Better Off Dead: The Lily Harper Series, Book 1

by H. P. Mallory

  Feeling a burst of joy light up within me, I laughed out loud and jumped up and down to the beat of the music, swaying my hips as I held up my fist, using it as a microphone to sing along.

  “I’m beautiful!” I said again, and then yelled it a third time. “No, I’m fucking beautiful!” I sang out, enjoying the feel of the word “fuck” as it fell off my tongue.

  “That’s right!” Bill’s voice sounded from behind me. I turned to smile at him, feeling only slightly embarrassed that he’d caught me lauding myself so obviously.

  Bill, however, barely noticed my embarrassment, if he did at all. He was already too busy doing what looked like the twist while singing: “Who da bomb?” Then he pointed dramatically at me. “You da bomb!” He started doing extremely suggestive pelvic thrusts and singing at the top of his lungs: “I don’t care!” Then he added to the song, mimicking the same melody: “I forgot my wallet on the counter in the kitchen so I couldn’t get us no food, but I don’t care! I love it!” Dancing his way over to the counter, he put his wallet into his pocket before dancing his way back over to me.

  Reaching for my hands, he twirled me around a few times until I started to get dizzy. Then, holding my hands up over my head, we both continued to dance terribly. I jumped up and down while Bill did some pathetically strange grinding move, and both of us sang off-key to the music.

  “’Ello?” I heard Tallis’s loud baritone at the same time that a sharp knock sounded against the wall.

  I stopped jumping immediately and felt a wash of hot embarrassment pass through me. Glancing over, I realized Bill had left the door open. Now, the bladesmith stood in the doorway, staring at both of us with an expression of amusement and surprise in his beautiful midnight gaze.

  “T … Tallis?” I asked, being caught totally unawares and not really knowing what else to say. I hadn’t heard from Tallis since we’d left him at his cabin in the Haunted Wood over two weeks ago. Sherita had traveled with us for the first two days of our voyage through the skeleton-tree forest, before she’d made her exit through a portal in one of the clearings. She’d returned back to Washington DC with the soul Tallis had retrieved. I still wasn’t sure how I felt about the whole Tallis-willingly-allowing-Sherita-to-take-the-soul thing but figuring the credit wasn’t mine to collect anyway, I chalked the whole thing up to a learning experience.

  As to Tallis, I’d expected to receive a letter from him, itemizing the expenses I owed him (I had, after all, given him my address), but I definitely never thought he’d make a personal appearance.

  “Ah hoope Ah’m nae interruptin’,” he continued, glancing around the apartment with interest. He nodded a few times, as if he approved of the place.

  My voice totally failed me because seeing Tallis Black standing in the doorway of my apartment, dressed in dark blue jeans and a dark black sweater, was the last thing I anticipated. Aside from his immense height and the scar that bisected his face, he looked … normal. Well, he looked hot, if I wanted to be honest with myself.

  “No, no, you’re not interrupting,” I said as I walked across the room and straight into a box, the corner of which imprinted itself into my knee. I wasn’t sure which was worse—the intense humiliation or the stabbing pain shooting straight up my thigh.

  “Smooth, Lil,” Bill said and laughed.

  “Are ye ookay?” Tallis asked, obviously trying to hide a smile behind his expression of compassion.

  “I’m fine,” I answered hastily and turned off the radio before smoothing my hands down the front of my jeans nervously. After trying to discourage myself from thinking about Tallis Black for the last two weeks, I was nothing less than stunned to find him standing on my doorstep. I half wondered if maybe I was just dreaming the whole thing.

  Bill started for the door, frowning at Tallis as he asked me, “Is Conan staying for dinner?”

  I gave Tallis a questioning expression, answering, “Um, I don’t know?” Then the reason why Tallis had come in the first place suddenly occurred to me and I felt stupid for imagining it might have been anything else. “Oh, you came to collect the money I owe you.” I couldn’t hide the disappointment in my tone.

  But Tallis shook his head. “Nae.” He quickly glanced at Bill before returning his attention to me. “If ye donnae min’, Ah woulds lock tae join ye fur sooper.”

  “Um, yeah, sure,” I stammered, unable to hide my smile. “I mean, under the circumstances, it’s the least we can do.”

  “What the fuck you wanna eat?” Bill grumbled, addressing Tallis with raised brows as if to infer he had places to go and food to order.

  “Whitever th’ lass is havin’.”

  “Whatevs,” Bill said as he started for the door. Then, thinking better of it, he leaned back in as he said to me, “Lil, cover your virgin ears.”

  “What?” I asked with a frown. But his attention was already on Tallis.

  “Just ’cause I’m playin’ errand boy, don’t think you’re gonna have Conan’s sexfest 2013 with nerdlet, namsay?”

  Tallis shook his head, chuckling. “Aye, naamsay.”

  “No, dude,” Bill said, shaking his head in dramatic exasperation. “You don’t say ‘namsay’ ta me. You say, ‘Yeah, I,’ meaning you, ‘namsay.’ Otherwise, it’s like you just said: Yeah, know what I’m saying?” He nodded and immediately shook his head. “Yeah, no. See? Dude, that makes like zero sense!”

  “Bill,” I warned him, getting annoyed at his long-winded explanation that was more confusing than it was enlightening. Then I turned my attention to Tallis. “Um, can I ask why you’re here now?”

  Tallis just shrugged like the answer should be obvious. “Did ye fergit yer trainin’?”

  “Training?” I repeated, clearly at a loss.

  Tallis nodded, offering me a boyish smile. “Och aye, ye said yerself ye werenae fit tae travel intae th’ Oonderground.” Then he paused, his eyebrows raised. “Hoo waur ye plannin’ oan preparin’ fur th’ neext time?”

  I shook my head since I had no answer.

  “Guid fing Ah was finkin’ aboot it fur ye,” he finished with a little chuckle.

  “Hey, Conan,” Bill started, his eyebrows meeting in the middle of his forehead as if he were in deep, meditative thought. “About our next trip to the Underground, I was thinkin’ …”

  Tallis eyed me quickly with a drawn brow before facing Bill again with an entertained grin. “Aye?”

  “There’re a few items we’re gonna need before we willingly go back down ta that shithole.”

  “Sooch as?”

  Bill took a deep breath and then flicked up his chubby index finger. “First, we need at least a week’s worth of frozen burritos, so we don’t have ta eat anymore o’ that nasty ass shit you catch. Second …” And his middle finger joined his index finger. “I can’t deal with all that walking and materializing so much; makes me a tired SOB, so I’m gonna need some sort of motorized wheelchair like a Rascal—something with like, four-wheel drive though, so it can handle that scary ass forest. Third … we need Ipods, dude! Then we can rock out and avoid boregasms …” His voice trailed off as he observed the ceiling, trying to remember the rest of his list. “Oh, yeah, I could also seriously use a Conan translator, ’cause half the time, I can’t understand a fucking word you say. And the Conan translator needs ta be a super hot chick. I ain’t picky about age but she’s gotta be a freeboober …”

  “A what?” I asked.

  “No over the shoulder boulder holder,” Bill informed me before turning his attention back to Tallis. “Speaking ah hot ladies, the last thing I could seriously use is the phone number of that naughty little Sherita number.”

  “Naughty?” I asked, frowning at Bill as I wondered what alternate universe he lived in.

  “’Tis all?” Tallis asked, shaking his head with a raised brow expression and a healthy smile.

  “Yeah, for now, give me a little more time, and I’m sure I can come up with some other stuff,” Bill finished.

  I couldn’t h
elp laughing as I looked first at Bill and then at Tallis. I suddenly felt extremely lucky to call them both my friends. Yes, my relationship with each one was quite odd, at the very least, but of one thing I was sure … I was exceedingly fortunate that Bill and Tallis had entered my life.

  Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light, I said to myself, remembering Helen Keller’s famous quote.

  Yep, Helen, you definitely got that one right.

  To Be Continued…

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  Turn the page for chapter one!

  ONE

  It’s not every day you see a ghost.

  On this particular day, I’d been minding my own business, tidying up the shop for the night while listening to Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (guilty as charged). It was late—maybe 9:00 p.m. A light bulb had burnt out in my tarot reading room a few days ago, and I still hadn’t changed it. I have a tendency to overlook the menial details of life. Now, a small red bulb fought against the otherwise pitch darkness of the room, lending it a certain macabre feel.

  In search of a replacement bulb, I attempted to sort through my “if it doesn’t have a home, put it in here” box when I heard the front door open. Odd—I could’ve sworn I’d locked it.

  “We’re closed,” I yelled.

  I didn’t hear the door closing, so I put Cyndi Lauper on mute and strolled out to inquire. The streetlamps reflected through the shop windows, the glare so intense, I had to remind myself they were just lights and not some alien spacecraft come to whisk me away.

  The room was empty.

  Considering the possibility that someone might be hiding, I swallowed the dread climbing up my throat. Glancing around, I searched for something to protect myself with in case said breaker-and-enterer decided to attack. My eyes rested on a solitary broom standing in the corner of the Spartan room. The broom was maybe two steps from me. That might not sound like much, but my fear had me by the ankles and wouldn’t let go.

  Jolie, get the damned broom.

  Thank God for that little internal voice of sensibility that always seems to visit at just the right time.

  Freeing my feet from the fear tar, I grabbed the broom and neared my desk. It was a good place for someone to hide—well, really, the only place to hide. When it comes to furnishings, I’m a minimalist.

  I jammed the broom under the desk and swept vigorously.

  Nothing. The hairs on my neck stood to attention as a shiver of unease coursed through me. I couldn’t shake the feeling and after deciding no one was in the room, I persuaded myself it must’ve been kids. But kids or not, I would’ve heard the door close.

  I didn’t discard the broom.

  Like a breath from the arctic, a chill crept up the back of my neck.

  I glanced up and there he was, floating a foot or so above me. Stunned, I took a step back, my heart beating like a frantic bird in a small cage.

  “Holy crap.”

  The ghost drifted toward me until he and I were eye level. My mind was such a muddle, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to run or bat at him with the broom. Fear cemented me in place, and I did neither, just stood gaping at him.

  Thinking the Mexican standoff couldn’t last forever, I replayed every fact I’d ever learned about ghosts: they have unfinished business, they’re stuck on a different plane of existence, they’re here to tell us something, and most importantly, they’re just energy.

  Energy couldn’t hurt me.

  My heartbeat started regulating, and I returned my gaze to the ectoplasm before me. There was no emotion on his face; he just watched me as if waiting for me to come to my senses.

  “Hello,” I said, thinking how stupid I sounded—treating him like every Tom, Dick, or Harry who ventured through my door. Then I felt stupid that I felt stupid—what was wrong with greeting a ghost? Even the dead deserve standard propriety.

  He wavered a bit, as if someone had turned a blow dryer on him, but didn’t say anything. He was young, maybe in his twenties. His double-breasted suit looked like it was right out of The Untouchables, from the 1930s if I had to guess.

  His hair was on the blond side, sort of an ash blond. It was hard to tell because he was standing, er floating, in front of a wooden door that showed through him. Wooden door or not, his face was broad and he had a crooked nose—maybe it’d been broken in a fight. He was a good-looking ghost as ghosts go.

  “Can you speak?” I asked, still in disbelief that I was attempting to converse with the dead. Well, I’d never thought I could, and I guess the day had come to prove me wrong. Still he said nothing, so I decided to continue my line of questioning.

  “Do you have a message from someone?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  His voice sounded like someone talking underwater.

  Hmm. Well, I imagined he wasn’t here to get his future told—seeing as how he didn’t have a future. Maybe he was passing through? Going toward the light? Come to haunt my shop?

  “Are you on your way somewhere?” I had so many questions for this spirit but didn’t know where to start, so all the stupid ones came out first.

  “I was sent here,” he managed, and in his ghostly way, I think he smiled. Yeah, not a bad looking ghost.

  “Who sent you?” It seemed the logical thing to ask.

  He said nothing and like that, vanished, leaving me to wonder if I’d had something bad to eat at lunch.

  Indigestion can be a bitch.

  ~

  “So no more encounters?” Christa, my best friend and only employee, asked while leaning against the desk in our front office.

  I shook my head and pooled into a chair by the door. “Maybe if you hadn’t left early to go on your date, I wouldn’t have had a visit at all.”

  “Well, one of us needs to be dating,” she said, knowing full well I hadn’t had any dates for the past six months. An image of my last date fell into my head like a bomb. Let’s just say I’d never try the Internet dating route again. It wasn’t that the guy had been bad looking—he’d looked like his photo, but what I hadn’t been betting on was that he’d get wasted and proceed to tell me how he was separated from his wife and had three kids. Not even divorced! Yeah, that hadn’t been on his match.com profile.

  “Let’s not get into this again …”

  “Jolie, you need to get out. You’re almost thirty …”

  “Two years from it, thank you very much.”

  “Whatever … you’re going to end up old and alone. You’re way too pretty, and you have such a great personality, you can’t end up like that. Don’t let one bad date ruin it.” Her voice reached a crescendo. Christa has a tendency towards the dramatic.

  “I’ve had a string of bad dates, Chris.” I didn’t know what else to say—I was terminally single. It came down to the fact that I’d rather spend time with my cat or Christa rather than face another stream of losers.

  As for being attractive, Christa insisted I was pretty, but I wasn’t convinced. It’s one thing when your best friend says you’re pretty, but it’s entirely different when a man says it.

  And I couldn’t remember the last time a man had said it.

  I caught my reflection in the glass of the desk and studied myself while Christa rambled on about all the reasons I should be dating. I supposed my face was pleasant enough—a pert nose, cornflower blue eyes and plump lips. A spattering of freckles across the bridge of my nose interrupts an otherwise pale landscape of skin, and my shoulder length blond hair always finds itself drawn into a ponytail.

  Head-turning doubtful, girl-next-door probable.

  As for Christa, she doesn’t look like me at all. For one thing, she’s p
retty tall and leggy, about five-eight, and four inches taller than I am. She has dark hair the color of mahogany, green eyes, and pinkish cheeks. She’s classically pretty—like cameo pretty. She’s rail skinny and has no boobs. I have a tendency to gain weight if I eat too much, I have a definite butt, and the twins are pretty ample as well. Maybe that made me sound like I’m fat—I’m not fat, but I could stand to lose five pounds.

  “Are you even listening to me?” Christa asked.

  Shaking my head, I entered the reading room, thinking I’d left my glasses there.

  I heard the door open.

  “Well, hello to you,” Christa said in a high-pitched, sickening-sweet and non-Christa voice.

  “Afternoon.” The deep timbre of his voice echoed through the room, my ears mistaking his baritone for music.

  “I’m here for a reading, but I don’t have an appointment ...”

  “Oh, that’s cool,” Christa interrupted and from the saccharin tone of her voice, it was pretty apparent this guy had to be eye candy.

  Giving up on finding my reading glasses, I headed out in order to introduce myself to our stranger. Upon seeing him, I couldn’t contain the gasp that escaped my throat. It wasn’t his Greek God, Sean-Connery-would-be-envious good looks that grabbed me first or his considerable height.

  It was his aura.

  I’ve been able to see auras since before I can remember, but I’d never seen anything like his. It radiated out of him as if it had a life of its own and the color! Usually auras are pinkish or violet in healthy people, yellowish or orange in those unhealthy. His was the most vibrant blue I’ve ever seen—the color of the sky after a storm when the sun’s rays bask everything in glory.