30 Ways to Fool an Angel (Tales of a Midlife Witch #7)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

I was halfway to Dublin by the time I heard my mother had survived her fight with the female guardian who wanted to kill her.

My phone was supposed to be turned off because of flight turbulence, but I wasn’t about to miss out on a message because of a technicality.

A burst of relief rushed through me and made my eyes burn after I read that the situation had worked out. My mother and I were reconnecting and the thought of losing her frightened me more than I could admit to anyone.

My father had seen to it that I never respected my mother’s true calling. I loved him but had learned some hard truths about him in the last few months. With Mom imprisoned and Dad free, I'd accepted his narratives about her and the justifications for what he did without question. I had believed him until my mother had to rescue me from something my father did. Even after she’d done so, I still struggled to accept that my father could want to control me that much.

Like any child of divorce, I felt conflicted about both of them. But I listened to my gut these days. My gut said I needed to trust my mother more than my father. She hadn’t sent me to Ireland simply to protect me. She’d given me my magickal inheritance and ordered me to protect it because protecting the ring was my magickal calling. Just as I now trusted her, she trusted me to find out how best to do that.

Everyone still considered me a child, even though I was nearly twenty-two. Mom was doing her best not to treat me like one. And I was doing my best not to act childish and immature. It was harder when I was worried and scared like I was now. Going to college hadn’t put me in danger of anything except the occasional professor’s wrath when I disagreed with them.

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Ya’ll be happy to know the turbulence we’ve been experiencing is behind us. We’re headed to Dublin with smooth flying expected for the rest of the way. We should be arriving within two hours, which is right on schedule. Passengers with in-flight service may now turn their phones back on. Flight attendants will be seeing everyone shortly to collect your trash. Before that can happen, though, we must reseat a few first-class passengers to accommodate a medical emergency. Two of them will be moving into the main cabin. We appreciate yer patience and understanding while we make these seating changes. Enjoy the rest of yer flight.”

Conn had booked me in business class instead of economy. Cursing my luck, I glanced at the empty seat beside me. One of the surly first-class people surely would be put there. Why would they move a person who paid for first class into the cheaper seats?

First, boarding got delayed while they fixed the plane. Telling us the reason didn’t inspire confidence in getting on it, or at least, it didn’t make me happy knowing there were mechanical problems. Then half the flight was turbulent. Why wouldn’t there now be an emergency in first class?

All I could do was hope they wouldn’t put a talkative person beside me. Lately, I detested making casual conversation, especially with non-magickals. I could only think about looking up the Ireland-based Shadow Breakers and asking them to train me. I epically failed when Mom tried to teach me magick. I thought maybe failing with strangers might not embarrass me as much.

But what could they do for me that Mom couldn’t?

Why couldn’t Gigi teach me?

Sending me to Ireland might be my mother’s worst idea ever. I was not prepared for this trip or what I had to do. I felt cut off from the family.

As if aware of my thoughts, the ring hugging my finger sent a mild jolt up my hand and into my arm. I bit my lip to keep from calling out.

Holding my hand up, I glared at the living metal for the pain. It looked like a gray granite man’s ring with a small square of onyx. As I watched small square turned into a red stone resembling jasper or cinnabar.

Cinnabar, a whispery voice said in my head. The stone of power brings sexual healing, courage, and protection to its wearer. My previous guardian needed grounding. You need more help.

I dropped my hand into my lap and looked off. Even the ring thought this trip was too much for me. The ancient artifact my grandfather had guarded for years in silence had been talking non-stop to me since the moment my witch mother took it off her hand and slid it onto mine.

Mom claimed the ring was my inheritance, though not one directly from her. My maternal grandfather had protected it. He’d died before Mom went to prison and we’d never talked about what he did with it.

It was a question that I couldn’t fathom any reasonable answer for because my brain couldn’t seem to accept I had magick, after all.

Why had Grandpa not told me about the ring himself? Had he not known I would inherit his powers and his job?

Our family kept so many secrets that our very existence seemed like one big secret at times.

Well, I had a news flash for the ring. It didn’t have to worry at all about my sex life because I didn’t have one. I’d made a couple of attempts to connect to men in the last year, but no male I’d met could handle the chaos I currently lived with.

The craziness of my life had gotten worse instead of better after Mom freed herself.

Living with Mom was a trial, though. When I left for the airport, an angry female guardian was coming to kill her. Dressed for battle, she was ready for the fight. Putting on her armor was a prelude to the violence she created.

But it wasn’t just Mom. Dad had gotten in touch with his dark side and had hired a demon to put me into a trance-like sleep. That was an evil thing to do to your child. My mother had just been let out of prison, a prison my father had put her in. Dad was turning out to be a real SOB and I had no idea why.

Given all the pain Dad had caused Mom, I’d accepted their divorce had been inevitable. But I still hadn’t adjusted. I don’t think children of divorced parents ever did.

Not only was Mom fighting ancient creatures claiming to be Earth’s guardians these days, but one seemed in love with her. Rasmus left her alone frequently, but he kept coming back. Mom didn’t seem to know what to do with him when that happened.

But I liked him. Rasmus possessed amazing magick and I could tell he genuinely cared for my mother. Could I tell if he loved her? Not really. My battling parents weren’t a good example. I grew up watching Mom hide a lot of things from Dad. I had to do it too. After Dad put her in prison, Mom stopped hiding everything, including how powerful she was. Everything Dad told me about her had been wrong. Worse, he’d lied to me intentionally about her.

Honestly, I didn’t know what to believe about my family on either side. Mom swore my grandmother, Gigi, knew nothing more than she’d already shared with me, but I was going to ask her anyway. Unlike my parents, Gigi never hid things from me. She told me the truth and spent hours answering my questions. The answers came with warnings and lectures to tread carefully, but I knew that came from love and caring. Magick was dangerous.

Unfortunately, I didn’t know what to ask about the ring. All I supposedly had to do was guard it. Did that mean I could never take it off? What about when I showered? Or cooked? There was nothing worse than getting food on whatever jewelry you were wearing.

The large male body landing hard in the empty seat beside me brought me out of my head. I turned to him, and my mouth dropped open. The man was gorgeous. He was as handsome as Conn’s male fairy friend. Only this man looked about my age—thirty at the most.

“Hello,” he said, showing me his wide, perfect smile.

I closed my mouth and swallowed the lump in my throat. “Hello, I’m sorry you got ejected from first class.”

He smiled and shrugged. “There’s a mother in labor. She needed to lie down.”

I nodded in approval. “It was kind of you to allow yourself to be moved.”

“Yes,” he said with a heavy sigh. “We must all be kind to each other. That’s practically a law on this planet, isn’t it?”

Oh. He was one of those types ...

Rolling my eyes at his sarcasm, I now lamented that I had to sit next to the handsome asshole.

My mother’s decisions about men had shown me very clearly that no woman needed to tolerate bullshit from the man in her life. I felt very much like my mother’s daughter as my interest in my handsome seatmate died at his insensitive words. If he felt too entitled to his first-class seat to be genuinely kind to a woman giving birth, I wouldn’t waste my breath trying to reform him. I would look out the window instead and pretend the selfish bastard didn’t exist. I’d had lots and lots of practice with guys like him.

“So...” he said as if he were forcing himself to be friendly. “I’m not Irish, but I call Dublin home. Are you headed there as well?”

I didn’t want to answer his question, but the ring jolted me again. Internally, I scoffed at its insistence that I talk to him. I tried not to let my reluctance show on my face. Like my passionate mother, my expression often warned others of my true feelings.

“I’m visiting my grandmother. She lives about an hour’s drive outside the city.”

The man smiled. “But visiting your grandmother is not your real reason for visiting, is it?”

Being selfish was off-putting, but his know-it-all attitude was even worse. “What I’m doing is none of your business. Stop talking to me, or I’ll have you moved to another seat.”

The man sighed again. “You’re going to make my job very difficult, aren’t you?”

I gave him a withering stare but stayed silent as I tried to figure out what he’d meant by ‘his job’ and how it referred to me. Was he a kidnapper sent by the female guardian to abduct me? Would the ring help me elude him?

Lifting one eyebrow, he spoke a command in a language I didn’t recognize. I winced a bit because it hurt my ears. Then I realized all the noise in the cabin stopped.

He sat in silence, waiting for my response. A full minute went by and then he spoke with exasperation. “You might want to check on them.”

Glaring at his order, I unbuckled my seatbelt and stood to look around. All the people in the cabin had stopped moving. This was a type of magick I’d never seen before, but Mom had told me about it. She said some guardians could stop time and restart it.

I sat back down and blew out a breath. “Release them. You’ve made your point.”

He whispered another word that shook the plane and everyone in it, including me. Normal activity resumed, with no one ever knowing they’d ever been frozen.

I lifted my chin. “Who are you?”

“You can call me Tony. I’ve always liked that name—very Italian. I love pasta... and Italy. Have you ever been there? It’s beautiful and the people are amazing.”

I snorted while I glared at him. “I’m not completely stupid. I know Tony is not your real name.”

“When you are worthy... no, let’s say IF you become worthy, then I will share my real name with you. For now, you are the ring’s guardian-in-training. Unlike your grandfather, I can see training you is going to take a while. Your energy is far too chaotic. We will need to get that under control as soon as possible.”

I turned to look fully at him. “My father hired a demon to put me into a trance sleep. He wanted to control me. My mother and her demon—the king of demons—refused to let him. I don’t have my mother’s magick, but I have her strength of will. No one will ever control me again.”

I watched as ‘Tony’ grinned and rubbed his jaw. “God, I find you tempting,” he said.

“Are you allowed to use your god’s name like that?”

“God is God. Think of God as what your world currently refers to as non-binary. God is all genders, all forms, all of everything imaginable. Do you believe?”

There was no good answer. I could tell this was a trick. “My mother’s family is pagan. She’s a daughter of The Dagda and speaks to him. He helps her, and she loves him for it. She’s also quite fond of Goddess Danu. Mom’s family doesn’t adhere to Abrahamic thinking but they are open-minded about the existence of such a deity.”

“Since God indeed exists, that’s very sensible of your mother.”

I glared at him. “I wasn’t finished speaking.”

“Do continue then,” he said snidely.

“Some of her cousins in Ireland are convinced God is an alien. They’re indulged as well.”

Tony’s head tilted as he chuckled. “Well, they’re not completely wrong. The God force didn’t originate on this Earth. It chose to put humanity here and then decided to remain.”

I narrowed my eyes at his comments. Like my mother, my would-be teacher seemed to enjoy being secretive. “My father lost his actual family as an infant. He was raised by a foster family who eventually adopted him. They were atheists and didn't subscribe to any religious beliefs. Maybe the complete absence of spiritual beliefs made my father turn to science as his god. He used science to turn himself into a monster with the power he sought.”

“So tell me, Fiona Derringer, where do you consider yourself falling on the religiosity scale these days?”

I turned to look out of the window at the passing clouds. After making him wait nearly a minute for my answer, I finally turned back to him. “Until something convinces me gods exist and are worth my reverence, I remain unaffiliated. That spiritual questioning also applies to a guardian masquerading as an angel for reasons he’s not being honest about with me.”

“ Ouch ,” Tony said with a laugh. “But you’re right. I’m not the angel you assumed I’d be from what you were told about the ring. Literature can be so misleading. Oral history also is not reliable. It teaches you things that must be unlearned for the sake of truly progressing. How did you determine I was not the demonic jinn?”

I grunted. “I can’t prove you aren’t until I learn to use the ring and see if I can control you with it.”

Tony looked up at the ceiling. “A part of me wants to throttle you. Another part wants to take you to bed. Yet I can do neither. My life is so unfair.”

“I read your kind found human women irresistible. How many abominable children did you create?”

Tony lifted his eyebrow. “I’m not the being you think you know from stories. Terms mean so little when life is limitless in other ways. Why do you need to define me? I’m just the same as you.”

“Sell your crap to someone who’s buying. That isn’t me. I’m not intimidated by your puffy lies. A fool could see you hate your job, but guess what? I didn’t ask you to come train me. Blame the ring. I don’t want to be anyone’s savior. I just want to go home and make sure my mother is okay.”

Tony stared at her. “Your mother is fine. You should be more worried about yourself.”

“My mother is fighting off supernatural beings who want to kill her. Don’t downplay the seriousness of the situation. I’ve fought alongside her enough to know what she faces. She sent me away with the ring to hide both me and it from her enemies.”

Shrugging, Tony leaned back in his seat. “Yes, that was precisely what she did. But don’t fool yourself, child. Without you, the ring will enter dormancy and disappear into history as a lost artifact. You can thank your grandmother and mother that the ring found them interesting enough to remain among your kind after your grandfather died. You can also be grateful that your father never learned of the ring’s existence.”

“You only care because you wouldn’t have a job if the ring took a centuries-long hiatus,” I said, smirking at my conclusions when ‘Tony’ glared at me. When the ring buzzed, I held up my hand and talked to it. “Stop that. I don’t need you to chastise me every five seconds. I have a right to be upset with you and your overseer. And I’m still not pleased with my mother’s timing. If you wanted a doormat for a protector, you chose the wrong person.”

I turned to find Tony staring wide-eyed at me.

“Does it talk to you?” he asked.

“Yes. Why? Were you hoping to keep that a secret as well? Well, the ring jumped that shark the moment it got slid onto my hand.”

Tony looked away then without speaking. “Shush now. I need to think.”

I blinked at his nerve. “No... I will not shush. Stop being rude. I refuse to tolerate it.”

Tony glanced down at his arm. I watched as a watch appeared. He studied it for a moment, and then it disappeared. I blinked over what I’d seen. Why would he hide his watch?

Was he a paranoid angel? Well, that would be just my luck today. I figured my mentor would have a thousand quirks for me to deal with, but I’d rather paranoia wasn’t one of them.

He narrowed his eyes at me. “It’s more like I have hundreds of quirks, not thousands. There’s no need to exaggerate.”

“Stop reading my mind,” I ordered.

“And I’m not paranoid. I just hate watches. I call one only when I need it. I suggest you take a nap. Once we land, there will be a lot to do. Plus, you’ll be instantly in danger. I’ll need to be prepared to deal with your enemies. You’re more helpless than a baby. I have no idea why the ring talks to you. It never talked to any of its other keepers, not even to your grandfather.”

Rolling my eyes, I pushed down further into my seat. “Maybe it talks to me because I’m not a doubter that sentient rings exist. My mother has talked to sentient objects my whole life. She has a magickal stone. My Dad tried to take it from her, so she put it inside her chest to protect it. The Wu Shaman who lives with us has a sentient staff, which she talks with more than Mom talks to her stone. Sentient objects are not that big of a leap for human minds after artificial intelligence got created.”

“You’re blabbing now, girl. Go to sleep,” Tony ordered.

I grunted in disgust. The dare rolled off my tongue without stopping. “Make me.”

Tony reached over and touched my forehead.

The last thing I remembered was a lot of darkness closing in on me.