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Long Time Dead (The Iphigenia Black Series #2)
Long Time Dead (The Iphigenia Black Series #2)
Long Time Dead (The Iphigenia Black Series #2)
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Long Time Dead (The Iphigenia Black Series #2)

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** New Release **

The Second Book in the Iphigenia Black Series.

A nice little town somewhere in America. A seafront funfair, a deserted ancestral home, a shoppe for “Things ye Neede”, a Lovers’ Lane and an ancient Indian burial ground. What could possibly go wrong? Iffie thought she had found the perfect place to go to ground and lick her wounds. After all, nothing ever happens in a place like that – at least not in “real life”.
But Iffie forgot that she doesn’t exactly live a “real life.” She’s hardly knocked the dust off her boots when she has a visitor suffering from a nasty case of being dead. A long time dead.
However Iffie gets straight on the case and soon sorts it all out ...
Ooops! Eternity just got a whole lot longer.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherNicola Rhodes
Release dateJul 21, 2012
ISBN9781476299082
Long Time Dead (The Iphigenia Black Series #2)
Author

Nicola Rhodes

About the Author Nicola Rhodes often can’t remember where she lives so she lives inside her own head most of the time, where even if you do get lost, it’s still okay. She has met many interesting people inside her own head and eventually decided to introduce them to the rest of the world, in the hopes that they would stop bothering her and let her sleep. She has been doing this for ten years now but they still won’t leave her alone. She wrote this book for fun and does not care if you take away a moral lesson from it or not. You have her full permission to read whatever you wish into this work of fiction. As she says herself: “Just because I wrote this book, doesn’t mean I know anything about it.”

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    Long Time Dead (The Iphigenia Black Series #2) - Nicola Rhodes

    The Iphigenia Black Series - Book Two

    LONG TIME DEAD

    Nicola Rhodes

    Long Time Dead. Copyright 2011 Nicola Rhodes

    Smashwords Edition

    All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

    Introduction

    This is a story about events that took place during the years between Iffie’s betrayal of Jack and the return of Bel from the dark places of mainframe. Sometime during the years of loneliness and self-recrimination when Iffie had relocated abroad in hopes of finding some peace.

    There was never much hope of that now was there?

    Prologue

    1708

    It would not be entirely true to say that Alfie was not expecting to be robbed in that alley. His life was one marked out for such misfortune in an ordinary way that the attack could not be said to be wholly unexpected, inasmuch as it hardly took him by surprise when it did happen. Although Alfie himself had no pretensions to precognition in general, he only felt that he might have expected it.

    What he was perhaps not expecting, even at the time of the event, was that he was to be robbed to death.

    It was an accident of course; robbers are not murderers in general, but this was hardly of any comfort to Alfie under the circumstances.

    It’s not as if I even fought back,’ he thought ruefully, and it was not until sometime later that he was to realise (and wonder) that he had been in a position to think it – or to think anything at all – what with him being dead and all.

    It was to be the beginning of a new life for Alfie Studdock.

    * * *

    Born in poverty and with no great prepossession of either brains or looks, Alfie’s life had gone downhill from there until at the age of thirty he was as lonely, poor and unwanted as a man could be.

    His eyes were bad, his teeth green with neglect, his beard patchy and his limbs stringy and weak. Orphaned at the age of seven (his mother had died in childbirth and his father later drank himself to death) he had been brought up in an asylum (not an asylum as we understand the word today to mean a safe place for the mentally ill, but only a home for orphaned children) where he had been regularly beaten and underfed for his improvement until he was twelve years old, at which point he had been deposited unceremoniously into the world to make whatever he could of himself.

    And he had tried, but with an unfortunate countenance and no education to speak of, it was a vain effort.

    In the first flush of youthful enthusiasm he had gone for a soldier and then, when that would not answer, a sailor but he was not made for such manly pursuits and he ended feeling that he had been lucky only to be laughed at and turned away.

    Enough – his story is too familiar to warrant further explanation. He drifted from one low job to another – sometimes having no work at all. He liked women as much as any other young man, but even the whores on the waterfront were not accessible to him due to a severe lack of funds, and this was not what he really wanted anyway.

    He dreamed of being dashing, of seducing women by means of his charm and good looks, of having savoir faire and a substantial income to supplement it, or at least the more commonplace allure of (having never quite got over his desire for soldiering) a red coat and side whiskers.

    The irony of having lost his life while being robbed was not lost on him. He who had nothing to steal except his life, and even that was not worth the stealing when he came to examine it.

    And there we come back to the strange circumstance of his being able to examine it at all.

    His theology was not good, but he was pretty certain that this was not what was supposed to happen. He had in his mind a vague idea of God and Angels – perhaps with harps. Golden gates and fluffy clouds disturbed his inner vision alongside the darker ideas of pitchforks, demonic faces and pits of boiling tar. Whatever this was, it did not fit the preconception either way.

    He had no doubt of his being dead – he knew he was (and from the way his attacker had scarpered, he had known it too), and yet, despite being dead as a doornail, it seemed, life went on as usual. This was a circumstance so depressing to his spirits that, had the thing been feasible, he would have no doubt hanged himself immediately.

    The idea of ghosts was entertained but briefly. A gang of jeering urchins and the disapproving looks of the local Clergyman as he shuffled past making it a certainty that he was as solid a citizen as he had ever been (in a purely literal sense) and no invisible shade of a former man. He could be seen and (as he realised when he shouted to the brats to leave him be) heard.

    Alfie had no friends worthy of the name and no one to confide in or seek advice of, so it is perhaps unsurprising that, after a restless night at his lodgings, he was to be found sitting nervously in the confession box of the local church twisting a handkerchief and stuttering out his tale to a most perplexed Father Andrews.

    That he would be thought mad was a consideration, and the well-known sanctity of the confessional was his only recourse to tell his story (and he felt he must tell it to someone, else it would never seem real) without apprehension of being carted off to the madhouse immediately. Besides which, it had occurred to him during the night that a man of the cloth, if anyone, might be in the best position to advise him vis a vis, the mysteries of death and the possibilities of a variation on the afterlife that he had been used to suppose was the typical case.

    ‘You see Father, I’m dead,’ he said. ‘And I want to know why, in that case, I’m still here.’

    ‘You are saying that your spirit still resides within your body my son, and yet you believe that body to be no more than your mortal remains?’ asked the Priest. Which was not at all what Alfie had said, or at least not so elegantly as that, but it fitted the purpose so Alfie agreed to it.

    ‘I see,’ said the Priest solemnly. ‘I have heard of such cases,’ he said to Alfie’s great delight and relief (he was not to be laughed at). But his relief was short lived.

    ‘It would seem that your sprit has been prevented from ascending to heaven (or descending to hell as the case may be) by unseen forces the like of which no human can conceive. In such cases the spirit flees back to the only place it has hitherto known, the body. But we must find out what has done this and why. You must be bedevilled, and we must investigate it. You must be exorcised my son – that is the first stage. Do you not agree?’

    Alfie neither agreed nor disagreed, having no idea what the Priest was talking about, but he murmured something that might have been taken for acquiescence.

    ‘Well, my son, you must remain in the Church, we shall offer you sanctuary in the style of the mediaeval times – you will be safe here from evil influence – and I shall consult the Bishop forthwith on what is to be done with you.’

    Chapter One

    Iphigenia Black had taken a house in a place with the unpromising name of Amitytown. On top of this, the aforenamed Amitytown was situated by the sea and had a funfair on the seafront that was open all the year round. As if this was not enough, there was a large, overgrown graveyard of ancient date, and it also boasted a Lovers’ Lane, a shop called Things Ye Neede, a run-down Motel on the outskirts of town and a desolate, abandoned house standing alone on a hillside. Besides this, it was populated largely by groups of surly looking Native Americans, a preponderance of perfectly coiffured housewives and a number of blank faced, blonde children.

    Therefore, Iffie felt absolutely secure of a completely peaceful sojourn, free from any chance of encountering any kind of supernatural or magical menace as long as she was here.

    And so far it had answered her expectations perfectly. She had been here a year, and it had been the most dull, humdrum, unexciting year of her entire life. Iffie only hoped it would last. She was quite resolute in her internal avowal of never wanting another adventure ever again.

    At first she had been inclined to be suspicious of all this felicity, having had a sharp lesson on one occasion at least of the instability of a cliché, in it being after all, not at all what it seemed. Cliché’s were well known to the magical community as being the one place or event that was practically guaranteed to be as non-magical or supernatural in nature or origin as it was possible to be.

    So she had visited the funfair and observed the leather jacketed youths on motorbikes and discovered them to be harmless and to have perfectly normal teeth. She had taken in the graveyard and the desolate house and found them nothing more than they seemed. Things Ye Neede had been a general store owned by a rather pretentious but otherwise quite normal young lady who had taken it over from her father when he had retired to Miami some years earlier.

    And there were no alien attacks taking place or dead bodies hanging from the trees at Lovers’ Lane.

    The perfectly coiffured ladies and the blonde children turned out to be no more than might be expected in a town situated so relatively close to Los Angeles that they excited no suspicion. All in all, Iffie was reassured and settled down to a carefree if not exactly happy existence.

    The only way she would have felt safer was if the place had been called Salem and had a gallows tree in the town square – but you could not have everything.

    She had, in the town, what used to be known in old fashioned literature as a large acquaintance, but no actual friends. That is to say, she knew a lot of people but was close to no one. She knew everybody by name to say hello to, and they knew her in the same way but beyond that she was not known to anyone. Neither her background nor her reasons for removing to Amitytown, but as she was friendly and inoffensive enough, nobody minded her.

    The fact was that, at this time, Iffie had a decided fear of being drawn in. She had been badly wounded by those who ought to have loved her and had yet to recover her strength for another trial on her heart.

    She was also aware that for people like her – magical people – there was no escape from trouble once you got involved with other people, for there was more magic out there (even in a place like this) than is ordinarily supposed and, like policemen and crimes, magical dilemmas tended to be laid on wherever a witch went. There is no such thing as a witch on holiday (or, as her family had proved again and again – a Djinn, Demon, Goddess or Faerie on holiday either). Iffie wanted none of it.

    No more magic or trouble for me,’ she told herself.

    She probably thought she meant it too.

    * * *

    It was nearing Christmas when Axel blew into town. The town was prettied up, and the shops were full of expensive gew gaws to delight the hearts of all the children and adults alike. Everywhere she went the sounds of carols and other less inoffensive Christmassy songs could be heard blasting out over tinny speakers. Everyone seemed happy and busy. But Iffie was not fond of Christmas time. It was for her, the reminder of the worst day of her life and, even before that, she had never celebrated it. It had not been revered in her family or even particularly noticed. Her father had hated it anyway, for reasons never disclosed, and her mother had been born 3000 years before it had even existed. Therefore, there were no happier memories of earlier Christmases to soften down or replace the one tragic memory that stuck in her mind.

    It was just another day, but one that she would rather not think about.

    But everywhere people were scurrying about buying gifts and planning parties (parties ugh – another good reason to have kept herself aloof).

    Axel Silverberg blew into Amitytown just as all the excitement was building to a frenzy. It was Dec 22nd (as she remembered it later) just a few days before the big day and she was planning to spend it locked in her house alone with a good book or three, and was actually in the bookstore choosing which titles to manifest later at her own leisure when he walked in.

    He was undeniably handsome. Tall, blonde and lean with that rangy muscular look that some women find so irresistible. Not Iffie, however. She would not have even noticed him had it not been for the shadow behind him.

    Shit!’ she muttered under her breath and left the store instantly.

    ‘Bloody Christmas,’ she swore, as she walked home as fast as she could. ‘I should have gone to the Bahamas!’ But there was no avoiding it now, and she knew it.

    He would come to her, she was sure of it; she only had to wait. Whether he knew it or not (and she was not at all sure that he did know it, it was such a peculiar situation) she was – must be – the reason he was here.

    Of course, she reasoned, she still had time to metaphorically pack her bags and get out of Dodge before he turned up. It was only what she had long promised herself if something like this should happen. But somehow, now that it came to it, she just could not do it. Sometimes she cursed her upbringing, it just would not allow her to let it lie.

    Yet she continued to try to reason herself out of it. She wanted to leave, didn’t she? And what business was it of hers anyway? If she had not seen him in the bookstore … But, of course, she had seen him and anyway, all that meant was that she was forewarned of his presence. It did not actually change anything. Besides, had she not seen him, she would not be having this dilemma now about what to do about it. He would no doubt have burst upon her in some other way, giving her no time to run away. But she had been warned, and she could now run away and no one the wiser – not that there was anyone to know anyway, but … Well, it had to be faced, all these arguments were in vain anyway. A sense of duty notwithstanding, she had to admit that she was curious to see what would come of it all, and that realisation led her eventually to the reluctant admission that she was glad it had happened or, at the very least, relieved anyway. To face the fact that she was, in truth, bored silly. In her secret heart, as she now acknowledged, she had been longing for something to do.

    She stopped pacing the room – and it was only as she stopped that she realised she had been pacing. The decision was made. The knowledge of her secret wishes revealed. Now all there was to do was wait. She sat down and commenced staring at the walls for a while.

    Eventually she fell asleep.

    Chapter Two

    He did not turn up that night, nor the next. but on the third night at about midnight, just as Iffie was beginning to think she had imagined the whole thing with his shadow (perhaps out of her repressed desire for something to happen), and he was just an ordinary bloke, she heard a scuffling sound at her back door and someone falling over her broom and cursing. Iffie smiled – she had not been mistaken after all; it was certainly him. For one thing, no one in this little town – apart from the youths at the funfair – was ever abroad this late, and for another, her broom was her early warning system. It was, in fact, not really there at all; it was on the astral plane and no ordinary mortal could possibly ever trip over it there.

    Until now, she had not, despite all the staring at walls, given much thought to what she ought to do next. There was never much point, as she had learned, in worrying too much about this sort of thing before it happened or cogitating over plans. This stuff usually took care of itself. Now she could ask him herself what was going on.

    She opened the door without going anywhere near it and was rewarded by his surprised face appearing in the gap and looking nervously into the kitchen. She grinned knowingly at him.

    ‘Well, come in then,’ she snapped. You’re letting all the cold out.’

    The air inside was indeed enticingly frigid compared to the muggy heat of the night air.

    ‘Not very seasonal, is it?’ she remarked as he recovered his wits and strolled inside with a very commendable and almost convincing performance of a man at his ease.

    ‘Not very,’ he said in a pretty broad London accent which made her smile – he was out of his element in more ways than one she thought.

    ‘So,’ she said, waving him to a chair, ‘what can I do for you then?’

    He looked blankly at her. ‘I hardly know really,’ he said hesitatingly. ‘I just sort of …’

    ‘Why don’t I start then?’ she said. ‘For a kick-off, tell me sunshine, how long have you been dead?’

    He opened his mouth in total bewilderment, then shut it again, then opened it again.

    Iffie waited patiently until he collected himself enough to say: ‘How did you know?’

    ‘Your shadow,’ she told him. ‘I’ve seen them like that before. You are dead, aren’t you?’

    ‘I was beginning to wonder myself,’ he said. And Iffie nodded understandingly. ‘What with all the walking and talking and so on?’ she surmised. ‘I can see how it would be a little confusing. So how long has it been?’

    Now it was her turn to be surprised when he admitted: ‘About 300 years I reckon.’

    ‘O-oh!’ she stuttered. ‘As long as that?’

    ‘At least,’ he assured her. ‘But really, how did you know it? I went to a priest once but he …’

    Iffie cut him off. ‘Well, I

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