Sass and Seances: A Paranormal Women's Midlife Fiction Novel (Midlife Grimoire and Ghost Mysteries Book 1)

OceanofPDF.com Sass and Seances A Midlife Grimoire and Ghost Mystery by Kat McGee Murder Predicted, your FREE Midnight Calls Ghost Hunter Mystery, is available HERE. (Sign up for your free copy, free forthcoming paranormal cozy mysteries, and receive new release notifications!) Copyright Info © Kat McGee 2023, Towering Pines PublishingAll rights reserved. This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons alive or dead is coincidental. Cover design by Covers by Kat (coversbykat.com). All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental. OceanofPDF.com Contents Books by Kat McGee 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 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Also by Kat McGee A Note from the Author About the Author OceanofPDF.com Books by Kat McGee Midlife Grimoire and Ghost Mysteries Midlife Grimoire and Ghost Mysteries Series Sass and Seances Attitude and Afterlives Mood and Mediums __________ Witches of Willow Hollow Witches of Willow Hollow Series Cupcakes and Conjures Pie and Potions Donuts and Divination Cake and Crystals Ganache and Ghosts Fondant and Familiars __________ Midnight Calls Ghost Hunter Mysteries Midnight Calls Ghost Hunter Mysteries Series Murder Psyched Murder Ghosted Murder Deja Vued __________ Midlife Matchmaker Mysteries Midlife Matchmaker Mysteries Series Exed & Hexed Jilted & Jinxed Veiled & Vexed OceanofPDF.com Chapter 1 All was not well in the hour before midnight on a Friday night inside the supposedly haunted abandoned antebellum. The interior surfaces appeared whitewashed pale gray, as if the house remained on life support, and the structure’s pop, cracks, and groans served as the once grand home’s final gasps. Emma Janson had endured far too many life support situations in the last few months, and sadly, both the patients—her marriage and her grandmother—succumbed mere weeks ago. Rolling her shoulders and soothing the shifting hairs along her nape, she hunched, turtling her neck into the soft knit of her bulky lilac sweater, and shivered in the once likely austere sitting room. “Realistically,” she muttered, “middle-aged women don’t go hunting for ghosts.” A blue-haired senior with her face hidden by multiple wraps of a crocheted scarf hugged three clanking, long-handled flashlights and shuffled toward haphazardly arranged folding chairs. “Okay, so maybe they do.” Emma shrugged and wriggled her nose at the woman’s trailing scent of lavender. “I know I agreed to do this, but—” “What’s the matter, shivers trailing your spine? Maybe you’re sensitive, and you’re sensing restless spirits.” Dressed in a thick tannish orange suede jacket, forty-something Sloan Hoyt clutched several devices that looked like various sizes of walkie-talkies. “Someone’s restless, but I don’t think it’s of paranormal origin.” Gnawing her inner cheek, Emma gauged the distance to the open ballroom doorway. After that, it was a short walk down a hallway through a foyer. Once she crossed the tatty rug that might have once been blue rather than dirty gray, she’d be out of the door and on the road back to her grandmother’s farmhouse, where she worked from home as a freelance editor. Also, it was where she’d stayed during the six months of Grandma Dorothy’s illness and through the lingering vestiges of her relationship with a meteorologist. Too bad he couldn’t predict the outcome of his straying any better than he could forecast the weather. Although lucky for him, the blond, ample-busted news anchor at the television station didn’t seem to mind. On Emma’s first outing after her divorce and burying her last living blood relative, a tightness gathered in her jaws, and a faint ache thrummed behind her eyes. Thank goodness she’d driven her own car. “Gals, you won’t believe this,” Meredith Silverstone clutched several folded handouts and flyers. “We picked the perfect night to go ghost hunting because we’re in for a treat.” With her straight salt and pepper hair hanging to brush her shoulders and her mascaraed lashes catching in the tapered edges of too-long bangs, she returned from visiting a group of twenty-somethings. Rejoining Sloan and Emma, she bounced on the thick rubber soles of her doctor-recommended tennis shoes. “Easy on those heels, girlfriend.” Sloan, her prematurely white, short hairstyle featuring orange streaks, held up a device and studied a small screen. “You don’t want to be laid up again with tendonitis, fasciitis, or whatever itis it is, do you?” Meredith scoffed. “The doc says I’ll be able to run a marathon in no time.” “We don’t run marathons.” Emma raised her eyebrows. “We watch them on television and make fun of their workout outfits, remember?” She caught her breath when a slender man who looked far too much like a funeral director closed the room’s doors. Wait, wasn’t he the guy who delivered the printed memorials for her grandmother’s visitation service? Maybe if she excused herself to visit the restroom and fast-walked her way out of the house to her SUV? Perhaps it was for the best, since the walls of Claymore House felt as if they closed in. “Ladies, would you be terribly disappointed if—” Meredith held up her hand, her smile complimenting the pink flush of her cheeks. “No disappointment allowed tonight because the one and only Southern Psychic will perform the séance. Can you believe it?” “Oh, joy.” Sloan rolled her eyes, looking slightly unhinged as most fortyish women who