Paranoia, Pixies and…Prophecies?
Midlife Mayhem Book Four
Melinda Chase
Copyright © 2020 by Melinda Chase
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Midlife Mayhem Book Four
If there was one thing I’d learned over the last few months, it was that absolutely nothing lasted forever.
Which was probably why I’d been so surprised when Hunter announced he was staying in Portland. I couldn’t help but think, and hope, that it had something to do with me, a forty-year-old divorcee who was half witch and half fae.
Or maybe that was just a pipe dream.
Either way, a new hunk isn’t the only thing that’s changed in my life within the last forty-eight hours. For starters, I freed an elf from prison based solely on the fact that he knew my grandfather’s name. And then that elf promptly had some sort of magical heart attack, leaving me to wonder just what the heck is going on in the world of the fae.
I won’t have to wait too long to get answers, though. In fact, they’re coming at me more quickly than I can even think.
Paranoia, Pixies and…Prophecies? Is the Fourth book in the Midlife Mayhem Series by Melinda Chase.
Melinda loves writing tales that prove life—romance—and ‘happily-ever-afters’—do exist beyond your twenties! Her debut Series features a snarky, hilarious heroine, Shannon McCarthy, and her wild adventure of mid-life self discovery filled with mystery and romance. It's sure to please fans of traditional paranormal romance and cozy paranormal mysteries!
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Thank You for Reading!
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About the Author
1
“Have you found a way to magically wake him up yet?”
Hunter’s soft murmur brought me out of my waking daze, and it was only when I shook myself back to the land of the conscious that I realized I’d been staring at the elf we rescued from the Council’s prison like a creepy stalker.
I mean, I was starting to feel like a bit of a psycho. He’d been in my home for less than forty-eight hours, and I was already doubting whether or not I’d made the right decision.
It’s never wrong to rescue someone, right? I’d stuck my neck out, literally, and nearly gotten myself killed in the process, but the allure of meeting someone who knew about my grandfather was just too strong to handle.
Of course, now he was passed out on our couch, shifting from sleeping to deliriously conscious every few hours, and giving me no answer whatsoever. In truth, all I knew now was that he was old.
Like, really old. Marcella had explained that he must have been at least three thousand to be having these symptoms.
She’d also explained that they were a byproduct of being inches away from death. She hypothesized that the stress of his prison break had been too much for his two hearts to handle, and they had brought him into this half-unconscious state in order to attempt to preserve him.
She wasn’t sure how much longer he’d last, though.
“No,” I sighed, swiveling around on the coffee table and turning to look at Hunter.
Things were weird between us. I hadn’t seen him since he’d almost kissed me in the foyer and then announced that he was moving to Portland permanently.
At least, I was pretty sure he’d almost kissed me. I’d been out of the dating game for so many years I could no longer tell what was an almost kiss and what wasn’t.
“I’m sure he’ll wake up soon,” Hunter reassured me. “His body just needs time to process everything. You’ll have your answers in no time.”
Hunter crossed the living room to come and sit next to me. He leaned in close, searching my eyes with his own as if he was trying to communicate something for which he didn’t yet have the words.
I was just about to break the silence and come right out and demand that he just kiss me already when a massive gasp permeated the air.
I whipped around to see the old elf convulsing on the sofa, gasping for air, with his milky eyes fixated on the ceiling as if he was staring at something.
“Oh my God!” Hunter hollered.
Within a millisecond, I was kneeling by the elf’s side in terror. It seized my body, making my brain freeze up.
He couldn’t die. He was the only link I had to Laslow. The only man who could tell me what had happened.
“Marcella!” I heard the scream as it pierced the air, but I could hardly even tell that it had come from me. All at once, everything flooded my mind and, for the first time in my life, I had a complete out of body experience.
I watched from afar as Marcella, Grams, and Mom flew into the room. Hunter came up to me, grabbed me, and drug me away so Marcella could work, but I couldn’t even feel his arms around my torso.
Instead, I was staring right at the old elf man as he seized on the couch, desperately searching my mind for some sort of spell. Even a feeling would have done. All I wanted was for my magic to shoot to the surface, working on its own like it so often did, so it could save the old man.
But nothing happened.
Marcella worked hard, and I watched from afar. I don’t know how long it was- whether it was five minutes or five hours- before the convulsing finally stopped, and the old man lay deathly still.
My heart stopped then, sputtering in empathy before it froze in my chest the same way the elf’s body had just frozen.
“Is he dead?” My whisper brought me back to myself. Hunter must have finally deemed it safe, because he released me and stepped to my side, keeping one arm firmly around my shoulders in comfort.
“No.” Marcella shook her head, but I could see the agony in her deep brown eyes. “He’s merely in a coma.”
“There’s something you’re not telling me.” Sometimes, my family forgot just how astute I was. Call it a holdover from my previous life as a Boston D.A.
“He’s going to die, kiddo,” Mom said, keeping her voice strong. She probably wanted to be the one to deliver the news. Moms were always like that.
I wasn’t sure if I’d processed what she said or not, but I found myself nodding. Of course. It was par for the course in my life, at this point. One step forward, two steps back.
“At least he’s not dying in prison,” Hunter pointed out, rubbing a comforting hand up and down my back. “He has you to thank for that.”
“Not me,” I pointed out. “My magic.”
The room went silent once more as we all accepted that there was nothing more we could do. If Marcella had given up, then all hope was truly lost.
“You know what, I think I’m going to bed,” I said suddenly, patting Hunter’s arm and slipping out of his grasp.
“It’s eight-thirty,” he pointed out.
“I know. I’m just feeling really tired today. I’ll call you in the morning?” I leaned forward and pecked his cheek softly, feeling the warmth of his skin under my lips. A part of me yearned to be alone with him right then, but I knew
he’d ask me a million questions about how I was feeling and, honestly, I wasn’t in the mood for that.
It had been a rough forty-eight hours. I’d hardly slept. I needed time to think.
“Goodnight, babe,” Mom called after me.
I gave them all a final wave and then plodded off up the stairs, nearly collapsing into my bed.
Sleep didn’t come easy or fast. It shouldn’t have surprised me. I felt as if I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in months, ever since I started to unravel the badly woven carpet of my life.
Hunter sent me a text when he’d arrived back at his new house.
You’re stronger than anyone I’ve ever met. Just remember that. I’m here if you need to talk.
It was short, but it said more than any text I’d ever received. I didn’t need Hunter to launch into a monologue about how much he loved me or supported me, or any of the other cheesy things he might have said.
Knowing he was there no matter what was enough for me. Heck, he’d given up his entire life as a hunter just to save mine.
If that didn’t scream “good man,” I didn’t know what did.
I managed to fall asleep at some point well past midnight. I think my body finally gave in to the exhaustion that had plagued me for the last two days because I slept for nearly thirteen hours. In fact, by the time I woke up, the house seemed completely empty.
I lay there for a moment, drinking in the stillness. The midday sun poured through the cracks in my sky blue curtains, lighting up the old hardwood floor and showing me the dust that danced in the air.
Normally, I would have had a conniption and instantly sprang up to go and dust the entire house. But this morning- or afternoon, really- I just couldn’t bring myself to care.
I felt like I was having a mid-life crisis. Only, without the fancy new cars and the hot younger men, the boozy nights out on the town and the new group of girlfriends whose sole purpose was to talk me into spending massive amounts of money on revealing clothes I didn’t want or need. I’d always scrunched my nose in disgust at the thought of becoming one of those women, but right now, that kind of a mid-life crisis would have felt like a gift from the gods.
Instead, the mid-life crisis I was having was a million times worse. I didn’t want to buy new clothes or a new car, and I definitely didn't want to get drunk all of the time.
All I really wanted was to just disappear.
Not in a suicidal way, of course. I wanted to keep on living. But I wanted to do it on a remote island in the middle of the Bahamas, where a boat came once a week to drop off a shipment of food, and I never had to see another face again, if I so chose.
That sounded like a nice way to go. I could live out the rest of my days like that. There was enough money in my bank account.
Even as the thoughts crossed my mind, though, I knew I’d never act on them. This mid-life crisis wasn’t caused by a sudden fear of my mortality, like everyone else’s was.
It wasn’t even caused by a fear of my immortality. It had nothing to do with me at all.
It was everyone else. I had a sudden and distinct feeling that a person’s very association with me would bring them harm. After all, Laslow was in prison because he'd fallen in love with Adora, created my mom, and, by default, created me.
Hunter had a target on his back because he… liked me or loved me or felt some sort of intimate feelings for me.
And my mom and Grams seemed to constantly be in danger nowadays.
So, yeah. Running away to a deserted island in the middle of the ocean sounded pretty darn good. But unfortunately, I wasn’t one of the characters in my mom’s romance novels. I wasn’t a character in anyone’s novels.
This was my life now, and laying in my bed at one o’clock in the afternoon moping about it wasn’t doing anyone any good.
“You’re not going to die today, Shannon,” I reminded myself.
That sentence had become a sort of daily ritual over the last few days. It was like the meditation journey I was still attempting to go on.
I’d read, in the exact same magazine, that gratitude was an important practice to incorporate into one’s daily life. There was some other stuff in there about how being grateful can help a person manifest, and blah blah blah. Honestly, it was full of a lot of that woo woo bull that I still hated.
Hey, a girl can believe in magic, but that doesn’t mean she suddenly believes life will magically go the way she wants just because she uses the Law of Attraction. Trust me, if that was how life worked, I'd be vacationing in Hawaii right then.
But the one important thing that I pulled out of that article was the importance of reminding yourself every day why life was great.
My life wasn’t exactly great, but I wasn’t dead. So that had become my daily reminder.
I wasn’t dying today.
I pushed myself out of bed and pulled on some clothes, and then went downstairs for a cup of early afternoon coffee.
As I passed the living room, I did a double-take and nearly had a heart attack.
The couch was empty. The old elf was gone.
“Oh no,” I sobbed, rushing over to it like I could somehow bring him back. “No, no, no. He wasn’t supposed to die yet.”
“He's not dead,” Marcella’s voice suddenly said behind me.
I whipped around, gaping at her in disbelief.
“But… the couch… is empty,” I repeated. I have no idea if my mind was just overworked from all the stress, or if I genuinely could not fathom any explanation other than death at this point.
“The fae are not Yoda, babe,” she chuckled. “They don’t just disappear when they die. I moved him into the guest space in the attic so we could have our couch back.”
My brain processed that information in a split second, and it only took me a moment longer to realize how ridiculous I must have looked when I ran up to the couch sobbing like a madwoman.
“I’m sorry,” I sighed, plopping down right on top of Herman’s nearly invisible tail. The familiar let out an indignant screech and launched himself onto the coffee table, where he proceeded to plop down and stare at me like I was the absolute devil.
“You’ve been dealing with a lot,” Marcella reassured me, coming to sit at my side so she could rub my back soothingly. “You need to give yourself a little time and space to process everything.”
“But that's the problem,” I moaned, dropping my head into my hands and pressing my fingers to my eyelids so hard I saw stars. “I don’t have time. Or space.”
Marcella, usually one to come up with some cheeky, comforting line, fell silent.
That was the moment I knew that I was absolutely right about everything.
“I should get to the store,” I said suddenly, standing up. “Mom and Grams might need some help.”
“I think they were—”
“I just need to get out of here,” I cut Marcella off quickly before she could continue to protest. I had no intention of going to the store, but I didn’t want her to feel like I needed space from her.
In truth, though, I just needed a little space from everything. Just a moment to clear my head.
That moment ended up taking the rest of the night. I wandered around Portland, taking in the sights of my childhood juxtaposed with new places and people- buildings that were now gone, or empty lots where buildings had now been erected. It’s a strange thing, to walk around your hometown and watch your childhood play before your eyes, while also knowing that childhood no longer exists. In a way, I felt I'd been stuck for a while in the space between childhood and true adulthood. I’d felt suspended. As if even as I stepped forward, my feet had gone nowhere. I supposed that I could chalk that all up to the fact that, up until recently, I'd been living a life that was, essentially, a lie.
I walked all over Portland that day. It took me nine hours to finally circle and come back home, but when I finally did, I had this overwhelming sense of calm.
I’d stopped the inner turmoil while I wandered aroun
d, and instead reminded myself that I could only control a few things.
What were they?
First and foremost, myself. I could work on my magic and become the formidable halfling I knew I could be.
Secondly, I needed to learn all that I possibly could about the fae. Who were they? What was their history? Why did we live in separate worlds? And, most importantly, were they really as bad as the Council believed?
That was it. That was all I had control over. If an evil fae decided to attack us tomorrow, there was nothing I could do. If the Council suddenly rained hellfire down upon my head, there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t control the fae or the Council.
So what was the point of constantly worrying?
2
Despite my new belief that worrying was completely pointless, I still felt that familiar flutter in my chest when I walked into Magic for Real the next morning and discovered that the entire break room had turned into some weird research/case-solving/crazy house a la A Beautiful Mind.
“Uhhh, what’s this?” I asked in my absolute calmest, most polite tone of voice.
“Oh, hey!” Tanya’s brown head suddenly popped up from behind a stack of massive, leather-bound books with crinkled, stained yellow paper that looked like they had come straight from the Middle Ages.
“Hi. What’s this?” I repeated. It seemed I was incapable of carrying on a normal conversation when I was staring at my once clean break room and attempting to absorb the fact that it now looked like a war zone.
The stack of books that Tanya had been hiding behind was only one of about sixteen. They all looked the same to me- leather-bound, thick books with yellow pages, and a distinctly musky smell. The cabinets in the back- the ones where we normally kept snacks and extra office supplies- were now covered in a million and one Post It notes of all different colors. Yarn had been strung between some of them, seemingly connecting one note to another, though what the connection was, I couldn’t be sure. One note read: “Bridge of Power,” and had a string trailing from it to another note that read: “Ends of the rainbows?”
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