Midlife Strife: A Paranormal Women's fiction Novel (Bells and Spells - Book 1)

by M. L. Briers

  Whoever had turned that man into a vampire in his early fifties knew what they were doing, but Lottie couldn’t help but wonder what he would have aged into. Some men were like a good Malt Scotch, so much better with age.

  “Since we chased him out of town,” Louann answered for her.

  “He’s back now,” Lottie said over her shoulder, just as he turned to take them in.

  Louann stared right back. Six foot four of tailored good looks, his black shirt showed his lean but slightly muscled frame, his black suit looked expensive and fitted him in all the right places. His brown eyes, flecked with amber were always guarded, but ever so sexy, and his chiselled good looks were to die for – and they knew only too well that if you got too close and let your guard down – that was precisely what could happen.

  Lottie turned back to Louann and pulled on her magic; she knew her friend was doing the same thing. It wasn’t as if he was going to attack there and then in an almost full restaurant, but it was good to be ready if he did.

  “Check, please,” Lottie called, and Dean Talbot was only too happy to yank his pad out and head towards their table at breakneck speed.

  That was one good thing about Louann’s company; they always got the best service, and speedy too.

  ~

  Amber watched her aunt work, and the woman was she an expert in getting blood from a stone. If the CIA or MI5 had Claudia on their books, then there wouldn’t be any more secrets left in the world to uncover.

  With someone like Sandy; it was like taking candy from a baby, only more rewarding, grown-ups didn’t tend to scream and cry about it – much.

  “So, just engaged then?” Claudia asked as Sandy went from shelf to shelf looking at the products that Bells and Spells stocked and frowning at some, she’d even pulled her hand back a couple of times like she’d been hit with static electricity.

  Sandy looked occupied. “Yes.”

  “But it didn’t work out? That’s a shame,” Claudia said and looked to Amber to back her up.

  “We’ve all been there; mine cheated,” Amber said and shrugged.

  Poor Dean, he’d practically paid the price for that every day since, or every time that he happened upon Grandma Lou, and Amber didn’t think it could have happened to a nicer person, but she still felt a little guilty about it.

  Grandma Lou was like a dog with a very juicy bone, and once she’d sunk her fangs into it, she’d never let go. Dean was a dog in more ways than one, but maybe it was time that particular bone was buried.

  “That’s horrible,” Sandy said, screwing up her face in empathy.

  “What’d yours do?” Claudia asked and noted the way the woman shut down again. “Cheated?” she urged.

  “No, well, probably,” Sandy said. “He did everything else; cheating seems to be something that could have been on the list.”

  Claudia hated him already and wished that she knew the man’s name so she could send him a little magical something to make him regret treating a woman like that. “So, you left him and came here?”

  “Yes, he still texts me,” Sandy said, and Claudia picked up the nervousness in the air. No wonder the woman looked like a scared rabbit, she was. “He wants his engagement ring back…”

  “Best to give it to him; breaks all ties, and the ring is a symbol of the everlasting,” Amber said.

  “Oh, I will, when I can figure out how to give it to him and not see him,” Sandy said.

  “Maybe we could help with that,” Claudia offered. She’d love to go up to Mr Very Wrong and ring his bell.

  Sandy didn’t say anything; she just smiled. Claudia didn’t like that smile, it looked sad, especially as it didn’t reach her eyes.

  “Well, I think you’ll be perfect for the job,” Amber said, taking pity on her for having such a deadbeat ex, and Claudia hounding her.

  “She is?” Claudia looked surprised, but Amber scolded her with just a look. “You are,” she said backtracking.

  “I am?” Sandy didn’t look too enthusiastic, if anything, she still looked confused, but that was what twenty minutes with Claudia did to a person if they weren’t on their guard.

  Amber knew she needed to bring the woman back to reality. “But if you don’t want the job.”

  Sandy snapped to attention and shook off the confusion. “Oh, I want it, I really do.”

  “Great,” Amber said, clapping her hands together with a smile and a shrug. “Then, you start tomorrow.”

  Sandy nodded and headed for the door. “It’s lucky we ran into each other,” she said to Claudia with a little more enthusiasm for life. “And sorry again,” she added lamely.

  “No need to be sorry,” Claudia offered with a reassuring smile. “And fate has a way of putting a person where she needs to be when she needs to be there. This was just your turn.”

  “Bye,” Sandy said, and couldn’t get out of the store fast enough.

  On the other side of those windows, the woman looked less caged and a little more connected to life, at least she did until her phone beeped again and her shoulders sank when she looked at the screen.

  “There’s more to the story,” Amber said, feeling as if she wanted to go all Miss Marple on her new employee.

  Claudia nodded. “Oh yeah, big time,” she agreed. “And this is just the place, and we are just the witches to drag it out of her, kicking and screaming if necessary.”

  Amber did a double-take, and her aunt snapped on a bright smile. “You worry me sometimes,” she said.

  “If it’s only sometimes then I’m slipping,” Claudia practically purred the words back at her, and even Magic the cat, lifted its sleepy head and cast an eye at her.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ~

  Lottie stood next to the driver’s door and leaned in towards Louann. “We’ll meet back at my place,” she whispered; just in case the vampire was within hearing distance.

  “Yes,” Louann said and started to walk away. “No!” she grumbled, turning back. “I have that thing tonight,” she said, rolling her eyes and tossing a look back over her shoulder to the restaurant entrance to see if the vampire was going to follow them out. “Claudia’s here,” she added on a harsh hiss.

  Lottie’s eyebrows reached for her hairline. “Oh, that’s right, the prodigal daughter has returned.” She smirked.

  “Not my daughter, we just loosely adopted each other, so to speak, you know the story…”

  “Oh, I remember that family like it was my own,” Lottie shot back, and her eyebrows seemed to be stuck in the upward position.

  Claudia wasn’t that bad, although her mother had left a lot to be desired, she did always seem to be where the trouble was. But did she find it, or did it find her? Louann thought it was probably fifty-fifty. “Well, she’s doing well for herself now…”

  “Yes, but how?” Lottie replied in a dry accusing tone, and Louann had to admit, she’d pondered on that very same thing several times, but she’d never asked.

  If you didn’t ask, then you couldn’t be accused of anything if trouble came knocking at the door, and that was the way she liked it.

  “Come over to my – Marilyn’s for dinner,” she said, correcting herself. “We’ll slip out to the summer house after and talk.”

  “Or the vampire will show up on your doorstep, and all hell might break loose,” Lottie warned her.

  That gave Louann pause for thought. They had practically run the man out of town a decade or so ago. The question was; why was he back?

  “Follow my car,” Louann said, and wished she’d had the good sense to ask Lottie for a ride to the restaurant in the first place; then they could have ridden back together and plotted along the way.

  “But, honey, you drive atrociously,” Lottie tossed back with a smirk.

  “Well then, I’ll follow you, but don’t be surprised if I hit you in the rear,” she called as she headed for her vehicle.

  “That’d be the most action I’ve seen in a while,” Lottie called back and chuckled when
Louann tossed a glare back over her shoulder. “Unfortunately,” she muttered to herself as she yanked open the driver’s door and slipped behind the wheel.

  Lottie started the engine and sat back in her seat. Louann’s gut was never wrong, and she’d felt something was off. Now that something was back, but the question was; why was that blast from their past back to haunt them?

  What was it that he could want a decade later, and what was it going to cost them to get rid of him this time?

  The sound of Louann honking her horn made Lottie snap back to reality. She looked in the rearview mirror, and her friend’s car was right behind her. In true neighbourly fashion, she held up her middle finger and slowly pulled away from the kerb.

  Whatever the vampire wanted, they were sure to find out – but while Lottie loved a good mystery, she knew that her best friend hated it because she didn’t have the patience to wait that long to find out.

  ~

  “I’m home, where’s the bunting and cake?” Scott yelled as he came through the front door like a battering ram. But then he’d always been like that; he’d practically shot out of the womb like something was chasing him, and he’d learned to walk without learning to crawl first.

  Marilyn was so happy when he’d said his first word at four months old, she’d thought it had been mooom, but it turned out to be more, more food, more toys, more stimulus, more talking, more going out, more-more-more of everything, and nothing had changed. He was like a whirlwind in her life from the moment he was born, and she was sure that nothing would ever change that.

  Scott had always been a force of nature, and the little town like Clearview couldn’t hold him in. He’d gone out into the real world to explore and came running back every time he got himself in trouble. Was this one of those times?

  Marilyn sure hoped he wasn’t bringing trouble to her doorstep, because trouble was one thing that she could do without. She was sure she was having some sort of midlife-strife crisis or something equally as weird, but she just didn’t know what, and other people’s problems might have been a nice distraction, but her strife would still be there at the end of the day.

  Truth be told, she was still trying to find her feet after her divorce a decade earlier, and she knew she should have found solid ground by now, but being left with two kids, her mother, a large house, and no husband to bounce ideas off, well, life had taken its toll.

  The one thing that she was grateful to Jake for was that he’d continued to pay the mortgage and the kids bills – the scum-sucking, two-timing butthead – and she’d wondered every now and again if her mother and magic had anything to do with that kind of heart.

  He’d certainly left the house with a flea in his ear, magic stinging his backside, and a vow to make sure she didn’t have a penny to her name from that day forward when she’d found out about his infidelity and had told him to leave. But Marilyn didn’t want to dwell on the past because, in some ways, it felt like she was stuck in it.

  All in all, Marilyn thought she was doing pretty well. The house hadn’t fallen down, the kids had survived to adulthood relatively unscathed, and she wasn’t popping anxiety meds like some divorcees she knew. But she didn’t need trouble to upset the apple cart, especially this weekend with Claudia here.

  “I’m in the kitchen,” she yelled, listening to the clutter of whatever bags he’d brought with him, probably full of dirty clothes if past experiences were any indication, and then the heavy footfall as he came her way.

  “Where else would you be?” he called back, knowing her better than she knew herself.

  It was true, she sometimes thought her life revolved around the kitchen, but then it was said that the kitchen was the heart of the home. Maybe if she’d made the bedroom she’d shared with Jake the heart of the house, then he might not have two-timed her all over three counties.

  Still, what was done was done, and there was no forgiving and little chance of forgetting her ex-husband's misdemeanours. He was pond scum, and she needed to live with her mistakes – and his.

  “At least someone can follow direction,” she muttered; thinking on the encounter with her mother earlier. “Hi!” she said, all bright and breezy when her only son and family warlock walked through the door with a big, beaming grin on his face, and eyes full of stardust just for her.

  Now that was what she wanted to see – fake or not – it gave her a warm maternal feeling inside that you just couldn’t buy with money or obtain through magic or chocolate.

  “For you,” he said, and whipped out a huge bouquet of her favourite flowers – that was one trick to get her onside that he hadn’t learned from his father. The ex didn’t do gifts, and that was how Marilyn had known that he was up to no good; he’d bought her a box of reasonably expensive chocolates one night, and it all went pear-shaped from there.

  Marilyn’s heart burst with happiness. Her son was a gem among the stones in the world, and she accepted them with a bubbly chuckle of embarrassment and joy.

  Scott always could cheer her up; it was one of his magical gifts, he seemed to infect those nearest to him with his moods, and as he was mainly a happy-go-lucky guy, a good time was felt by all. “You definitely should have,” she said, pleased as punch that she had someone thoughtful in her life, and she chuckled again.

  “I thought so,” Scott said, walking around the counter and leaning in to place a kiss on her red heated cheek. “I have this too,” he said and whipped out a large bar of her favourite chocolate.

  “Oh, gold dust!” she exclaimed, even happier with the second gift. “They are so hard to get hold of now, the local store has stopped stocking them, and Mr Krampsky refuses to special order them in.”

  “You really need to get out of town more. I found it in a little store two towns over when I stopped for gas on my way here.” He made his way to the coffee jug and reached for a mug.

  “I’m not sharing,” she said and yanked open her store cupboard to place the bar behind a large bag of flour.

  “I have a whole box, just bought it right up off the shelf, it’s in the hallway,” he informed her with a cheeky grin that always absolved him of his sins in her eyes.

  Marilyn reached up and palmed his cheek with her hand before she did the unthinkable and pinched and tugged it. As all kids did, he hated that, but she loved the bored look on his face whenever she teased him with it. “This is why you’re my favourite son,” she informed him.

  “I’d be happier with that compliment if I weren’t your only son, or if you said favourite child,” he said with a chuckle.

  “Now what kind of a mother would I be if I had favourites?” Marilyn asked, turning back to the apple and blackberry pie on the side that she’d just taken out of the oven. It was perfect.

  Scott hummed on that thought. “A normal mother, but the fact that you don’t share which one of us you like best makes you exceptional.”

  Marilyn turned a bright smile on him. “It’s nice to know I’m exceptional at something,” she said with her usual self-deprecating humour that always annoyed him.

  “You should have divorced him ten years early, he’s made you believe his hype,” Scott said, biting down on all the words he could pin on his father for being a first-rate jerk, and for his mother putting up with him for as long as she did – they’d been through them all before, but it didn’t make a difference, his mother was still stuck in her life.

  Family first, it was a good motto, but when it made her life miserable, it wasn’t a good life lesson to share and not something he aimed to live by. His mother had thrown away her youth on a man who didn’t deserve it, and now she was throwing the rest away by wallowing in quicksand, unable or unwilling to pull herself out.

  “Well, I’m just thankful you are not your father’s son,” Marilyn said, turning a smile back on him and noticing the worry lines on his brow. “You’re going to make someone very happy one day.”

  “Tell that to my string of first dates,” he offered back and noted the look of sympat
hy in his mother’s eyes. “Don’t do that,” he warned her. “You’ll bring down my mood, and then I’ll infect everyone else, and this weekend is going to be fun – Aunt Claudia is here – and she’s always a twister of excitement and debauchery.”

  “I should be worried you said that,” Marilyn chuckled. “But I suppose it takes one to know one,” she added.

  Somewhere in the back of her mind where she’d long since buried her wish to be just like them, that thought sprung to life once more and cracked open the light in the darkness. But that was just silly – starting over at fifty-two was … an effort that she couldn’t waste time or energy on.

  Ten years earlier, she had thought that maybe once she was divorced, she could be like that – after all, there wasn’t anything stopping her – nothing, but her – and her children. She was a mother, and she couldn’t be a free spirit like Claudia when she had two kids depending on her.

  It wasn’t to be; real life had gotten in the way of any plans she tried to make for her future, and it had been easier to go day to day and take whatever popped up along the way, but nothing had ever popped up.

  And now? Her midlife strife had taken the wind out of her sails, and she couldn’t get it back. She wasn’t far off being elderly, and then she’d be her mother.

  Ugh, that sucked, but it was inevitable. We all became our mother someday.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Scott said in a sing-song tone that always made her smile.

  “No, you don’t,” Marilyn snorted a chuckle back.

  “Yes, I do.” He offered a look that said he might just, but she wasn’t about to say anything out loud for fear of prodding fate to react – and she didn’t need fate to make an appearance and get on her case.

  Marilyn threw a dishtowel at his head, and he snatched it out of the air with the flare that was reminiscent of a magician doing his stage act. “Hush and go get your dirty clothes, I can get a load in before anybody else arrives,” she scolded him.