Nightmare
on Jacey Street
Helens-of-Troy
Book
2
Janine
McCaw
Genre:
Paranormal/Urban Fantasy
Publisher:
Supernatural Central
Date
of Publication: October 2016
ISBN:ISBN-13:978-1537646763
ISBN-10:1537646761
ASIN:
B01ILC0B3Y
Number
of pages: 164
Word
Count: 55,000
Cover
Artist: Tom McCaw
Book
Description:
NIGHTMARE
ON JACEY STREET, book two in the Helens-of-Troy series, finds
matriarch Helena LaRose planning a quiet Thanksgiving dinner with her
daughter Helen and granddaughter Ellie. Uninvited guests keep turning
up at the door, and when the turkey hits the table, all hell breaks
loose
To
add to the craziness, body parts are turning up in the neighborhood.
Helen gets a new job at the police station with her mother`s ex-lover
Chief Roy Cohen and Ellie gets a new job at the Topaz with her
frenemy Tara Wildman. Ryan Lachey and Tom Williams uncover secrets
from Jacey's Sumner's mysterious past.
Join
the Helens and your favorite Trojans as the hellmouth opens once
again and the LaRose women are called upon to ward off the latest
terror in the sleepy little town of Troy.
NIGHTMARE
ON JACEY STREET...because it's never good when the dead are at your
door.
NIGHTMARE
ON JACEY STREET
Helens-of-Troy
Book 2
Monday…
CHAPTER
ONE
Helen
LaRose burst through the front door of her mother Helena's home like
a banshee on crack cocaine. "It's never good when the dead
arrive," she announced, removing her mohair hat with one
dramatic swoop of her hand. The static electricity in the dry winter
air immediately made her ebony tresses stick out in different
directions as if she were permanently attached to a Van de Graaf
generator at a science fair.
"What
on earth are you going on about?" her mother asked. Being a
trained health care professional, she quickly gave her only daughter
the once over and deduced that although Helen might be emotionally
insane, she was physically fine.
"Love
the look," she teased, approaching Helen and yanking one of the
fly-away hairs from her head.
"Cut
that out," Helen snapped.
"Don't
look at me like that. You had 'I am angry' stamped on your forehead
before you even came through that door," her mother insisted.
"I
told Ellie to put some salt on the front porch steps before she left
for school today so the ice would melt. Obviously she forgot,"
Helen sighed. "I just wiped out on the second step from the
bottom. The result of which makes me afraid to tell you the turkey
you so desperately wanted for Thanksgiving dinner won't make the
cover of Food magazine anytime soon." She paused a moment to
wipe some snow from the back of her coat. "But I’m fine,
thanks for asking."
Turning
to prop the front door open with her foot, she proceeded to drag the
bird across the threshold and into the house.
Helena
did her best not to smirk.
"Well?
Aren’t you going to say anything?" Helen asked, reaching down
to show off the item like it were a showpiece on The Price is Right.
"You're
right. It looks dead. You know, if you were going to drop the bird on
the ground, you could have saved us some bucks and bought a utility
grade one," her mother suggested.
Helen
rolled her eyes. "I meant," she tried to explain, "aren’t
you going to say anything about the size of the stupid bird? I told
you we should have picked one up earlier in the week, but oh no,
'wait until the middle of the week when they panic and put them on
sale', you said. Thanks for that. This monstrosity was all they had
left."
"It
does seem a little large," her mother admitted upon closer
inspection of the fowl. "You know that it's just the three of us
having Thanksgiving dinner together, right?" She could tell the
sarcasm in her voice was starting to annoy her daughter.
Helen
kicked the still frozen bird in her mother's direction. It took a
couple of rolls across the hardwood floor and landed by Helena's
slippered feet.
"So,
we’ll have leftovers," Helena shrugged. It was her way of
letting Helen know she was good with the whole situation. "I
sure hope Ellie likes turkey soup."
It
had been a few weeks since Helena LaRose’s adult daughter Helen and
her teenage granddaughter Ellie had moved into her home, and she was
still trying to adapt to the change. A little extra food was the
least of her troubles.
"Where
is my daughter-of-doom anyway?'' Helen asked.
"Goth-Chic
said she and Jacey Sumner were going to hang out together after
school," Helena replied, finally taking her eyes off their
future dinner. She spied a disapproving glance from Helen.
"What?
Why are you looking at me like that?" she asked. "I thought
we agreed that socializing with the undead was good for her."
"I'm
not so sure that hanging around with that blonde bombshell is a good
idea for Ellie," Helen cautioned.
Of
course Helen was happy that her daughter was making friends so
quickly after their sudden move to Troy, but there was something
about the tall British girl named Jacey that unnerved her. Helena had
said the girl was a "sensitive", and was content to leave
it at that, but Helen felt there was something not quite normal about
the beautiful girl that had become her daughter's best-friend-forever
in a matter of a few short weeks.
"The
girl tried to save Ellie's life," Helena reminded her. "I
know you're good at blocking things from your mind, but even you
can't have forgotten that so quickly. Jacey's bravery ought to count
for something." She waited to see if Helen would relent, and
since that didn't happen, she switched tactics. "Besides, I
thought it was the pregnant girls that you wanted Ellie to stay away
from."
"Jacey
is sixteen and has already had a baby. That's not much better,"
Helen argued.
"You
weren't much older when you had Ellie," her mother reminded her.
"Do
I need to remind you that Jacey doesn't seem to know where her child
is?" Helen shot back without missing a beat. "I know where
Ellie is. Maybe not right this second, but you know what I mean."
"Okay,
I'll give you that one," Helena conceded. "It is a bit
disconcerting that the girl has no clue to the whereabouts of her
child."
"You
think?" Helen sighed.
"Jacey
probably just doesn't want to talk about it. It's not something a
girl her age would want to bring up with people who are practically
strangers. She probably doesn't want to be judged. Maybe you can
relate to that?"
That
comment stung Helen. She'd never admit it, but her mother had a
point. If the truth be known, her past was more like Jacey's than she
cared to admit. She decided to change the subject "And I also
thought we agreed that we wouldn’t call Ellie 'Goth-Chic' in this
house," Helen reminded her mother.
"That’s
what her friends call her," Helena insisted. "What's wrong
with it? I think it's cute, black being the new everything in her
wardrobe. I just want to fit in. Besides, I think they've shortened
it to Goth now. Too many words, too little time."
Since
Ellie's arrival, Helena had not seen her granddaughter dress in any
color that approached the lighter side of the color spectrum. Even
the loose T-shirts she wore at night were dark in color and usually
involved skulls, crossbones and occasionally a withering red rose.
But only occasionally.
"You
are not supposed to fit in. You are not her friend, " Helen
reminded her. "You’re old enough to be her grandmother…oh
wait… you are her grandmother." She put her hands on her hips
and paused, taking in the vision of loveliness before her that was
the matriarch of the LaRose household. "And what the hell are
you still doing in your negligee, Mother? It’s four o’clock in
the afternoon. Didn't you have any clients today? "
"I’ll
have you know this is my afternoon negligee," her mother
offered, twirling around so that the chiffon sleeves flowed freely
from her arms in a bewitching motion. Helena hinted to people that
she was only in her fifties, and luckily her body helped keep her
little secret. In reality she was decades older, but the LaRose women
hid their age unnaturally well. "If you must know, I scheduled
today off. I didn't know I had to check with you first. I thought it
was my naturopathic clinic out back, not yours."
"I
seem to recall you were wearing that on Halloween, " Helen
reminded her. "In the evening. When you were dressed up as a
witch. And I thought we were all trying to forget about Halloween.
You're not helping much with that whole concept. "
Halloween
had been an adventure that began with Helen leaving her husband,
moving to Troy with her precocious fifteen year old daughter Ellie,
finding a dead body on her mother Helena's front porch, and going
straight downhill from there.
"No…"
Helena hesitated, brushing a lock of her own dark hair away from her
piercing green eyes. "We agreed not to talk about the events of
Halloween week. We never said we would forget about them. I kind of
made that promise to a few people."
Halloween
week had been a traumatic time in the small town of Troy. Two of the
town's children had been murdered by a vampire and a third had been
kidnapped. It was up to the Helens — Helena, Helen and Ellie LaRose
— to rescue the boy and ensure the town returned to its sleepy-town
fame and people lived as happily ever after as they could, living in
and around a hellmouth like they did.
"Humph,
" Helen replied. Her relationship with her mother had always
been stressful, and although the terrifying events of Halloween week
had no doubt brought them closer together, the combined estrogen
levels of the three women living under her mother’s roof was
proving to be a lot to handle. "It’s not hard to see where
Ellie gets her rebel-on from."
"Was
that a Bowie song?" her mother asked, digressing.
"No.
That would be Rebel Rebel. Get your head out of the seventies."
"You
leave her to me," Helena smiled. "I’ll have her wearing
clothes that are more form-fitting in no time. " She adjusted
the bodice of her gown to fit snuggly around her ample bosom and
stuck her chest forward just enough to make her adult daughter
cringe.
"Never
mind," Helena said, as she turned around and headed for the
kitchen. "I wouldn't want Ellie to usurp you as the belle of the
slutty ball in this weird little town."
Helena
chuckled to herself. While her granddaughter’s insistence to dress
in a Gothic fashion was a bone of contention for her daughter, it
didn’t bother her in the least. She knew that Ellie was simply
trying to show the world that she had her own sense of style. A style
that didn’t appeal to her straight-laced mother. No surprise there.
Helen had been a handful in her teenage years herself, a fact that
wasn't lost on Helena. Helen, if the truth were known, had gone
through a punk-rock phase that was more Salvador Dali than anything
Ellie had yet to ensemble. Helen had moved on to the likes of Anne
Klein and Ralph Lauren, and Helena suspected that in time, Ellie
would leave the darkness behind as well. At least when referring to
her wardrobe.
"Helen,
come back here. You’re not just going to leave this turkey in the
middle of my living room floor, are you"? Helena questioned.
Receiving no reply, she tried to pick the bird up herself. "Good
Lord, Helen. How much does this thing weigh?" She glanced at the
grocer label. "Twenty-five pounds? Have you invited the pilgrims
to dinner?"
Helen
came back into the room with a large garbage bag in her hand.
"It's
here now," Helena told her daughter sternly. "We are not
throwing it out. I'll just have to get up at the freaking crack of
dawn to dress the bird and get it into the oven." She looked at
it again. "I may have to buy a bigger oven."
"Well,
at least something would get dressed around here." Helen raised
her hand, indicating for her mother to stop talking. "Silence. I
have a plan." She put the bag on the floor, rolled the heavy
bird one more time so that it landed on top of the green plastic bag,
and proceeded to drag the newly devised turkey transporter into the
kitchen.
"And
that’s why I paid for your university education," her mother
commented, following her into the sunny back room. "You're the
smart one in the family."
"Thank
you. For the education and the complement," Helen noted. "I
am so looking forward to Thanksgiving," she added. "I could
really use a break."
"A
break from what?" her mother asked. "You don't have a job."
She sat down at the kitchen table and began to thumb her way through
her granddaughter's copy of Rue Morgue magazine that had been left
beside the dirty morning dishes that were still on the table.
"A
break from… you know…" Helen said coyly, her bobbing, tilted
head giving away her futile effort of nonchalance.
"Spit
it out, Helen. I've got things to do before I die."
"A
break from the craziness. A break from my hormone fuelled daughter. A
break from my most recent separation from my most recent husband, and
a break from things that go bump in the night." She opened the
fridge door and sighed. There was no way in hell that the bird was
going to fit into it. "Do you feel like picking up a new fridge
while you're out appliance shopping for that new oven?"
"To
the best of my knowledge you're not getting any of the things that go
bump in the night," her mother smiled. "I'll go get the big
cooler from downstairs. You can put it in there." She stood up
and walked towards the basement door.
"Get
your mind out of the gutter. I meant the vampires and wraiths. They
went bump in the night. Well, actually they were sliced in the night,
but you know what I mean," she replied.
She
opened the freezer door and was relieved to see plenty of ice. With
any luck the cooler would keep the turkey cold enough that they
wouldn't come down with botulism.
"With
you it is hard to tell," Helena replied. "Do I need to
remind you that you sleep with dead people? And it was only one
vampire."
"You
can't look at it like that," Helen insisted. "Ellie's dad…
sure, he died… but he's not dead. Not in the human sense of the
word. And if we're going down the bizarro road, it was you who tried
to set me up with the wraith twins that wanted to kill my daughter.
And need I remind you of the teenaged vampire Lothario you had living
in the backyard?" She moved so close to her mother that she
could see the corners of Helena's mouth squirm ever so slightly. "And
there were two vampires, as I recall. Man-oh-man, there were two
vampires."
"Wipe
away the drool, Helen. I told you, Ciaran Quinn is off limits,"
her mother warned, placing her hand on the doorknob.
"Come
on, Mother. If the deadest of dead are okay by me, then the
breathing, strapping loins of that fine specimen of vampire man can't
possibly be off limits," she sighed. "You used to tell me
not to be so picky about the men I… um … date."
Helena
watched her daughter flush uncontrollably and for a moment saw a
teeny-tiny bit of her own personality peep through from her
daughter’s being. She smiled for a second, and then assessed the
seriousness of the matter. "I thought we determined it is never
good to date a vampire. Not when you're fifteen, or when you're
whatever the hell age you want me to tell people you are."
"Let
me think about both those thoughts," Helen replied back. Deep in
her heart she knew her mother was right, but her libido wasn't so
sure.
Helena
went down the basement steps, turned, and looked upward towards her
daughter as she reached the bottom. "You think about it all you
like," she warned. "I know he's mighty sweet eye candy, but
Ciaran will always be a vampire. I trust I needn't remind you how our
last go around with one of their kind turned out. He's off limits,
Helen. Repeat after me. Off. Limits."
Helen
pouted, stomping her way down the steps like she had when she was
seven. "Please tell me you've never had a relationship with him.
He's half your age."
"And
what would be so wrong with that?" Helena questioned, genuinely
offended by Helen's remarks. "For the record, the age thing is
the other way around. By a century or so, I might add."
"It
would kill me," Helen sighed. She had put up with both her
parents flirtatious ways during her life, but she hoped anything
remotely scandalous that her mother had done in the past, stayed in
the past. It was hard enough trying to keep Ellie from making the
same mistakes both her mother and herself had made at a young age. It
was as if the LaRose women were genetically modified to reproduce
early. Only once, and always having a girl.
"Don't
be so dramatic, darling. Or morose for that matter," Helen
sighed. "I can appreciate that you're wondering how you can get
some when you're shut in the house with the two of us…"
"Actually
I wasn't wondering, Mother. But thanks anyway."
"…so
maybe we should think about inviting a few people over for
Thanksgiving," Helena continued, ignoring her daughter's plea of
innocence. She opened the door to the storage room and looked for the
red and white cooler. "We could mix it up a bit if you don't
want to spend the holiday with just the two of us."
"Like,
invite Dad?" Helen asked.
"Alexander?
Oh HELL no," Helena was quick to reply. She could see the
cooling unit under her summer patio furniture, so she began to dig
through the pile. "Help me with this, will you?"
"Don’t
you dare try to set me up," Helen pleaded while taking a folding
lounger from her mother's arms. "Got it? No mixers or fixers or
anything that rhymes with that. Repeat after me…ix-nay on the
fix-ay."
"But
I noticed a strapping… your word, not mine… fireman out cleaning
the fire truck the other afternoon while I was in town and I thought
of you. No really, I thought of you. Remind me to walk by on Tuesdays
in the summer when they're all out there in their T-shirts. I don't
know if it would put my fire out, but it would be a hell of a lot
more fun than watching the paint blister outside my office out back."
"I
thought you said you were thinking of me?" Helen commented
slyly.
"Well,
I'm not going to let a perfectly good fire hall full of men go to
waste, even if you're too silly to recognize all that firm, muscular
potential."
"Mother,
please."
"Fine.
Have it your way. It will be just you, me and Ellie for the feast."
"Fine."
"Won't
that be kind of boring though?" Helena pleaded. "It is a
holiday. They're more fun with people around."
"Boring
is underrated. And the last time I checked Ellie and I were still
considered people." She looked at her mother's stored furniture
collection more closely. "Good God, Mother. You've had this
furniture for decades. Can you even buy replacement plastic webbing
for these loungers anymore?"
"Helen,"
her mother lamented, "get with the program. That furniture is so
old it's retro. I could get a hundred bucks for that chair from a
picker."
"Not
in this life," she replied.
Helena
looked at the chair in question more closely. "I guess it is
kind of 1967. I don't know why I keep dragging it with me from town
to town."
"We
are going to the mall to replace this stuff once winter is over. Out
with the old, in with the new as they say," Helen insisted. She
saw her mother's facial expression turn to one of sadness, but she
sensed the patio furniture wasn't the problem.
"But
sometimes I like the old and reliable," Helena said softly.
"Do
you want to get back together with Roy Cohen? Is that what this is
all about?" Helen asked her mother. "Do you want an excuse
to invite him over for dinner?"
Helena
had been in a relationship with Troy's Chief of Police until a few
weeks ago and Helen knew she and Ellie were at least partially
responsible for the couple's breakup.
"No!"
Helena insisted. "There are plenty of other single men in this
little town of Troy. We'll just have to go out and find us a
couple.'' She pulled the cooler from the corner and held it over her
head. "Ta-da!"
"That'll
be fun…double dating with my mother. Not," Helen told her in
no uncertain terms. She noted a power cord dangling from the back of
the cooler Helena held. "Ah, it plugs in," she said,
somewhat relieved.
"Yes,
darling," Helena said wryly. "I did buy the unit this
century. So you can save the ice for our drinks. I have a feeling
we're going to need it."
"What's
that supposed to mean?" Helen prodded.
"Nothing,"
Helena tried to cover. "You know how I hate the holidays."
"Liar,"
Helen taunted, knowing full well her mother was counting the days
until the Christmas decorations went up. "I can see that while
your summer furniture was thrown into a heap over in the corner here,
your rooftop Santa display is all neatly packaged away in plastic
tubs that are labelled and stacked alphabetically. So you're busted
on that one."
"I
like the prep," Helena admitted. "The tear down, not so
much. Thanksgiving doesn't really count for that though. There's not
much decorating to do. It doesn't even have official colors."
"I
don't think it's supposed to be about the colors," Helen
replied. "But if you have to have some I suggest red, yellow and
orange. The colors of autumn."
"It's
not autumn in Troy anymore," Helena protested. "It's
winter. It's grey. You don't see a lot of festive grey napkins at the
Biggie Mart, do you?"
"Work
with me here, Mother."
Helena
was quiet for a moment. "At least I have you and Ellie with me
to celebrate the holidays with this year. For that I am truly
thankful."
"Thank
you," Helen said, giving her mother a hug. "I know you had
a hellacious Fourth-of-July party this past summer, and Halloween
definitely got a little out of hand…"
"A
little?" her mother laughed nervously.
"But
Thanksgiving is the holiday when traditionally we fight over whether
you are making a homemade apple or pumpkin pie. You know where I
stand on that issue."
Helena
smiled. "You know, it's been so long since we spent Thanksgiving
together, I'd actually forgotten that little discussion ever
happened."
"You
threw the dough at me," Helen reminded her. Mind you, it was
deserved. She had not so mistakenly picked up a can of pumpkin pie
filling rather than the apple one her mother had noted on the grocery
list she had given her that day. The mother of all food fights had
ensued between them shortly thereafter. It took days to scrape the
hardened pieces of what had turned into paste, off the walls.
"You
did eventually learn make your own as I recall," Helena laughed.
"And
wall cleaner sales started to decline significantly," Helen
smirked.
"I
like apple, you like pumpkin," Helena shrugged. "I guess
that means Ellie has the deciding vote."
"She
likes lemon meringue."
"That
little tart," Helena laughed. "Then three pies it is. We're
going to dine like queens for quite some time."
"If
we don't explode from eating the damn bird first," Helen
giggled.
"Never
say explode," her mother begged. "Not on a holiday. Not in
this house."
About
the Author:
NIGHTMARE
on JACEY STREET is the third novel completed by Janine McCaw. For
the Vancouver-based novelist it is the continuation of a dream, and
the fruit of years of working in a different creative realm. McCaw
is also currently working on two additional books: Sisters of Mercy
and Pumper.
In
high demand as an insightful, humorous and engaging guest speaker,
juror and analyst for festivals and trade forums around the country,
McCaw also spent large amounts of time traveling abroad to television
markets. Writing relieved the stress of constantly being on the
road. Increasingly, she turned her main hobby into outlines for
novels, and finished fleshing out the characters, plot and dialogue
for OLIVIA’S MINE, a fictional account of a young bride’s
struggle to make a life for herself against the backdrop of the
disasters that hit Britannia Beach, British Columbia in the early
1900s. The book was released in 2006 and continues to be sold at the
British Columbia Museum of Mining.
McCaw’s
deep understanding of compelling plots, widely appealing characters,
natural dialogue and strong story arcs comes directly out of her
early career in the film and television industry. McCaw’s skills as
an observer started early when her family uprooted from the City to
small town Ontario – and she became the classic fish out of water.
Writing down her thoughts became an outlet as she scribbled her way
through childhood, while she also developed her observational skills
and visual eye with photography. A die-hard hockey fan, McCaw
studied Cinematography at Humber College, and was headed for a career
as a cameraperson covering professional sports when she landed an
internship in a broadcasting services company.
McCaw
excelled in the television distribution arena. She joined Thomas
Howe & Associates and moved with that company to Vancouver, where
she distinguished herself with her talent for identifying the right
product for the right market, and her people-skills in negotiating
contracts. After furthering her professional development with several
high-profile Canadian entertainment companies, she parlayed her
reputation as a leading Cable Programming specialist into her own
boutique firm. Formed with a partner, Dark Horse Ent. specialized in
finding, and selling, niche Canadian television series -
entertainment, information and variety - around the Globe.
Web:
www.janinemccaw.com
Twitter:
mc_janine
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Free
eBook copies of Helens-of-Troy (Book One) via website
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