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  Spandex, Spells and…Shadows?

  Midlife Mayhem Book Three

  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 Three

  I finally had some answers. Except those answers only led to more questions. And the first question on my mind?

  Were there any other halflings in existence?

  Between Hunter’s and with the Council, his orders to kill me, and the immense growth in my magical powers, I’d hardly had time to explore that possibility.

  But I needed to. I needed to know if there was anyone else like me out there, and I needed to know now. The only problem was that when I got my wish, well…

  Let’s just say things didn’t quite turn out the way I had expected. Then again, when did they ever?

  Spandex, Spells and…Shadows? Is the Third 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

  One month with no insanity.

  Well, unless I counted the fact that I’d nearly blown up the garden shed on one—wait, no, two—occasions, accidentally turned Herman into a toad, then a snake, and then a rat before he finally shifted back to a cat, and also set fire to my mom’s favorite dirty romance novel series.

  They weren’t really all that great anyways.

  Or maybe I was just feeling a little bit lonely.

  I’d finally gotten up the guts to semi-express to Hunter how I felt about him, and now he was locked up in a Portland hotel room four and a half miles away, and I was under strict orders not to visit him, no matter how dire the circumstances became.

  I wasn’t too keen on violating these orders seeing as Hunter was still bound to the Council, and therefore had an insatiable thirst for my blood not unlike the kind Edward Cullen had for Bella in the Twilight series.

  Only, the two of us were full-grown adults and knew how to spot toxic relationship dynamics from a thousand miles away.

  So, since I’d been staying far away from Hunter at all times, keeping busy with our family magic emporium, and attempting to figure out how to reign in my now out of control half fae magic, the month that had passed since we’d gotten our family grimoire back had done so in relative calm.

  Come to think of it, my definition of “relative calm” had changed a lot in the last few months. It used to be that Shannon McCarthy thought a calm month was when no one turned up dead in a park somewhere. Now, calm months happened when only three major disasters occurred, and I didn’t end up having to save everyone I loved from certain doom.

  Oh, how the times had changed.

  “Do you plan on sitting there all day, or would you like to make yourself useful?” My mother demanded as she tromped down the staircase, already dressed and ready.

  I glanced at the clock on the mantle, the one that shot out a tiny stuffed pixie every hour, on the hour, and pointed at the large hand, which was just barely past five a.m.

  “It’s morning meditation time,” I murmured to her gently.

  I’d been attempting to get my stubborn, hot-headed mother to meditate with me for the last week and a half. I’d read a statistic in Women’s Health that claimed daily meditators managed to increase their lifespan by an average of four to seven years. Now, I had no idea how true that was, but what did ten minutes of quiet thought a day hurt?

  According to Mom, those ten minutes made her want to rip her hair out of her head.

  “You’re still on that?” She sighed, rolling her eyes. “Fine. But we need to get this spell over with before it’s time to open the shop. Keep doing your woo woo shit, and I’m going to make myself a pot of coffee and meditate on how to find this curse-breaking spell.”

  Mom whirled out of the living room and into the kitchen, where she proceeded to bang around and make more noise than a fireworks display on the Fourth of July.

  “Tune it out, Shannon,” I murmured to myself, closing my eyes and working to quiet my mind.

  That was the part I was still having some trouble with. Or a lot of trouble with, if I’m being honest. My mind didn’t really do “quiet.”

  The second I closed my eyes, Hunter’s face popped into my head. His sweet, charismatic, protective face.

  He was staring at me like I was the devil incarnate, and he was ready to drive a stake through my heart. His gray eyes were alight with anger.

  More anger than I’d ever seen in my life.

  “Shit!” I gasped. My eyes flew open of their own accord, and I was staring at my living room again, with a few logs in the fireplace and a million different charms hanging haphazardly around the mantle.

  “Not so calm now, huh?” Mom chuckled, returning to the living room with two steaming mugs of coffee in her hands.

  “Everyone’s meditation journey is different,” I parroted, recalling the article I’d read. “Some people take a little longer to adjust to this new way of being.”

  Mom narrowed her eyes, staring at me with pursed lips and an expression of absolute disbelief.

  “Some people aren’t half fae witches, and they definitely aren’t the only one of their kind in existence,” she pointed out.

  My stomach twisted up into a tight knot at her words, so I distracted myself by taking a sip of the burning hot coffee, and purposefully ignoring the way it seared my tongue as it slipped down my throat.

  I had yet to tell Mom about the discovery I’d made in Rudolfo’s diary. The hunter had claimed that I was, in fact, not the only half-fae in existence. A few hundred years ago, he’d known of at least three.

  If I was correct in my estimate of our lifespan, it was highly probable those three were still alive. But even if they weren’t…

  Let’s just say it didn’t seem too crazy to hypothesize that Grams wasn’t the only witch in recent history to fall in love with a fae and have a child. By now, I had learned that one of the central tenets of the earthly magical world was false. We’d all been brought up to believe that fae were a rarity in our realm. They only crossed over to cause mischief and do evil. Any that did come over were promptly sought out and killed by the Hunter’s Council.

  Clearly, that wasn’t true. Which left me to wonder: how many fae were living among us, undetected?

  “Whatcha thinking about?” Mom asked, adding a little bit of a lilt to her voice.

  “Nothing.”

  It was a weak cover. Actually, it was more like a non-existent cover, but I really wasn’t in the mood to divulge my inner musings j
ust yet. First of all, I knew Mom would feel like I’d lied to her, which was the exact opposite of the truth, and second of all…

  I just wasn’t ready. I couldn’t really put my finger on why, but it just felt strange to talk about it with Mom and Grams, knowing they could never truly understand. Mom’s fae side had been bound when she was so young, before her powers had really set in, that it was almost like they hadn’t even existed in the first place.

  Neither of them could really understand the way I was feeling.

  “Let’s just go do this spell,” I announced, standing up and sucking down the entire cup of coffee. “Is Grams awake yet?”

  “Barely,” my grandma croaked as she descended the wooden staircase. She was still rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, and her gray, curly hair was mussed up. She wasn’t the normal, put together Grams everyone else would be used to seeing, but then again, Grams of the morning was an entirely different person than Grams at any other time.

  “I may have woken her up ten minutes before her alarm,” Mom confessed.

  “Yes, Elle, the alarm that I had set to give myself plenty of time to sleep in before we needed to perform the spell for Shannon,” Grams snapped, shuffling into the kitchen and getting her coffee.

  Even at ninety years old, Grams drank at least four cups of coffee a day. I used to insist that she slow down on the caffeine intake, but that had never gotten me anywhere. Grams did her own thing. She always had, and always would.

  Besides, ever since I’d discovered I came from a family of witches, I couldn’t help but wonder if Grams had some sort of secret gene that helped her stay youthful. Most other ninety-year-olds lived in nursing homes and rode around in wheelchairs, but Grams still acted like she was sixty-five.

  “Well, Mama, sometimes your alarm clock isn’t all that reliable,” Mom pointed out.

  Grams harrumphed but said nothing more. Instead, the old matriarch led us out of the house and to the garden shed in the backyard, where all of the magical ingredients we needed for virtually any spell were kept.

  Along with a few other magical items that were a bit more deadly than some dried rose petals and a stick of selenite.

  In the center of the shed sat a massive black cauldron over a tiny green flame. The slimy green potion inside was bubbling away, popping like hot grease every once in a while.

  Next to the cauldron sat a tall, eccentric witch with her finger pointed out straight to control the massive stick she’d placed in the cauldron. It spun around and around, stirring the potion easily.

  “Morning, Marcella,” Mom said.

  “Shh!” Marcella hissed. “He’s just about to… OH MY!”

  It was then that the three of us caught sight of the slightly burned book Marcella held in her lap. Her eyes were wide as she read the page, and I could have sworn I saw her actually lick her lips before she looked up abruptly.

  “Do people actually do this sort of thing?’ She asked, her voice barely above a whisper, as she held up to book for us to see.

  The cover had a photo of a swooning woman, dressed in something from the eighteenth century, although the outfit was far more busty than anything I expected had been proper. A shirtless, oiled up man held her in his arms, as if she needed to be saved by his macho, Photoshopped muscles.

  The title read: Between the Woven Sheets.

  I couldn’t help the disgusted sound that came out of my mouth.

  “Whatever it is, no,” I told her.

  “Only if you find the right guy,” Mom chuckled at the exact same moment.

  And then both of us went beet red. There are some things, no matter how old they are, that mothers and daughters do not wish to discuss.

  Marcella, though, didn’t seem to be at all aware of the awkward silence, because she just nodded, trance-like, and looked back down at the book.

  “So the potion’s ready, right?” I asked, quickly changing the subject to one that was less… strange.

  “Oh, yeah, babe,” Marcella nodded. She snapped her fingers and a cup and ladle appeared out of thin air. She poured a huge spoonful of the slimy green liquid into the cup and then handed it to me. “Drink up.”

  “The spell, Elle,” Grams murmured.

  I stared down at the frothy green liquid I held in my hands, trying to choke back the bile that threatened to rise. It did not look at all appetizing.

  But, alas, if this was the price I had to pay in order to be cloaked from the prying and dangerous eyes of the hunters, I’d pay. Though, not gladly.

  Grams and Mom started to chant the spell, each one laying a hand on me, and I sucked in a deep breath before I raised the cup to my lips and started to guzzle down the potion.

  It tasted like snails. I knew because I’d had them at a restaurant back in Boston once. Then never again.

  “Et Pallio Zedije.” Marcella joined in on Mom’s and Grams’ chant, and the sound of all three voices together started to overwhelm me. I wasn’t sure if it was the slimy potion, the notion of what we were doing, or the sheer amount of magic that I could feel pulsating through the air, but I suddenly started to feel hot all over. And not in a good way, like when the sun is coming down in the middle of summer and searing all of the skin on my body, but it’s still somehow pleasant. This was more like a melting sensation, as if all of the cell’s in my body had been filled with fire and were destroying themselves from the inside out.

  The heat grew and grew, consuming everything until I was almost certain I was about to black out.

  Then, in the blink of an eye, it was over. The burning feeling disappeared, leaving behind only traces of heat, and the garden shed came back into my consciousness. It was only then that I realized I had somehow ended up flat on the floor, and the cup had sprung from my hands and landed about a foot away from me.

  Three worried faces appeared above me.

  “I’m good,” I croaked. “I’m good.”

  That sentiment was proven a little less true when I rolled over and let out a groan so loud I was sure our neighbors could hear it. My entire body hurt, like I’d just run a half marathon. At least, I assumed that’s what a half marathon had to feel like. I’d never actually done one.

  “Up you go.” Marcella grabbed me by the shoulders and lifted me to my feet with way more strength than I ever thought the woman could have possessed.

  “So did it work?” Mom asked, scanning me with her alert green eyes like she thought she could actually see the product of our spell.

  “Don’t know,” Marcella shrugged. “Guess we’ll just have to wait until she gets close enough to a hunter to see.”

  “Great,” Mom sighed sarcastically.

  “Well, I’m sure Hunter could help—”

  “NO!” Three voices hollered immediately.

  “Let’s not test our theory needlessly, hmm, darling?” Grams said. “Let’s go open up the shop instead, take your mind off of things.”

  I had a feeling I wasn’t the one whose mind needed to be distracted, but I relented anyways, and drove over to Magic for Real with Grams.

  The day was busy, as always. A small part of me still regretted that we hadn’t been able to rehire Annabelle after my semi-disastrous potion had made her forget all about us, but I supposed it was still for the better. I’d rather be busy all day than risk allowing another human into our newly dangerous lives.

  Around four, I noticed that the Lost and Found pile had begun to spill out of the small bin where we kept it and all across the break room floor, so I decided it was time to sort through it. Hardly anyone ever came to retrieve the various coats, purses, and knick-knacks that they left behind, so I wanted to discard the trash and take the rest of the stuff down to Goodwill. Maybe someone else would find a use for the ugly green sweater on the top of the pile.

  I had three different piles going when I neared the bottom of the stack and found something that was actually not horrendous, for once.

  A necklace.

  It was pretty and dainty, with a thin silver ch
ain that almost seemed to glow, soft pink crystals hung through, and a tiny little pendant in the center. The pendant was a fairy that had been carved straight out of a glittery yellow stone, the likes of which I’d never seen before.

  The clasp was broken, indicating it had probably fallen off of some poor woman’s neck while she was perusing our sage selection, but I had a feeling that finding her would be an impossible task.

  I was drawn to the necklace, though, for some inexplicable reason. It wasn’t at all my style, though I had fairly expensive taste, and I’d never wear something with a pendant like that.

  Still.

  I found myself picking it up and traipsing over to the dirty little mirror in the corner of the room to hold it against my chest, trying it on for size.

  Immediately, a familiar and unwelcome feeling swept over me.

  “Oh, no,” I murmured, but it was too late. The break room disappeared around me, and I was swept into an entirely new time and place.

  Someday, I really had to learn to control these visions of mine.

  A dark, empty field popped up around me, and I felt a shiver of fear reflexively crawl up my spine before I reminded myself that none of it was real.

  The dark was all consuming. I couldn’t see a single thing, except the light of a moon high in the sky.

  Wait.

  No.

  Two moons.

  “Where am I?” I murmured aloud, so shocked I couldn’t hold it in. I was pretty sure the answer was: the world of the fae. I didn’t have time to think it through, though, because a dark, shadowy figure appeared on the horizon. It was running straight toward me with an uneven gait, one that clearly signaled terror.