Something Sinister This Way Comes: A Paranormal Women's Fiction Novel (Midlife Wishes Book 2)

by R K Dreaming

I flushed. “That was dirty money and I shan’t be using it!” I said heatedly.

  Charming plonked himself down cross-legged on the floor, took the matches from me and, with annoying efficiency, proceeded to make a fire, where I had miserably failed.

  He blew on it patiently until the flames caught a thick log and then grinned in satisfaction.

  I pursed my lips. “You could have just used your magic.”

  He smirked. “Not unless you made a wish.”

  He was teasing me, and I only laughed.

  We stayed there for a long while, just staring at the glowing, flickering flames, basking in their heat and beauty. Somehow I found myself leaning my head on his shoulder and was glad when he put his arm around me

  Companionship, I told myself. That’s all this was. Two lonely people seeking comfort.

  I was saddened when suddenly he broke the comfortable silence by saying, “You want this for Gaia really, don’t you? You want to be a mother she can be proud of, live in a house she can come home to...?”

  And just like that I had to pull away. Because the sound of her name was too painful. I’d worked so hard to find her, and when I finally had, she had thrown it in my face that she had known who I was all along and she wasn’t interested in being my daughter. That she knew the Reaper was after us, and as far as she was concerned, she was safer far away from me and far away from him.

  She thought I had abandoned her, and hated me.

  The wound was fresh, and a lump came to my throat at the mere thought of it.

  I shook my head, and my voice came out husky and small. “She isn’t coming back.”

  “She will,” he said fiercely. “After she’s had time to think about it. After we’ve put the Reaper in the grave he belongs in.”

  “I thought you couldn’t kill?”

  “We’ll think of something.”

  He squeezed my hand.

  I cleared my throat and blinked away tears. “Then we had better catch some sleep. Because in a few hours we’re going have to break into the crime scene and get started on finding him.”

  Chapter 2

  SIGOURNEY

  Some hours later it was the middle of the night, and Charming and I were standing some way from the house that the actress Merilyn Hepburn had died in. Unfortunately for us it was surrounded by a ten-foot-tall security railing tipped in vicious-looking spikes. Police tape cordoned it all off, and there was even a sleepy looking pair of Brimstone Bay cops parked up in a squad car outside to deter any journalists.

  “Darn,” I muttered, though I had been expecting nothing less. She was a film star after all.

  Luckily for us we had walked here, not wanting the loud gunshot crack of an etherhopping arrival to alert any neighbours.

  We retreated into a clump of ornamental bushes and out of view. I looked at Charming. “Any chance you can use your genie powers to silently etherhop us into there?”

  Charming snorted. “You wish.”

  There was a time when this would have irked me, as he had once refused to even conjure me up a mere grape without threatening to make me wish for it. Not anymore though.

  I chuckled. “If I did wish it,” I asked speculatively, “could you etherhop silently?”

  He shrugged. “Stupid thing to wish for. We could try it if you really want?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Round the back it is then.”

  “We could vault it?” he suggested impatiently, eyeing up the cops in their car, one of whom was snoring while his partner munched some chips and watched TV on his phone. He pointed to another bunch of trees closer to the fence. “From there. Bet they won’t see.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Have you taken a look at me lately? You might be able to vault over those spikes with your dignity intact, but I’ll be skewered like a flopping fish. Some of us haven’t been living the keep fit-lifestyle if you must know.”

  He grinned. “You look pretty good to me.”

  “I imagine anything female looks pretty good to you after being stuck in a lamp for a thousand years, but I haven’t suddenly developed athleticism after I stopped being a sanguith two weeks ago.”

  I might be able to walk in the sun now and have my health, a miracle for a half-vampire, but I had no doubts as to my limitations.

  “Come on,” I said, retreating back the way we had come. “Maybe there’s a side alley into the property or something.”

  He grabbed hold of my elbow to stop me. “I’ll go myself. You wait here.”

  “No,” I whispered firmly. “We already talked about this. And anyway, I’ve spent decades catching criminals, and keeping up on the details of The Reaper case. You won’t know what you’re looking for.”

  “Neither will you.”

  He meant without my psychic powers.

  “I’ll know more than you will,” I said grudgingly, shaking him off.

  I trotted briskly, keeping an eye out for any alleys that led into the back gardens behind this street of houses. Surely gardeners used them to access these prestigious properties without disturbing the wealthy residents? “There has to be another way in somewhere.”

  He shook his head. “See how these houses are back-to-back with the houses on the next road over? I bet we can get in from their back neighbour’s garden.”

  “Oh goodie. At least when I end up flopping on their nine-foot fence, there won’t be any cops around to see. Maybe you can boost me over like a little rocket, Mr Muscles.”

  “Or maybe the houses on the next road over won’t even have a fence at all.” He winked, as if he knew exactly what he was talking about.

  “How do you know that?” I whispered.

  He tapped his nose. “Some of us haven’t been wasting our centuries.”

  I snorted. “You mean you and your little chicken pal have been taking moonlit walks around Brimstone Bay to while away the endless hours?”

  When he scowled, I chortled. “Oh my gosh. That is so funny. Little rooster-genie and his chicken lady friend going on romantic walks.”

  He scowled. “It wasn’t funny being trapped as a rooster for a thousand years, you know. She thought it would be hilarious, just because my familiar is a chicken. It’s not!”

  He was so mad that I immediately stopped laughing. “Sorry. So erm… who is this she? Was it a woman who trapped you in the lamp?”

  Unfortunately for me, no answers were coming. He sank into a moody silence, zipping his lips as if he regretted his little outburst.

  We trudged down the street and then up the neighbouring one that ran parallel to it until we got to a house we thought must back onto Marilyn Hepburn’s mansion.

  Charming had been right. Compared to Marilyn’s luxuriant home, this house was rather ordinary. It didn’t even have a perimeter fence.

  “They’re asleep,” he said.

  Right again. No lights were on inside the house.

  Charming walked down the driveway as if he had every right to be there, and I followed. A path at the side of the house led to a wooden gate. I grabbed him to stop him from touching it, and waited a long moment, driven by my instinct to do so though I was not sure why.

  “They don’t have a dog,” he whispered. “It would have barked by now.”

  I shook my head. No that wasn’t it. My eyes landed on the two cars in the driveway and I breathed a sigh of relief. That was it.

  “They’re not witches,” I said. I had been worried they might have put magical protections on their fence.

  His quizzical expression cleared. He vaulted effortlessly over the gate and then opened it from the other side to let me in.

  As I followed him into the garden, which was overgrown with weeds, it hit me again how much I had lost now my psychic gifts were gone. There was a time when my ever-present psychic music would have read the ‘tone’ of the world for me, and I would have known without even having to think whether the fence was a danger to me or not. Now I had to rely on my eyes and ears in ways that were not second nature to me.

>   I felt a jab of fear. What if Charming was right? What if I no longer knew what I was doing?

  I was counting on The Reaper having made a mistake and left a clue behind this time. Usually he killed mothers in front of their young daughters, but Marilyn had no daughters. This murder had been an act of desperation to get rid of the one woman who knew his face.

  And now I was scared that he really might have left a clue, but with my psychic powers gone, I would miss it.

  The horror of that thought had brought me to a standstill in the middle of the garden. I only realised this when Charming came back for me, looking worried.

  “What is it?” he whispered urgently.

  I gave him a weak smile and shook my head. “Nothing. Everything’s fine.”

  It would be. Somehow it had to be.

  Squaring my shoulders, I marched to the back of the garden, with its unsightly and poorly maintained wooden fence. Beyond that was a tightly packed row of tall evergreen trees, which Marilyn Hepburn’s estate agent must have planted to cover the unsightly fence for her rich clients.

  Ignoring Charming’s offered hand, I scrambled over the broken fence by myself and tumbled into Marilyn’s garden, landing behind the trees.

  Crouching amongst the dense foliage, I peered out. Charming arrived beside me with his usual silent leonine grace.

  “She’s lived her whole adult life as a Humble movie star,” I whispered. “I think she’ll have security cameras recording the property. Pull your hood over your face.”

  I pulled my own overlarge hood down, covering half of my face. Hopefully when the cops saw the footage in future, they would think we were nosy reporters.

  The entire wall at the back of the house was like a huge window overlooking the manicured garden. Next to the house sparkled a beautiful rectangle of a perfect-blue pool and some pristine wooden deckchairs — it all looked like it belonged in a sunny holiday spot.

  “Little piece of heaven,” I murmured.

  How sad it was that Marilyn had lived among such beauty only to have it snatched away.

  Charming’s sombre eyes reflected that he was thinking the same.

  We jogged over to the house. Beyond the glass was a lounge. It was darkened, but enough moonlight fell through the glass wall for us to see it was empty.

  My heart leapt when I found that the sliding back door was a few inches open. Some careless crime scene tech had saved us a bunch of trouble.

  I slipped inside and waited for him to follow before I returned the door to its original position. Luck, I told myself. But my heart was racing with uncertainly. Oh how marvellous it would have been to be able to be sure, but my gifts were gone.

  Charming was surveying the lounge and let out a low whistle of appreciation.

  I promptly punched him in the arm. “Idiot.”

  “What?” he said with a shrug. “It’s too quiet. No one’s here but us. This place is cool. Old world opulence is over-rated. You should do yours more like this.”

  The lounge was furnished in a minimal style, the large open space floored in black-streaked marble. Its focal point was a couple of sleek sofas and a glass coffee table on which was an angular vase containing a single sculptural flower, wilted now. Two wine glasses were on it too. Marilyn had been drinking with her male friend before it all happened.

  The room felt cold to me, and there were precious few places to hide.

  Feeling horribly exposed, I whispered, “Stay close,” and quickly made my way to the base of the stairs.

  I came to a sharp halt, seeing a patch of dried-up blood near the bottom step. The area was marked with a little paper cone and taped off to prevent anyone stepping on it.

  There was no sign of a clawed dripping bloody pawprint here. This was the mark The Reaper always left behind.

  “It had to be the guy who was killed here,” I whispered to Charming. “Not Marilyn.”

  “Amelie,” said Charming, his jaw clenched.

  I felt a pang of guilt. I had been thinking of her as Marilyn, the famous actress whose face I had known from movies. But to him she was still little Amelie, his descendent, the last remnant of his family.

  “Amelie,” I murmured, nodding.

  I edged around the blood and hastily made my way up the stairs, filled with urgency to see where Amelie had died. Because if the Reaper had made any mistakes, he would have made it there, with his real victim.

  Her friend, poor man, who had gotten in the Reaper’s way, probably had no idea about her past. That she was really Amelie Assisi, who had vanished off the face of the earth after seeing The Reaper’s face. Amelie, who had supposedly died as a girl, but who The Reaper had successfully hunted down before even Charming could find her.

  Poor little Amelie Assisi, who had lived in fear her whole life but not been able to stop the horror that had always been coming for her in the end.

  Had he left a fingerprint behind this time? A hair filament? A magical trace that the Conclave of Magic had already found, but which I would be unable to see? This fresh murder could be the key to finding The Reaper, and I was worried the Conclave investigators were already several steps ahead of Charming and me.

  Upstairs, I paused outside what had to be the master bedroom. Some splatters of blood were on the white carpet, visible in the moonlight flooding in from the huge windows everywhere.

  I was tempted to touch them, still aching for the gifts which might have told me if the blood belonged to Marilyn, or her friend, or to The Reaper himself. But no visions would come to me this time.

  Charming was staring at the blood. The stricken look on his face hardened to resolution. I knew that look. It was what I felt whenever I thought of what I wanted to do to The Reaper.

  The bedroom door was slightly ajar. I pushed it open with my knuckle, realising too late that I should have brought gloves. I should have thought about fingerprints while I was downstairs.

  I stepped into the bedroom, Charming so close at my back that I could feel his warmth.

  The first thing I saw was the king-sized bed with its cream silk sheets and the horrible browned mottling of bloodstains all over them. I swallowed hard, looking for The Reaper’s mark. I found it on the wall beside the door. The outline of a massive clawed pawprint made of blood was clearly visible.

  I stared at it, shaken, remembering the first time I had seen this mark, the night my mother died. The sound of my own wailing, a terrified two-year-old left all alone, screaming for the woman who had loved her most in the world.

  It was a shock to see it again now, so horrifically real and menacing, even though my logical mind knew that a print this big could not belong to a real creature.

  I was shaking. Charming’s hand clasped my shoulder to soothe me.

  “Something’s wrong,” I whispered.

  “What?” he asked.

  I shook my head. Something was wrong in this room and I didn’t know what.

  “Something’s wrong,” I murmured again helplessly.

  And then I heard it. Footsteps coming up the stairs behind us.

  “Sigourney,” called a man’s mocking voice out of the dark. “It is you, isn’t it, Sigourney? I knew you would come.”

  Chapter 3

  SIGOURNEY

  “Hide!” I hissed to Charming.

  A stubborn look came onto his face, but I insisted “Get back inside the lamp right now!”

  To my astonishment, as if I had uttered a command, he turned into a whirling billowing cloud of multicoloured smoke and vanished into my shoulder, my skin tickling as he dived into the lamp that was tattooed there. And he was gone.

  Just in time.

  I turned to face the man coming upstairs, his footsteps on the wooden stairs as mocking as his voice had been. He came into the doorway, a looming figure, and flicked the light on so that I could see that smug smile of his.

  My insides chilled.

  It had been a trap and I’d walked right into it.

  The man in front of me had a squ
are face and a squarish body, and an aura of great physical strength even in his sixties. His clothes hung loosely off his enormous frame, giving him the impression of being even bigger. I knew him well.

  “Polliver,” I said coldly, as if seeing him here was no surprise at all, as if I had fully expected him, because I was supposed to be a psychic and it was the only card I had left, though it was an empty one.

  “Well, well,” he said, a horrible smile playing on his unpleasant mouth. “Aren’t you predictable?”

  That slimy smile reminded me of the horrible psychic music that had always resonated off him, making me constantly uncomfortable in his presence. Boy was I glad I couldn’t feel that anymore.

  Cuthbert Polliver had been my boss at the Sentinel Alliance London Headquarters for many years. When I’d started, he’d been nearly forty and little more than a pen-pusher. He’d resented being assigned to take care of the unwanted sanguith psychic until he had realised how useful I could be. And thus his dreams of advancement had flourished into life. He had enjoyed lording it over me right up until my elevation to a Grace and all of the power and prestige that came with it. The thought of addressing me as ‘Your Grace’ had rankled him too much, and he’d moved on. His resentment of me had never died out though. I had felt it oozing off him like bitter bile every time our paths had crossed since.

  He menaced me now by stepping close enough for me to feel his breath on my face. I refused to flinch. I wasn’t the weak, brittle sanguith anymore. I was getting used to not being afraid of being accidentally broken. It was an empowering feeling.

  And Polliver seemed to have forgotten I was no meek little madam, but stood nearly six feet tall myself. He couldn’t look down on me so much as he had hoped.

  “What are you doing here, Polliver?” I said casually, like I hadn’t a care in the world.

  He scowled, worried I had some sort of advantage in this situation that he hadn’t foreseen. But he seemed to shake this off, as if growing certain I was merely bluffing.

  He unclipped a set of handcuffs from his weapon belt and swung them around and around on his finger.