by Tara West
“Well, let’s go meet her. I bet she’s preparing your welcome home party right now.” He flashed a dimpled grin, one that stretched his jaw and showed two pearly white rows of beautiful teeth. Honestly, this guy was too gorgeous to be The Grim. Those childhood fairytales had gotten him all wrong.
In fact, he was so darned cute, I almost wanted to follow him. Almost. I turned, pointing down at my vacuous eyes. “So I’m just supposed to leave my body here? What’s going to happen to me?”
“Ash.” He heaved a sigh before jerking open the door. “You’re no longer tethered to your weak mortal body. You have ascended.”
His knuckles whitened as he clutched the handle, and I wondered how he was able to open the door when he was supposedly an apparition. Just one of the many questions about my weird afterlife I hoped to get answered. In the meantime, I didn’t feel right leaving my body like that.
“My corpse is going to rot if nobody finds me. My mom lives all the way in Portland. It will be days, maybe even weeks.”
“It doesn’t matter, does it?” He chuckled.
Okay, sexiness aside, what a jerk! The guy actually had the nerve to laugh at my corpse?
“Of course it matters.” I hated the whine that slipped into my voice, but I was determined to hold my ground. My poor, poor mom. If the shock from my death didn’t kill her, then the depression would. Not trying to sound like an entitled princess, but I was literally her whole world. I might not have been as successful as my sister, but I was half the bitch she was. “My mom will be devastated,” I said with a sob as visions of her crying at my funeral swam through my mind.
“Only for a short while.”
He said this with a causal air, as if deciding between a latte or a cappuccino. I wanted to slap him.
“That’s not true.” I turned up my chin, giving him my best haughty expression. “Mom loves me.”
He shook his head, any trace of humor in his eyes doused like water over a flame. “The human lifespan is short when compared to an eternity in the afterworld.”
Ugh! The guy was impossible. Did he not realize the tornado of emotions swirling around in my head? I’d been killed and passionately kissed within the span of an hour, and now I was supposed to abandon the body I’d been living in for the past twenty-nine years and follow a total stranger (disregard that I’d just been intimate with him) up to a place he was calling the Penthouse? This was all too weird. Too, too weird.
I threw my hands in the air. “So I’m just supposed to walk out of my apartment and follow you to Heaven?”
“Yes.”
I eyed him through slits. “How will we get there?”
“The elevator.”
“Of course.” I rolled my eyes and slapped my forehead. “Why didn’t I think of that? Silly me forgot to check if my apartment complex stretched all the way to Heaven before I signed the lease.”
“Ash, I’ve got to get to that heart attack victim. You think you’ve got it bad? This guy just died in the middle of sex. The prostitute is hysterical, and he’s been assigned to the second floor.”
“The second floor?”
“The bottom level of Purgatory, and only a few floors away from the fiery pit of doom.”
I gasped. “So there’s really a Hell?”
“You’re never going there, so don’t worry about it. Come on, Ash,” he pleaded. Damn him, that dimpled smile was back. “Your afterlife is going to be a whole lot better than the life you’re leaving behind. I promise.”
He held up a hand like a boy scout taking an oath, but this was no boy scout. This was the freaking Grim Reaper. All of the stories I’d heard about him had been pretty horrific. Now I was supposed to trust this guy? Then again, what other options did I have? It’s not like I could have crawled back into my damaged body and woken myself up.
I leaned into him, jabbing a finger in his chest. “You’d better be a man of your word.”
He placed a hand over his heart. “Ma’am, my word is my honor.”
“Stop calling me ma’am,” I growled as I stomped past him and out the bathroom.
Much to my dissatisfaction, Grim’s heavy footsteps trailed behind me. I was almost to my front door when a loud knock stopped me in my tracks.
“Omigod!” I spun around, searching Grim’s unreadable eyes for help. “That must be Roger. What do I do?”
“He can’t see you.” He walked up to me and held out his hand. “Come on.”
I hesitantly slipped my hand in his, surprised at the energy that zinged into my palm and nearly made my knees buckle. Dear God, how did this guy do that to me?
But before I could think about how he turned my blood to molten liquid, Grim was pulling me through the doorway and out into the hall.
Strange how the guy standing on the other side didn’t notice us. And then I got a good look at my blind date, all five-foot-seven and two hundred pounds of him.
Five-ten and one hundred and eighty pounds, my ass!
It looked like I’d dodged one bullet and got struck by another. Story of my life, or in this case, my afterlife.
APPARENTLY, AFTER I’D wasted all of Grim’s time with that groping and kissing, he was now very, very late to his next appointment. Since he’d already violated protocol with me once, he said he might as well do it again, which was why, rather than taking me to “the Penthouse,” I was standing beneath the shadow of a huge, artificial palm tree near the shallow end of some guy’s condominium pool. I watched with morbid curiosity as the EMTs fished his bloated, nude body out of the Jacuzzi. His mistress of the night, whose legal age was questionable, was wrapped up in nothing but a Hello Kitty beach towel, hunched over in a wicker chair, sobbing convulsively into a strawberry margarita. A middle-aged cop sat beside her, scribbling notes into a tablet.
Dead Guy’s spirit was doing a backstroke in the deep end of the pool, refusing Grim’s numerous pleas to get out. His very round belly, nearly as round as his very bald head, protruded several inches out of the water, and his shriveled up dingle-berries were an alarming shade of blue.
“I told you I’m not dead,” Dingle-berry said to Grim for like the twentieth time.
Geez, had I been this hardheaded with Grim? Talk about a stressful job. I was almost starting to feel sorry for the guy.
“You are dead,” Grim said in a tone more frigid than the water that had shriveled the dead guy’s balls, “and you need to get out.”
Dingle-berry kicked off from the side of the pool, lazily paddling back toward the EMTs. “If you want me to come out so badly, then come and get me.”
“I told you I can’t do that.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.” The dead guy paused to wave a hand behind him before continuing his slow stroke. “Those EMTs over there are about to resuscitate my body.”
It took four burly looking EMTs to hoist the cadaver out of the water. I cringed when they accidentally dropped him on the pool deck. The corpse made a loud squishy sound, like a butcher slapping a fish onto a marble slab.
One of the medics brought out a big, black bag, and I knew what was going to happen next.
“Stan, they’re zipping you up in a body bag.”
When Grim pointed toward the scene, I thought I saw a humorous gleam in his eyes. Maybe I didn’t feel sorry for him. It seemed he took sick satisfaction in witnessing our misery.
“What?” Stan stood up and waved his hands at the medics, who paid him no notice as they hoisted his corpse into the bag and began zipping it up. “Hey, you stupid EMTs! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Stan hoisted himself out of the water and ran circles around the medics. They paid him no heed as they placed the body on a stretcher and rolled it out the side gate.
Stan punched the gate and screamed a bunch of obscenities before running up to the prostitute with arms flailing wildly above his head. “Hey, Lila, or Lilly, or whatever the fuck your name is! Stop them, Goddammit!” He pointed at the gate while jumping up and down. “I d
idn’t pay you a thousand fucking dollars to sit there and act like an idiot. Do something!”
But she didn’t hear him. In fact, she was too busy unbuckling the cop’s pants to worry about crazy ghosts.
“They can’t hear you, Stan,” Grim grumbled as he impatiently waved him over. “Come on, let’s go.”
Stan turned toward Grim with a wild-eyed expression. “Hell, no!” he screamed before diving back into the pool.
Disregarding Grim’s earlier command to lie low, I stepped out of the shadows. “Why don’t you go in after him?”
“I can’t.” The edge in his voice sliced through the air between us, making me feel cold, unwelcome, insignificant.
I didn’t know how this guy managed to make me feel a torrent of negative emotions with two words, but he had. He reminded me too much of my cocky, condescending law school professors, more validation for why I had to drop out of that hell hole.
I wrapped my arms around myself as I watched Stan paddle with more fervor. He was definitely not getting out of the pool anytime soon. This was going to be a long night, which sucked on so many levels. Not only was I forced to endure the aloof company of the totally hot immortal who’d just passionately kissed me moments earlier, but I had to watch some naked, bloated guy make an ass of himself while his hooker gave a cop a blowjob. Well, at least someone was getting lucky tonight.
“Do you have any idea who I am?” Stan said haughtily after his shiny marble head popped up above the water. I recognized that tone. It was the same tone my boss, Mr. Schwartz, used whenever he tried to bully a client, another lawyer, or more often than I cared to admit, me.
Grim’s bunched shoulders were strung so tight they looked ready to crack. “You’re dead is who you are. Now get moving. I’ve got a schedule to keep.”
“Why can’t you go in? Some other protocol?” I asked in a huff. “You’ve already broken the rules twice tonight. What’s one more time?”
Grim’s stance was almost as rigid as his stiffy had been earlier, as he watched with stony features while Stan paddled through the water. Finally, he opened his mouth as if to speak.
I waited, wondering if he was going to say something.
“I can’t swim.” He’d spoken so softly, I wondered if he’d said anything at all.
“You’ve got to be shitting me.” I waved a hand at Stan. “That pool is like four-feet deep. Just walk the hell in and get him.”
Grim answered with a quick shake of the head as he folded his arms across his chest, eyeing Stan with disdain. “Ain’t gonna happen.”
Well, geez, here I was thinking that my life, or afterlife, couldn’t have gotten any weirder, and my death escort turned out to be hydrophobic.
“Shouldn’t that have been a prerequisite at the Grim Reaper School of Retrieving Lost Souls, to not act like a big pussy around water?”
A fire lit beneath his eyes. For a split second, my knees weakened, and it wasn’t out of lust. I’d seriously pissed Grim off with that last comment, but I didn’t care. I’d never been very good at staying inside boundaries.
“Don’t judge me,” he ground out, sounding like a grizzly bear who’d woken up too soon.
Ignoring his scowl, I turned up my chin. “I’m trying hard not to.”
“No, I mean don’t judge me.” He pointed a finger toward the sky. “That’s the Big Guy’s job, and he takes offense when others try to do it for him. He doesn’t revoke Penthouse passes often, but he always makes exceptions.”
Ooh, was he bluffing me? I crinkled my eyes and studied his features for any sign of deceit, but without any admissible evidence, it was hard to tell.
“Fine. I won’t judge you,” I called over my shoulder as I walked past him toward the edge of the pool. “I’ll just do your job.” Slipping off my heels, I dove into the water.
DRAGGING A NAKED, TUBBY guy out of the pool was a lot harder than I’d initially thought it would be. I thought one of the benefits of being dead was I wasn’t supposed to feel pain? But the frigid water sliced through my skin as if I was being cut open by a thousand tiny knives. What the hell had I been thinking when I dove into that pool? My poor nipples were so hard, they could cut diamonds. I tried to envision myself at the beach, burying my chest in hot sand, but that whole mind over matter shit wasn’t working.
To make matters worse, Stan pulled me back as he resisted my attempts to yank him to the water’s edge. Considering he wasn’t much taller than my five-foot-five frame, he was strong for a little guy. In the end, the only thing that worked getting Stan out of the water was persuasion, and I didn’t mean me begging him to get out. I meant my perky, pebbled nipples that were about to carve holes out of the clingy fabric of my black dress. Apparently, Stan was a tit man. Luckily, in addition to my pudgy thighs, I’d been endowed with breasts to match.
As soon as I popped my chest above water, those things beckoned to him like twin lighthouse beams calling a ghost ship to shore. I swear the pool filled up another foot with the drool hanging off his lip. Facing him, I slowly backed up the stairs, trying to keep far enough away from his outstretched hands as he followed me like a zombie in a trance.
I tried really hard to ignore the loud slurping and groaning noises behind me as Hello Kitty hooker got the cop off. So glad to know that one of Seattle’s finest was working diligently keeping his citizens safe. No telling who else that hooker would have propositioned if he hadn’t occupied her time.
Grim wedged himself between us as Stan was about to get a free feel of my girls. He handed each of us towels, and I quickly dried off before wringing my hair onto the concrete.
“Are you okay?” Grim asked me, blocking Stan, who was trying to charge me like a cantankerous bull with a festering butt-sore.
“Sure.” I shrugged. Well, I’d meant it to be a shrug, but it ended up being more like a convulsive shake. Damn, it was cold! “Can we get out of here?”
“Yeah,” he said before he snapped around, growling at Stan. “Will you wrap a towel around that thing? There’s a lady present.”
Stan had let his towel fall to the ground, and he was thrusting his hips back and forth like he was some kind of stud horse.
“I see the lady,” Stan said as he peered around Grim’s massive arm and waggled his eyebrows at me. “Shove off, Mac, so I can get better acquainted with her.”
When I saw Grim pull his fist back, I knew what was coming next. I just couldn’t believe it. In one fluid movement, Grim had knocked the guy out cold.
“How did you do that?” I asked as I stumbled backward, nearly tripping over my own feet.
But Grim didn’t answer as he rolled Stan onto the towel and tied it around him. Then he hoisted the guy over his shoulders like a marine would carry a wounded soldier. “Let’s go.” His gruff tone was coarser than sandpaper.
“You know, if you were a little nicer, your job would be a lot easier.”
Grim pushed past me and trudged toward the gate. “Don’t tell me how to do my job.”
I rolled my eyes as I trailed after him. Then an odd thought struck me as I clutched the towel to my chest. “So those people over there. Don’t they see a towel floating through the air?”
“No,” he said as he undid the latch on the gate and pushed it open. “We’re not in the same dimension.”
I stopped, feeling as if I’d struck a brick wall. I knew my mouth was hanging open, but I couldn’t help it. I tried to shake the fog that had settled in my brain as I stared up at him. “I’m trying to wrap my head around that.”
“Don’t worry yourself over it,” he said in his usual indifferent tone. “After a day in the Penthouse, you’ll forget all about the first floor.”
The first floor? He must mean Earth.
“I hope you’re right.” I followed him down a gravel walkway lit with bright lights that sprang up beside trim bushes. When Grim didn’t respond, I added, “I’d like nothing more than to forget this day.”
Well, the death part I’d like to forget, but tha
t kiss. Damn. Just thinking about the way his lips had melded to mine made me soak my panties. Good thing they were already wet from the pool.
Since Grim had apparently become a mute, I was forced to walk the rest of the way in silence as I focused on his tight, round behind. Not because I wanted to gawk at his gorgeous glutes, but I was trying to keep from staring at a rather large, hairy mole on Stan’s flabby back.
We walked through a set of double glass doors and ended up in a lobby with shiny marble floors and a small elevator flanked by potted plants. The elevator dinged loudly as the doors slid open. An elderly couple strolled off hand-in-hand, and before I could get out of the way, they walked right through me.
“Ewww.” I shivered before flinging myself into the elevator. Dropping my towel to the ground, I felt up my legs and arms to make sure I was still intact.
Grim chuckled as he stepped inside and inserted a large brass key into a shiny silver slot. “How do you think they’d feel, knowing they just walked through a ghost?”
The elevator was cramped to begin with as Grim filled what was left of the tiny space. I had to flatten myself against the back wall to keep my nose from pressing into the mole on Stan’s back. The guy reeked of chlorine and vodka, and there was some other smell, too; sickly sweet, reminding me of fermented eggs. I wasn’t quite sure, but I thought it was coming from the mole.
Ewww times infinity!
I thought I heard Grim swear when Stan started shifting around.
“One floor to go,” he grumbled, “and I’ll be rid of this snake in the grass.”
Snake in the grass? Who says that anymore?
But for once I had to agree with Grim. I couldn’t wait to get rid of Stan, either.
When he twisted the key and punched the number two, the elevator lurched and my heart along with it. I’ve never been a big fan of heights. I had a hard enough time dealing with my third-story apartment.
A computerized woman’s voice sounded through the overhead speakers, naming off the first and second floors as we made our ascent.