Men-On-Pause; A Paranormal Women's Fiction Novel (Bells and Spells Book 2) Read online

  All eyes turned to Neal. Louann grunted and slipped off the stool, immediately heading for the back door. “I know when I’m not wanted,” she grumbled.

  “Bonus,” Marilyn muttered.

  “I heard that,” Louann tossed back over her shoulder before she slammed the door behind her.

  “Stop teasing your mother,” Lottie scolded her.

  “Teasing?” Marilyn asked with the best innocent expression she could muster, and boy, she should have been an actress.

  “Tell me this isn’t fate,” Claudia said with a chuckle as she lifted her mug of coffee and headed for the exit.

  “Bite me,” Marilyn muttered and shot a look at Neal. She narrowed her eyes on him and pointed her witching finger at his chest. “That was not an invitation for you.”

  “Perish the thought,” he teased, his eyes sparkling with amusement. “But if it was…”

  “It wasn’t,” she snapped, and he held up his hands in mock surrender.

  “Well, that’s my cue to leave and get back to the books, we have a spell to cook up and an unwanted guest to banish,” she slid off the stool and eyed the vampire for a long moment. “Maybe two,” she added.

  “That’s not nice, especially as I seem to remember being banished from my own house not so long ago,” he reminded her.

  Lottie pouted as she thought about it. “That was a decade ago…”

  “Exactly, just the blink of an eye,” he said and grinned.

  Lottie turned a curious look on Marilyn. “If you need me, just scream,” she said before eying the vampire up and down. “I have a spell I wouldn’t mind trying out, and he’d be the perfect victim.”

  Then she turned on her heels and started for the back door.

  A piercing scream echoed through the house that almost made Marilyn jump out of her skin, and Lottie stopped dead in her tracks, but by the time she’d turned, she was alone. “That was fast,” she grumbled and followed on after them.

  ~

  Neal was up the stairs before Marilyn’s foot touched the first step. She could only wish that she had his speed, especially when that scream had come from Claudia, and Claudia didn’t scream for many reasons – snakes, really big spiders, and, of course – the day she’d dyed her hair, and it had turned out green.

  Claudia ran out of her bedroom and straight into Neal. The impact was lessened when he grabbed a hold on her and pulled her against his chest. He spied into the room behind her, and the room looked empty enough, but he knew that Claudia wasn’t the type of person to scream for no reason – attack first and ask questions later, sure, but screaming wasn’t her thing.

  Claudia shimmied and twisted until she’d shucked him off. “What is it with dead people touching me?”

  “He touched you?” Marilyn asked, gasping a little for breath after hightailing it up the stairs.

  “Hey, I’m standing right here, and I have feelings,” Neal protested.

  “Not you,” Marilyn said, brushing him off with a wave of her hand. “The ghost.”

  “Ghosts can’t touch people,” Neal replied, but his smile was strained as he looked from Claudia to Marilyn and back again. “Can they?”

  “Go find out, I dare you,” Claudia said, shivering from head to toe in remembrance of that feeling, icy with a touch of yuck thrown in for good measure.

  “I’ll pass,” Neal said, frowning at the thought. Still, he was curious, and he walked to the threshold of the room and peered in.

  “We need to get some kind of a containment spell on him,” Claudia grumbled.

  “Like the ghostbusters?” Neal said, turning to smirk at her, when the look on her face said move, and move fast. He almost made it, but the ice-cold feeling that pierced him from behind and filled him from head to toe told him he’d screwed up.

  “Oh, crap!” Marilyn bit out at the sight of what was happening. Marsh Weathers, the golfing guy, was taking over Neal’s body, and she didn’t have a damn clue what to do about it.

  Claudia raised her hands and zapped Neal. If nothing else she was hoping that the magic would somehow send Marsh running. Nothing. By the time she’d got ready to zap him again, the takeover was complete.

  Neal’s chin lowered towards his chest, and a cruel smile took over his lips. Marilyn knew one thing, that wasn’t the man she knew. “Crap!” she muttered the word, but he snapped a look at her – of course, he now had perfectly enhanced vampire hearing.

  “Hello, ladies,” Neal said and took a step towards Claudia.

  Marilyn didn’t think, she only reacted, and the sound of Neal’s neck-breaking might have made her feel physically sick and somewhat guilty, but it did the job it was intended to do, and he dropped to the floor like a puppet with his strings cut.

  “You killed him!” Claudia bit out before she slapped her hands over her mouth and looked around her to make sure she wasn’t overheard. Why she didn’t know – maybe that old witch plausible deniability thing had kicked in, but there it was – silence was always golden. “Everybody keeps dropping dead bodies at my damn feet,” she muttered behind her hands and took a long step back from Neal.

  Marilyn felt a strange sense of guilt for doing what she’d done, but she knew she needed to do it. That didn’t make it all right; it just made it morally right, in a weird sort of way. “He’s a vampire, he’ll live – sort of,” she said and grimaced.

  “How long do we have?” Claudia asked.

  “For what?” Marilyn shot back.

  “Until he springs back to life like Boris Karloff rising from a coffin…”

  “I thought Boris Karloff was Frankenstein,” Marilyn looked confused.

  “He was both, and do you want to argue semantics now?” Claudia said and pointed down at Neal. “We have a dead guy in a dead guy and a dead guy that’s going to be undead soon enough. Could we leave the horror movie stuff until we have a real crisis on our hands?”

  “I don’t know how long it takes a vampire too – revamplify,” Marilyn said with a shrug.

  “Revamplify?” Claudia raised her eyebrows.

  “Revampliate?”

  “Both good choices,” Claudia admitted, looking at her friend as if she was an alien. “But the fact remains…”

  “Dead guy walking in minus ten?” Marilyn replied.

  “You think?”

  “How am I supposed to know how long it takes for the undead to be undeaded.”

  “Okay, this whole making words up thing is a little weird, and you’re taking it to the limit now,” Claudia said.

  Marilyn folded her arms and cocked an eyebrow at her best friend. “That’s what you find weird?”

  “Yes, and can we stop and try to think logically?”

  “Probably not,” Marilyn said with a small shrug.

  Claudia took on a smirk, and Marilyn narrowed her eyes on her. “Because it’s your boyfriend?” She wiggled her eyebrows and winked.

  “Let me think on how many ways I can tell you to take a long run off a short pier right now.”

  “Touchy,” Claudia replied, but the smirk was still there.

  Marilyn looked down at Neal, who still looked like he was sleeping, even if his neck was at a strange angle, and she grimaced. “We need the elders,” she admitted.

  “You know, it would be nice if we could – one day sometime soon – actually come up with a plan, a spell, or a way out of our some time troubles on our own.”

  Marilyn couldn’t argue with that one. “Yes, but for that to happen we’d need to act our age and pool our knowledge, and only one of us can do both of those things, and clue – it isn’t you.”

  Claudia folded her arms and raised her chin. “Well, fine. You go run off to ask the elders while I stay and break Neal’s neck over and over until you return.”

  Marilyn was going to argue the merit of asking her mother for help, yet again, but she also saw the logic in Claudia being the one to kill Neal. There had to come a point where she didn’t have the heart or the will to do it anymore – but only b
ecause she had a moral compass, and would take pity on the man, and not because she had feelings for him. Claudia, on the other hand, had neither of those things.

  “Fine,” Marilyn said and turned on her heels.

  “Ha! I knew it,” Claudia called after her. “You like him…”

  “Do not make me drop you on your bony backside,” Marilyn warned, and she’d do it too because her moral compass was a little wonky at the moment.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ~

  “Right in, you say?” Lottie asked, looking down with a curious gaze at Neal lying dead on the hallway carpet.

  Marilyn had gone to seek her mother’s advice, and Lottie had demanded to see for herself, hence why everyone was now staring down at the poor dead vampire – who snapped back to life before their very eyes.

  “My turn,” Louann said, and took a little too much pleasure in using her magic to snap his neck, once more rendering him undead.

  “At least now I know what to get you for your birthday next year,” Claudia said.

  “You enjoyed that,” Lottie said with an accusing tone.

  Louann raised her eyebrows and regarded her friend with amusement. “I admit it was cathartic,” she replied.

  Marilyn didn’t like her mother’s enthusiasm for the kill. “Well, I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself, mother, but can we concentrate on finding a way to get the dead guy out of the dead guy, so the original dead guy can live more than a few seconds?”

  “Because you miss his company?” Lottie asked with a sly smile.

  “Why does everyone keep insisting that I have some vested interest in the vampire?” Marilyn asked.

  “Oh, see, now, when you’re trying to deflect he’s the vampire, but before he was Neal,” Claudia said.

  Marilyn sighed. “Neal, the vampire, dead guy walking, does it matter? The point remains that we can’t keep doing this…”

  “I could,” Louann informed her, and she did a double-take on her mother.

  “That’s not something to be proud of, I find it deeply disturbing,” Marilyn scolded her.

  “It’s cheaper than therapy,” Louann replied.

  Marilyn took a long moment to roll her eyes to the ceiling and try to regain some sense of composure, which, under the circumstances and her mother’s presence was probably a futile move. “It’s like dealing with toddlers all over again,” she grumbled.

  “Look, she wants her dead boyfriend back,” Claudia teased. Lottie covered her mouth when she chuckled, and out of the corner of her eye, Claudia did notice Marilyn’s head whip around and felt the glare of her eyes, even if she wasn’t looking at her. “There must be something in the dark arts part of the book of shadows that covers this.”

  “Dark arts?” Marilyn looked at her as though she were insane. “It’s not necromancy to bring back the undead; it would only be necromancy if the dead were dead and not undead to start off with.”

  “Well, that made perfect sense to me,” Louann muttered.

  “He’s a vampire,” Marilyn said and motioned with both hands to Neal. “He’s the undead. What we need to do is find the spell to release the dead guy inside of him from his body, so the undead – aka Neal – can come back to life without the dead guy inside of him.”

  “I got it,” Lottie said, turning to look at Louann.

  “Well, don’t give it to me,” Louann scolded her. “But I much prefer the undead and the dead guy like this.”

  “You would,” Marilyn snapped.

  “And you wouldn’t because you like the undead guy,” Claudia said. “You can admit it.”

  Marilyn opened her mouth to protest, but Neal snapped back to life and Louann killed him with her magic once more. “Cockroaches and vampires,” the elder announced. “They just keep ticking.”

  Marilyn ignored her mother, even if she did feel like wringing her neck. “Lottie!” she snapped out and turned her attention to the elder who was frowning at her. She realised that she was taking her annoyance out on her and waved an absent hand in the air. “Sorry,” she said, and she meant it; it wasn’t Lottie that was driving her slowly insane, but her mother, who was giving it her best shot.

  “Accepted,” Lottie said with a smile that told her she was understood and forgiven.

  Marilyn took a deep breath and tried her best to ignore all things Louann. “Do you know how we can push the ghost out from the vampire?”

  “Getting a ghost from a ghoul,” Louann said, cutting in, and jumping up and down on Marilyn’s last nerve. “Like blood from a stone.”

  Marilyn turned to her mother and opened her mouth to tell her a few home truth when Lottie stepped in. “It’s not an everyday spell that I have to hand, but I can consult a few friends and see what they think.”

  “Would you?” Marilyn asked, finally seeing some light at the end of the tunnel as she turned back to the elder and mentally used a sledgehammer to pound down the fact that she still wanted to offer her mother a few choice words, and none of them repeatable in a church.

  “And I’ll stay right here and zap the sucker every time he reanimates,” Louann said with glee.

  “Reanimates, good one,” Claudia said. “We were going with revamplifies.”

  “Ugh!” Marilyn said and took off down the hallway away from the madness in an effort to save her sanity.

  On the bright side, she guessed that she didn’t need to worry about running into Neal for the next little while. One man down, and one to go – but how easy would it be to get rid of Jake, especially when she didn’t know what he wanted?

  ~

  “Busy?” Amber asked, strolling into the store and around the counter where she placed her car keys and bag next to Sandy’s.

  “Not really, Mrs B just left, she needed an emergency candle,” Sandy informed her.

  “I hesitate to ask what the emergency was, but as long as it didn’t endanger the town or the fabric between this world and the next…” She left that open.

  “She wanted to make a healing spell for her cat, it threw up a furball, but Mrs B thinks it might have been poisoned by the dog people across the road,” Sandy explained.

  Amber frowned. “That would involve a vet, not a healing spell,” she said with a sigh.

  “She took Freya to the emergency vet yesterday, the vet said she was fine, but Mrs B just wanted to be sure,” Sandy grinned. “I like that woman, but she’s a little…”

  “Psycho?”

  Sandy chuckled. “Oh, and your father came in looking for Scott, and you, but mainly Scott.”

  “Warlocks stick together,” Amber said with a shrug, but she couldn’t help but wonder what her father wanted with Scott. She knew one thing, Scott wasn’t that interested in having their father back in town. It was little wonder he was laying low.

  “Just like witches,” Sandy said as she walked by carrying one of the display heads that she’d taken out of the stockroom. “I thought I’d try something out, is that okay?”

  “Sure, go for it, and we’re not busy today. In fact, I might just close up early. Having a life outside of this place might be nice for once.”

  “Well, if you have something to do, I can stay and lock up, go home now,” Sandy said.

  Amber liked that idea – in fact, she liked it a lot. Spending the rest of the day with Josh would be cool. “Are you sure you don’t mind?”

  “Not one bit,” Sandy couldn’t help but smile. “I’m sure you can think of better things to do.”

  “You betcha,” Amber said, and snatched up her keys and her bag, and headed right for the door before anything happened that would change her mind.

  “Have fun,” Sandy called as she placed the display head in the centre circle of the podium.

  “See you tomorrow,” Amber said and stopped in the doorway. “Catch a lay in; I’ll open up.”

  “Thanks,” Sandy called, and Amber gave her a backwards wave as she headed out into the autumn sunshine. The wind was picking up, and it had a cold touch, but the sun was s
till warm and felt good on her skin.

  “Hey!” Claudia called, clip-clopping in her heels down the street towards her with a friendly wave and a strained smile that screamed that she needed help stretched across her face.

  “Hi,” Amber said and waved back as she waited for Claudia. In her mind, she was cursing – there goes her cosy afternoon with her mate.

  “I need a few things,” Claudia said, and when she caught up to her, she wrapped her hand around her wrist, spun her in place, and yanked her back towards the store.

  Amber squealed in protest. “Emergency much?”

  Claudia leant in and whispered. “Two dead guys become one,” she said, and there was no time for Amber to ask anything else because Claudia dropped in behind her, placed her palms on her back and practically launched her through the door with a hearty nudge.

  Sandy looked up from the display in surprise. “Back so soon?”

  “It was not my intention,” Amber said, turning back to Claudia as the witch walked in, yanked the door shut behind her and turned the sign to sorry we’re closed.

  “That’s – ominous,” Sandy said, frowning at the goings-on.

  “Kind of makes me wish I’d made my escape earlier, and scared to know what the heck is going on?” Amber said.

  Claudia took a long deep breath in, and her breasts got a lot more perky, for one long moment she was distracted by them, and then she snapped out of it. “I need a few things for a binding spell,” she said.

  “Done,” Amber said and motioned around her. “So, can I go now?”

  “I need a few witches for the binding spell,” she admitted and flashed them a strained, but pleading smile.

  Amber knew it; time off for good behaviour was not on the cards for her and her mate. Well, poop!

  “I’m in,” Sandy said and raised her hand to chest height like she wanted to ask a question.

  Claudia looked at her, unsure if that was actually the intention. “Yes?”

  “What are we binding?” Sandy asked.