Midlife Shadows: A Paranormal Women's Fantasy by Kate Swansea

Author:Kate Swansea [Swansea, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-05-17T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

The insipid light of moon dawn roused Elise. Not that she was precisely sleeping—it was more of a restless drowse. She felt more than ordinarily black and blue. Black from sleeping in the trees, and gaining bruises on her bruises. Yesterday’s adventures aided and abetted the blackness with deep muscle fatigue. And blue, because, well—everything.

Her woes were too innumerable to list. And besides, hadn’t she decided to be a whole new, positive, can-do Elise?

She groaned as she sat up and leaned her wrecked self against the trunk. She stared at the border of the dead wood forest where it met the beach. Three dark figures perched nearby with their legs swinging free over the bough. Nina and Jerome glanced over their shoulders toward her as they sat on either side of Idris. All three were in silhouette as the moon rose over the black sea behind them.

“Come here, Elise,” said Nina. “You need to hear this.”

Elise stood, stretched, and then opted for crawling toward Nina and Jerome. Her knees ached, but she felt safer that way, even with Nina giving her detailed directions en route.

“Elise,” said Jerome, “Idris has been telling us stories of his life, things he remembers. We have covered his childhood and traveling twenties so far. This guy was quite the adventurous young man, you’d be surprised. Go ahead and ask him something.”

“I think talking slows me from fading into an umbra,” Idris said. The rising moon suddenly flooded the land with ambient blue light and he half-smiled at her. Wow, she had never seen the man smile before. She nodded and smiled back as she thought for a second.

“Okay, sure. Can you remember why you may have become so angry?” She wanted to know why he’d been drawn into Inferium and if there was a way that the group could help him avoid his fate. She tentatively put her question to him, emphasizing that she didn’t want to pry but wanted to help.

“Good question. One I have pondered since the other woman… Marly, suggested I was here because I was angry. I am angry. I was furious. I—” Idris lapsed into silence and stared vacantly at his hands. Even in the dimness, Elise could see that they evanesced and then re-solidified.

Haltingly, he began.

“I had a brother, Constantine, who was younger by a year. My brother followed me everywhere. We loved to construct things: model planes and boats, play with Lego and Meccano, and pull old cars apart and rebuild them. While I gravitated toward an architectural degree, Constantine pursued engineering. And being older, I got a job first. It was with a prestigious architectural and engineering firm in London. And later I helped Constantine find employment in the same firm. I found love first, too. I married an IT expert named Kerstin, who was the most clever, most beautiful woman ever. She was tall and blonde, and Swedish.

“However Constantine had secretly fallen in love with her, too. As a consulting architect for an international firm, I was away from home a lot.

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