Beyond Dead: A Bridget Sway Novel (A Paranormal Ghost Cozy Mystery Series)

by Jordaina Sydney Robinson

  I gestured between us. “You seem to be a little confused about how this works.”

  “Is that right?”

  “It is. You see, I can make your afterlife easy or I can make it hard. Do as I ask and I’ll make it easy.” I pushed the list back to him, smiled and walked downstairs to breakfast hoping that he’d at least get me the first five things on my list.

  Thankfully the kitchen was empty and remained so while I finished my tea and toast. I didn’t question why, I simply accepted it gratefully. Oz walked in as I set my washed dishes to drain.

  “Ready to go?”

  I made an indistinguishable noise that he took for agreement and I followed him outside. He took my hand and a couple of seconds later we stood in the arrivals circle at the bureau. I managed to keep my feet and didn’t even heave. I was classing that a success. Oz walked me along the indistinguishable corridors from the arrivals room to the ladies’ locker room.

  “You didn’t have to walk me the whole way.” It sounded like a complaint but really I was glad he had. I’d have never found it otherwise.

  “Just wanted to make sure you were where you were supposed to be.”

  “Thanks, Mr Jailor. Maybe you can tie my leash to the door handle while you find someone to take over in your absence.”

  “A leash.” Oz nodded and wagged a finger at me. “Now there’s an idea.”

  I didn’t even respond. I rolled my eyes and headed into the locker room. Oz caught my elbow and pulled me back.

  “What did I forget? Am I not allowed to leave unless you give me permission?”

  Oz pulled something out of his pocket, reached for my hand and dropped the mystery item in it.

  “A whistle?” I held it up to my face and frowned. “Do I even want to know?”

  “Can you please drop the attitude for a few seconds? Just a few.”

  “I’ll give you thirty.”

  “Thirty. Wow. I’m so lucky.”

  “Tick, tock,” I said.

  Oz stepped closer and lowered his voice. “If you find yourself in trouble, any sort of trouble, just blow it and I’ll come and get you.”

  “I thought that was the purpose of the bond?” I turned the whistle over in my hands. “That if I’m scared you’ll come running?”

  “It is, but the things that scare most normal people don’t seem to touch you and things that shouldn’t scare you, do. I haven't quite found your balance yet.” He took the whistle from my hands and looped the chain around my neck, tucking it inside my suit jacket. “It’s a precaution. And it’s for emergencies only.”

  I peered down my top at the whistle hanging neatly between my breasts. Trust a guy to think that was an appropriate chain length. “And why exactly is it that you feel I’ll need rescuing?”

  “Because, cumulatively, I’ve spent less than an hour in your company and I consistently find myself daydreaming about ways to kill you.” Oz tapped his chest. “And I’m supposed to protect you.”

  “Hmm, I don’t daydream about you at all.” It had been an attempt at a witty comeback to imply he didn’t even register enough on my radar to fantasise about killing him. It would have been a good one too except for his pesky lie detector.

  The corners of his mouth kicked up into a grin. “Not at all, eh?”

  “Already know how I’d do it,” I shrugged. And that was the truth. I’d planned it in detail that first night. “But I do so love your little pep talks. I feel so glad to be dead.” I pulled the whistle up by the chain and held it up to my eye. “So what’s your response time like on this?”

  “Excellent. But it’s only for—”

  “Emergencies. Yeah. I heard you.”

  “Be good today. Don’t find any more dead bodies. And don’t collect any more shadows.” He gave my ponytail a quick, light tug, smiled and disappeared to do whatever it was he did all day.

  “I’m sorry.” I spoke to the empty corridor. “Am I his five-year-old niece? Why is he pulling my hair?”

  I adjusted my ponytail and headed into the locker room, thinking about my day ahead with Fenton and his unfathomable haunting system. Today would be better. I would make a bigger effort to observe how he evaluated each situation and ask him to explain. Maybe he’d even let me try another assignment. Yes, today would definitely be better.

  I opened my locker to get my uniform out. Immediately I closed it again and blew the whistle.

  Oz appeared next to me in less than two seconds. “This better not be a test.”

  I jabbed a finger in his chest and it practically crumpled against the hard wall of muscle. “You jinxed me.”

  Oz glanced around for an explanation and I jerked my head in the direction of my locker. He frowned but opened it. Inside was a body. With the man’s face tilted away from me and blood smeared over the half I could see, it took me a few moments to recognise him. It was Fenton.

  Chapter Six

  “Boo!” Fenton leapt from my locker, crazy eyed and hands bent into claws.

  Startled, I shrank back. I may have even squealed. Normally, I’d scoff at such girly behaviours but I’d had a stressful few days and it was beginning to tell on my nerves. Oz, however, didn’t flinch.

  “You should’ve seen your face.” Fenton laughed before realising I wasn’t the only person there. He puffed his chest and squared up to Oz. “Mate, this is the ladies’ locker room. You shouldn’t be in here.”

  Silently, Oz reached into the pocket of his shorts and pulled out a leather wallet. He flipped it open so Fenton could see whatever was inside it. Whatever status parole officers carried within the bureau was enough to make Fenton pale.

  He gestured to the fake blood and backed out of the room. “I need to wash this off and I’ll meet you outside.”

  Oz turned to me. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, of course.” I nodded, fluffing my hair as casually as possible. “I just didn’t want any more stains on my suit, that’s all.”

  He dipped his head to catch my gaze. “You’re sure?”

  “Uh-huh.” I casually flicked my fringe from my eyes, hoping he’d not noticed my squeal. “Why?”

  He grinned at me. “Because you’re cutting off the circulation in my arm.”

  I glanced down at his tanned forearm to see my white knuckled grip still attached to him. I let go, feeling the blood rush to my cheeks. At least that would help my makeup-free face. “I was going to pull you in front of me.”

  He nodded. “To save your suit.”

  “Exactly.” I smoothed a hand down the front of my beyond saving suit.

  “Well, if you feel your suit’s in danger again …” He gently tapped the whistle hanging around my neck, grinned and disappeared.

  A stormy faced Fenton was waiting for me in the tunnelling room. He’d washed most of the fake blood off but I could see patches he’d missed around his hairline. And here I thought ghosts didn’t need Halloween tricks to scare people. I’d have to ask Eleanor about it. Hmm, maybe not Eleanor, perhaps one of my housemates? Charlie? I’d ask Pete.

  “Ready?”

  Before I had a chance to respond he gripped my arm and tunnelled us to our first assignment. The transition was so rough I dropped heavily onto my bottom when we landed. The grass cushioned the impact somewhat but, in a tiny part of my mind that wasn’t spinning, I knew I was going to have a bruise tomorrow.

  Colours blurred my vision; small clouds of flowers and bright green grass covered the view in front of me. Oddly, I recognised the place from its smell rather than layout. Part sea air, part summer blooms, part an earthy undertone that drifted down from the nearby moors. We were in Scarborough’s Italian Park.

  Fenton stormed over to an unhappy looking teenage girl holding a book in her hands and staring out over the small pond. Her bench was surround by a mass of vivid blue and yellow crocuses. Fenton carefully picked his way through so not to disturb the flowers and catch her attention.

  Standing behind her, Fenton gently stroked her hair three times. The gir
l turned her head as if she’d felt it. A sad but content smile crossed her face.

  Fenton dusted his hands and noted something on the assignment schedule. He picked his way clear of the crocuses and headed back towards me.

  “Ready?” Without giving me chance to respond, or even recover from his previous tunnelling, he bent over, gripped my shoulder and tunnelled us again.

  We landed in a busy call centre. Leaving me gasping on the floor, he abandoned me to do whatever the assignment was. Heavily applied perfumes and deafening chatter choked the air. I crawled to a nearby empty desk and pulled myself up and out of the main thoroughfare. If someone walked through me in this state it would be game over for me.

  A girl in her early twenties, tottering on heels that were bigger than my entire shin, lost her balance as she passed. She thrust her hand through my stomach to steady herself on the desk. I dropped back to the floor in agony and began to retch while she wobbled away no worse for wear.

  I must have been as white as the ghost I was when Fenton returned a few minutes later. He didn’t ask why I was slouched on the floor holding my stomach; he simply reached down to grab my shoulder and tunnelled us again.

  This time we landed on one of the quiet suburban side streets near the promenade, not far from home. The road was lined with tall whitewashed town houses, every third one a B&B, and a smattering of scantily clad tourists preparing for a long day on the beach.

  I watched as Fenton disappeared into the B&B opposite. By the time he strutted back out through the front door I’d recovered enough from his rough tunnelling to be sitting on a garden wall and ready to tear his face off. He crossed the road without looking and stopped in front of me. He reached for my wrist but I slapped his hand away so hard the momentum spun him half way around. I’d had enough of him dragging me all over the place like a rag doll.

  Shock, quickly followed by determination, flashed across his face. He tried to grab me a second time and I slapped his hand away again, harder than before. Once more and he was going to get a punch on the nose. I’d had more than enough of his temper tantrum and my head just couldn’t take another rough tunnel.

  “Stop. Fenton.” I held my finger up in warning when he reached for me again. “Just stop.”

  “What are you going to do?” he snipped. “Whistle for your parole officer again?”

  “I thought you were dead.”

  “Yeah, whatever.” He turned his back on me and started to walk away up the street.

  “Stop acting like a child.” I sat on the wall and folded my arms. I’d had my fill of him already and I’d been at work less than ten minutes. Staring at his back, I wondered if I could quit. Maybe the afterlife had a welfare benefit system.

  “I’m childish now?” He thumped his chest as he stormed back over to me. “I’m childish?”

  I shrugged a shoulder, fast losing interest in the conversation. “If the cap fits …”

  “I’m back on probation.” He jabbed a finger perilously close to my shoulder. If it connected we were going to have a serious falling out. “Because of you.”

  “No.” I watched his finger pull up short of touching me and stared back at him. “You’re on probation because of you.”

  “Ohhhhh, it’s all my own fault,” he said.

  “Well, yeah, actually it is.”

  “How is it my fault?” He stared at me aghast. “You were the one who involved your parole officer. I can’t believe you blew the whistle on me.” I smiled before I could help myself, not sure if the pun was intended or not. By the grim set of his mouth, I was guessing not. “I’m on probation and you think it’s funny?”

  “If you hadn’t been trying to scare me in the first place none of this would’ve happened.” I smoothed down the front of my jumpsuit with a superior air. I loved being in the right. “So, yes, it is your fault.”

  He stared at me, jaw firmly closed, eyes wide in anger. His breath came in short, sharp bursts. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking but I assumed he was imagining all manner of terrible ends to my afterlife. He, Oz and my shadow should form a club.

  “Okay, look.” I stood and dusted off the seat of my jumpsuit. “We have to work together so how about we draw a line under it and move on? You don’t try to scare the afterlife out of me and I won’t blow the whistle on you? Deal?” He didn’t look happy exactly, but the vein in his forehead had slowed its throbbing. “So, where are we going next?” I smiled and held my hand out to him. I wasn’t one to hold a grudge. Well, actually I was, but I saw no reason to tell him that.

  He exhaled slowly and without speaking took hold of my hand, this time tunnelling me considerably more gently than before. We arrived in a stockroom of a dress shop. The room was a chaotic mess of rails each tightly packed with clothing. Shelves, reaching from the floor to the ceiling, stretched along each wall. Messily folded jumpers sat on every shelf.

  In the centre of the hurricane of clothing a blond boy in his late teens wrestled items from the rails and ticked them off a list. Once he'd managed to extricate an item from the organisational mayhem he placed it on an empty rail by the door.

  “Assess the situation and tell me what action is required.” Fenton folded his arms and waited.

  The boy looked fed up. From what I remembered, having briefly worked in retail when I was younger, that wasn’t exceptional. Especially since it was approaching the end of the school holidays, we still had beautiful weather and he was locked in a dungeon of a stockroom.

  “Tick, tick, tick …” Fenton whispered.

  I took a metaphorical step back and tried to look at the bigger picture. Move his carefully extracted pile of clothes hanging on a spare rail? Pull a few jumpers off the shelf? Jam the stockroom door shut? Kick him in the shin? Without knowing the desired outcome, what hope did I have of ascertaining the right action? Fenton shrugged when I said as much to him.

  “We have to work with the information we have,” he said and he spread his arms wide to encompass the stockroom. “And this is all the information we have.”

  “We have to turn the radio on.” It was a stab in the dark.

  “Nope.”

  “Turn the lights off?”

  Fenton tutted. “You’re guessing.”

  Obviously I was guessing. “Untie his shoelace?”

  “Annnnnd you’re out.” Fenton walked over to the boy and did something to the walkie talkie the boy had clipped to his belt. “All done. Let’s go.”

  I peered around Fenton at the boy. “What did you do?”

  “Changed his radio channel.”

  “So?” I watched the boy climb a stepladder and balance precariously as he grabbed garments from different shelves, overreaching rather than moving the ladders. Health and safety, anyone?

  “They all need to be on the same channel so he and his colleagues all over the shop can communicate.”

  “So now he can’t hear or speak to the others and he won’t know why?” For some reason that didn’t sit exceptionally well with me.

  Fenton pointed his pen at me. “Exactly.”

  I watched the boy climb back down to the safety of the floor. Until he was down I hadn’t realised I’d been holding my breath. “Why?”

  Fenton noted something on the assignment sheet, not paying my questions any real attention and shrugged. “Because.”

  “Because why?” Fenton glanced up at me and shrugged again. I nodded to myself. “Okay then, what about this whole situation specifically told you that was what you needed to do?”

  “When I saw the situation.” Fenton glanced around the stockroom then back to the sheet and shrugged for the third time. “I knew.”

  “But how?” I raised my forefinger at him. “And if you shrug one more time …”

  “You learn how to read situations.” He patted me awkwardly on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, I’m here until you can do it. It takes as long as it takes. Time to move on.”

  He offered me his hand with no more explanation. Reluctantly, I too
k it. We landed in an empty classroom. Several of the windows were open and the sea breeze drifted through the room. It carried all the familiar scents and sounds of summers in Scarborough: flowers, sea, sand and seagulls. An array of papers lay on the teacher’s desk and a navy cardigan, with a huge white flower brooch, rested over the back of the chair.

  “Assess the situation and tell me.” Fenton perched on one of the desks at the back of the classroom and folded his arms, waiting.

  I moved around trying to get a feel for the atmosphere, but since empty school buildings spooked me the main vibe I got was creepy. “Give me a clue.”

  “Fine.” Fenton sighed dramatically. “It’s at the front of the room.”

  First thing I saw was the whiteboard. “We’re going to write rude words on the board.”

  “I can imagine that’s the type of child you were. But no.”

  “We’re going to loosen one of the wheels on the teacher’s chair?”

  “I’m sensing a theme.”

  “Am I close, though?”

  He laughed. “Not even a little.”

  On the desk lay two biros, blue and red. “We need to change the lids on the pens.” I guessed. My assistant used to do that accidentally all the time. Drove me mad.

  Fenton narrowed his eyes at me.

  Footsteps echoed along the corridor outside and Fenton snapped into action, quickly striding to the desk and reaching for the two biros. He swapped the blue lid to the red pen and the red lid to the blue pen. I stared at him. Our job here was to swap biro lids? Biro lids! I know I’d guessed it but I didn’t expect that to actually be the answer. Before I could say anything he tunnelled us.

  By lunchtime I’d managed to correctly assess two out of the twenty-three assignments we’d completed. Fenton had appeared less happy when I’d guessed right than wrong. Tired, confused and more than a little frustrated, I slumped down at the nearest empty table and stabbed at my crispy chicken pasta bake.

  “What’s that face for?” Sabrina sat down beside me and watched the feeble stabbing of my lunch.

  “I’d say life, but even that’s not true anymore.”