Midlife Ghost Hunter: A Paranormal Women's Fiction (The Forty Proof Series Book 4)

by Shannon Mayer

  A series of ooohs rose from the women behind me as if they were the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing praises to heaven. Seriously, they could have been a full orchestra for how long the sounds of their appreciation went on, changing in tones and pitches.

  “Oh, honey, if you don’t climb on him, I’m going to!” The old lady cackled. “Lovely, he is so very lovely.”

  “He is lovely,” I said. “I’ll give him that.”

  Officer Cuffs beside me puffed up his chest and gave them a smug smile. I burst out laughing. “I don’t mean you, Short Stack. I mean my lawyer.”

  I was shoved through the open cell door as the officer whipped around. “Him? He’s a fat, hideous troll!”

  Same language Alan had used. Crash was definitely pulling tricks with his glamor, the cheeky man. Crash winked at me again, that smile of his doing all sorts of terrible things to me. I didn’t care what other people saw; he was hotter than sin and I was ready to find a reason to repent.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I get the bail money set up. Don’t do anything, okay?” Crash said, and then he was hustled toward the door by the officer, who obviously didn’t want anything to do with him with the way he touched his arm and then jerked back. The officer even went so far as to wipe his hands on his pants, as if he’d touched something gross.

  “How am I going to do something in here?” I lifted my hands, grabbing the bars.

  Officer Cuffs snorted. “She’s going to trial in three days. She ain’t going anywhere.”

  Crash stood in the doorway and spoke as if Cuffs hadn’t interjected into our conversation. “Don’t ask me. You’re the one who finds trouble like a—”

  The door slammed behind the two men, and I was alone again with the other women.

  “You really pissed someone off, didn’t you?” the old lady with the fluffy hair said. “I mean, I’ve seen them process people fast, but a trial in three days? That’s something else, and you are about as white as they come. I’d believe it more if you weren’t so pale.”

  I looked down at her, realizing she barely came up to my shoulder. “You’ve seen them do this before?”

  Fancy pants looked at me. “Who you talking to?”

  I waved at her to shush her, looking at the old lady again.

  “Usually when they want to get rid of someone stirring up shit. That’s the way of things here in Savannah, as I’m sure you know.” She blinked rheumy eyes up at me. “Savannah is good at keeping her secrets close, and she don’t like anyone knowing what a beast she is under the silken covers.”

  Her description was not all that far off. “I haven’t been lifting anyone’s sheets.”

  Well, that wasn’t exactly true. I’d been dealing with the O’Seans and their garbage. Plus, I’d done the council a solid by helping them identify Davin as a mole. And when I met with them a few days ago, Stark, the old guy, had actually spoken to me. Something he never did anymore, according to Roderick. Surely that meant I was on their good side. Maybe they’d help me?

  “Hey, I want my phone call!” I banged my cuffs against the bars. Damn it, the ass hadn’t even taken them off and I’d been too busy goggling at Crash along with all the other estrogen-overloaded ladies to realize it.

  I clanged against the bars until the other woman started bitching. Officer Cuffs finally came back with a rather bored look on his face. “What?”

  “I want my phone call,” I said. “Right now. And I need to speak with Officer Burke.”

  “You ain’t got a right—”

  “Now!” I barked the word at him and . . .well, for lack of a better word, I flexed my magic muscles. I had a bit of fae in me, a bit of witch, a little of lord only knew what. It was enough to put some oomph into the word, and he jumped as if I’d slapped him on the ass with a willow switch.

  “Burke ain’t here. She’s on suspension.” The words came out of him in a burst like they’d been pulled out. “House arrest.”

  My jaw dropped. I wanted to ask what had happened to get her into trouble, but from the way his eyes had narrowed, I figured there would be no forthcoming information from him.

  I asked anyway.

  “None of your damn business,” he said, already on his way out the door.

  “Then get me my phone call!” I pushed more magic into my words, and again he jumped, slamming the door behind him.

  “Oh, Leather Girl, you lit a fire under his ass. How’d you do that?” The old lady once more sidled up to me, and I looked down at her.

  “Do you have a name?”

  “Edna,” she said. “Edna White.”

  “Seriously,” Fancy Pants stood beside me on the other side. “Who are you talking to? ’Cause acting crazy is not going to get you out of here. Just ask us. We’ve all tried it. Nobody cares if you’re nuts.”

  I looked down at Edna, who grinned up at me as Alan appeared in the anteroom, looking paler than usual. “Bree, they’re moving up the trial again. This is impossible! How are they making this happen?”

  “The shadow world,” I answered without hesitation, the certainty coming from the middle of my bones. Crash could have handled the regular police without an issue. I was sure of it. Hell, I’d bet that Corb and Eammon could have gotten me out of trouble with the human authorities. But we weren’t dealing with them, were we? “Same way you got everything in the divorce and landed me with our combined debt. The corrupt system never bothered you much when you were a beneficiary of it.”

  Alan glared at me. “That was necessary. There are times when the law is wrong and needs to be massaged into place.”

  I pointed a finger at him, my handcuffs clinking. “And I’d bet you anything that they—those people in the other room—feel the same way you did. So all your high and mighty ‘this isn’t right’ bullshit is just for show.”

  Which was beside the point. Officer Burke was on house arrest, no doubt to keep her from helping me. So this thing went even deeper than I’d first thought. How had they known there was a connection between us?

  Talk about getting ducked sideways and upside down.

  I looked back at Edna, who had an impressive swat for a dead person, and let out a sigh. “You got any ideas on how to get out of here?”

  Fancy Pants ignored me this time, just muttering “Nuts, she’s a fruit loop.”

  “You need someone to break you out. Maybe that hotsy-totsy, yummy lawyer of yours? He’s got muscles for days, and I’d put money on him being fae, if I were a betting kind of woman.” Edna sighed. “I did so love me a fae lover once in a while. Very flexy in the sack, all bendy and full of tingly magic in all the right places.”

  I started to giggle. I shouldn’t have laughed. I was for all intents and purposes on death row, about to be executed for a crime I hadn’t committed.

  The giddiness of the unexpected laughter mixed with adrenaline made me feel like I was full of helium and about to float away. Maybe it would have turned into full-blown meltdown laughter, only the door opened and Officer Cuffs walked in with a cell phone, holding it out to me as though he couldn’t believe what he was doing and didn’t want to acknowledge it.

  “Here. You have two minutes.” Officer Cuffs growled, his eyes sweeping over the other women in the cell with me. Fancy Pants cringed back, but Edna and the gal on the floor did not.

  I took the phone and dialed the first number I could think of, which was Corb’s. Hopefully he could put his council connections to good use. He picked up on the second ring.

  “Who is this?” he growled, obviously not recognizing the number.

  “Corb, it’s me. I need you to get Roderick and send him down here. They’re framing me for Alan’s murder. Something hinky is going on, and the council might be able to help. There’s no way the human police are doing this alone. I—”

  “They won’t help. I already tried,” he said. “Hold tight. We’re working another angle. They’re not going to win, Bree. Trust me. Okay? Look for Kink, just wait for her.”

  And then h
e hung up on me, which was just as well, seeing as Officer Cuffs was trying to tug the phone away.

  “That was not two minutes,” Fancy Pants said, no longer cowering. “I timed it.” She tapped her very expensive gold watch.

  She’d just got done calling me crazy, so I hadn’t expected her to stand up for me. Then, as he jerked the phone away from me anyway, it hit me—we were all locked in here together, being treated like shit, and it had formed a weird kind of sisterhood. Even if one of us was dead, and one of us was about to be dead, we were tied together in this place of in-between. In between life and death, in between the outside world and being locked up . . . almost like a fae in between.

  I blew out a breath as the officer stormed off, slamming the door behind him. The sound echoed through the room, and I stepped away from the bars, my cuffs clinking.

  Corb thought he had a loophole? If there was one, why hadn’t Crash thought of it? Of the two of them, I had more faith in Crash despite our rocky whatever-the-hell-was-going-on-between-us situation. Corb was young, and he cared too much about earning the praise of his superiors and the council. It had driven him to lie about things he really shouldn’t have.

  Then again, Crash had been less than forthcoming too.

  Jaysus on high, maybe I liked liars? I wrinkled up my nose and pursed my lips. I was going to have to dissect that at a later date, when my head wasn’t on the chopping block.

  The creak of the outer door turned all our heads. A new guy swept into the room, his hair smoothed back in a swooshing pompadour style that made me think he was going to whip out a bright red cape and flap it at an oncoming bull. Hell, he was lean and lanky enough that he could have pulled it off.

  He drew close enough that I could have reached through the bars to shake hands with him. A bright citrusy cologne drifted into the cell, not the kind of scent I’d have paired with a guy like him. His dark eyes narrowed on me, and his mouth thinned even as his nostrils flared. Like he really didn’t like what he was looking at. Or maybe he could smell the poo?

  “I am the district prosecutor. Mr. Langley. What did Corb Walker mean when he said, ‘look for Kink’?” When he spoke, his mouth barely moved, almost as if he were a ventriloquist. It was all kinds of weird, and a warning shot down my spine that this one was trouble. “Is this some sort of sex cult you’re involved in? Is that why you killed your ex-husband? Did he discover your depraved ways?”

  He tucked his hands behind him and stepped back as if he thought my supposed depravity might be contagious.

  So the phone was tapped, no surprise there.

  “Are you afraid of me?” I’d purposefully answered his question with a question, something Alan had hated—mostly because it worked so well with men who had outsized egos.

  Speaking of, Alan swooped in beside me. “Yes, keep him on his toes. Don’t give him anything.”

  I wanted to point out to Alan that it didn’t really matter what I said. They fully intended to string me up for his murder and gawd only knew what other charges they’d trump up along the way.

  Mr. Langley shook his head. “You are not in a position to be asking questions. I would think you’d want to answer them and gain some—”

  I raised my cuffed hands, palms facing him, effectively shutting him up. And put on my I-used-to-be-married-to-a-lawyer-and-helped-him-in-his-office persona. “Let’s be straight with each other, Mr. Langley. You and your boys are back there spreading Alan’s blood all over my things to make a case against me that is not real. You and I both know that. Whatever your reason for wanting me dead, you’re so committed to it that you’ve bumped up the trial to—” I waited for Alan to whisper the new date in my ear, “—tomorrow at nine in the morning.”

  Mr. Langley paled. “You can’t know that. Only I know that.”

  “Can’t I? I would think someone being charged with such a serious crime should at least know when her trial is. Or do you mean I can’t know that because you hadn’t told anyone else yet?”

  I smiled, and Alan grunted beside me. “Maybe you could have been a lawyer.” That from him was a high compliment. “He’s sweating now.”

  Mr. Langley glared at me and I smiled back. “Go back to trumping up charges, asswipe. I’m not dead yet.”

  “Correct,” he said in that weird marionette way of his. “‘Yet’ is the word you need to remember, Ms. O’Rylee.” He spun on one heel and stomped from the room, the sway of his hips reminding me distinctly of the realtor who’d auctioned off Gran’s house.

  Monica had seemed fairly normal until she stomped outside of the house three times—stomps that packed a metaphysical wallop—and awakened something. She had a connection to the shadow world, and now this strange prosecutor had her walk. My instincts told me it was no coincidence. They hadn’t been wrong yet, so I decided to trust them and act on my gut feeling. Even if this was weirder than most of my guesses.

  “Monica?” I called out.

  The prosecutor spun around so fast, he had to grab the edge of the doorframe.

  My jaw dropped, and beside me, Alan spluttered. “How can that be?”

  I didn’t know the answer. What I did know was that somehow Monica the realtor was also Mr. Langley the prosecutor. Which did not bode well for me. The shadow world was really going for broke. It also confirmed that Davin wasn’t the only one who wanted to take me out.

  The person in front of me, who was maybe two people in one, glared at me. “You need removing, and that is all there is to that.” Something had shifted, and the entity now spoke in Monica’s voice.

  Edna tsked. “Something ain’t right. That one isn’t human.”

  I agreed with Edna—silently. Fancy Pants sucked in a sharp breath at the voice change, but otherwise kept quiet. I’m not sure our final cell mate even noticed, as she was snoring on the cement floor.

  The door slammed after the prosecutor. Him? Her? Them? Yes, them it was. They were pissed, and I didn’t really know why. Who did they work for? Because I didn’t really think that Monica/Mr. Langley was (were) the powerhouse behind this thing. More like a deliverer of bad news. A memory whipped through my mind of a man with no face. I’d met him on the same night I’d met Roderick, and even now couldn’t figure out what he’d looked like. His facial features had been a blur when I’d seen him in the hotel, and the feeling of menace that had rolled off him was nothing short of knee shaking. Was No-Face Bruce even on the council? Or was he a thug for someone there?

  Could he—Bruce—be Monica?

  I had no way of knowing. Just one more mystery added to the pile at my feet.

  Alan stormed around the cell, hands flinging in every direction, rightly peeved that he’d been “had,” as he put it. He’d thought Monica was a woman. He’d slept with her, so of course, she was a woman. How could she be a man too? His ranting made Edna laugh.

  “So you like both? I wouldn’t have pegged you as bi. You seem too uptight to be open to a back-door entrance.”

  “I’m not!” he yelled back at her, and then blinked. “Wait, you’re dead too?”

  She grinned. “Yes, longer than you’ve been, you switch hitter, you.” She laughed again and waggled her fingers at him. I might have laughed too if I weren’t so tired.

  He spluttered and started going off about not being gay, and never being gay, and, and, and . . .

  “Can you keep it down, Alan?” I snapped. “Nobody wants to listen to your homophobic tirade. Just . . . enough. I suspect they’re some sort of shifter and can be anything they want to be in a given situation. Man. Woman. Whatever works for them in the moment, or whatever the hell they feel like.”

  Once more Fancy Pants gave me the side-eye. I nodded at her and then looked away.

  Rubbing my hands over my face I plopped onto the closest bench, unable to do anything but wait. Wait and wonder why Monica/Mr. Langley of all people was so intent on my death. Was there really a connection to the council?

  The house had gone for a decent price, so I doubted Monica’s comm
ission was the issue. There had to be some other motivation, but my mind was too numb to turn it over. At nine in the morning, I was going on trial for a murder I had not committed, with evidence that had been fully planted. If I’d been able to, I’d have put big bucks on the trial being done by noon, and my execution wrapped up before dinner.

  The afternoon slid away, and I found myself dozing, listening to Alan pace and mutter while Edna goaded him on, poking at him any way she could. Near the end of the day, as the sun was dipping low showing through the one tiny barred window that sat above our heads in our cell, and the other inmates rattling about asking for their dinner, a sound I recognized tugged at my ears.

  I sat upright, my back protesting the sudden movement after lying on the hard bench for so long, muscles cold and slack. I twisted around to look at the one window that let fresh, humid air into the small cell. The flutter of gossamer wings and the tinkling of bells were music to the ragged bands of hope I had left in me.

  I breathed out her name like a prayer. “Kink.”

  4

  The fluttering of Kinkly’s wings kept my eyes locked on the window until she appeared, all dressed in black, which was not her color. She was an autumn-toned fairy from her skin to her hair and eyes, and she normally wore various shades of browns, golds, and yellows that blended with and complemented her natural tones. The black clothing only made her four-inch stature look smaller.

  “What the hell kind of bug is that? Gross!” Fancy Pants yelled and threw a shoe at Kinkly.

  “Stop it!” I tried to grab the shoe in midair but ended up just knocking it to the side, which was better than it hitting the small fairy. I hurried to the window as Kinkly slid through and dropped onto my upturned palm.

  I guess just like Crash, Kink made humans see her as something else.

  She shuddered as she pushed on one of the handcuffs with her foot. “These are old school iron. They did that because of your fae blood. It dulls your magic.”