Midlife Mountain Devil: A Paranormal Women's Midlife Fantasy (Midlife Mountain Magic Book 3)

MIDLIFE MOUNTAIN DEVIL RENEE BRUME Copyright © 2023 by Renee Brume 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. All product names, logos, brands, trademarks, and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Cover: Getcovers.com Editing: Pocketediting Proofreading by: Horus Copyedit and Proofreading Map by Piroska Edes behance.net/piroskaedes CONTENTS 1. Campfire 2. Surprise 3. Clues 4. Breakfast Plans 5. The Library 6. The Holler 7. Trail Head 8. The Funeral 9. Target Practice 10. Taco Party 11. The Pope 12. Silverthorn 13. Attack 14. Cabin in the Woods 15. Birthday 16. Afterglow 17. Goodbye 18. Heart to Heart 19. Another Day at Potentia Security 20. Bundle of Joy 21. You make my dreams come true Epilogue Next In Series About the Author CHAPTER 1 CAMPFIRE The leaves crunched under my boots as I sipped my pumpkin spice coffee from Dunn’s Donuts. The bright blue fall sky was brilliant overhead, the wind cold against my face. It was a perfect fall afternoon. I pulled up my scarf and turned to my wizard friend, Easton. “Hey Beth, how many priests does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” he asked with a grin. “I don’t know,” I said, raising my eyebrows at his questionable dad jokes, afraid he was going to give me a dirty answer. Until recently, I had been romantically involved with Clay, a Lutheran priest. He had run off on a mission, leaving me frustrated in more ways than one. “Nun,” Easton laughed as we hiked down the leaf-lined trail. My dog, Wheezer, gave him a low growl and flicked his tail in irritation. “See, even he thought it was bad.” I smiled as Wheezer instantly forgot what he was growling at and charged through the underbrush, chasing small animals or figments of his imagination. This well-groomed path was popular with the locals and visitors to the area. In fact, this trail connected farther west to the Appalachian Trail, which went all the way north to Maine and South to Georgia. We didn’t get a lot of through hikers here, though, just local families out for a brisk walk with fido. Which made it perfect for my dog, Wheezer. He was a mutt I rescued from the local pound after Clay left at the start of summer. He was some kind of hound shepherd mix. I believed that getting a dog would help fill the loneliness and sadness I felt after failing to convince the man I had such a connection with to stay here with me. It had only partially worked. “Woof! Woof!” Wheezer ran into the trees, crashing through the underbrush, and then finding us again on the path. “Why are we out here again?” I protested, throwing my empty cup away in a trail trash barrel and then putting both my freezing hands deep into my jacket pockets. “It’s my fault,” Easton said with a smile. “I was reading through the police logs and noticed that there was a disturbance here last Saturday night, around midnight. One of the houses up on the ridge that overlooks this forest called in a report of lights and fire in the woods. It sounded suspicious.” “Probably teenagers having fun,” I said, looking at the GPS on my phone. We had already walked a mile down the trail. “Except that an unknown portal to hell opened up in this area about the same time. It was a quick blip, but we need to investigate,” Easton said. The houses on the ridgeline were big, with immense windows that glinted in the sun. The immaculate green yards, rolling with nary a stick or weed in sight, screamed money. They were probably all lawyers or doctors or maybe dentists. We definitely didn’t want any demons from hell to rush out here, so close to a housing development. “This should be the area,” Easton said, looking into the trees. Wheezer took off, barking like crazy, into the underbrush, and a raven swooped down and landed on the path in front of us, gave us an urgent caw, and flew back into the woods. “Looks like Garret might have found something,” Easton said. “And so did Wheezer,” I noted, following the raven off the path. The bird was circling in the sky. The smell of fall assaulted me as I went off-trail. The scent of dead leaves, a campfire, and then another smell hit me, a smell of death and rot. Perhaps an animal had died? The trees had already lost their leaves, and any deer paths that might lead through the brambles were covered under a layer of forest debris. Spying a scrap of green fabric on a bush, I pulled it off and inspected it. “This is odd. It looks like the color of medical scrubs. Someone’s been this way.” And that’s when Wheezer came bounding out of the woods with a severed arm in his mouth, looking pleased as punch to have found the world’s biggest bone. “Wheezer! Drop it!” Easton shouted with alarm. Wheezer, ever the good boy, dropped it immediately and then whined, looking at me with his big brown eyes and his tail between his legs. The arm lay on the ground. I could see the bone sticking out one end, and the skin was charred, as if someone had tried to burn it. A bright blue university of West Virginia ring shone on the finger. “I think I’m going to be sick,” I said, bending over as a hot flash overtook me. “That looks like Sean’s ring.” I bet if I examined it, it would have the emblem