An hour later I managed to get untangled and went back downstairs. I felt a little guilt for leaving Anna with all the hostess duties. I was a bit disheveled but most people didn’t notice. Evan followed a few minutes later, and I was able to introduce him around. I was a bit concerned about Erik showing up, we knew a lot of the same people, and I was sure someone would have mentioned the party. I tried to be subtle and ask around if anyone had heard from him. It turned out that his new band was playing somewhere up in Washington and he wouldn’t be able to make it. I sighed with relief. Now I would be able to relax with Evan. As the evening progressed, groups of two and three began to leave. By nine o’clock, only the diehards were left. We all decided to strip down and climb into the hot tub now that all the kids were gone and there was no one left to offend. I was a bit surprised that Evan was willing to take it all off, he had been so shy back when we were first seeing each other. After about twenty minutes I couldn’t take it any longer. I got out of the tub, and dragged Evan with me back upstairs. We needed to finish what we had started earlier, I knew he wasn’t done with me nor would he be for a long time tonight. In the morning after sending Evan home, I started cleaning the house. The guys from the rental place would be coming to get everything at three o’clock and I wanted the house to be somewhat decent by the time they showed up. I carried around a large trash bag as I picked up all the paper plates and cups that had been left on the counters and tables outside. I loaded glasses in the dishwasher and found most of the silverware. Anna came down in sweats and a tank top when I stopped to take a break and make coffee. She started helping wipe down counters and said that she would take out the trash. Most of the people that showed up last night were pretty considerate and cleaned up after themselves, there wasn’t that much of a mess. Down in the basement there wasn’t too much of a mess, just a bunch of candy wrappers and a couple cups. I cleaned those up and went back upstairs. I poured a cup of coffee and sat down on one of the barstools. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do for the rest of the day, I could just hang in the work room or go out and do something. One of the things I needed to do was set up a guest bedroom in one of the rooms downstairs for Michael. I didn’t mind him staying here with me, but I was feeling territorial and needed my own space. I didn’t want him expecting to stay in my room with me. There were two bedrooms on the main floor, one was standing empty and the other had boxes that I hadn’t gotten around to unpacking yet. I would have needed to set up a guest room at some point, it was just going to be sooner than later. I asked Anna if she wanted to go with me to pick some things out, but she decided to stay and clean up the room to get it ready for furniture. I took the keys to the Matrix and headed out to find a dresser and a bed for the guest room. I went to several stores until I found something that would be suitable for the room. I wanted something functional and not too fancy. I picked up a few decorations for the room, a vase for flowers and a couple framed prints. I also found a night table with a couple drawers. I stopped at a department store as well, and picked up an alarm clock and extra towels for the downstairs bathroom. The furniture would be delivered tomorrow and I headed home to see how Anna was doing. When I got back to the house, Anna was outside in the backyard digging in the garden. I went to the den and found a spiral notebook that was mostly empty and opened it up to a blank page. I stood at the kitchen window and watched for a few minutes before I slid open the sliding door and stepped out onto the patio. “You need anything? Something to drink maybe?” I asked her. She shook her head in the negative and I set the notebook on the patio table and sat down. I needed to make notes on what I needed to work on. I had a property management company running my rentals and I wanted to look over the books. I needed to set up a meeting with the attorneys to find out how the other two companies were doing. I scribbled notes down in the spiral. It was a nice day outside, sunny and warm. I raised my head up to feel the sun on my face. I needed to make another reservation to the island and wrote that down too. The doorbell rang and I got up to answer it. The rental company had arrived to get the tents and extra tables. Anna cleaned up the empty pots from the plants she had been putting in the garden and we went inside to get out of the men’s way. I went into the den to transfer my notes into the calendar in my laptop. I decided to go down to the farm on Tuesday and see how things were going. I needed to arrange to buy the sheep stock and the pigs, I wanted my friend Dale to help me pick out the best animals. I remembered the pictures I had taken and opened the desk drawer to take out my camera so that I could download the pictures. I heard a noise at the door and called Anna in. I wanted to show her the pictures of the village at the farm. The pictures had come out very well and I decided to post them online so that more of the community could see what the houses there looked like. I heard my phone ringing, and pulled it out to answer it. It was Random and I spent the next hour on the phone with him. There was some kind of problem at the island, and he wanted me to come out as soon as possible. I had planned to go down there in two weeks, but it sounded like he needed me there sooner. I told him that I would be down a week from Monday. Michael was going to be leaving Sunday night and I would be able to take off the next morning. When I got off the phone, I called Michael. I wanted to find out if he could come out a day or two earlier, I could change the reservation for him. He agreed that that would be fine and we chatted for a while longer until I realized how late it was there. Finally arriving at the island, Random met me at the beach. He led me by the hand toward the opposite end of the island from the castle. We were almost at the center of the island when I noticed the ground getting warmer and warmer. We came to a clearing that had several pools of water that were bubbling slowly. They looked similar to the geothermal pools of water at Yellowstone. The largest one was a brightly colored hot spring. From the steam that was rising, I knew they would be too hot to go into. They were probably several hundred degrees. I had an idea though and wondered how hard it would be to create tubs that could be heated with this water, and possibly pumping up the cooler ocean water. “That’s not all,” he said and led me a bit farther past the clearing. There was a large crack in the ground with more steam rising from it. It smelled like sulphur and I stepped back. To my mind and thinking, these geographical features had probably been here for years and I didn’t see that much of a problem. Random seemed overly concerned to me. I promised him that I would look into it, and have someone come out to look. I was used to living in the “Ring of Fire” so I wasn’t concerned, until I started thinking that I was in a different part of the world. I didn’t know if this was normal for here or not. If we were near Hawaii or something, it would be more normal. I gave a little more serious thought to contacting someone to come take a look at the crack. I had a friend who was a seismologist with the department of earth and space sciences at the University of Washington. I would have to call her and see if she could come out and visit for a working vacation. We walked slowly back toward the construction area. It was very hot out and I didn’t want to get heat stroke. Then Random told me about the other issue he had been having. Apparently some of the workers had been seeing things that could not be easily explained. I asked him what it was that he had heard. Random said that he had over heard some of the men talking about seeing a woman in white walking down on the beach. I laughed out loud at that. “That is so cliché!” I told him. He said they had talked about other apparitions as well, calling them demons and devils. I knew that some members of the crew were native islanders that were very superstitious. I needed to come up with a plan to nip this in the bud. I wondered if a ritual would be in order. Perhaps if I dressed in white and walked along the beach, they would think that it had been me all the time. Possibly then they would think that I was very powerful and that they needed to obey me at all costs. I would have to look up some of the traditional legends for this part of the world and figure out how to make a show out of my presence here. Most of the workers didn’t know who I was so I figured that it wouldn’t be too hard to do. When we arrived at the plateau, I was surprised to see how far the work had come along. The wall along the cliffs was nearly complete, and the lower floors were being worked on now. I walked around the deep hole to see how much was done. The concrete had all been poured to make the walls and the bottom floor. The inner walls were framed and one end already had the drywall up. I found Jeff and asked him how he thought things were going. He sounded positive when he talked about the construction, but got a strange expression on his face when I asked him about what the men were saying. I told him what Random had said to me and he confirmed it. I let him know that I would be taking care of that before it turned into a disaster. I wanted the compound completed on time without losing workers to their silly fears. After looking around a while longer, I asked Random to come back to the yacht to join me for dinner. I had chartered a smaller vessel this time, I had less of an entourage traveling with me. The cook was just as good as the other though and I had been able to discuss the menu and make arrangements for what I wanted to have.

Click here to go to chapter xx