HAVEN HOLLOW

  Books 21-30

  Day Dream

  Ritzy Business

  Pan’s Delight

  Armed & Charmed

  The Christmas Spirit

  Blood Rose

  Blood Bond

  Georgian Ghouls

  Velvet Voodoo

  Dead Ringer

  by

  J.R. RAIN

  &

  H.P. MALLORY

  The Haven Hollow Series

  Gypsy Magic

  Cashmere Curses

  Faerie Enchantment

  Spandex Sorcery

  Love’s Goddess

  Demon in Denim

  Taffeta Trickery

  The Black Cat Cocktail Club

  French Country Frights

  All Hallow’s Eve

  Mystic Veil

  The Yule Log

  The Broken Mirror

  Art Deco Apparitions

  The Vampires Grave

  Herringbone Hexes

  Raising Cain

  Druid’s Curse

  Colonial Corpses

  Angora Alchemy

  Day Dream

  Ritzy Business

  Pan’s Delight

  Armed & Charmed

  The Christmas Spirit

  Blood Rose

  Blood Bond

  Georgian Ghouls

  Velvet Voodoo

  Dead Ringer

  Summer Solstice

  Lace Laments

  Enchanted Emporium

  Gypsy Gold

  Newlywed and Pixie-Led

  Cold Blood

  Hexes and Hoarfrost

  Satin Superstition

  Memento Mori

  Silk Skullduggery

  Blood & Ice

  Royal Ransom

  .Nightmares and Numerology

  Other Books by J.R. Rain

  VAMPIRE FOR HIRE®

  New Moon Rising

  Moon Mourning

  Haunted Moon

  Moon Dance

  Vampire Moon

  American Vampire

  Moon Child

  Christmas Moon

  Vampire Dawn

  Vampire Games

  Moon Island

  Moon River

  Moon Tales

  Vampire Sun

  Moon Dragon

  Moon Bayou

  Blood Moon

  Parallel Moon

  Moon Shadow

  Vampire Fire

  Midnight Moon

  Moon Angel

  Vampire Sire

  Moon Master

  Dead Moon

  Lost Moon

  Moon Vacation

  Vampire Destiny

  Infinite Moon

  Vampire Empress

  Moon Elder

  Wicked Moon

  Moon Shots

  Winter Moon

  Moon Blade

  Sasquatch Moon

  Moon Cases

  Wild Moon

  Moon Magic

  Moon World

  Vampire Deep

  Moon Matador

  Latin Moon

  Sun Dance

  Unicorn Moon

  Missing Moon

  .

  Other Books by H.P. Mallory

  PARANORMAL WOMEN’S FICTION:

  Midlife Mysteries

  Midlife Spirits

  Haven Hollow

  Misty Hollow

  Trailer Park Vampire

  Gwen’s Ghosts

  PARANORMAL ROMANCE:

  Witch, Warlock & Vampire

  Lily Harper

  Dulcie O’Neil

  Gates of the Underworld

  .

  PARANORMAL REVERSE HAREM:

  Happily Never After

  My Five Kings

  Haven Hollow: Books 21-30

  Published by J.R. Rain and H.P. Mallory

  Copyright © 2024 by J.R. Rain and H.P. Mallory

  All rights reserved.

  Ebook Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Day Dream

  Ritzy Business

  Pan’s Delight

  Armed & Charmed

  The Christmas Spirit

  Blood Rose

  Blood Bond

  Georgian Ghouls

  Velvet Voodoo

  Dead Ringer

  Reading Sample: Shotguns and Shifters

  About J.R. Rain

  About H.P. Mallory

  DAY DREAM

  Haven Hollow #21

  (Sandman Syd)

  by

  J.R. RAIN

  &

  H.P. MALLORY

  Day Dream

  Published by Rain Press

  Copyright © 2022 by J.R. Rain & H.P. Mallory

  All rights reserved.

  Ebook Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Day Dream

  Chapter One

  At the moment, it was hard to tell which was more squashed, me or the mattress I struggled to maneuver into the room.

  Pressing myself against it, I could only pray it wouldn’t wind up with as many wrinkles as my face was getting. After five repetitions of this tedious process, I had to congratulate myself for having the prescience to put away my glasses before getting started. My vision was a little fuzzy but not enough to stop me from wresting the five mattresses inside the rooms at The Haven Hollow Inn. Now, I was grateful beyond words that this was the last one I had to worry about today. Such strenuous activity had a nasty habit of reminding me I was on the wrong side of my one-hundred-forty-fifth birthday (though I didn’t look a day over forty-five).

  “Just... another step... Syd,” RJ called out from the other side of the mattress. I expected this was just as hard, if not harder, for my kindly helper. Bigger was not always better when one was trying his hardest to get bulky items through tight doorways and unbending corridors. No sooner did that thought cross my mind when I suddenly popped out the other side of this particular doorway and into the room proper.

  While RJ and I carefully got the rest of the mattress inside, I surveyed my new surroundings. The quaint early twentieth century-style room had a few concessions to the modern age, i.e., a television and an early 2000 model phone. The empty bed frame in the room’s center was authentic to the original period of the house and we slowly tilted the mattress from vertical to horizontal so it could fill the spot. The smiling face of RJ greeted me on the other side. His intimidating six-foot-plus frame and infectious charm made me smile at him in return.

  I’d known RJ since we were boys, before he’d ever moved to Haven Hollow. Even though we hadn’t seen each other in a long while before this, we’d stayed in touch. I always did find it something of an irony that he was now living in a town dedicated as a haven to all supernatural creatures and yet RJ had no idea.

  “Hell of a way to pass a morning, huh, Syd?” RJ remarked.

  I glanced at the antique clock on the wall. “Actually, we’re nearing two in the afternoon,” I replied, shaking my head as I wondered where the time had gone. “Be best if I’m on the side closest to the wall.”

  RJ stared at the confined space I was indicating between the frame and the wall. “Tight squeeze in there. Sure you can manage it?”

  I gave him a fatherly look. “Even tighter for you.”

  “Hey, you’re not that small, pal.”

  I gave him another smile. Standing five-foot-ten and one hundred and seventy pounds with a full meal inside me, I seemed like a garden gnome compared to my friend. “I’m small enough.”

  RJ shook his head and slumped his big shoulders as he said, “Well, whatever you decide.” Then he added, “I mean, you’re s’posed to be the expert here, right?”

  When it came to mattresses and sleeping, RJ was right—I was the expert. After all, I was also The Sandman.

  “I am,” I answered while placing my side of the mattress towards the wall.

  We had to tread carefully. An antique dresser occupied the wall directly in front of the bed, which hampered most of our maneuvering room. Ancient furnishings that ranged from ottomans to chairs took up the rest of the space. I winced and pressed my lips together when I heard the unmistakable scraping of porcelain against fabric, indicating the lamp on the nightstand was about to crash. RJ’s side suddenly dropped, followed by a meaty slap.

  “Whoa!” RJ exclaimed, holding up the lamp like a baseball he’d just caught in the bleachers. “That one was way too close for comfort.”

  “Best set that aside ‘til we finish,” I suggested, nodding towards the chair in the corner, which was well out of the way. RJ set the lamp on the seat cushion behind him, then we carefully placed the mattress on the iron frame. Thankfully, all the bed frames in the inn were identical, so this mattress slid into place without any fuss.

  Sighing with relief, I leaned against the wall and using my grandfather’s handkerchief, which I habitually carried in my breast pocket, mopped the sweat off my brow. Though RJ was just beyond the range of my reduced vision, I could see him nearly sitting down on the corner chair.

  “The lamp,” I warned him before replacing the handkerchief next to my glasses case.

  “Oh, yikes!” RJ said, practically jumping out of his skin. By th
e time I got my glasses out, RJ had already gently placed the lamp back on the nightstand. “Nearly twice in one day,” he noted. “Hope the third time isn’t the charm.”

  Placing the plastic square frames back over my eyes, I spotted someone looking at us from the doorway. It was a gray-haired woman in her mid-sixties, holding my colorful umbrella in her dainty, age-spotted right hand. She flashed RJ a toothy grin and then shook her head at him.

  “Now you better be more careful or you’ll break one of my grandma’s lamps!”

  “I’m so sorry, Ethel, and it won’t happen again, honest,” RJ protested, holding up his hands as though he were surrendering to an irate bear. “Just glad Syd, here, is spotting me.”

  “Yeah, it’s a very good thing our Mr. Blackstone is watching out for you.” She turned her shining eyes towards me and added, “You know, even with the glasses off, you don’t miss much.”

  Pushing myself off the wall, I rolled the kinks out of my shoulders. “There’s more than one way to see, Ethel. Anybody who’s had an intense dream knows that.”

  Ethel chuckled before walking over to pat the bare mattress. “Well, speaking of dreams, here’s hoping that these new mattresses will give my guests some sweet ones.” Handing me the umbrella (that was a lot more than just what it appeared to be), she gave me a look that I knew all too well. “You poor man. You nearly tuckered yourself out doing so much work.”

  “It was fine,” I answered with a laugh as I caught something about to fall from the corner of my eye. “The vase, RJ,” I called out right before RJ’s long fingers nearly clipped it off the small table it was sitting on.

  The big man yanked his fingers back in disgust. “Dangit, I’m such a klutz today!”

  “You’re just tired,” I corrected him. “Nothing a spot of lunch won’t cure.”

  RJ’s smile seemed more than a little self-conscious. “Gotta admit my stomach’s been rumbling since we took out the last old mattress.”

  I looked back at Ethel. “If all goes well with the mattresses and your customers’ sleep improves, you’ll advertise my store when it opens?”

  Ethel gave me a big smile. “Honey, if you live up to half those big claims you’re making about these mattresses, it’ll be my life’s mission to see that every resident in Haven Hollow becomes a loyal customer of ‘Sandman Syd’s Mattresses’.”

  I shrugged. “My family’s been in this business for four generations, so the guests should be sleeping well soon enough.”

  ***

  Once outside the inn, I reached into my front right pants pocket to pull out my wallet. Taking out some cash, I held it up to RJ, who immediately backed away and held up his hands.

  “Hey, what are you doing?” he asked.

  “Paying you for your time,” I answered as though it were obvious. Pointing toward the dumpster, where the old mattresses now jutted out over the lip, I added, “That was several hours of hard work so you earned it.”

  “I told you already, Syd,” RJ argued, “buy me some lunch and we’ll call it even.”

  I was about to insist he take the money when an unwelcome sight in the parking lot caught my attention. A rusted BMW that looked like it came from the Reagan era was parked next to the front door.

  The driver got out and all but slammed the door behind him. Even though he towered over RJ, he didn’t have my friend’s bulk. Yet, he was intimidating, all the same. And not just owing to the scowl that seemed ever-present on his face. His tanned skin was as smooth as plastic and his longish, black hair was pulled back into a low ponytail. Maverick was an extremely handsome man, but you wouldn’t know it, owing to the frown that marred his face—or maybe it was reserved just for me.

  At the sound of the slamming of the car door, RJ groaned, “Man, you can’t seem to shake this guy.”

  “Well, that’s what happens when you go into business with someone,” I answered, even though that wasn’t quite the truth. I wasn’t in business with Maverick—he was more like my babysitter. But, owing to the fact that RJ wasn’t in the know about supernatural politics in Haven Hollow, I figured Maverick and me being in business together made the most sense.

  RJ locked his eyes on my face. “Want me to stick around?”

  I moved towards the newest arrival and said, “No, I’ll see you at The Half-Moon.”

  RJ took a moment to give a warning glare at the approaching figure before finally walking away. That barb prompted a sour expression on Maverick’s face. He looked like he’d just sucked down a whole lemon. But as Maverick was a member of the Council (and the newest addition, from what I understood) I didn’t want to upset him. Well, more than he was already upset, by the looks of things.

  Once he was close enough, I greeted him with a nod. “Maverick.”

  He looked at the retreating back of RJ with suspicion. “Is that big lunkhead going to do or say something stupid?”

  “I don’t think so,” I replied and stared a little harder at him. “I’ve kept to my end of the bargain and haven’t told him anything I shouldn’t.”

  Maverick narrowed his eyes at me, and I could almost hear his teeth grinding together. When I’d petitioned to move to Haven Hollow, Maverick had been assigned as my parole officer of sorts. It wasn’t that I’d broken the law or done jailtime—it was just that a sandman had the power to wreak havoc with the dreams of the townspeople so the Council wanted to be careful. Their answer had been to assign Maverick as my keeper of sorts, someone who would keep an eye on me until I could be proven a safe and valuable asset to the Hollow.

  After a moment of silence, I adjusted my glasses and said, “Shall I presume this isn’t a social call?”

  Maverick answered by folding his arms across his broad chest as he leaned against his beat-up car. “You know why I’m here.”

  I nodded. “Just doing your due diligence and making sure I’m not destroying your lovely little town.”

  “Exactly right.” Then he looked over at the dumpster which was full of Ethel’s old mattresses. “First sale?” he asked me.

  “Not sure you can call it a ‘sale’ exactly,” I answered, shaking my head.

  “Don’t tell me you gave away… what, five mattresses?” he asked as he returned his attention to me, his eyes wide with disbelief as he shook his head. As to what type of supernatural Maverick was, I was fairly sure he was a warlock but his abilities seemed to be tainted by something else. When I’d inquired about as much to Roy Osbourne, the head of the Council, he’d just cryptically replied that Maverick ‘didn’t like to discuss it’ and that was the end of that.

  “Sometimes you’ve got to give away merchandise in order to get a good name going,” I offered on a shrug. “And what better way to spread the word about my magical mattresses than to offer them to Haven Hollow’s only hotel?”

  Maverick chuckled at that. “I might have been assigned to babysit you until everyone’s convinced you aren’t going to go full ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ in Haven Hollow, but you’re going to need better business sense if you’re going to make it here.”

  “Thanks for the advice,” I answered, shaking my head. Even though Maverick was a difficult sort, I was fairly good at not allowing difficult sorts to get under my skin.

  “Until next time then,” Maverick said as he turned to his ‘car’ and gave me a quick nod.

  “Until next time.”

  As to when that next time would be, I never knew. Maverick just dropped in when he dropped in, though he never stayed long, which suited us both. I didn’t think Maverick was a bad sort, necessarily, I just thought he resented the fact that he had to babysit me. I didn’t resent it, because I understood the potential threat I could represent to Haven Hollow. I was actually beyond grateful that the Council had allowed me entrance at all.

  After Maverick piled into his vehicle, he turned on the engine which coughed and spit like an old smoker with emphysema. Then he looked up at me and with two fingers motioned that he was keeping his eyes on me. I just gave him a smile and a quick nod.

  I stood there until Maverick was well down the road, and then my stomach started growling at me. It was definitely time to follow up on RJ’s suggestion for lunch and get over to the Half-Moon for the day.

  Chapter Two

  The sun was going down when I finally returned to my future mattress shop, Sandman Syd’s.

  The interior wasn’t anything special to see, just a large, empty space at the moment. It could have been the interior of any empty warehouse. In the back left corner were a stack of mattresses, placed atop each other with a blanket between them to keep them clean. The back right corner had unassembled bed frames leaning against the wall, waiting to be put together. I was careful not to block the door that opened to the pile on the opposite wall.