New release sample: QUITTING THE HERO BIZ

 The following Monday, she put her Going out of Business sign in the window of Lazy Days Spa, in among the Christmas decorations and day's special signs. No one remarked on it. They were too busy exclaiming over the Christmas tree designs and other fingernail art. They had to get a massage right that moment. Christmas shopping was wearing them down. What were those delicious aromas coming from those amazing candles? Jane didn't know if her extended holiday hours were a blessing or a curse. How much more obliviousness from Fendersburg could she take?

She let out a shriek of utter relief when she retreated to her apartment, and collapsed on her couch, in the dark, to listen to Christmas carols. She had survived her first day of Going out of Business.

Two minutes later, buyer's remorse struck.

If her life was a horror film, or a farce, this was the point where all the bad news would start rolling in. She would find out that Neighborlee had an insane asylum at the north end of town and a federal prison at the south end, and despite the renovations and repairs and the building inspector's certification, her building was prone to gas leaks, stubborn plumbing, ghosts, and had lost six tenants in the last four months.

"No. It's going to work out. I've earned it," she told herself repeatedly.

She certainly couldn't stay in Fendersburg. Even if no one noticed her Going out of Business sign, she couldn't, wouldn't turn back now. Learning to be blind and deaf to the regularly occurring minor catastrophes all around her had been painful. Letting Timmy Higgs suffer for his nastiness and refusing to pick up after irresponsible people was easy enough. Refraining from tripping shoplifters and chasing after runaway baby carriages was not. So she didn't. She could still manage such rescues without anyone guessing.

The fact that the accident and crime rate continued to trickle downwards rather pointed out she wasn't needed after all. She should have quit being the Ghost years ago.

Time to move on.

New release sample: QUITTING THE HERO BIZ

 

The research into the graduates of Neighborlee Children's Home ran into a roadblock. Only the records of the last ten or so years had been computerized. Everything earlier was waiting to be uploaded, and it wasn’t a priority. Getting physical access to the older records would have to be added to Jane’s list of tasks once she moved to town and became accepted.

"It just strikes me as odd, you know?" she told Katie during a quick dinner visit spent in speculating. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think someone is hiding the information, protecting it, maybe ...”

"Maybe someone is keeping important information like that from leaving the town boundaries?" Katie suggested.

"Maybe. Who knows?" She looked around her apartment, caught somewhere between packing and unpacking. She had been too optimistic, jumping the gun and packing before all the delays with the building hit. When she needed things for daily living, she had started unpacking. Every time she got a bit of news of progress from the landlord, she started packing again, but when there was another delay, she unpacked a little bit.

New release sample: QUITTING THE HERO BIZ

 Jane dove into her own research, now that she had taken care of the big, time-consuming tasks like planning how to renovate the inside of her new building, ordering cabinets and display cases, and creating her own sanctum in the apartment on the third floor that was three times larger than her current apartment. She calculated how much more space she would have and researched new items to add to her spa’s inventory. That was the fun part. Then she programmed her computer’s search engine to flag any stories that appeared on the Web dealing with Neighborlee, any police news, TV broadcasts, following up on personalities. Digging further on news in the town and surrounding area kept her busy in the evenings and helped her ignore the constantly fluctuating feelings about the Ghost. Honestly, when was Fendersburg going to accept the fact the Ghost was gone, and nothing they could do or say would bring him back?

She studied the major businesses in Neighborlee, the community leaders, and town stories and legends. Jane learned the Tattler had been bought at Thanksgiving by Sheridan Communications. That necessitated a quick trip to the Sanctum to confer with Demetrius and Beau, resulting in two researchers being assigned to dig into the Sheridan family. The family patriarch had been a graduate of Neighborlee Children’s Home, a lost child. Even more important, he had had several close calls with Demetrius and Beauregard in the past. Whether he was friend or foe was uncertain, but the Hoax family was sure he wasn’t allied with the Rivals. Not like the resident Neighborlee nasties, the Grandstone family.

New release sample: QUITTING THE HERO BIZ

 Her teachers found some amusement at the vagaries and stupidity of the people of Fendersburg. Jane was touched that they were concerned about her feelings and her progress in getting out of town. The Council finally met. They agreed, the focus had to shift from finding lost and abandoned and unclaimed children, to finding the next generation, the descendants of the lost and abandoned who hadn't displayed powers. People who had married others like them, produced children who might be Gifted, and had helped them hide their Gifts. 

Other members of Hoax got to work doing research. They dug into the few records of Neighborlee Children's Home that had gone public, following up on the lost children who had grown up normal, who had been adopted or who had graduated and gone out into the world. Where they had gone, what they had done with their lives.

New release sample: QUITTING THE HERO BIZ

 As the weeks crawled by and fall turned into winter, the reactions in Fendersburg wavered slowly back and forth. Glad the Ghost was gone, because it meant he wasn't interfering with their lives. Glad the Ghost was letting them grow up and think for themselves. Suddenly, the Ghost showing up to fix or prevent every minor catastrophe was seen as interference with the rights and freedoms of the people of Fendersburg. Then someone would make a mistake, cause an accident, take a stupid risk, essentially thumb their nose at the warnings of people with more common sense, and suddenly everyone was furious again. The Ghost had no right to abandon his responsibilities. The race resumed to blame someone for driving the Ghost away.

There was always someone who spoke with an almost homesick fondness for the days when the Ghost showed up within a few seconds of a call for help or the sound of squealing brakes. Girls who had never been within a hundred yards of the Ghost talked about the sound of his voice, the touch of his hand, feeling his arm around them as he carried them away from danger. Jane wondered how many times she could hear such outright lies in her shop before she became physically ill. As time went on, the worst of the airhead liars got into fights with each other over who the Ghost would have dated and eventually married.

She found some amusement in the torments Otis went through, when people remembered the broad hints he had dropped that he was the Ghost. Girls wanted him to prove his secret identity. People wanted him to pay for damage that he, as the Ghost, hadn't prevented.

New release sample: QUITTING THE HERO BIZ

 At the three-week mark, Jane took off Saturday night after closing up the spa and headed for Neighborlee. She walked around all day on Sunday, glorying in the quiet, the fall sunshine, the people who smiled at a total stranger and offered advice on where to get the best burger, the best bed & breakfast, and recommended she attend the college’s newest theatrical production. She made an appointment with the realtor to look at the Spindelmutter building, and laughed at herself, remembering last time she thought about doing it the Ghost’s way. It was perfect. Huge picture windows and a recessed doorway, old brick, in the middle of the business district, in a long row of quaint, fifties-style buildings.

The realtor, Debbi Kunardi, answered all Jane's questions. She couldn't take over the building right away. The county building inspector had found major foundation damage that needed to be repaired. The owner was in the middle of gathering estimates and determining what he wanted to do, how extensive he wanted to make the repairs. When Debbi told him that Angela at Divine's Emporium had recommended the location to Jane, the owner promised the repairs wouldn't impact the lease price at all. He would even sign a paper locking in his price before he found out the cost of repairs, guaranteeing Jane would have first refusal after the renovations had been made. He also promised a power wash to freshen up the outside of the building.

"Definitely weird," Katie agreed, when Jane reported on the results of her first foray into resettling to Neighborlee. "But nice." 

"It's kind of like what Beau told me. The town is alive and reaches out to welcome you, if you've found your place there."

New release sample: QUITTING THE HERO BIZ

 The usual bi-monthly diatribe about vigilantes and people living in fantasy worlds ran in the Fendersburg Trumpet a week after the Ghost's resignation letter. Instead of the usual demand for intensive psychiatric evaluation for the Ghost, the letter writer, Marijane Hunter, congratulated the Ghost on finally gaining some perspective and a grasp on reality.

Three days later, her house was burglarized. She wrote a scathing letter to the editor, blaming the entire town for the Ghost's retirement.

Other than Marijane being robbed, Jane didn't notice any change in the crime rate in Fendersburg. She suspected someone had struck Marijane because of her letters to the editor. For all she knew, people blamed her vitriolic letters for the Ghost leaving.

The accident rate went down, now that people no longer took their safety for granted. Jane would have laughed, except she felt an odd little twinge of guilt. Had she encouraged people to be careless about their own welfare? Maybe her leaving was good for Fendersburg. Maybe it was good for the world that there really weren’t any comic book style superheroes.

It didn't matter. She reminded herself of that firmly every time she heard someone discussing the Ghost’s reasons for quitting. She reminded herself of that every time she crossed a day off her hidden countdown calendar.

New release sample: QUITTING THE HERO BIZ

 

Timmy Higgs got stuck in the tree, chasing his balsa wood plane two days after the letter appeared in the paper. He hung there for nearly half an hour before his mother called for the fire department. Ginny Piper, Fendersburg's fire chief, laughed about it when she came into the spa that afternoon for her weekly therapeutic massage.

"Kind of nice, you know? Using our equipment and training." She sighed as Jane rubbed deep into her shoulder muscles. "That kid was actually scared, just hanging there, kicking and starting to blubber. And you know what he told me when we got him down to the ground? He said the Ghost was his friend, and he wanted to know what we did to scare him away. The Ghost has too much sense to be friends with that brat. He kicked me in the ankle when I told him not to climb that tree again." She snorted. "His mother swatted his bottom before she dragged him away. I bet that's the first time that ever happened. For both of them."

"Probably," Jane agreed. Inside the privacy of her head, she wavered between shrieking and laughter. Timmy thought he was her friend? Not for all the tea in Asia!

New release sample: QUITTING THE HERO BIZ

 

"The moment you're ready to make the move, do let me know." Angela rested her hand on Jane's wrist for a few seconds. "I know a good two, three dozen people who would be ecstatic to have a place like yours come into town. In fact, if you started now, you could be open in time to take advantage of the Christmas rush."

"Oh... I... Well..." Jane fought not to yank her hand out from the soothing warmth of Angela's hand. “It’s not that easy.”

Demetrius and Beauregard would never let her abandon Fendersburg. Even if the Rivals were ignoring the town lately.

"Anything is possible."

Later, as Angela was ringing up the shirts Jane had picked out, and a bag of two pieces from every candy jar, the Wishing Ball caught her attention. Angela laughed and nodded at it.

"Go ahead. Make a wish." A chiming laugh escaped her. Something in her gaze dared Jane, while quashing the automatic, unspoken response: Wishes are for children.

Jane waited a moment for the colors to swirl gently in the reflective, black opal surface. They didn't. When she put her hand flat on the top curve, she didn't feel that zip-tingle she had always gotten as a child when she made her wish. The disappointment was thick enough to block any words she might have tried to speak.

Please... I want to get out of Fendersburg. Away from those lazy, greedy, totally oblivious people. I want to find a new place to live, and a spa even better than the one I have now, where people use common sense and don't expect a miracle to come out of a jar. I want... I want there to be magic again. Something beyond me, bigger than me, stronger than me. Something mysterious and awesome.

A single spark leaped off the Wishing Ball as she removed her hand and Jane gasped, staring at her index finger where the spark rested for a moment, a golden-green, swirling ball that seemed to have a core of black, just before it vanished.

She thought Angela frowned at her, but a moment later she wore her usual serene, slightly superior, slightly amused expression. What her friend Katie always called a "Vulcan smirk."

New release sample: QUITTING THE HERO BIZ

 "I have a spa, back home. Facials, manicures, pedicures, massages, sauna."

"You do all that? Multi-talented. And probably overworked." Angela gestured with a tip of her head toward a corner of the main room. Jane saw a white wrought iron bistro table and chairs.

Definitely overworked, but nothing I can admit to you.

Angela chuckled as she went behind the counter. "Iced green tea with ginseng and honey?"

"That sounds lovely, thanks." Jane settled down at the little table. "Umm, actually, I don't do all those things. I have people who come in and provide services. I have plenty of room in my store, so... Most of what I do is make appointments and sell all sorts of teas and creams and bath salts. The good kind, the legitimate kind," she hurried to add.

"Of course. I wouldn't expect anything else." Angela came back to the table with two glasses full of ice and two tall bottles of iced green tea in Jane's favorite brand. 

Was there room behind the counter for a cooler and glasses and ice? She shrugged away that consideration. Things happened at Divine's Emporium and it was wiser not to ask questions. Answers might destroy the wonder, the sense of "anything is possible."

"We could use a spa like yours. If you ever consider coming back home to Neighborlee, I know just the place. The old Spindelmutter building. Lots of room, three floors, and the third floor is an apartment. You could add a whirlpool and expand your offerings to include exercise clothes and such."

Jane took the information from Angela and chatted about the possibilities. She had actually been thinking about expanding her merchandise to include clothes and homeopathic treatments. Who was she hurting by playing along? It was a good cover story.

Although, a niggling sense of warning crept through her after just a minute or two. Essentially, she was lying to Angela, and Jane vaguely remembered some unspoken law that no one ever crossed Angela or tried to steal from Divine’s Emporium.

New release sample: QUITTING THE HERO BIZ

 

Angela smiled wider, her expression lighting up as she studied Jane's face. "Yes, definitely. You were that quiet, pale little girl who kept trying to turn yourself invisible." She laughed.

Jane laughed with her. The caress in Angela’s voice made her attempts to fade into the wallpaper sound charming. Sensible.

"I still have that volume of The Jungle Book you loved to read whenever you visited. Jane Wilson. Or did you change your name when you became a legal adult? Did your adopted parents change your name? Never mind. That's your business." She waved her hand, brushing away the questions before Jane could feel invaded. "What brings you to Neighborlee?"

"Playing hooky." She laughed a little.

It was nearly the truth, even if she was here on official Hoax, Inc., business. The grinding stupidity of Fendersburg, where everyone expected the Ghost to save them from a total lack of common sense, made any brief escape feel like a vacation.

"From what?" 

For a moment, that familiar, crooked little knowing smile played across Angela's face. It hinted she knew all the things Jane couldn't say, the things she was feeling and hadn't been able to put into words. She knew her secrets and would wait patiently until Jane was ready to spill them.

New release sample: QUITTING THE HERO BIZ

 The sign out front promised whatever someone needed would be here. Did that meant everything had to be here? Jane grinned, wondering if "everything" could indeed be jammed into this house.

She frowned, when it struck her that the room and the aisles certainly seemed longer than should have fit into the house. At least, not the size of house she had glimpsed from the outside. Maybe it was just an optical illusion. With so much crammed in, it just seemed bigger than it really was.

It wasn't like space could be stretched to accommodate everything shoehorned in here. Could it? Sure, some of the members of Hoax had managed to stretch space and even stretch time when they were under a great deal of pressure, but they couldn't make it last.

Her wandering brought her to the main room. Another sigh, as she saw the marble-topped counter with the brass cash register and shelves full of apothecary jars, just like she remembered them.

Where was the Wishing Ball? Panic shot through her, like the first time she rose three feet off the ground without knowing quite how she did it.

"Welcome to Divine's Emporium." A woman stepped through the doorway behind her.

Jane turned around quickly.

Angela, the proprietor of the shop, hadn’t changed in the dozen-plus years since Jane had left Neighborlee. The same long waterfall of hair in dozens of shades of gold, with a hint of strawberry. The same intense, crystalline blue eyes. The same granny-style dress in a blue handkerchief print. Angela had the kind of figure that looked good in the semi-shapeless dress, neither model skinny nor buxom. Just right.

"Uh, hi... I'm—”

"I know you." Angela caught hold of Jane's hand and led her past the counter to a tall, skinny window. The Wishing Ball was right there on the corner, why hadn't Jane seen it?

New release sample: QUITTING THE HERO BIZ

 

Was the Wishing Ball still there? What would she wish for, if she could?

"That's easy," Jane muttered as she stepped off the sidewalk onto the flagstone path and through the wrought iron gate that stood open. "To escape Fendersburg."

She grinned at her silliness. She had to grin, or she might cry. Sometimes she absolutely hated the town of lazy, entitlement-attitude mental midgets she had to look after while trying to trick the Rivals into making mistakes so Hoax could identify them.

Then she was at the porch and the front door. She sighed in delight as she pushed the front door open. Bells chimed sweetly, almost like singing, and the sound faded slowly as she stepped down the short entry hallway. The sense of having walked into a familiar place wrapped around her. She smelled fruity scented candles, the dusty perfume of books, and chocolate. Freestanding display shelves invited her to browse a haphazard collection of figurines and decorative boxes, candles, dishes, and numerous other bright, colorful items she ignored as she let memory guide her feet. 

Divine's didn't stock all the trendy candy and gimmicks that cluttered the counters at other stores. No novelty candy shaped like aliens. No trading cards and dispensers shaped like garbage cans or cell phones. She saw candy bars and gum, hard candy and licorice whips and funny, funky shapes she hadn't seen since childhood. Jane wandered for a few minutes, looking at all the display boxes and jars. Dolls in lacy dresses, wooden toys, puzzles made of metal and string and wood, pinwheels and bottles of bubbles, sidewalk chalk, squirt guns, balloons, and other fragments of an innocent, happier time.

New release sample: QUITTING THE HERO BIZ

 "Wonder how much trouble I’d get into if I looked for people I knew … No. Don't be ridiculous." Jane sighed and quashed her grumbling. The last thing she needed was to be caught talking to herself. Even in a town that regularly produced odd incidents, she didn’t want to risk catching anyone’s attention. Or worse, being remembered. One of the first lessons Beau had taught her was to blend in, to avoid notice. To be a watcher, rather than the watched. The safe, responsible use of her Gift depended on it.

More memories crashed down on Jane as she turned the corner onto the street where Divine's Emporium sat near the dead end. Instead of the usual metal highway guardrail barrier at the high point of the slope, Neighborlee had a pretty wooden gate, and signs pointing to paths people could take to walk down to the park below. Jane studied the building as she walked down the street, remembering bits and pieces. The multiple shelves of penny candy in old apothecary jars. The big brass cash register. The book room. The vintage clothing room, where children could play dress up as much as they wanted. Funny, how it never occurred to Jane until now that adults who came into the shop during their play never seemed upset. Angela, the owner, protected their fun.

"The Wishing Ball," she whispered, and her steps slowed as she remembered the globe just about the size of a bowling ball, dark metallic rainbow swirls, sitting in a stand shaped like a coiled dragon. She had loved simply gazing into the Wishing Ball, on the counter next to the cash register. Jane had always imagined someday the soft swirling of colors in the ball would resolve into images that would answer the questions that haunted her young mind. Who her parents were, how they had lost her, so she had been found, a little more than a year old, sitting by the side of the road just inside Neighborlee's borders. Like the other children, Jane had made her share of wishes on the Wishing Ball. Many had come true, but they were easy wishes: what she wanted for Christmas, to pass an upcoming test, for the bullies to leave her alone.

New release sample: QUITTING THE HERO BIZ

 

Jane threw away the rest of her apple. She was careful to wrap up the brownie, though. Only a fool would throw away three inches by three inches of fudgy chocolaty goodness with frosting as thick as the brownie itself. She might need the comfort of that brownie after she visited Divine's Emporium.

She remembered how to get there, like she had built-in GPS. A big olive and gold Victorian house on a dead-end street overlooking the slope down into the park. Jane dredged up memories of Divine's as she walked the few blocks over there. Outings to town were treats at the orphanage. She remembered competing with the other girls to hold their housemother's hand as they walked from their cottage to the curiosity shop. Or better yet, to hold the hand of Mrs. Silvestri, the orphanage administrator, when she took children into town for shopping excursions or to play in the park or go to a play at the college.

Funny, how easy it was to remember all those little things now, when up until this visit, it felt like her life hadn't really started until Beau and Demetrius took her to the Sanctum. Not that the Old Poops would ever employ memory-wiping. 

New release sample: QUITTING THE HERO BIZ

 Jane had chafed, waiting for the day her teachers would give her the duty of testing Neighborlee. She had a talent for sensing when a Gift was being used. Just last summer, she had helped locate a girl in Sydney, Australia, who had started manifesting her Gift at age nine. Demetrius and Beauregard had brought her along to investigate. She had befriended the frightened child and convinced her that being able to manipulate water like clay didn’t make her a freak or dangerous.

That had been far more satisfying than the last five years assigned to Fendersburg, the town the Old Poops had put under her care. Jane understood the necessity of generating “odd” occurrences to draw the attention of the Rivals, trick them into making mistakes, to identify and trap them. Her Ghost talent was perfect for the task, allowing her to be in the middle of activities in town while staying entirely anonymous, so the Rivals would never guess she was the bait, even if she talked to them face-to-face. The problem was that Fendersburg’s population seemed to be getting more lazy and shed more I.Q. points as time went on. She wanted something more challenging and meaningful. Just how long could she play “catch me if you can” with the Rivals before they gave up and left Fendersburg alone?

Jane paused in mid-crunch and had a hard time swallowing the last bite of her apple. Thinking about going back to that antithesis of Mayberry had just killed her appetite. On the surface, Fendersburg looked a lot like Neighborlee: small town, business district measured in blocks, not miles; weekly newspaper, Mom & Pop businesses. Everybody knew everybody else's business. Underneath... Neighborlee didn't have a suspected inbreeding problem. Here, people cared about good personal hygiene, and everybody graduated from high school and at least tried to go to college. No Gifted child would ever appear in Fendersburg. Most of her duties entailed protecting the town from itself. 

That sense of being wasted, of having a useless job, made this visit to Neighborlee feel like a treat. Other than the Sanctum and her little apartment in Fendersburg, this was the only other home she had ever had. Ten years in the Neighborlee Children's Home. She had been happy there. She had friends. What happened to those friends? Did they remember her? She had been a quiet child, with a talent for blending into the background and being unnoticed, even before she discovered her Gift.

New Release: QUITTING THE HERO BIZ, Neighborlee Book 6

 

Jane Wilson disappeared when she was a child. When she learned to make herself invisible, her teachers made her disappear from Neighborlee Children's Home. And just in time, too -- before some nasty folks known only as the Rivals tried to take her away, to turn her into a weapon.

 

Years later, she used her semi-pseudo-superhero powers to become the Ghost, defender of the little town of Fendersburg. The plan was to attract the attention of the Rivals, and lure them into a trap. Unfortunately, the people of Fendersburg got lazy, and soon grew so dependent on the Ghost to fix all their problems, they stopped thinking for themselves.

 

So Jane quit being the Ghost. In the wake of the odd events during the holidays in Neighborlee, she returned to her roots. 

Her mission:

Find out what happened to all the Lost Kids who lived in Neighborlee Children's Home.

Find out what the Rivals are looking for in Neighborlee.

Find the guardians.

Out NOW, in Print and Ebook, from Ye Olde Dragon Books