Midlife Soul Hunter (The Forty Proof Series Book 8)(Paranormal Women's Midlife Fiction)

Midlife Soul Hunter Copyright © Shannon Mayer 2023 All rights reserved Published by Hijinks Ink Publishing www.shannonmayer.com All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a database and retrieval system or transmitted in any form or any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the owner of the copyright and the above publishers. Please do not participate in or encourage the piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. Midlife Soul Hunter THE FORTY PROOF SERIES SHANNON MAYER HIJINKS INK LTD To my reluctant muse, who finally showed the duck up. You're a bitch, I hate you. Don't leave me again. 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 Chapter 21 Explore More Forty Proof Connect with Me 1 I’m here again, in a place where no one ever wants to go, but every woman alive has been at least once. The valley where despair claims your body and hope flees your heart and soul, leaving you alone and lost, feeling as though you cannot take another step. Like I said, all women know this place, and plenty of men, but in my foolishness, I’d thought I was safe from that place now. It was logical that I might think that way. I’d survived my husband’s mental abuse and philandering, the death of my beloved Gran, and rebuilt myself step by painstaking step. I’d faced monsters, demons, and evil that tried so very hard to take me out. Along the way, I’d become more than I’d ever believed I could be. I’d found my heart and courage. I’d found friends who rallied around me in my times of need, friends who had become the family of my heart. And I’d found love that had shaken me to the core, changing the way I looked at the world. A love that I was holding to with everything I had in me, a love that I was fighting for. And yet, here I sat, on the edge of my bed in a ramshackle safe-house, exhausted beyond measure, unable to do more than sit and breathe. Everything in me hurt, from my skin to the roots of my hair, to that middle toe on my left foot which ached each time I flexed my feet. I knew it was more than body aches that were plaguing me—my soul had been battered, thrashed against the shores of a world without him…and I wasn’t sure where to put my feet next. I could still hear the echo of the last brave thing I’d said. “I’m not leaving him there. No matter what it might cost in the end.” I’d uttered those words after leaving Crash in hell, and I’d meant them with all my heart. Yet I hadn’t been able to find a way to him. No matter how hard I’d tried to find a path, it seemed my way was continually blocked. Three weeks had passed since that day, three weeks since Crash had died in my arms. His soul was trapped, and he’d warned me that he was the bait the Dark Council was using to get me to go into hell. Because by me going into hell, I gave the Dark Council another ingredient—and quite possibly—the last ingredient to the spell that would raise a vampire army. The very spell that Crash and I had been trying to prevent when he died. I didn’t care about that, didn’t care about any of it—I only cared about bringing him home. But finding a way into hell, an actual gateway, was apparently no small thing. Every one of my friends was helping me look—even Remy and his father, Ivan the Red. I’d barely slept, barely eaten, all I’d done was search the city, seeking anyone who might be able to send us in the right direction. Those who could have helped on the Council—Roderick or Stark—were nowhere to be found. It was as if they’d never existed. Gerry had no idea. Maggie, the goblin in the botanical gardens, didn’t have any information. Sarge and Winnifred, the garrache, had come up with nothing from any of the local packs. We’d interrogated Remy to no avail—he knew nothing of hell or how to get there. Despite his age and experience, Remy’s father, Ivan the Red, was no more knowledgeable. Though it hadn’t stopped him from dragging his son with him to the fae realm to try and find something that might help us. Remy had no choice, and Ivan had insisted it would be good for them to get to know one another. I wasn’t so sure about that, but I wasn’t in a place to argue. We’d even followed a lead to a haunted building that currently hosted “Hunk-O-Mania”. All that I got out of that was a lighter and an eyeful of wrinkled skin I didn’t need to have in my memory bank. Getting to Crash was all that mattered, and yet, not for the first time since I’d returned to Savannah after losing him, I was coming up with a whole lot of nothing. My hands began to tremor in my lap, and I clasped them together as the fear climbed in me that this was indeed it, that I was going to be grieving him for real. That there was no coming back for his soul. I blew out a breath and stood, wobbling a little. I gripped the edge of the bed and turned to look out the window. The light was dull outside—I’d only been asleep a few hours, passing out sometime after three in the morning, only to wake before dawn. Despite the lethargy that lay heavy on