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

by Shannon Mayer

  “And the others?” I prompted after she was silent for a few minutes. “What about this Coven of Darkness?”

  “Same thing. Thirteen witches spread out across the south, two or three in a city, in order to keep from being noticed. Both the silver and the dark understood that living close together was more likely to have us found out, and so we agreed to stay separate except for when we had to meet up within our respective covens. It has been that way for years for the safety of all.”

  It felt like there was more to this, so I prompted her again. “And?”

  A heavy sigh slid from her as we walked. “As the young ones came in, they should have mentored one on one with an older member of the coven, learning and growing. But the young ones brought into the Coven of Darkness started killing the older members instead, stealing their power instead of earning it. Lazy little bastards. It means they are stronger than before, but don’t truly know how to use their strength, which of course makes them dangerous.”

  I blinked a few times, imagining how that had gone down. “And the silver coven? I haven’t met any young ones. Gran never talked about bringing more women in.”

  “Because we didn’t,” Penny said. “Better to keep our power to ourselves than have it stripped off us in death. We learned from the mistakes made by the Coven of Darkness. So no one has been brought into our inner circle for over thirty years. Any witches that came to us for training were given basic tools so they would not end up killing themselves or others, but that was it. But in doing that, we have weakened ourselves.”

  Her words resonated with me. “I’m not a witch. To be clear. So no need to off me.”

  “No, you have a lot more going on in you, and it all comes together to make you a rather unique individual.” Penny laughed.

  She didn’t say more than that, and I let her words about the two covens roll through my head. The magic that had been tugging me along eased off, and suddenly we were slowing down.

  We’d reached a square not unlike the ones in Savannah, only this one was larger.

  “Beautiful,” I said as I took in the place. The last of the magic that had been ushering me along dissipated, and I knew that I was exactly where I was supposed to be. The view soothed some of the ragged edges in my soul and the flowers flooded my senses, reminding me a little of Gran’s garden back home. She would have loved it here. It was early enough in the afternoon that there weren’t many tourists either.

  “Jackson Square,” Penny said. “Lovely on the surface, but so much death underneath all those flowers. You can’t cover up death like that and not expect it to come back to bite you in the ass. Just like the mansion. Watch your step, girl.”

  With her warning ringing in my ears, we moved farther into the square, onto the grass. There was a moment where the ground softened ever so slightly, as if it would suck me down, just like when the wraiths had chased me in Alabama. I danced to the side, dragging Penny with me. She stumbled and I got us back onto the paved area.

  I tightened my hold on Penny’s upper arm and shot her a look. “I think we’re in trouble.” I grimaced. “Again.”

  14

  As the ground under my feet softened I thought moving onto the paving stones would help. But the ground still felt like jelly even there. Jackson square was turning out to be a shit place to visit.

  “Not today,” I muttered as I pulled Penny along, faster than she wanted to go, I’m sure, but adrenaline was pumping through me now, wiping away my fatigue and the discomfort of yesterday’s bruises. Even the sting from the whip faded as I looked for the best place for us to take a stand against whatever was coming our way.

  I steered us to the right, away from the center of Jackson Square. There was a large Catholic church across from us, a huge monument reaching into the sky, and you’d think there’d be less hanky panky from the shadow world in the church’s, well, shadow. However, I wasn’t getting a ‘come on in and be safe’ vibe off it.

  “What is it?” Penny kept up with my tugging, but I could practically feel her energy fading. “Girl, I can’t keep up this pace.”

  Crap, she was right. Much as I might not like running and doing all my exercises, I’d gotten into better shape and my body moved accordingly when danger reared its ugly mug. I took Penny to the center of the square, where there was a round flowerbed wrapped around a large statue of a horse and rider. I didn’t spare more than a glance for the statue.

  Penny sat on the stone. “What’s got you fussed? I’m not feeling anything.”

  I sat next to her and pulled my feet up off the ground like a teenager as I scanned the area with what I knew were unnaturally wide eyes. No doubt the few tourists thought I was on some sort of drug given the way I was staring, my head moving around as if it were on a swivel.

  “You didn’t feel that on your feet? The ground got soft.” I said, then lowered my voice. “Like with the wraiths.”

  Penny shook her head. “Wraiths don’t soften the ground.” Her eyes got as big as mine probably were. “Which means whoever is controlling them is close. Damn, I’m getting old if I didn’t notice that. I was so focused on the immediate danger.”

  I grimaced and stood on the edge of the flower bed, trying to get a better view. But I still couldn’t see over the tops of the tourists’ heads.

  I needed more height than the flower bed was offering, so I turned and waded through the thick bed of flora, grabbed the bottom foot of the metal rider and shimmied my way up.

  “Hey, you can’t do that!” a woman yelled.

  “Listen, Karen, I’ll get down in a minute! Untwist your panties!” I yelled back. The cold metal of the statue was slick from a steady drizzle of rain, making it hard to get a purchase, so I was sweating by the time I’d climbed over the soldier and stood between his crotch and the horse’s neck. Then again, even with the cloud cover it was warm and humid. Yes, I was going to blame the sweat on the heat, what woman wouldn’t?

  I did a slow turn, one hand resting on top of the soldier’s head for balance as I looked for someone who didn’t fit in with the tourist crowd. Just in the time we’d been there, a good number of people had shown up. Baseball caps and brightly colored umbrellas littered the area, and the dark hooded character slipping out of the square stood out like a damn sore thumb.

  “Hey!” I yelled in their direction. “I see you with your stupid cloak on like some damn Harry Potter wizard! You aren’t fooling anyone, you jerk face!”

  The robed figure slowed and turned to look my direction, the animosity radiating off him palpable even with the hundred feet between us.

  Well, I’d gotten his attention.

  Whoops.

  The hooded figure raised a hand and swept it in my direction. There was no visible magic, but I could feel a wave of unseen badness coming at me. Yes, badness, it was the best word I could come up with in that moment, so sue me.

  “Penny, we’d better go,” I said.

  “Found trouble, did you? Who you yelling at?” she barked up at me.

  I scrambled to get off the horse and rider statue, slipped and went sideways. My foot caught in the crotch of the rider, and I flipped upside down. “Yelling at bad guys full of badness!” I yelped as I tried to sit up.

  Hah, an upside down sit up, who was I kidding? I moved a quarter inch. Maybe.

  Sit-ups were not on the menu of my workout. Running was, and maybe some stretching and yoga if Suzy insisted on it and I couldn’t escape her. I tried to squeeze upward again, the feeling of something bad coming toward me intensifying. Another squeeze upward, and I may have let some pressure off with a cracking fart. In that moment all I could think was at least neither guy I’m hot for is here listening to this.

  Oh, how damn wrong I was.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Crash’s voice snapped my head around so I was looking at him upside down. Crash, here in NOLA? I thought he was staying in Savannah to see what he could find out?

  Then again, the fae were looking for the angel wings. Wa
s that why he was here?

  Damn, he even looked good upside down. A light gray shirt plastered to his body, damp from the rain and jeans that fit him just right in all the right places.

  And then I realized he must have heard the roar that had ripped out of my back end.

  Jaysus lawd, kill me now.

  At least the blood rushing to my face could be blamed on the current angle of my body and not the fact that I wanted to die from embarrassment. That had been no quiet, ladylike poof escaping my body.

  Nope, it had been the rumble of a dual set of trains roaring down the tracks as I fought to sit up and unhook myself from my precarious position, putting pressure on my guts that I couldn’t control.

  His hands wrapped around my body, and he easily lifted me upright, which positioned me in front of the soldier as if we were riding off into the sunset together.

  I opened my mouth as the something bad that had been thrown at us hit.

  The smell of putrid, stagnant water rolled up my nose, and I snorted and gagged. Crash shook his head and grimaced, taking a step back as he looked at me sideways.

  “Not me,” I bit out as the smell from the spell coated my tongue. I spat to the side. Again, super unladylike, but what did I have to lose after that last blast?

  “That’s what they all say,” Crash said, and I whipped around to see a distinct smirk on his mouth.

  Again, I was going to say something, but the statue under me . . . moved. I blinked and twisted around to see the freaking soldier looking down at me with a pair of very dead eyes.

  “Holy shit.” I scrambled to get off the horse, and a lot of things happened at once.

  Penny intoned something that was surely a spell by the feel of it in the air, and Crash reached to pull me down as the horse statue under me bucked, freeing one of its back legs from the monument.

  Were the people around us not seeing this? How were there no screams, no shouts of Oh my Gawd?

  “I can’t hold them away from this for long,” Penny said. “Get her off that damn horse, fae king!”

  The soldier statue wrapped a metal arm around my middle and clenched me to his body.

  “Damn it, this isn’t the seventeen hundreds! You can’t just pluck me from the field and run away with me!” I yelped as I fought to free myself. I managed to get my legs under me and pushed upright, the little bit of drizzle working in my favor, making the metal slick against my skin.

  The horse below us jerked another back leg free with a plunge forward, which loosened the soldier’s hold on me by a fraction of an inch. It was enough.

  I managed to stand, so the soldier’s arms were just around my legs. Before he could tighten his hold again, I threw myself off, knowing that the ground was going to hurt, but there was nothing I could do about that right then.

  I was not going to get snatched by some statue.

  A split second from the ground, Crash’s arms found me.

  “Got you,” he said as he pulled me upright. Rather than lock his arms around me, he gave me room to get my feet under me.

  I whipped around to look at the horse and soldier.

  They were back where they’d started, solid once more, and Penny let out a sigh of relief. “That was too close. I didn’t have much left in me to hold the view back from the humans. The spell had a time limit on it, but I think it might have been extended if you hadn’t slipped out of the statue’s arms.”

  The closest tourists to us were giving us some serious side eye, and more than a few waved a hand in front of their noses. So they could smell the spell that had come for me, even if they couldn’t see it.

  Crash shook his head and motioned for me to lead the way. I took a wide berth around the statue. It was, I noticed, in a slightly different position than the artist had designed it. Just a half step to the left on the horse and the soldier’s arms were cocked at the elbow in a new angle. That wasn’t what kept my attention.

  The soldier’s eyes followed me. I stuck my tongue out at him, and his eyes narrowed. I contemplated flipping him off, but instead I stepped forward and held a hand out for Penny. She latched onto my arm, her fingers trembling. “Who did you see?” she asked softly.

  “Guy in a black robe. Thin, not a big guy. I guess it could have been a woman.”

  Crash fell in on my other side. I wanted to ask him just what he was doing there, if it had anything to do with angel wings. Not that I was upset he’d shown up, other than the whole fart scene. Not really. He had caught me, after all, and kept me from landing hard and breaking bones.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  He nodded and winked at me. “Your friends will always do their best to catch you, Bree. If you let them.”

  A flush of warmth settled around my heart and tried to tighten my throat. Nope, I would not cry. Instead, I focused on Penny.

  “I’d guess that was our necromancer,” she said. “The kind of power required to animate something like that is no small thing. Necromancer for sure. Heaven help us.”

  “What about the tonton macoutes?” I asked. “Could those have been his too?”

  “Not the right kind of undead,” Penny said. “It’s possible, but he or she would need help, I think.”

  I looked over my shoulder, but the necromancer had disappeared after leaving us with his statue buddy. Why though? Had he done it just to show off? I frowned, thinking about the only real necromancer I knew well enough to say I knew him. Louis was not a showoff. If anything, he hid what he was to some degree, probably because he had nothing much to show. That other necromancer, the one from the council, had real talent. I’d seen him put Alan in his place at the council meeting.

  What was his name? Jacob.

  Except the council apparently had it out for me, so I couldn’t risk going to him. For all I knew, he was the hooded figure.

  “That frown says you are thinking hard about something,” Crash said. “If you tell us, maybe we can figure it out together.”

  The words tumbled out of my mouth. “I’m going to call Louis. He might be able to help us find the necromancer.” After all, he’d given Eammon a way to stay safe. I reached up and touched the ring on my necklace, the silver cool beneath my fingers.

  Crash pulled a phone from his back pocket and handed it to me. “My phone’s safe to use. It can’t be traced.”

  I took it from him and dialed through to Louis. Or really, through to Eammon. If he and Louis were pally enough that Louis had given him that ring, presumably he’d also left him with a phone number.

  The phone rang twice and then a gruff voice answered, “Eammon here.”

  “Eammon, it’s Bree,” I said.

  “Bree, you be alive?” he roared.

  I frowned. “Why would I not be alive?”

  A whoosh of air slid out of him. “Tom was attacked by wraiths. So was I. We barely got to Missy in time. She said if you were attacked too, you’d be dead, seeing as she don’t think much of you.”

  I flipped the phone to speaker so Crash and Penny could hear. “You and Tom were attacked by wraiths? Why? When?”

  “My guess? Whatever trouble you’ve found is spreading, lass.” He sighed, and I was sure I heard a feminine snort in the background.

  “Is that Missy?”

  “It’s where we be staying,” he said.

  “Not for long!” Missy snapped. “And I want that spell book, Breena O’Rylee. You did not hold up your end of the bargain. You gave me a dud!”

  I looked at Penny, who shrugged. “Well,” I said, “you could come and get it.”

  Penny grinned and nodded her approval. “That is a good idea, Missy. We could use you here.”

  There was silence for a beat. “Penny? What are you . . . never mind. You’re helping that brat, aren’t you? You always loved a lost soul.”

  “Of course, I am. It’s what Celia would have wanted.” Penny paused. “And the task is still unfulfilled.”

  Task? Was she talking about me, or the spell Gran had died to protect?
<
br />   Missy let out a rather unladylike curse. I decided to cut to the chase.

  “Eammon, do you know how to get in touch with Louis?” I asked.

  He spluttered. “You didn’t even want to ask me how me and Tom be?”

  I sighed. “You’re alive. That’s awesome. Now, where is Louis? I need to talk to him.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. Missy snorted, and I could just imagine her face twisting up in her trademark grimace.

  I rubbed my face. “Okay, look, can you tell me where to find a nice necromancer to talk to in . . .” I hesitated to tell him where we were.

  A soft sigh slid out of him. “You don’t trust me?”

  “It’s Missy I don’t trust, and you already know where I am.” I lowered my voice as I brought the phone closer to my mouth. “Do you blame me? Someone tried to pin Alan’s death on me in order to have me killed. I’ve been attacked by four wraiths, and I’m no closer to finding my gran.” I didn’t feel like telling him about the statue that had just come to life and tried to run away with me. Or my run in with the whipping ghost in the mansion.

  There was the sound of a scuffle. “Give me the phone!” Missy snapped and then she was on the line, loud as life. “I know you’re in New Orleans, Breena. I will arrive shortly. That book is mine.”

  Another scuffle and Eammon cursed her in Gaelic. “Damn witch,” he muttered. “I can tell you where to start, or where I would start. Homer Underwood. Not a necromancer, but an acquaintance that knows me well. If you use my name, he’ll direct you to the right people at least. He be your best bet.”

  “Thanks, Eammon.” I said. “When I get back—”

  “Don’t be making promises you can’t be keeping.” He paused. “Don’t hang up. There be more to tell you. That place you thought was safe, that was keeping the fairy cross hidden?”

  My hurt lurched up into my throat, and I could barely answer. “Yes?”