Magical Midlife Madness： A Paranormal Women's Fiction Novel(28)

“Jess, a Jane is not a tourist.” He paused while I grimaced at the taste of the wine.

“Yikes. This one is…tart,” I said. “And not in a good way.”

“You might need to let it breathe a little,” Donna said, moving that bottle to the side.

“It might be kinder just to let it die,” I murmured.

“So that we’re on equal footing.” Austin downed his glass.

“Good God, man, no! You’re not going to enjoy today if you do that.”

“I haven’t been drunk in…years.”

“Fine, but there are better ways to go about it.”

“After last night, I need to get drunk.”

I tapped an air microphone. “Is this thing on? Bud, I just said there were other ways to go about it.”

“Maybe after today I’ll like wine.”

“Oh my God, this was hopeless before it began.” I threw up my hands as Donna glided out of the room. “I don’t even care, either. Keep charming everyone, brother. I want the preferential treatment, because I’m still going to have fun.”

“So. Are you ready?” he asked, his mood sobering.

“For all of this?” I waggled my finger as he reached over the bar and then filled up his glass. “Not really.”

“Don’t worry about me—”

“Can’t help it. Chugging wine is absurd.”

Donna glided back in with a tiny smile curling her lips. She clunked down a shot glass and a bottle of Scotch. “Maybe this’ll make things a little…less terrible.” She then put a row of freshly opened wine bottles on the counter and met Austin’s eyes. “From this one…” She moved her finger down the row and stopped on the last. “To this. Let me know if you want anything. If anyone comes in, make them leave until you’re ready.” She nodded and made her way back out.

“Well, now you’ll have to buy something from here,” I said. “She’s too nice not to. Hopefully the wine gets better.”

“Jacinta.” His voice sucked all my focus to him. “We use the term Jane for non-magical people. The bar you were in the other night—my bar? Except for a couple of people, everyone there was magical. Niamh is magical. So are Earl and Edgar. So am I. So is Ivy House. Magic is one-hundred-percent real, and almost always kept from those who are not magical.”

I couldn’t even laugh because of his special ability to make me believe the things that came out of his mouth. In this, just like in most if not all things, he was supremely confident, as though he spoke from a place of authority and experience. What he’d just said, to him, was absolutely real. I could tell that he believed it with every fiber of his being.

I chuckled uncomfortably, because what else could I do? He might not wear a cape, but he was still clearly certifiable.

“You’ve heard stories about werewolves, right?” he said. “Vampires, mages, druids…”

“Not druids, no. Not sure what those are.”

“Fine, whatever. Well, they are all real. Edgar is a vampire. Earl is a gargoyle. Niamh is—”

“No.” I held up my hands, shaking my head. “No, you have to stop. You have to. Have you always believed this, or has the town rubbed off on you?”

Austin poured me a taste of the next wine, exactly as much as Donna would have given me. He poured himself a full glass.

“Please don’t chug-a-lug that wine,” I begged despite the situation. “It really kills the spirit of the thing.”

He shook his head, a smile wrestling his lips again. “It’s impossible to stay serious with you.”

“I was being serious with that request.”

He started laughing. “That’s what’s so funny. Look, you grew up thinking that magic exists only in storybooks.” He paused for my reaction. I gave him a blank stare. “Did you ever wonder where the ideas came from?”

“Nope. I always assumed it was drugs and/or alcohol.”

“But what if the ideas came from life?”

“Hallucinations, you mean?”

He showed me his fingers, the burns gone. “Normal humans don’t heal this quickly.”

I grimaced at the taste of the Chardonnay. “This one is a nope. Big nope on this one.” I leaned closer to his fingers. No remnants of the burn were left on his thumb and pointer. “Okay, but you said it was an allergy.”

“Normal people don’t have their skin sizzled away when they touch silver.”

“People have sun allergies. That has to be a lot rarer than a silver allergy. What’s not normal is this conversation. Look, Austin…what you’re saying is not logical. People probably haven’t been honest about that with you because of your size and scariness, but I’d be doing you a disservice if I didn’t say anything. Now, I should—”

“You’re going to have to change,” Donna yelled from the back room. “She’s been a Jane all her life. It’s like imagining the impossible is possible without any proof. She’ll have to see it for herself.”

“See what?” I asked.

“Donna, you do it,” he commanded.

“Donna, do not enable him because of a crush,” I called. “Don’t try to change men—if they don’t do it willingly, it’ll never stick.”

Donna re-entered the tasting room, stripping off her shirt as she did so.

I paused in confusion, watching her come around the bar and stop in the middle of the space. Her bra followed her shirt onto the floor.

“Nope.” I stood. “Strip shows and that God-awful Chardonnay are a nope.” Austin put his hand out to stop me. I pushed it to the side. Or tried. It didn’t budge. “Get out of the way. I’m done. I’m not here for…whatever this is. I’m going home. Then maybe re-considering this whole move because O’Briens has gotten to be entirely too much.”

“Watch,” he said, then squinted and pulled his head away, as though nervous I might jab his eyes.

Why were people in this town so protective of their eyes? Usually people didn’t think about that vulnerability. It didn’t speak well for my favorite self-defense technique.

I pushed at him again as Donna said, “This isn’t a striptease. This is magic. Look.”

A flash of light and heat drew my attention. Donna, stark naked, mottled and bent and reduced down into a huge, hairy black rat.

“What the f—!”





Nineteen





I blinked at the giant rat for a moment. The rat blinked back up at me. I looked around the room. I looked at my hands.

Then my wine.

“What did you guys put in this wine?”

“It isn’t the wine. She’s a were-rat. Her parents are both were-wolves, but her mom…had an indiscretion, made evident when Donna first changed. Our animals are passed down directly from our parents. There aren’t dominant and recessive options, like normal genes. Shifter children are usually shifters, and they always shift into the same animal as either their mother or father. Upon learning that Donna’s mother had cheated, her father divorced her—or the shifter equivalent. He made life difficult for them within the pack. Her mother found a place in another pack, but it was also all wolves, and Donna was the odd one out. She was ridiculed. So much so that she ran away at sixteen…and found this town.”

“There is no way being a rat among wolves is less normal than this crazy town,” I said, downing the awful Chardonnay in my glass.

“You know what a shifter is,” Austin said, and I just wanted him to stop talking. I wanted to wake up from this sudden nightmare. Because I’d tried hallucinogens in high school, and I knew how they worked. If the wine had been drugged, more things would be morphing and changing. I wouldn’t feel this horribly sober if I’d just hallucinated a woman turning into a rat. A rat that docilely stood in the center of the wine tasting room, staring intelligently up at me.

I shook my head and turned around. “This isn’t possible.”

“You learn new things all the time,” Austin said. “How is this so different?”

I widened my eyes at him and pretended not to see Donna change back to human out of the corner of my eye. My stomach rolled with the implications.

“This is different,” I said, my voice uncontrollably rising. “This is much different.”

“How?”

“How?” I gestured around me. “How?” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “If magic existed in the world—real magic, I would know about it. It’s that simple. People would know about it. That’s not something you can keep a secret.”

“Governments keep things secret all the time.”

“The government knows about this?” I screeched.

He poured a larger taste of the next wine. I gulped it down. Then coughed and grimaced. “See?” I said hoarsely. “That’s why you don’t gulp wine. It’s gross.”

“A very tiny sector of the government knows about it, and they use their influence to make sure everyone else, including the rest of the government, stays unaware. Magical people don’t want Dicks and Janes knowing about them, for the most part. Watch the X-Men movies and you’ll see why. It’s easier just to blend in, and it’s surprisingly simple.”