A Familiar Problem

by Sam Cheever

  “Maybe he was straddling both sides in case King Al’s plans failed.”

  “Or until he figured out which side would benefit him most?” Deg nodded. “It’s possible. From everything I’ve heard, Adriel’s loyalties are transferable. He’s a bit of a wild card. Brock told me the demons in the demonic realm didn’t believe ol’ Al could pull it off. If Adriel had doubts that would make sense.”

  “How is he? Brock?”

  Deg sighed. “You can imagine how disappointed he is in his uncle. But I think it bothers him more that people are now looking at him like he’s part of the resistance.”

  I realized my mother would have probably known that and I wondered if it had factored into her decision to add us to the council. “I think that might change soon.”

  “You know something?”

  “Yeah. But it’s not my news to tell.”

  Deg settled the sleeping kitten back onto the grass and stood. “I need to go. Talk to you later?”

  “Absolutely.”

  He stopped at the door, turning back. “There is one other thing, LA.”

  I swung around to look at him.

  “Brock and Mandy don’t want to tell you, but I thought you should know.”

  “Now you’re worrying me. What is it?”

  “You know how they won’t tell us how they got back here when we thought they were dead?”

  I nodded.

  “They won’t because they can’t. Mandy admitted to me that she fell into that bog and was sinking, something dark and deadly wrapping itself around her, and then something happened and she suddenly found herself lying near the border of Illusory Park.”

  “How’s that possible?”

  He shrugged. “No idea. She said there was a flash of light and then she was out of the bog. Brock told me a similar story. He was being attacked by those things in the sky and suddenly there was a flash of light and he was lying in the primordial forest.”

  “What about the wraith?”

  “Huh?”

  “Remember they told us they thought they’d seen a wraith when they came back?”

  “Oh. Yeah. They described it to me as a shadow sliding away from them after they came to in the park.” He shrugged. “Anyway, I thought you should know. I guess that’s a mystery for another day.”

  I nodded and watched him leave, my mind spinning.

  The sanctuary was eerily quiet after he left. I sat a moment longer, trying to make sense of something that clearly didn’t. I finally gave up, figuring I’d tackle it when I wasn’t so tired.

  I sat a while longer, lacking the energy to do my chores, and then forced myself to stand. I was heading for the house when I heard a soft sound behind me.

  I turned in time to see a shadow skimming along the glass ceiling.

  My pulse surged for a beat and then I caught a glimpse of the pale, wispy form standing a few feet away.

  I gave a small yelp of surprise.

  Celeste grinned, pushing at her ethereal wave of red-gold hair with one hand. “That bad, huh?”

  I grinned. “Grandmama!” I took a couple of steps in her direction but her image wavered so I stopped, afraid I’d cause her to disappear entirely.

  “How are you, child?”

  “Better now. How’s life in the Elysian Fields?”

  “Boring,” she complained happily. “But there are perks.” She cast a meaningful glance toward the wraith perched in the branches of the sanctuary’s biggest tree. “I have my very own taxi service.”

  I laughed. Leave it to Celeste to arrange things to her liking, even after death. “I don’t think that’s how they’re supposed to be used.”

  She shrugged. “A strong will is a strong will, child. Even in the afterlife.”

  I nodded, suddenly feeling the shame I’d nursed since leaving her on her deathbed to rush back to Trudy. “I…I’m really sorry I abandoned you.”

  Celeste’s gaze held the maturity of centuries of life. She smiled gently. “Don’t apologize. You were tending to the affairs of the living. I no longer belong in that world.”

  Tears burned my eyes.

  She shook her head. “Don’t cry for me, child. I’m happy. I have a whole new group of people to terrorize here. It’s delightful.”

  I gave a watery laugh. “I don’t believe you.”

  She lifted perfect, red-gold brows. I was happy to see that she’d regained her beauty and vitality after her death. It seemed right. “Have you met me?”

  “I mean about the being happy part. The terrorizing part is a given.”

  She chuckled darkly. “But I am happy. I would never lie to you, LA. I have never lied to you. You do know that, right?”

  I sniffled, scraping tears off my cheeks. “I miss you so much.”

  “I miss you too, child. And your mother.” She frowned and I wondered if she was thinking of Trudy. “We’ll still see each other. I promise.”

  “I’m glad.”

  Her image shivered on the air and I held my breath, but it strengthened again and I blinked, realizing she was only a couple of feet away. Grandmama reached out and touched my hands, grasping them in a cool, firm grip. I looked into her pretty face and felt my world evening out again. “I came because I wanted to tell you two very important things.”

  I nodded. “I’m listening.”

  “Number one.” Her gaze softened. “I’m oh so proud of you, child. You are every bit the woman and Familiar that I’d hoped you’d become.”

  I didn’t even try to stop the tears as they ran from my eyes. Sniffling, I allowed myself to be pulled into her arms. Despite the coolness of her frame, the hug warmed me to the center of my heart. “Thank you, Grandmama.”

  “And number two,” she said, pulling out of the hug and fixing me with a stern look. “Things are changing. Challenges continue to build in your world. Do not let your guard down and know whom you can trust at all times. It’s vital that you heed my words, child.”

  A million questions popped into my head.

  But I wasn’t going to be allowed to ask them.

  Almost as soon as the last word drifted from between her lips, Celeste started to fade away.

  “Goodbye, LA. I’ll see you soon.”

  I bit back a sob, covering my mouth with my fingers to keep from begging her to stay. I knew she’d moved on to the next phase of her long, long existence.

  I needed to do the same.

  But as the wraith swooped through the sanctuary, bathing me in cool air that made me shiver violently, I knew I would always have Celeste in my corner, no matter what happened.

  That was a balm to my sorrow. “I love you Grandmama,” I whispered to the empty air.

  Her voice danced back to me through the stillness, filled with the warmth her form no longer held. I love you too, child.

  Read More Reluctant Familiar Mysteries

  If you enjoyed A Familiar Problem, you’ll love the next book in this fun series. Nothing Familiar.

  Nothing Familiar

  Fighting powerful magical forces that threaten to upend her world, LeeAnn is alone and overwhelmed, and she’s running out of time to save the ones she loves.

  LeeAnn’s life is taking a nasty turn. There are forces at work which are determined to expose the magic community to humans. One of LA’s closest allies hovers on the edge of death. Grandmama Celeste has disappeared and, for the first time since LA’s known her, isn’t responding to pleas for help. To make things worse, LA’s best friend, Deg, is attacked by Wraiths and the healers aren’t sure they can cure him.

  LA soon finds herself on a journey to Underworld…traveling to Hades in search of a rare flower that’s closely guarded by Wraiths. The journey is long…fraught with danger…and LA must trust someone who hasn’t always been trustworthy for its success.

  But her challenges haven’t yet begun. Her world continues to burn.

  Will LA be able to dispel the stigma of her own mistakes? Or will her friends pay the ultimate price as she gives he
rself over to the evil swirling around them all?

  Nothing Familiar

  Nothing Familiar

  CHAPTER ONE

  * * *

  It hadn’t been all that long ago since I discovered that Angels actually walked on Earth again. It had been an even shorter time since I’d seen the Angel standing before me last.

  In that moment, I hoped it would become a whole lot longer before I saw him again.

  “I thought this had been taken care of, Tollman.”

  The angelic being dressed in police detectives clothing glared down at me from a great height of six feet something.

  In my mind, he’d always be well over seven feet tall. Not because of the kind of man he was. It was just that he got a lot bigger when he dropped the human mask and assumed his true form.

  That kind of thing sticks in your mind.

  Tollman shrugged broad shoulders, a glint entering one dark blue eye. “The spell to wipe memory only works on humans, Mapes. The Guild is apparently as immune to magic as they are adept at using it.”

  “But, The Guild are human,” Deg argued, frowning.

  Tollman looked down his perfect nose at Deg. “Do you know that for sure?”

  My Witch’s frown deepened. Nobody knew exactly what the Sensitives were. Though their auras appeared human, with a slight shading that reflected their use of magic, we hadn’t come up yet with an explanation for why magical energy could flow through their bodies without cooking them from the inside. “So, you think one of The Guild told this reporter…what’s his name again?”

  “Becksmart,” Tollman growled out. He smoothed long fingers through his thick, mahogany hair and sighed. “Malice Becksmart.”

  “Quite a name,” I murmured.

  “Yes,” Tollman agreed. His square, bristled jaw flexed with disgust. “And he definitely lives up to the malice part. We’re all very lucky I’m the one he approached with this.”

  Shoving a long strand of wavy red hair behind my ear, I fixed him with a slightly hostile blue-green gaze. “Did he know about what happened in Town Square? Or just about magic in general?”

  “Specifically, Town Square. But he seemed to believe magic use was running rampant in Illusion City. He implied humans were in danger.”

  Deg and I shared a look. There had been an incident in December in the center of town. Magic had been indiscriminately used against humans. We’d had to scurry to remove the memory of it from the human population’s minds.

  Up to that point, we’d thought the erasure spell had been one hundred percent successful.

  “You wiped it from the reporter’s mind?” Deg asked, his tone worried.

  Nodding, Tollman leaned against the island in my cozy kitchen and crossed muscular arms over his chest. As usual, despite the frigid outside temps, he’d rolled the sleeves of his dress shirt up to his elbows and wore only a dark, slightly rumpled pair of slacks with the shirt.

  But the “lived in” look of his clothing did nothing to diminish the almost visible energy flowing through his big body. The angelic being exuded strength and confidence, intelligence burning in his navy eyes. “That won’t stop The Guild from telling someone else. Despite your warning, they seem determined to expose the magic-using community.”

  Deg shook his dark head. Like the Angel, my witchy partner was tall and good-looking, with black hair and intense silver eyes. Deg exuded an abundance of power too, but his was a totally different type of energy from the Angel’s. As with all Witches and Familiars like me, Deg’s power came from the Earth…the elements…and was a light energy that left the world feeling cleaner with its use.

  By contrast, Tollman’s power was born of the Celestial environs. It was a foreign energy that rode the atmosphere of Earth like an oily film rather than filtering into it to become one, cohesive entity.

  During the weeks Deg and I had known him, Tollman had used his power sparingly. I figured the Angel knew his energy was too foreign for the Human Realm. Either that or he was trying to keep a low profile with the powers that be in the Celestial Sphere.

  After all, we really didn’t know why Tollman was living among humans. Or who he’d hacked off to be sent to us.

  He’d been strangely tight-lipped about his presence on Earth.

  “What do you want us to do?” Deg asked.

  “Tell the council for starters. The leaders of every magic house should be aware of the dangers and take the necessary precautions. Then I need you to help me silence The Guild.”

  My head was already shaking. I didn’t like the sound of that. “I won’t be party to killing innocent humans, Tollman.”

  His handsome face folded into a disgusted frown. “I’m not talking about killing anyone, Mapes. But we need to find a way to muzzle them or they’re going to take all of us down.”

  Thinking of The Guild members I’d recently met, there was one in particular I’d suspect of going to the press with our secret. “I know someone we can speak to about it,” I told Tollman.

  He waited a beat for me to go on, but I held my tongue. I’d work with the Angel for the good of my people, but I didn’t entirely trust him.

  Mostly because he didn’t even half trust me.

  “I’ve already spoken to Littleton,” Tollman told me. “He doesn’t know anything.”

  Argold Littleton was a Dark Elf, and one of the wealthiest people in Illusion City. He was currently dating a Guild member and fully understood why they were dangerous…though he trusted them a bit too much for my taste. On the face of it, he would seem to be the perfect person to approach about our current problem. However, I’d learned one important thing during my last interaction with The Guild. They believed they were a cohesive unit. But I knew they had at least one member with a deadly agenda that wasn’t good for the magic-using community. We’d busted that member, but I suspected he hadn’t been alone in his ideology and goals.

  “I’ll keep you in the loop,” I told him by way of a response.

  Tollman held my gaze for a long moment before nodding. “Let me know if I can help.”

  ***

  We climbed into Deg’s car because my little two-door, convertible sports car was death on snow, and I dialed one of our fellow council-members as Deg headed into the city. Brock was a Demon, a friend, mostly, and a good guy to have in our corner. He also worked at Familiar, Inc., my family’s company and ground zero for the magic-using population.

  He answered his office phone on the fourth ring, sounding winded. “Talk.”

  I blinked. “Tough day?”

  “You have no idea. The Trolls have destroyed the plumbing on the fifth floor, and the Fairies caught them using the facilities on their level. I’ve been picking Fairy feathers out of the ceiling tiles for an hour, and the ventilation system can’t keep up with the explosion of Fairy dust.”

  Fairies tended to discharge fairy dust when they were upset. It played havoc on people’s sinuses.

  “The sparkly stuff’s spreading in clouds throughout the whole building. We all look like we have swine flu.” He sneezed as if to emphasize the point. “War of the Realms has broken loose. Everyone seems to think I’m the guy to fix it.”

  “It sucks being a ‘Get ’er done’ kind of guy,” I teased.

  He sighed. “When did I become such a grunt, LA?”

  I fought a grin. “If I were you, I wouldn’t use that particular word during the current situation.”

  “Har.” The response held no humor, but I could see him grinning in my mind’s eye.

  “I’ve called to save you.”

  “Thank goodness. What’s up?”

  The smile died from my face as I remembered how dangerous our current problem was. “Tollman came to see Deg and me today. He says the magical mind-wipe from the Town Square fiasco didn’t work quite as well as planned.”

  “That’s bad, LA.”

  “Ya think?” I frowned, fighting to keep my temper in check. “Apparently Sensitives are immune to memory-wipe magic.”

>   “One of them talked?”

  “Worse. Somebody went to a human reporter, and that reporter came to the police for a statement. Luckily, Tollman caught the case. He wiped the man’s memory and sent him on his way.”

  “But The Guild’s agenda still lives and whoever told the reporter will probably do it again.”

  “Yeah. And this time they’ll most likely make sure we don’t get a chance to wipe it again.”

  “Okay, yeah, this is really bad. What do you need me to do?”

  “Can you put people on all the news organizations? We need to know if anyone from The Guild shows up telling tales.”

  “Of course. But what do you want us to do if we catch one of them?”

  “Bring him or her into Familiar, Inc. We need to figure out a way to diffuse this.”

  “Will do. Mandy’s in the lab, working on some general use spells. I’ll put her on finding something that will work on Sensitives. Just in case.”

  “Good plan. Thanks, Brock. Deg and I will be in the office in a couple of hours. When we get there, we’ll fill you in on what we found.”

  “Where are you two going?”

  I grimaced before I could stop myself. “We’re headed into the eye of the hurricane.”

  Also by Sam Cheever

  If you enjoyed A Familiar Problem, you might also enjoy these other fun mystery series by Sam. To find out more, visit the BOOKS page at www.samcheever.com:

  * * *

  Gainfully Employed Mysteries

  Honeybun Heat Series

  Silver Hills Cozy Mysteries

  Country Cousin Mysteries

  Yesterday’s Paranormal Mysteries

  Reluctant Familiar Paranormal Mysteries

  About the Author

  USA Today and Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author Sam Cheever writes mystery and suspense, creating stories that draw you in and keep you eagerly turning pages. Known for writing great characters, snappy dialogue, and unique and exhilarating stories, Sam is the award-winning author of 80+ books.