Magical Midway Paranormal Cozy Series Books 1-3

by Leanne Leeds

  As I thought back through the experiences of the last few months, I could see how that fit me. Gunther was training me and my natural magical witch power. I had lived, mostly, in the human world before being elevated to ringmaster. Without me, Gunther would’ve remained a half-witch, and he may have not put on the lawgiver ring. I could see it all, and I shivered again.

  “She told you all this about the next ringmaster of the Magical Midway?”

  Gunther shifted uncomfortably in his chair, and his eye twitched. Without warning, he pushed away from the table. Snatching the mug, he turned away from me to put it in the sink.

  And he stayed facing away from me, unwilling to turn around.

  “Gunther, you’re freaking me out a little.”

  “I'm sorry for that. I don’t mean to,” Gunther told the wall as I stared at his back. He sighed deeply. Without turning around, he spoke once more.

  “Ethel told me all this about the woman that would become my wife.”

  Slow down.

  Leave me alone, Samson.

  We must talk.

  Go. Away.

  I’m not proud of the fact that I pushed away from the table so hard that the chair clattered to the floor. I will admit I’m a little embarrassed that I ran out of my own yurt as Gunther called after me. I’m a little mortified that I ran straight to the haunted house, slammed the door, and threw myself down on the couch with my legs tucked to my chest, my arms wrapped around them. While hyperventilating.

  But, you know, what Gunther said was a lot to take in.

  The ghosts of the house gave me a wide berth as I sat in the entryway. It was cool, and dark, and still in this place. Though I knew the ghosts were here, and I was sure they knew I was here, the absence of life was comforting.

  Charlotte, we must talk, Samson insisted again.

  “Get out of my head!” I shouted, cracking the stillness of the cool, lightless seating area. “I mean it, Samson. Leave me the hell alone! Give me just ten minutes to myself! Please!”

  His presence slipped far enough away from me I felt like I had some breathing room. Just as Samson withdrew, a tiny glowing head popped around the archway that took patrons deeper into the house.

  “Charlotte?” little Anna whispered as her innocent eyes stared at me. “Are you okay?”

  I nodded, brushing away the tears I hadn’t realized had fallen. “I’m just a little overwhelmed, that’s all.”

  “Yeah, my mommy says you have a tough job,” Anna answered as she came out from the archway and walked over to me. The little girl that looks no more than five was really two hundred and fifty-seven years old. “Maybe when I grow up I can get a job like yours.”

  “I don’t know that you want my job, Anna,” I told her as she sat down next to me. “My job seems to come with an awful lot of complications. And predetermined relationships, as it turns out.”

  Fiona flew in the door and breathed heavily as she stared at me. “I’m so glad you’re predictable, Charlotte. I was about to turn this place upside down looking for you.”

  “Why? What’s wrong now?”

  “Gunther told me about your… discussion,” Fiona said as she sat on the other side of little Anna. “He also told me how you ran out the door, and he was worried about you.”

  “Of course he is. Why wouldn’t he be? I mean, I’ve been preselected by the universe to be the man’s wife. If he doesn’t marry me, does he get assigned another one?” I asked her bitterly.

  “Oh, my goodness, the most powerful witch in the entire world is feeling sorry for herself. Should I get the barbershop quartet in here to sing you a sad song? I think one of the centaurs plays the violin, we could get him in here to play it for you,” Fiona snapped, rolling her eyes.

  “What the heck is wrong with you?”

  “Wrong with me? Wrong with me? Charlotte, you are my best friend in the entire world, and I love you, but you’re acting like a complete idiot,” Fiona snapped.

  “Gee, Fiona, why don’t you tell me how you really feel.”

  “I always tell you how I really feel,” Fiona said as she leaned forward. “I’m going to choose my words carefully at the moment because there are children present, but how could you treat him like that?”

  “Like what? I didn’t do anything to him!”

  “He told you something that he’s been living with since he was a child,” Fiona pointed out. “Ethel Elkins has been telling him about his destined love since he was knee-high to a gnome. Before he knew what a girlfriend was, he was told about you. When he went to Impy and suffered through those horrible girls treating him like dirt, he dreamed about the girl that was meant for him, that would love him for who he is.”

  “That’s really romantic,” Anna said with a giggle. “It’s like a fairytale!”

  “It is like a fairytale,” Fiona agreed. “Or at least it was until Gunther opened up to the woman he’s been waiting for all his life and she ran out of the yurt crying like her puppy had just died.”

  “That’s not fair,” I told her, angry. “This was just sprung on me out of thin air!”

  “Everything has been just sprung on you out of thin air! That’s the gig, Ringmaster! If you haven’t figured that out by now, take some time in this darkened hallway to come to terms with it. Because in case you didn’t get the gist of Gunther’s story, you don’t have time to sit here and wallow while lamenting how unfair it is the universe decided you should have a cute blond.”

  “You’re missing the point.”

  “Then explain it to me, so I don’t think you’re acting like a ninny.”

  I glared at my obnoxiously blunt friend as I tried to calm myself down. But I just couldn’t.

  “Fiona, what if he only cares about me because he thinks he’s supposed to?” I whispered, and the tears exploded from my eyes.

  Fiona jumped off her chair and kneeled down in front of me wrapping her arms around me. “Stop it. Just stop it. That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard in my life. You know when someone is telling the truth. You know when someone is genuine with you. It’s why life was so hard for you in the human world. You know how Gunther feels about you. Prophecy or not.”

  “She’s right! She’s right she’s right she’s right!” Anna, who I had completely forgotten about, shrieked as she bounced up and down on the couch. “I heard him talking to Anya, and he said how much he likes you. His eyes get all googly and soft when he talks about you,” she said, giggling.

  “When did you hear Anya and Gunther talking?”

  “Watch this!” Anna burst out. She stood up and held out her little arms. Smiling at me, I heard a pop, and little Anna disappeared. “You can’t see me anymore, can you? I just learned how to do this! My mom said that ghosts used to be able to do it, but nobody could do it for years and years and years and years, but now we can all do it again!”

  Her voice moved around the room as if she was racing from one corner to another, and I could sense her excited emotions and thoughts, but not even a whisper of a shadow indicated she was there.

  “That’s really impressive, Anna,” I told her. “Can all the ghosts do that?”

  “Yep, everybody can do that, but they don’t want you to know because they could be listening to people’s conversations and people could get mad and… uh oh,” Anna said as her excitement level dropped. The little girl reappeared and looked up at me, concerned. “I don’t think I was supposed to tell you we could do that.”

  “Don’t worry, little one,” Anna’s mother said as she came through the entryway. “We don’t keep secrets from our ringmaster, do we?”

  “But Joe said we shouldn’t tell—”

  “Hush now, little one,” her mother said with a stern look. “I think you said quite enough.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Anna said as she pouted.

  “Ringmaster,” Anna’s mother, bowed her head. “It’s good to see you again. Fiona.”

  “Hello there,” I said, unclenching my body from the ten
se ball I had been in. Standing up, I nodded and tried to actually look like a ringmaster. “I don’t think I remember your name.”

  “I don’t believe I actually told you the last time we met,” the matronly woman said. “My name is Gerda. It’s nice to meet you more formally.”

  “You as well, Gerda,” I nodded.

  “Little Anna is correct, we all have the ability to make ourselves invisible and travel outside the house without alarming anyone or risking anything,” Gerda said. “It is actually good you came to visit us. Some of us have overheard things during the festival, Charlotte. Things I think you should be aware of.”

  “Everybody here?”

  The ghosts crowded again into the front hallway. I recognized none of the faces other than Anna and her mother Gerda.

  “Did we get new ghosts?”

  “Why would you ask that?” a gigantic ball of a man asked as he twirled his handlebar mustache. “Don’t you remember us from when you and Dergal had your… ah, discussion?”

  It wasn’t a discussion. It was more like an interrogation, really. And not a very successful examination if I recalled what took place in this hallway accurately.

  “I don’t remember you from last time.”

  “Ghosts can change their appearance, Charlotte,” Fiona told me. “I think only Anna and Gerda look the same as before.”

  “I met you when I looked like this so I want to stay looking like this so you’ll always recognize me!” Anna told me in a rush. “What if I waved to you and you don’t know who I am and then you don’t wave back? I would be really sad.”

  “Well, I definitely don’t want you to be sad, Anna,” I told her. The little girl giggled in response and nodded.

  “I used to be the dapper, spectacled gentleman that greeted you at the door,” the non-spectacled non-dapper chubby man told me. “In any case, Gerda relayed that you might be interested in some of the festival conversations that we have overheard.”

  “Oh yes, especially the ones that have taken place between that elf and that witch,” another ghost nodded knowingly.

  “Which witch?” Fiona asked.

  “The dark and gloomy one that looks like she belongs in here with us,” another specter chimed in from the back.

  “Terrifying woman,” a voice from the crowd called out.

  “But very crafty, that one,” someone said. The crowd murmured in agreement.

  “Indigo overheard Bolt and Devana talking late last night,” Gerda told me. “She came to me when she got back because she was concerned. She heard the Witches’ Council mentioned.”

  “I did, indeed,” a high-pitched voice called from the corner near the door. “The two of them was thick as thieves, they was. She was givin’ him what for, too, about the stunt he pulled with you.”

  “Did you get a sense of what stunt she was talking about specifically?”

  “She was incredibly angry at him, wot with the draggin’ you through the festival yesterday,” the voice said through all the phantasms squeezed into the front hallway. I stood on my tiptoes trying to spot the ghost the voice belonged to, but I couldn’t see her. “Said he was crossing lines that he shouldn’t be crossin’, wot with the makin’ you all woozy boozy and all.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” I said as I turned to Fiona.

  “It does if she’s running the plot and he screwed up some plan she had,” Fiona disagreed.

  “She looks like she’d be at the center of an evil plot,” someone murmured. The crowd agreed.

  “What did she say about the Witches’ Council?” I called in the small voice’s general direction.

  “Just that he knows the rules,” the voice called back. “Said if he got caught breaking them, he knows exactly what will happen to him.”

  “What rules? Did she specifically say something about Witches’ Council rules?” Fiona asked.

  “No, Miss, but who else has rules? I didn’t hear much more than that.”

  “We need to go back and talk to my uncle.”

  “Why?”

  “Samson told me there were things I needed to know about the huntress witch,” I told her. “I just realized that my uncle was so annoyed with me that he never actually bothered to tell me them after he lectured me.”

  10

  “No,” I told Gunther as I walked back into my yurt with Fiona. He had clearly been waiting for me, and he practically jumped toward me as soon as I walked in the door. “I don’t have time for this, or you. I can’t talk about it yet. Not now.”

  “Charlotte, we need to—”

  “I said no.”

  Gunther flinched.

  Fiona’s eyebrows screwed up in judgment as I snapped at my… Boyfriend? Betrothed? Soon to be husband? Destined partner?

  For the moment, despite Fiona’s assurances that I knew Gunther’s feelings were genuine, I didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to confront what he had told me. He had kept it from me as I had kept Aidan’s secret from Tabitha. I understood, now, even more, why Tabitha had been so angry at me.

  My trust in him had wobbled. My confidence in myself was shaken. Most of all, though, I was afraid I was in a relationship that just wasn’t real. That my fear about Gunther’s feelings being informed by his past was more than justified. Maybe he didn’t love me. He loved the me he expected since he was a child. He loved the idea of me.

  Gunther’s itsy-bitsy revelation little more than an hour ago had rattled me. Relationships are complicated enough without magic, circuses, and prophecies thrown in. I wish I could say the reason I was pushing Gunther away was because I was having trouble processing what he said. But that wasn’t it.

  Well, not entirely.

  I knew I would have to ask him how long he knew before he told me, and I probably would not like the answer. Fiona seemed insistent that he known for almost as long as he’d been alive. How could he not tell me? Did he keep it from me because he knew I would see his feelings weren’t real? That they were just some manufactured side effect of his belief in the prophecy?

  Until I had that answer, I didn’t want to talk to him about anything else. And yet… I wasn’t ready to ask the question.

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

  “You wanted to talk to me?” Uncle Phil asked as he walked in. “Samson said you had some questions about Devana.”

  “Yeah, I do,” I told him.

  “Look, Mr. Astley, we’re kind of in the middle of something. Could you give us a minute? You, too, Fiona,” Gunther asked my uncle and friend. I glared at him and turned back to my uncle.

  “We’re not in the middle of anything. Anything Gunther and I need to talk about can wait, Uncle Phil.”

  “What’s going on here?” My uncle looked at my boyfriend and me suspiciously. No one responded. Uncle Phil turned to Fiona, and she mouthed something that I didn’t see.

  “What? I can’t read lips, Fiona.”

  Oh for heaven’s sake. Charlotte found out about the prophecy as it relates to the golden boy over there, Samson told him.

  My jaw dropped as another person I trusted admitted they had been keeping things from me.

  “Are you kidding me? Everyone in this room knew about this prophecy that I was supposed to marry Gunther? Everyone except for me?”

  “Wait. You’re supposed to marry Gunther?” Uncle Phil asked me, confused.

  “No!”

  “Yes,” Gunther said.

  Maybe, Samson said.

  Fiona wisely remained silent, and then headed out of the door.

  “And that’s what Ms. Elkins has told me over the years,” Gunther finished explaining. Uncle Phil looked gobsmacked.

  “I don’t even understand how that could work, Gunther,” my uncle said once he finished. “Far be it from me to question the prophecy of a norn, but you and Charlotte have responsibilities and limitations upon you that would make a… well, a more permanent and serious relationship quite impossible.”

  “I’m well aware of that.”

/>   “Does no one listen to me when I say I don’t want to talk about this right now?” I asked the two men as they sat in my yurt, sipping my tea, and discussing my future.

  “I’m not trying to interfere in your relationship, Charlotte, but…” Uncle Phil trailed off as his gaze traveled from my face to Gunther’s and back again. Charlotte, I understand that you may be upset with the boy for withholding this from you on a personal level, but the tale he just told goes far beyond your feelings for him or his for you.

  “What do you mean?” Uncle Phil looked relieved that I had spoken out loud.

  “The prophecy of the Thirteenth Witch is quite a bit more than a fairy tale romance, Charlotte,” Uncle Phil said as he shifted on his chair. “It is rumored to herald a cataclysmic change in our paranormal world. The arrival of the Thirteenth Witch is supposed to usher in an age of freedom, a return to the magic that we once had. Our return to our place as the guardians of the humans.”

  “I didn’t know about that part,” Gunther said.

  “Indeed. There seem to be pieces of the story held in different places within our world. Different families, different creatures know different facets of it. Interestingly enough,” Uncle Phil said, standing up. “Devana and the huntress witches are part of the myth that I know.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “The huntress witches are supposed to be the guardians of morality in the paranormal world—” my uncle began.

  “That woman dressed in black talking like someone that takes people down for fun is a guardian of morality? Are you kidding me?” I burst out. Everything about Devana seemed… dark. Dangerous. She didn’t scream moral. Or guardian. Or safe.

  “Charlotte, again, stop looking at this through human eyes, human ideas of morality,” my uncle said as he leaned toward me. “Oh, no, here… Think about the myths that you learned in your human school. Those creatures and gods that brought balance, or justice, were very often the most terrifying. Not that Devana is terrifying, but her purpose in the story of the Thirteenth Witch is not an easy one.”