't even know it was
here!" he sputtered.

"Tell that to the judge."

"This is extortion!"

"No, I've looked up extortion,
and that is not the definition of it."  I leaned forward.  "This is
tough.  This is not just going to go away overnight."

"Well, then, stay as long as
you need to make it stop!" he said.

"The point you're missing is
that we might not be able to make it stop," Killian explained. 
"Please believe my partner when she says that this is a problem that may
be bigger than both of us."

"I have a ghost ship to
run."  Julio relaxed into his chair.  I could see the wheels of his mind
slowly starting to crank.  This was not a good thing.  "Maybe I'll turn it
into a vampire ship.  That'll keep the tourist dollars rolling in."

"No, trust me, you don't want
to do that," I said.

"And why not?  Those goth kids
are all over the sparkly vampires.  I could hold Valentine's Day dances every
day.  A nice little bar for vampires and the people who want to get to know
them."

"That is a terrible
idea."

"People will pay a lot of
money to get up close and personal.  We'll hem them in one of the ballrooms
with some holy relics and garlic.  It'll be better than any haunted Halloween
maze offered in Southern California!"

"Those haunted mazes have
strict no-touch/no-kill policies!  Look, this is a terrible plan."

"No, the more I think about
this, the better it gets."

"You can't let folks here on
Earth know that monsters are real, not if you want to live."

"Every child in America knows
monsters are real.  The fact I have confirmed evidence?  They'll claim me as a
hero!"

"You'll get yourself
disappeared really quickly."

"I'll start the rumors and the
internet will take care of the rest."

"That sounds like a great idea
for a meme, but that's going to get a lot of people hurt.  I, along with the
authorities of The Other Side, can't let you do that."

"Well, then, you've got 36
hours left in your contract to shut up that portal or that's exactly what I'm
going to do.  You want to save humanity?  You better put on your big girl pants
and get to it.  The time is wasting.  Frankly, I don't really care if you do or
don't.  I'm sitting on a cash cow either way.  You get to decide how people
spend their money."

I looked at Killian, wondering if
Julio understood that if he opened this boat up as a vampire theme park, he'd
be the first item on the fun menu.

K
illian and I walked up to the top
decks of the Empress Adelaide.  The lights of Long Beach twinkled in front of
us.  The sky was dark.  I'm sure there were probably stars up there, but you
can't see anything with all the light pollution. 

A bunch of tourists were up on the
top decks, taking pictures of each other as they pretended to fall overboard. 
Lovers strolled hand in hand and whispered sweet whatevers into each other's
ears.  Some of the lovers were real.  What was freaking me out a whole lot more
was that a lot of them were ghosts.

"What the hell?" I said
as one of the ghost couples walked right through me.  I felt like someone
grabbed both my lungs and pushed all the air out of my body.

"I do not believe this is hell,
Maggie."

"Maybe for you it's not."

Now, I had made my peace with
ghostly types after our adventure in Ghost Town, but they still weren't my
favorite.  Give me something I could stake any day of the week over an
uncontrollable mist that can come and flip your lights on and off while you're
trying to watch TV.  And now they were all around us.

I looked at Killian. "Did you
see them?"

Killian was fixated upon a loud
family where one boy was beating up on his kid brother every time his mom's
back was turned. "I do not know which is the more terrifying."

We were about to learn.

My cell phone rang.  I picked it up
and said, "MacKay &... K Tracking.  How can I help you?"

"Maggie! 
It's Lacy."

"Who
is it?" asked Killian.

"Your
girlfriend," I said.  "Now let me find out why she's calling,
okay?"

"Tell
her to call me if she requires more payment for doing us that favor."

"She
has been paid in full, elf."

"I am
happy to increase her salary."

I rolled
my eyes and turned back to the phone. "Lacy,
what's up?  You working the midnight shift?"

"Somebody's
got to hold down the fort when things get ugly."

Kind of
like how emergency rooms get really busy when the bars let out, The Other Side
police station was its busiest after the sun went down.

"Listen,
Lacy, we're stuck in the middle of a haunted boat and surrounded by ghosts
right now..."

"We're
all busy, Maggie," replied Lacy, not at all impressed.  "I got back
those fang prints on that guy you staked."

"Yeah?"
I said as I pulled a notebook from my jacket pocket.  "Hit me."

"Vamp
named Les Westerly.  Last known record of him was in 1936 and then he
disappeared.  No paperwork saying he should be anywhere close to Long Beach, so
on behalf of The Other Side's finest, we'd like to thank you for bringing in a
skip who appears to have been hiding on Earth for the past eighty years.  Your
reward check is in the mail.  And on that note, I have been told to tell you to
quit staking vampires until you find out whether or not they should be staked,
please."

"Consider
me reprimanded."

"I
can practically hear the waves of sorrow and regret in your voice."

"I
can barely keep them contained," I replied dryly.  "Thanks,
Lacy!"

"Tell
that partner of yours to come in anytime he'd like to be reprimanded."

"I
gotta go, Lacy.  Bad reception.  Ghosts are screwing up the connection,"
and then I hung up.

"Ghosts
were not 'screwing up the connection,' Maggie," Killian said.

"Trust
me, things were getting screwy enough."

"What
did she have to say?"

I pocketed
my phone.  "That vampire we got last weekend wasn't supposed to be
here."

"Good!"
replied Killian.  "That should make the paperwork process smoother."

"Yeah,
good that we didn't stake an innocent vamp.  Not good that the last anyone ever
saw him was eighty years ago and suddenly he appears out of nowhere in a
bathroom stall dressed like he should be in The Great Gatsby.  Or more to the point," I said as I pointed at all of the
ghosts around us, "like he should be hanging out with these guys instead
of hanging out with us."

"What
do you think is going on, Maggie?"

I tried
feeling the boundary, but was getting nothing.  "Mom felt nothing.  I'm
feeling nothing.  These guys shouldn't be here at all.  And yet, here they
are.  I'm wondering if that portal downstairs is so loud, it is just drowning
everything out.  Sort of like noise-canceling headsets."

It was at that moment that there was
the sound of a low horn.  It was like a foghorn, except louder.  Way louder. 
Earth-trembling louder.  It made the entire floor rumble.  And that's when I
felt the shift.  It wasn't just a little shift, I felt the entire boat shift. 
Smoke started pouring out of one of the stacks and it began glowing bright red
against the night sky.

"What is that?" I asked
Killian, pointing to the day-glo light coming off the top of the ship.  It was
like the entire place had been put under some dead-head's black light, and we
were joining a party already in-progress.

He had no answers for me and was
looking just as blown away as I was from the whole thing.  That's when I
realized what had happened.  Everything beyond the boat had disappeared.  The
topography was the same, but the skyscrapers and touristy harbor were gone. 
Inside the boat, everything had a fresh new gleam to it, like it had just been
built.  All the ghosts had been replaced by real people strolling along the
decks, and the real people were now ghosts.  Porters and cruise directors walked
along to make sure everyone was safe and sound.  Laughter tinkled from below
decks as well as the sound of an orchestra playing a swinging tune.  No one
seemed to notice anything was wackadoo except for me and Killian.

"Fuck."

Killian let out a slow whistle,
"I should say so."

I grabbed Killian and dragged him
away.

"Where are you taking me,
Maggie?"

"We sort of stick out like
sore thumbs," I replied, pointing down at what we were wearing and the
strange looks we were getting from the passengers.  Killian, in his navy blue
turtleneck and slacks could probably have passed as a sailor, but me in my
leathers, boots, utility belt of weapons, and neck guard were not going to be
fooling anyone.  I pulled Killian into a doorway and tried to pretend like we
could disappear into the shadows.

Killian breathed deep. 
"Right.  First order of business, find ourselves clothing appropriate to
the local color."

"First order of business, we
get back to our own time and figure out what the hell is going on," I
muttered as I started feeling the air around us.  "I should have told
Julio to take this job and blow it out his porthole."

"What are you doing, Maggie?"

"Trying to find the weak
spot."

"What do you mean?"

"To get us home."

"How do you propose to do
that?"

"I'll just punch a hole in
dimensions," I said as I gave Killian a good-natured punch in the arm,
trying to reassure him I had everything under control.  "Do you remember
who you're talking to?"

"I know very well who I am
talking to, Maggie."

I laced my fingers and gave my
knuckles a good cracking.  I rolled my head and loosened up my shoulders.  I
gathered up the energy and reached out to punch through dimensions... and my
hand stayed exactly in this dimension.

"What the what?!?" I
asked.  I pushed again.  Nothing.  Flop sweat started prickling on my lip. 
"Come on!" I grunted.

Killian folded his arms and looked
at me, "Whom was I talking to again?"

"I don't need any of your
attitude, elf.  Why isn't this working?"

"Perhaps because you are
attempting to walk through both time and space?" Killian oh-so-helpfully
pointed out.

Smart ass.  "Excuse me, I will
have you know that I completely took time into my space calculations."

"And yet, here we still are."

"How many portals to other
dimensions have you opened recently, Killian?  I think the answer would be
none."

"Might I suggest we go down to
the swimming pool instead?"

"The swimming pool...?" I
repeated, trying again to bust through the dimensions.

"I seem to recollect,
Maggie," he explained like I was some idiot child, "there was a
natural vortex in the swimming area, which you believed was a doorway between
the dimensions."

Color me an idiot.

"Good thinking.  Let's see if
we can remember where it is."

"And you call yourself a
tracker," he said affectionately.  "Come along, Maggie.  Follow
me."

We began
walking swiftly along the deck towards a door that would most likely take us
somewhere close to a door that went inside and down.  That was about as close
as I could remember about that pool's direction.  Again, I felt like I was
flying blind.  Direction was completely confounding my mind.

"Why
can't I remember where anything is on this ship, Killian?"

He patted
my shoulder bracingly.  "If there are a number of dimensions here,
especially dimensions which fold upon themselves in time and space, you are
probably sensing thousands of doorways and paths."

The elf made sense.  I think Killian clued in on how freaked out I
was, flying so blind, because he paused for a moment to reassure me.  "I
have traveled the elfin forest in the dead of a moonless night with nothing to
guide me and I made it through.  I might not be a world walker like your
father, but perhaps being blind to the dimensions here shall be useful.  Let me
navigate us and trust I shall not let you come to harm."

I gripped
Killian's hand for just a second. I didn't want to get too mushy on him, but
there was a part of me that just wanted to let him know, just for a moment,
that I was really grateful.  "Cool," I said. 
"Whatever."

"So,"
he continued, completely letting it pass without embarrassing me, "do you
believe we have traveled to a ghost dimension or just another dimension of
reality?"

JUST another
dimension of reality...  I love how he made it sound as exciting as picking
between white and wheat bread at the grocery store.  As we passed another group
of Depression- era people, along with some ghosties of
the 21st Century to come, I said, "It doesn't feel like it's just ghosts,
Killian.  We know that these modern people are real people from our own world. 
We're stuck in some sort of other time."  I stopped in my tracks. 
"That's why my mom can't sense them.  They're not dead."

Killian put
his arm behind me and moved me along.  "Then it should be easier to return
to our time, should it not?"

Killian and I turned the corner on
the steps, then walked through a small lobby to get to the next set of stairs. 
That's when a bouncy little head of familiar blonde hair came running at us. 
Up until this point, we had been getting some funny looks, but folks were
giving us a pretty wide berth.  This kid, however, was coming straight at us
like she recognized us.  What was scarier was that both Killian and I
recognized her, too.  She was our little pool protector, our little badass.  I
didn't know whether to hug her or run.  She reached us before I could decide.

Shyly, she whispered, "You're
real, aren't you?  Everyone said you were my imaginary friends and made fun of
me, but you're really real!"

"We're real," I replied. 
"Here.  Punch him in the gut."

Killian
smacked me in the arm.

"I am
Jackie," she said.

"We saw you in the pool,"
I said.  "You yelled at a woman in black."  I put up my hands.
"Wait a minute.  Are you the ghost who wrote in the soap bubbles and was
messing around with the soda machine?"

The kid heard something behind
her.  Her eyes got as big as mine did the first time I found out there really
was a monster under my bed.  "You must help us!" she said, suddenly
hyperventilating. 

I slowed that kid's roll.  "I
know!  That's what we're going to try and do."

She looked over her shoulder in
fear, "She's coming.  I must go!"

"Who is coming?"

"Her!"

"Tell us what you need!"
I said.

"Watch out!" she warned
us.  "There is death all around us!"

Jackie began shaking.  She pointed
down the promenade.  "There she is.  There she is with her friends!  They
keep killing everyone.  People go with them and then we find them with two
bite-holes in their neck, and then they are like ghosts.  And you can't do
anything to stop them.  They just want to bite you."

Killian and I looked where she was
pointing and there was that gal in black with a couple of swells on her arm,
the same lady who had oh-so-kindly been the cruise director to those vampires I
had staked earlier. 

Only I didn't think she had me and
Killian on her day's events list.

The woman in black looked up, saw
us, and took off the other direction.  If her fangs hadn't given her away, her
speed sure did.  No woman should be able to run that fast in high heels. Her
fellas followed after without even breaking a sweat.

It was on.  Killian and I broke out
in a flat sprint, getting some none-too-friendly looks from the staff.  Guess
they weren't used to seeing a girl in leather. 

"Costumed performers coming
through!" I shouted as we pushed through the crowd. 

Down the steps we went, deep into
the heart of the ship.  "Remind me to pack my cocktail clothes the next
time we decide to jump times," I asked Killian.

Even though I was running full tilt
and was Killian running even faster, that vampire was gone.  Killian put his
arm out and slowed me down.  The hallway stretching in front of us was
completely empty with nothing but rows and rows of closed doors.  She could
have slipped into any one of the staterooms.

"You take that side, I'll take
this one," I said, jiggling the handles.  It was a wasted effort.  They
were all locked.  Our lady and her boy toys gave us the slip.  We lost her.