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

by R K Dreaming

  My voice had come out rather more scathingly than I had intended.

  Charming’s jaw was gritted. I held my hand up to stop him saying anything that would make me even madder at him.

  “That coin is yours, isn’t it?” I demanded. “I dreamt it. It was your mother’s.”

  I remembered something else from my dream that took my breath away. His mother’s face had been so like Amelie’s, Marilyn’s. It hurt to realise it. No wonder Charming had been so devastated by Amelie’s death. She had looked like his mother. How awful it must have been for him.

  I swallowed hard. “I dreamt The Reaper had the coin too, Charming. How could that be? It was in a puddle of blood next to one of his victims. He picked it up and put it in his pocket.” My voice shook at the memory of it, so vivid in my mind.

  I flushed when his eyes fell back to the card, reading it again, seeing the words that said the killer was going to kill the person I cared most about in the world.

  The killer had enclosed Charming’s own coin, which meant that the killer thought he was what I cared about most in the world.

  Charming made no comment, which was worse in a way than if he had pointed it out.

  “I don’t understand…” My voice trailed off in distraction.

  My eyes noticed again what they had very much noticed before. Charming was wearing pyjama bottoms and nothing else. His torso was bare. A snide little voice whispered something I didn’t want to think about in my mind.

  “Were you with her?” I demanded before I could stop those awful words coming out of my mouth. My cheeks flushed hot red, but I raised my chin.

  “Who?” he said looking confused.

  “Little Miss Redhead-Kitten-Heels, is who,” I said. And when he still looked baffled, “Bridgit Corkmony!”

  He actually laughed. “Why the hell would I be there? She’s got a lover, if you had forgotten. The trade minister himself. I was at Oberon’s. Where else would I be?”

  “How am I supposed to know?” I said, mortified now. “Why would you have gone to Oberon’s? You’ve got a perfectly good bed here.”

  He raised a cynical dark eyebrow. “You made it clear you didn’t want me here.”

  “I did no such thing,” I said.

  “No? You charged out of the house as if your tail was on fire.”

  “Only because you were being ridiculous and… And how could you tell Oberon about Gaia? You knew it was a secret!”

  He flushed. “It slipped out. I never meant to. I’m sorry. I really am.”

  He looked it too.

  It had always meant a lot to me when people knew how to apologise.

  For the first time since he had gotten back, I suddenly felt like hugging him, glad that he was in one piece. I really had thought for a horrible moment that The Reaper had got him. That it was my fault because I had disregarded The Reaper’s clue. That I had let Charming down.

  “Charming,” I said seriously. “How did The Reaper get your coin?”

  He shook his head sceptically. “He couldn’t have had it. I lost it so long ago. Centuries ago. I thought I would never see it again.” He was turning it over and over in his hands, as if marvelling that it was back.

  “Maybe it’s not yours?” I said hopefully.

  He shook his head. “It was the only one of its kind. This is definitely it. I recognise it. I was devastated when I lost it. It was the last memory I had of my mother.”

  His voice croaked at the mention of his mother, and he immediately stopped speaking.

  My heart broke a little at that. I wished I could hug him, but I knew he wouldn’t want that.

  “You said you thought The Reaper was going to kill me?” Charming said now, and then laughed harshly. His eyes went dark. “You should have known better than to worry about that. That lamp as good as makes me immortal, remember?” His voice was bitter.

  “So you can’t die?” I said softly.

  He shrugged. “Never died yet. Tried often enough.”

  I was alarmed. “That’s not funny!”

  “I thought maybe I could,” he mused. “And maybe the lamp would just bring me back to life. But never managed to prove that theory.”

  “Don’t talk that way, Charming. Just don’t.”

  He gave me a half smile, and teased, “So, you do care about me then?”

  When I didn’t answer, he said more cynically, “Of course you do. Everyone cares about their genie.”

  I wanted to tell him that I cared about him. Him, the man. Not the genie. But I couldn’t bring myself to say the words. I felt like I would be laying myself bare, making myself vulnerable. And I had already done that with the kiss.

  Squeak had grown tired of our conversation and our lack of consideration for her desire to sleep. She gave Charming a sharp peck on the shoulder, and then flew to my pillow, where she sprawled herself out comfortably.

  “Who do you think sent the coin?” I asked him.

  He shrugged. “No idea. Who do you think sent it?”

  “Bridgit,” I said to goad him.

  He actually laughed. “My, you’ve got quite a bee in your bonnet about her.”

  I tried not to scowl. She was the one person it could not be. If only she didn’t have such a rock-solid alibi as the trade minister, just so Charming would be forced to think about the possibility of her being a killer.

  But it was a petty thought, wishing she was guilty just because she was so darned attractive. So darned irritating, with that soft little voice. Why the heck did the woman bother me so much?

  “I’m going to bed,” I said curtly, and marched off.

  The last thing I thought about before I went to sleep was whether Charming would stay or go.

  My question was answered in the morning, when I went downstairs to find him in the kitchen cooking breakfast.

  He was freshly showered, his hair damp, and looking very relaxed and at home in his casual trousers and t-shirt. He was even humming to himself. What a picture of domestic bliss.

  I stood in the doorway quietly, watching him. It was some time before I realised that he was perfectly aware I was there.

  He grinned at me, and put a plate of toast, eggs, mushrooms and sausages down for me on the table, and a glass of orange juice too. “Tea?” he said.

  I chuckled. “Wow, he can even cook. And without magic too!”

  He had not been stingy with the portions. My mouth was watering already.

  “Yoghurt?” He handed one to me. At my querying look, he said, “Oberon took me grocery shopping.”

  I smiled fondly at the thought. Wasn’t Oberon a wonderful teacher. He should open up a How To Be Good To The Woman In Your Life school for men. I laughed, thinking I should suggest it to him.

  “What?” said Charming, filling up his own plate with a heap of food.

  I shrugged, and opened up the yoghurt curiously. It was orange flavoured, which I thought might be a bit weird until I tried it. It was oh so tangy and creamy and delicious. One taste and I gulped the rest down in large spoonfuls. Where had this been all my life?

  Charming was grinning at me. “Oberon said you might like it. It’s his favourite. Sleep okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “Liar,” he said. “You look like you haven’t slept a wink.”

  “Gosh, you really know how to make a girl feel good.”

  I couldn’t resist getting myself a second yoghurt from the fridge.

  He pulled my chair out for me at the breakfast table. He opened his mouth to speak.

  “Don’t,” I said.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t say whatever it is you’re going to say. Just let me enjoy this wonderful moment in peace.”

  He shrugged, and proceeded to munch his food with relish, and even made up a tiny plateful for Squeak. She pecked away at it, making a big mess, and seemed to especially enjoy the sausage.

  “Carnivore,” I accused.

  She cast me a beady look from her orange eye, as if to say I w
as one to speak.

  I stuffed half a sausage into my mouth, and munched it loudly. “Yes I am,” I said.

  “Yuck,” said Charming.

  I rolled my eyes at him. “Oh yeah, I forgot you liked dainty, ladylike ladies.”

  Like Bridgit, I added silently.

  Maybe he had a little bit of a psychic in him too, because he said the most annoying thing that he could say. “Have you thought of speaking to anyone like Bridgit? A professional, I mean.”

  I glared at him. “You think I need a shrink?”

  He shrugged. “If you want to call it that. It’s good to talk to someone, and you seem to have all these pent-up, er, thoughts. You’ve been through a lot recently.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’ve lost your mother, you’ve lost your daughter, you lost your gifts and they haven’t come back the same way. Your friends, your job… everything is gone. And the way you panicked last night… I think you’ve had a lot to deal with is all.”

  It hurt, but I laughed it off. “You think I’m a whack job, do you?”

  “I never said that.”

  “You meant it,” I accused. “Been comparing me to well balanced, ladylike ladies, have you? I’m sick of behaving like people want me to behave, and if you don’t like it then you can stuff it, Mr Fabulous Too Good For Himself genie!”

  He actually threw back his head and laughed. “Ah Sigourney, believe me in all my years I’ve never met anyone quite like you.”

  “That’s because I’m one-of-a-kind,” I snapped. “And why would you want to change me?”

  He looked surprised. “I don’t. I just thought maybe you’d like to have someone to talk to. Just think about it, okay?”

  I glowered down at my plateful of food. It was almost enough to make a woman lose her appetite, but not quite. I liked eating too much. So I ploughed through the rest of it, and simmered, knowing what he had really meant was that I didn’t have enough friends in my life. It was friends I should have been talking to, not a shrink.

  Well, I would have friends one day. I fully planned on getting myself some as soon as the genie was out of my life. He was a full-time occupation himself, had he not noticed.

  In fact, when he was gone, maybe I was going to reinvent myself as an independent psychic extraordinaire, now that I had some of my gift back. My money would run out soon enough without it.

  One thing was for sure. I certainly wasn’t going to be wasting my last wish on getting myself a pot full of gold.

  Speaking of gold, where the heck had Rodan Hale got enough gold to pay for that magical key? The man did charitable work. His office had not screamed any great wealth at me. He had left his rich family behind, so he didn’t have their money either.

  I frowned, remembering that Bridgit had said that it was Rodan who had persuaded her to move their offices into her house to save money.

  Could Rodan have asked her for the money? She had a big house, nice things, very nice clothes. She certainly had enough money.

  But she had admitted to Charming and me that she and Rodan had been involved in illegal activities, saving those poor girls from a life of slavery. If she had admitted that, why hadn’t she told us if Rodan had asked her for a fortune in gold?

  I supposed Rodan had other rich friends too. He could have asked Marilyn Hepburn for the gold. They had been close.

  But it was Bridgit who had gotten under my skin. Irrationally so. And now that it had occurred to me that she might still be hiding something, I couldn’t get the thought out of my mind.

  I had trespassed on her private property. She had seemed to buy my story about being a mad psychic who needed privacy for her visions, but what if she had been angrier than she had made out?

  Angry enough to sneak a mean, twisted little note under my door?

  I snorted. No way.

  Charming looked at me enquiringly, but I only shook my head. I didn’t need him to tell me that I was obsessing about Bridgit for no reason.

  I couldn’t imagine perfect pristine Bridgit Corkmony in her kitten heels creeping up to my house to slide a mystery envelope under my door.

  I couldn’t imagine her capable of murder. And she had her boyfriend, the trade minister, for an alibi.

  But something about her had irritated me from the start, and it wasn’t just the fact that she had flirted with Charming.

  And then it hit me so hard that I actually gasped. In the morgue waiting room when I had been talking to Rodan Hale’s spirit, a spirit only I could see, what had Bridgit Corkmony done?

  Nothing, is what. She had not reacted. She had not been surprised, so much so that I had assumed Rodan had been a real person I was speaking to.

  But Rodan had not been real. He had been a faded spirit that only my psychic gifts had shown me. A succubus like Bridgit could not have seen him because he had been less than a ghost.

  My mouth dropped open as I played over the scene in my mind. Bridgit Corkmony had not reacted at all when I had started talking to Rodan. She should have at least looked at me strangely.

  Maybe it was that she had just been polite. Maybe my talking to nothing at all had agitated her, because she had certainly been spooked enough to break that tap. I could not quite remember if I had mentioned Rodan’s name when I had spoken to him. Why would she not have been interested in that? Why would she not have asked, since he had been her close friend and business partner?

  And then I actually gasped. My goodness. How had I not seen it at the time. What if Bridgit had broken that tap on purpose? She had made such a fuss. What if she had done it to stop me from talking to Rodan?

  I slapped my hand against my forehead. That was exactly what she had done. And I had fallen for it! And her ruse worked, because next thing I knew, Rodan had gone.

  She was hiding something. She had to be!

  Something she was too scared to tell anyone.

  “Are you going to gasp and goggle all day, or are you going to tell me what is going on?” demanded Charming, glaring with exasperation at the mad faces I had been making.

  Stuffing the last bit of egg in my mouth, I shook my head and stood up quickly. “No, because you’re going to tell me I’m mad. You investigate your leads, and I’m off to investigate mine.”

  Sure I was on to something, I walked out.

  Chapter 19

  CHARMING

  Just after midday, Charming arrived to the hotel where Polliver and his team had been staying. He was worried that he might be too late, and that the sentinels might have already departed for field work.

  Yesterday, after his revelation that Polliver might be The Reaper himself, Charming had familiarised himself with where the sentinels were staying and had set up their office.

  He had overheard them talking about their lunchtime daily team meeting, and he was worried that he might have missed it already.

  Charming made his way through the hotel lobby, and towards the meeting rooms that the sentinels had hired for their use. He was relieved to see through the smoky glass pane in the door, that all three were still inside.

  Charming was wondering how best to lure Agent Antoine out of the meeting, when the agent suddenly got up from the table, and excused himself.

  As Antoine came towards the door, Charming nonchalantly ambled up the corridor. Antoine hurried past him to get to the gentleman’s bathroom. Charming casually walked up behind the man and grabbed him in a headlock.

  Antoine’s yelp of shock was cut off by the pressure of Charming’s forearm wrapped firmly around the smaller man’s throat.

  “Relax, buddy,” said Charming, as he wrestled Antoine down to the ground.

  Luckily, the young sentinel was not one of those really strong ones among his kind. Charming straddled his chest to pin him down, pinched his nose shut until the young man gasped for air, and forced the potion that he had purchased from a witch this morning down the young man’s throat.

  Within seconds, Antoine stopped struggling. He sagged, now fast asleep.


  The witch had assured Charming the potion should last anywhere from a few hours to a full half day.

  Next came the tricky part. Charming hoisted the unconscious sentinel onto his shoulder and proceeded to carry him through the corridors of the hotel, up a winding back staircase, and into the sentinel’s own bedroom. He passed three people on the way, telling each with an air of disapproval, “Tourists! Completely drunk at this time of day!”

  Charming deposited Antoine on his bed, and pulled a second bottle of potion he’d purchased from the witch out of his pocket. Yanking a few strands of hair off Antoine’s head, he popped them into the bottle and shook it thoroughly, watching it change into thick green gloop. He swallowed it down with distaste.

  He had wasted good hours finding that witch. It had not been easy. He’d needed one who wouldn’t be horrified at the idea of providing him with a third, and most important item.

  As he sat impatiently on the bed beside Antoine and waited for the potion to take affect, Charming lamented the wilful nature of his genie magic, and how cruelly it ruled over him, biding his own magic so frustratingly to its own will. Charming missed his magic. Missed the special way he’d once had with spells.

  He knew he was lucky that Sigourney had given him such free reign. Never in over a thousand years had any other wish-maker done that. Once they found him, they had been too terrified to let him out of their sight. She really was unique. She seemed to understand life in ways that it had taken Charming centuries to learn, arrogant idiot that he’d been.

  He was going to miss her.

  It took a full ten minutes for the potion to take effect, shrinking his body until he looked the twin of the lean young sentinel who was snoring on the bed.

  After checking that he looked the part in the mirror, Charming headed downstairs to rejoin the team meeting.

  “There you are,” snapped Polliver as he entered the room. “Having a nap, were you?”

  “Sorry, chief,” said Charming, and took Antoine’s seat next to Agent Bordey.

  He did his best not to glower at the man, trying to adopt Antoine’s subservient expression. Even so, the ever sharp Agent Bordey gave him a curious look.

  Charming suspected Sigourney would be fuming if she knew where he was right now. She who had insisted Polliver could not be The Reaper.