Midlife Fairy Hunter: The Forty Proof Series, Book 2

by Mayer, Shannon

  Eric handed me a plate of toast. “Here.” Feish glared at him as if he’d stolen her thunder.

  I ignored them both and motioned for Suzy to go on.

  “After he yelled at me for like five minutes straight, he seemed okay.” Suzy cut a piece off the apple she was holding and popped it in her mouth.

  Five minutes of yelling? That was not okay. I cringed at the thought of how much he was going to yell at me and then straightened my back. He was not my husband. Or my boyfriend. And really, he wasn’t even family anymore. Which meant he had no say over me, other than the fact that he was a mentor of sorts. Or had been. We’d been fired.

  Damn, my head really didn’t want to wrap around that. I’d spent years thinking of change as a bad thing, something to be avoided, and that kind of hardwiring didn’t just go away. Which was why I’d stuck it out with Alan for so long. Far longer than was good for either of us.

  A pang from my nether regions made me wince, and I stood up to finish my toast on my feet rather than sitting.

  Suzy waved around a second piece of apple, cutting through my minor epiphany. “He said we should head to the Hollows early tonight, plead our case to the other mentors. He thinks they’ll reinstate us.”

  But I wasn’t so sure I wanted that anymore. And before I agreed to do anything else, I needed to find out from Kinkly what was happening with the fairy ring. I’d missed two nights in a row, which meant I was out two enormous gems. I needed that money.

  Especially now. But how did I contact her? I looked at Eric. “Hey, can you get a hold of Kinkly for me?”

  He froze and his face flushed red. “Me? Why? I mean, I could try, but maybe she wouldn’t want to talk to me.” The words spluttered out of him, and I ducked my head so he couldn’t see me smile. He really had it bad for her.

  “I just need to talk to her. If you could contact her?” I asked again.

  His bowtie bobbed as he swallowed. “Yes, well, I could ask her.”

  Gran hovered and I just stood there and ate my toast. Neither Feish nor Suzy said anything about the night before, or going through the doorway to what was basically a porn club, or the men in black, nothing. Eric was quiet now too after spluttering about contacting Kinkly.

  “Eric,” I said, drawing his attention to me, “you know a lot about the shadow world, being a counsellor to shadow creatures. What would happen if Suzy and I broke away from the Hollows Group? Do you think we could make it on our own?”

  Suzy sucked in a sharp breath but said nothing, waiting as we looked to Eric. Not because he was a man, but because he was smart. We needed smart. He touched his bowtie and then his glasses.

  “You think you might not go back?” He blinked rapidly. “That . . . would be an interesting turn of events. You’d be free agents, for lack of a better word. That could be good and bad. It would mean you wouldn’t be tied to the council like the Hollows Group is, but that might also open you up to shadier people.”

  I thought about Crash, who was supposed to be one of the bad guys. Maybe he was a dick for messing around with all these women at once, but that didn’t make him bad, just a dick. What kind of shady was he talking about?

  I sighed. “So you think it’s a bad idea?”

  “Actually, I think it is a great idea. But I have one question.” He cleared his throat. “Could I be on the team? Just as an advisor, of course. I think I could bring insights to the team, and guidance when dealing with different personalities—”

  I waved a hand, cutting him off. “I wouldn’t do this without you.” A smile spread over my lips and then I looked at Suzy. “What about you? Want to start our own club? Keep the money for ourselves?”

  She picked up a piece of toast and bumped it into mine. “Done. Girl power, all the way.”

  Feish’s face fell, but I was ready for her. That’s what I got for sitting on the throne for the last hour, praying for the end to come. I’d had time to think about how this would go down.

  “You’d have to be our secret, Feish. You can be in, but Crash can’t know,” I said softly.

  Her eyes lit up and she threw her arms around my neck, almost strangling me. “We are friends.”

  “Of course we are.” I patted her back.

  “We’ll need a name,” Suzy said. “Charlie’s Angels?”

  “I think that’s taken,” I mumbled around my last bite of toast. My guts were feeling better, even if my backside was still miserable.

  “Avengers?”

  “Also taken.” I laughed softly.

  “Gran’s Girls,” Gran whispered. “Eric can be an honorary girl.”

  I burst out laughing but was rudely interrupted by a sudden banging on the back door. Eric and Feish jumped, lifting their hands as if they were ready to karate chop the would-be invader.

  I spun in my seat to see Gran float-running toward the back door, her fingers wiggling like mad as if she could still cast a spell. “I said to stay off my property, Matilda!” she yelled. I pushed out of my seat and hurried after her. Because neither Feish nor Suzy could see Gran. Only Eric could.

  They might be able to hear her at times, or get the occasional glimpse, but they didn’t see her the way I did.

  “Damn it, who is Matilda and why is she banging on the door?” Like I didn’t have enough problems on my desk. I skidded to a stop at the back of the house as the pace and volume of the banging picked up, and whipped the door open.

  “Matilda!” Gran pointed a finger at a woman standing on the doorstep in nothing but a partially shredded nightgown. Blood seeped from wounds all over her body, including a slash that circumnavigated her neck.

  I put a hand to my own neck. “Another ghost.”

  “WHAT?” Suzy whisper-shouted in my ear, making me jump. “What do you mean another ghost?”

  “Her grandmother lives here still,” Feish sniffed, which was a rather wet sound. Maybe she was getting a cold.

  “You mean it’s haunted?” Suzy was quiet for a breath and then pumped both fists into the air. “YES! I mean, that is so awesome! This team is going to kick some serious ass!”

  I ignored her as I stared at the ghost who kept looking over her shoulder, which made her head roll precariously close to the edge of falling right off. Matilda pushed on Gran, who pushed her right back.

  “No. You may not come in. You won’t bring that darkness into my home!” Gran stomped her foot and Matilda stumbled back, one hand clutching at her neck, the other wrapping around her middle. Tears slid down her pale cheeks, and her dark brown hair hung in messy ringlets. As if she’d had her coif done the day before and slept in it. Only I knew from the style of her nightgown she’d been dead for longer than a day. More likely she’d been dead for a couple hundred years.

  Another stomp from Gran, and Matilda floated down the back steps and to the back of the house next door, sliding through the solid brick wall as if it were nothing. Gran sighed. “She is a mess, that one.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “And this is because?”

  “Well, besides the fact that she was murdered? She clings to something that she cannot speak of because of the—” Gran drew her thumb across her throat as she made a ‘ggggkkkk.’ “—terrible business next door. My gardens always kept it from seeping over to us.”

  I had no doubt it was a terrible business. The Sorrel-Weed House was known for its hauntings, which had made it a serious draw for tourists, thrill seekers, and true believers hoping to catch a glimpse of ghosts and demons. “Is she going to be a problem?”

  “You need to work on the garden,” Gran said. “Anyone who lives here needs to keep it healthy. The protection spells I wove around the house are tied to the roots of the plants, and from there to the souls within this house. She and the others will keep out if the garden is maintained. All those idiots wanting to buy the house trampled my flowers and herbs, and that did damage to the spells.”

  A sigh slid out of me as I thought of all those hot summer hours I’d spent in the garden with my gran. She’d
loved it and I’d loved her enough to make the process bearable. But I could already imagine the plants dying off in rapid succession. A green thumb was not a skill I’d ever been able to cultivate. Yes, pun intended.

  I backed up and bumped into Suzy. Eric and Feish stood right behind her.

  “Was that really a ghost from next door?” Suzy breathed. “I’ve heard that there is some seriously bad mojo flowing through those walls. Never been inside of it, though.”

  Feish sniffed again. “Very bad. Even Boss thought maybe too bad for buying this house.”

  Her lips clamped shut as if she’d said something she shouldn’t have. Interesting.

  “Yes.” I looked at Suzy first. “That was a ghost. Gran ran her off. But I have to keep up the garden here if it’s going to protect us from the monsters from next door.”

  Eric cleared his throat. “I could help with that. I like gardening.”

  I touched his elbow. “You sure? It’s hot out there.”

  He smiled. “I’m a bigfoot. I like nature and it responds to me. I’ll do some baking when it gets too hot to garden.”

  Was he for real? No man was this good. Of course, then it hit me he wasn’t real. He was a damn bigfoot. Downright mythical.

  “Thank you, Eric.” I gave him a quick hug and he blushed.

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve been a part of something,” he said. “This is nice. Like a family.”

  Suzy nodded, and so did Feish. Gran stood off to the side watching us with serious eyes. I clapped my hands together.

  “So, since we’re all so wide awake, we should get my stuff from Corb’s. There’s not a lot of it.”

  Suzy looked around the house with new eyes. “You think there’s room for a third? I’ve always wanted to live in a haunted house. And I’ll help with the garden too.”

  I’d opened my mouth to say no until she mentioned the garden. Any help there would be good.

  “If there is room,” Eric said, “I could stay too. We are probably all safer together.”

  He wasn’t wrong. The more eyes on this place, the better. Especially considering we’d been shot at out in the bush.

  “Agreed,” I said. “We can keep an eye out for anyone coming and going. Work together.”

  I looked at the river maid on my left. “What do you think, Feish? You good with more roommates?”

  She pursed those big floppy lips of hers. “Maybe till Boss gets back. When he’s back, then he decides.”

  Back. Which meant he was gone for how long? What had he said the day of the auction?

  Up to two months.

  Two months in a place like that orgy pit?

  Probably. Yeah, I didn’t like how that felt on my heart. I was not falling for him, not by any twinkling of the imagination. But I’d thought . . .

  I don’t know what I’d thought. That he was different, maybe. That I was important to him?

  That he liked me. UGH. I was an idiot. He was a fae king. I was human. This was for the best, it really was. I just had to keep telling myself that.

  Suzy and I walked back to Corb’s loft to get Suzy’s car, Eric already hard at work in Gran’s garden as we left, chatting with Gran and getting her advice on how to best remove certain weeds.

  Suzy left me at Corb’s, took her car, and headed to her place to pack up the room she rented. Which was probably pretty empty considering all the bags in the back of her car.

  I let myself into the building, peeled off my boots to carry them in one hand to keep the noise down, and crept up the stairs. Corb would be sleeping now. I was sure of it. Cowardly of me to grab my stuff and run? Maybe. But if he’d yelled at Suzy for five minutes, then I could expect him to yell at me for ten. Especially given the way he’d been treating me. My phone had been shut off, I needed to remind him of that. I’d run out of minutes and hadn’t had the opportunity to add more.

  Not that I was afraid, I just didn’t have the energy to duke it out with him. What I could use was a hot soak in a tub, a full-body massage, and half a bottle of Advil.

  Too bad there were only two tablets left in the bottle in the bathroom.

  Back in my room, I stuffed my clothing into the one duffel bag I’d brought with me from Seattle. The rest of my stuff—what little there was—I’d put into a storage unit there. But I didn’t have the money to get it all shipped to Savannah, not if I wanted to pour every penny toward the house, and the more time that passed, the less I cared. I really didn’t have much to my name. I mean, I had the money from Eric and the bounty I’d completed. I touched the leather bag on my hip, where I’d stowed all that money.

  For just a moment, a flicker of horror swept through me and I scrambled to open the bag and make sure that the money was still there. I’d totally forgotten I’d been packing it around since the house auction. “Idiot, you’re an idiot.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t go that far,” Corb said. “A fool, maybe, but not an idiot. You’re too smart for that moniker.”

  I turned to see him in the doorway. He had on pants and a shirt, so maybe he hadn’t been sleeping, even if he had some good dark circles under his eyes. I zipped up the bag with one long swipe. “Well, yeah, today we can call me an idiot.” When was the guilt trip coming? The one where he complained that he didn’t know where we’d been? Maybe it wasn’t coming.

  And maybe hell had frozen over.

  He looked around me and saw the bag, leaned over and picked it up. “Because you’re leaving?”

  “No, that’s not why I’m an idiot,” I said. “There are other reasons. Like packing my money around with me. I need to get it into a bank or something.”

  He nodded and let my bag go. “Funny. I thought you were going to say you were an idiot for disappearing without a trace for nearly a day,” he drawled softly as he stepped into the room and crowded my space. There it was, the guilt trip. And damned if I wasn’t feeling it right to my core. “I thought you were going to say you were an idiot because you could have died, and no one would have known where to even look for you.” Another step closer, and then he was looking down at me, and not in a condescending way. More like an I might just eat you kind of way. Shit, he was super-duper angry.

  “Well,” I tucked my hands behind me to keep them from touching him. Because despite all the signs that he might be interested, and my hormones’ insistence that I should take him up on any and all offers he might be making, I was not a total idiot. I was sure it had something to do with the spell the O’Seans had laid on everyone. “I didn’t think you’d miss me. Just a few weeks ago you would have been happy to see me disappear from your life. So why should now be any different?”

  His jaw ticked, and the way his chest rose and fell made it obvious he was struggling to breathe evenly. “Is that what you think?”

  “I dropped into your life without an invitation.” I shrugged. It was hard to act casual when a man of his size was crowding the tar out of you. Especially when my fingers wanted to dance all over him. Bad, bad Breena! He was kind of on the taboo list. Just like Crash. Crap, I’d really fallen into the “I like bad boys” trap. I cleared my throat and dragged my bag across the small bed to my side. “I know that you’ve got people—sorry, things—to do.” I made myself give him a casual wink. As if I didn’t feel the urge to strip my clothes off and roll around on him—if only to feel sexy and wanted for a change. “You’re well stocked, and I don’t want to walk in on something I shouldn’t.”

  He frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  Oh, Gawd, he was going to make me say it, wasn’t he? Well, he’d left me with no choice. Like a Band-Aid I’d left on for long enough it had glued itself to my skin, I was going to have to rip this sucker off. Time to lay it on the line.

  “Oink and Boink? Boy Butter? Sorry, but I’m not sure I’m up for the amount of lubrication you apparently require.” And just like that, I turned my back to leave before he could notice my red cheeks and realize that maybe I wouldn’t mind all the stuff that went with his s
tash under the sink.

  15

  I didn’t wait around for Corb to come up with some lame excuse for why he had so much lube in his bathroom. I grabbed my bag and my boots and was out of my bedroom, down the hall, and out the front door even as I heard him swear from the bathroom.

  Here’s the thing, I know what you’re thinking. Get it, girl! Take him up on the offer! I mean, that’s the advice my bestie from Seattle, Mavis, would have given me. And a teeny tiny part of me, right at the center of my libido, was urging me to do exactly that. Buff. Young. Hot. Dangerous. Damn it. He checked all the boxes for a fling, but I was not a fool. He was out of my league.

  I’d just been shown how much it hurt to get your hopes up via Crash and his two ladies. Hell, Crash hadn’t even spoken to me, as if he’d be embarrassed for people to know he knew me. Whether it was because I was human, or not eighteen going on twelve, I didn’t know. It didn’t really matter.

  But I was not going to fall for another bucket of bruised ego with Corb.

  I was across the street and in Centennial Park Cemetery before I heard the door of his loft open. What in the world possessed me to do it I don’t know, but I ducked behind one of the bigger tombstones and slid to my butt.

  “Are you really hiding from Corb?” I asked myself. “What in the world is wrong with you?”

  Movement to my left snapped my head in that direction. “Robert!”

  The skeleton swayed side to side as if he were on a ship at sea. “Friend.”

  “You’re okay? I thought you were done for when you got blasted!” I held a hand out to him as if to high five, and he mimicked the motion, only he had skeletal digits and no real palm. I high fived him anyway.

  “Okay. Healed,” he rumbled. “Friend.” He stayed where he was and so did I.

  “Yeah, well, your friend is an idiot,” I said. “I disappeared for a day and a half. But we were only gone an hour on our end.” I rubbed my head. “And I drank something wicked that knocked me on my butt.” I winced, thinking about how all that liquid had come out. “I’m still sore.” I patted the ground next to me and Robert sat, crossing his bony legs, still swaying.