“Bad morning? I suppose your partner’s ‘I’m dead’ trick didn’t start the day off well for you.”
I turned to her in surprise. “How do you know about that?”
“Bureaucrats.” Sabrina gestured around the hall. “If you as much as sneeze around here you need to file a report about it. And your guardian was extra thorough.” She winked at me.
“What? What was that for?” I gestured to her winking face.
“Apparently Fenton scared you so badly you screamed.” Sabrina chuckled. “It’s in the report so it must be true.”
“I did not scream. I may have expressed vocally that I was startled. Wait, Oz filed a report?”
“Yep.” Sabrina arched a sardonic eyebrow at me and affected a voice I’d heard people use with babies. “And he was not happy with Fenton scaring his ickle newly dead.”
“Oh, shut up.” I focused on my lunch so Sabrina wouldn’t see me attempting to suppress a smile.
“No.” Sabrina reached out and grabbed my chin, squishing my jaw, turning my face to her. “No, you can’t.”
“Can’t what?”
“You can’t date him. I know he’s super hot, but you can’t date him. It’s totally against the rules.”
“Oh, great.” I dropped my fork and it clattered on the plate. “I was just planning on fantasising about him, but now you’ve told me the bureau say I can’t date him I really, really want to.”
“You didn’t want to date him until I told you it was against the rules?” Sabrina frowned. “You really do have serious issues with authority.”
“Meh.” I picked up my fork and stabbed at my pasta some more. “It’s not exactly like you're Little Miss Law Abiding.”
“Touché.”
“Hey, do you have a cooking rota at your house?”
“And a cleaning rota.” Sabrina nodded. “And a TV rota. And a comfy armchair rota. And a washing rota.”
I screwed up my face and stabbed my lunch some more. “This place sucks.”
She waved my complaint away. “We just have to get through ten years and we’ll be fine.”
“Oh, only the next ten years. That’ll be a breeze.”
“It’ll be fine. And back to the topic in hand. Fenton’s back on probation.”
“Yeah, he mentioned that.” I’d been so annoyed at the time it hadn’t properly registered. “What was he on probation for before?”
Sabrina leaned towards me and peered at my pasta. She was an expert at making covert conversations appear normal. “‘Unauthorised haunting’ was the official term.”
“What? So how come he wasn’t GB’d?”
Sabrina sipped her coffee with a frown. “The reports were a bit weird actually. It looked like they had him banged to rights, but he was let off with six months’ parole.”
“That’s interesting.”
“Thought you’d like that.” Sabrina nibbled a corner of her chicken panini, pulled a face then tried a different corner. “Apparently, this haunting thing works like speeding. Everyone does it to some degree and they don’t generally zap you for it. Only those who really push the boundaries.”
“Afternoon, ladies. Mind if we join you?” Charlie waited for us to agree but Pete had already sat down and started eating.
“Sure,” I said, making some quick introductions.
“How’s your day been so far?” Charlie asked, heavily salting what looked fish pie. “Feeling any more confident?”
“Halfway through day two and I’m still alive, so to speak. I’m counting that as a positive.”
“Atta girl.” Pete grinned at me despite the reproachful glare he got from Charlie.
“What is it you’re having difficulty with? Maybe we could help?” Charlie said.
“The partner,” Sabrina chimed in, curling her lip in disgust, which I loved her a little bit for.
Charlie’s eyebrows inched up. “So, Fenton’s your partner? That’s a bit unusual.”
I shook my head. “He uses the words ‘partner’ and ‘trainer’ interchangeably so …”
“Maybe they’ve decided to start buddying people up on that area. That way if one of them kicks it, they’ve already got someone trained,” Pete said.
“Pete.” Sabrina interlaced her fingers and leaned forwards, elbows on the table. “I know we’ve only just met, but I feel the need to introduce you to a novel concept called ‘tact’.”
“Nah, you’re okay with it, aren’t you Bridge?” Pete shovelled another forkful of mash into his mouth as if he hadn’t eaten in days.
I nodded. I liked Pete and his straightforward, no-nonsense ways. I found it oddly comforting in a world where I was still discovering all the rules.
“So, what is it you’re having trouble with?” Charlie asked again.
“Assessing the situations and working out the correct action to take.” I loaded up my fork. After so long on low carb diets I struggled to get the pasta to my mouth. It just seemed so wrong. “I don’t think I’ll ever get it.”
Charlie frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Y’know, when you turn up at an assignment and have to figure out what needs to be done. I keep asking Fenton for parameters but he says it’s something you learn.”
Charlie glanced at Pete, who’d momentarily stopped eating, before turning back to me. “You know what to do because it tells you on the assignment sheet.”
“No, I know the sheet tells you where to go and who the target is. But I mean when you get there and have to work out you need to tap the guy on the shoulder three times. That’s what I’m struggling with.”
“Bridget. If you have to tap someone on the shoulder three times, it will tell you on the assignment sheet. It gives you the name, the time and place and what you need to do. It’ll even tell you which shoulder to tap him on,” Charlie said.
Pete nodded. “All you need to do is execute the actions on the assignment sheet.”
“There are never any assignments that require you to work out the course of action yourself?”
Charlie and Pete shook their heads in unison.
“That’s actually an incredibly serious crime,” Charlie added.
Huh. What wasn’t a crime around here?
Spotting Fenton on the other side of the dining hall I excused myself and navigated between the packed tables, my mind racing with all manner of retribution.
I sat down in the empty seat next to Fenton and smiled widely at his three companions. My smile may have resembled more a lioness showing her teeth because both boys leaned back in their seats while the heavily bleached blonde, who had applied her makeup with a trowel, stared right back at me.
She curled her lip at me. “Can we help you?”
“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friends?” I asked.
“This is Neil, Rob and Emma.” Fenton smiled uneasily and gestured to his friends in turn. “Guys, this is Birget.”
“Oh, Fenton, you kidder. Isn’t he a riot? This morning he pretended to be dead and scared the afterlife out of me.”
“Yeah, and you went and snitched to your parole officer about it.” Emma’s lip was still curled. Maybe it was some sort of condition.
“Well, gosh, he played it so darn well,” I gushed. “Just like this initiation where I’m supposed to guess what action to take at every assignment.”
They all laughed but Fenton’s expression froze.
“We were taking bets on how long it would take you to work it out.” Emma seemed genuinely amused. “None of us thought you’d be so stupid as to not have figured it out by the end of the first day, though.”
“Ohhh, Fenton.” I smiled, ignored her jibe and punched him hard in the arm before dropping the pretence. “I’ll take the assignment sheets now.”
“It’s my responsibility,” he snapped.
I nodded and held out my hand. “And you’ve taken it so seriously.”
He folded his arms over his chest and stared at me like a stubborn eight year old not wanting to r
elinquish his favourite toy.
“Okay, two options.” I smiled widely and counted them off on my fingers. “One, you give me the sheets, or two, I will beat you bloody with your spoon and strangle you with your own entrails.”
“You can’t threaten people like that.” Emma jabbed her fork into the wooden table.
“Do not push me, you little Barbie wannabe. I have no patience left,” I said.
I turned back to Fenton and waited. He stared right back not wanting to give an inch. Fine. I fingered the silver whistle around my neck. I didn’t really want to use Oz as a threat but I figured not much else was going to get him to cave in front of his friends.
“They’re locked in a safe over lunch.” Fenton relented when he realised he held no cards left to play.
“Then I suggest you finish your lunch and meet me in the hallway in fifteen minutes.”
I didn’t wait for him to agree. I knew he’d be there. I could hear his friends calling me all manner of names as I walked away but I really didn’t care. I was furious. He’d made me feel unprepared and unqualified for my job. I might not have wanted the job but, since I had it, I intended to be the best facilitator I could be. I could’ve understood it if he was trying to make me look inept so he could keep my area. I paused mid-stride realising maybe that was exactly what he’d been trying to do. Hypocritically, I decided I didn’t understand after all.
“Remind me never to get on the wrong side of you,” Sabrina said as we headed back to our table.
Both she and Charlie had hovered at a discreet distance in case they needed to intervene.
“You get it sorted out?” Pete looked up from his food, only partly interested. I watched him eating and wondered if anything would force him to abandon a meal.
“Yeah,” I nodded sitting back down. “Thanks for your help.”
I finished my lunch and found an unhappy looking Fenton waiting for me in the tunnelling room half an hour later, clipboard in hand.
“I don’t appreciate you implying I’m irresponsible in my duties in front of my friends.”
“Well, I don’t appreciate you lying to me.”
“I wasn’t lying to you,” Fenton snapped. “I was training you.”
I nodded. “Yes, because I feel oh-so-very-well trained. And I’m a trainee, not your partner?”
“Kinda.” He winced and rocked a splayed hand like a seesaw. “You’re technically both for now.”
I threw my hands up in exasperation. “Nothing is straightforward in this place.”
“Isn’t that the truth?” He mumbled, more to himself than me. “Look, the purpose of getting you to assess the situations is to show you that you can’t assess them. Every now and then a facilitator goes rogue. They think they know best and discard the assignment sheet in favour of their own judgement. Hopefully what you’ll have learned is that there’s no way to discern what actions we need to perform because we don’t hold the relevant information. You can’t work it out from looking at the situation, so by understanding this you’ll be much less tempted to deviate from the instructions.”
It did make a certain sort of sense, and I had definitely learned that lesson. And it explained why he’d not been happy when I’d guessed right. Fenton seemed genuinely apologetic, and it wasn’t as if I had a whole lot of options.
“So?” Fenton held out his hand to me. “Truce?”
∞
I was shattered by the time we were done with that afternoon’s assignments. Fenton had watched and offered sincerely helpful advice. Some had been straightforward hauntings, like moving things, but others were more specific, like removing a set of keys from a grandmother’s purse before she left the house. I couldn’t explain why but those made me feel very uneasy.
I sneaked out of the back door of a Chinese restaurant having finished the last assignment of the day to find Fenton talking to another facilitator whose back was to me.
“You need to mind your own business, boy,” the other facilitator growled.
“Or what?”
“Or you’ll find yourself in more trouble than you can slime your way out of.”
I could see the vein in Fenton’s forehead throbbing and I was still several yards away. His eyes found me over the facilitator’s shoulder. Noting Fenton’s distraction the other facilitator spun round. It was Pete.
“Bridget, I was hoping to see you.” Pete grinned as if he hadn’t just been threatening Fenton. “Getting the hang of it now?”
“Yeah.” I nodded, not really sure on the correct response for interrupting a threatening.
“Excellent. I have to run. The office added some of your area assignments to my list while you’re training. More work, less time.” He rolled his eyes then winked at me. “See you later.”
“What was that about?” I asked when I was sure Pete had gone.
Fenton dismissed the question with a wave of his hand. “Just something and nothing.”
“It sounded a lot more like something to me,” I said, but before I could question him any further a wave of nausea hit me and the alleyway started to tilt so badly I had to reach out to Fenton for support.
“Bridget?”
“I feel funny. Dizzy. Like I’m tunnelling but at half speed.”
Fenton’s eyes stretched wide in a panic. That was not the expression I wanted to see on his face right then. “What have you done?” he asked.
“Me? Nothing.” Why was everyone always blaming me?
“Well, you must have done something.” Fenton scanned the alleyway, looking for help or GBs I wasn’t sure. “You’re being summoned.”
“What?” I slurred, hearing myself speaking from far away. “What does that mean?”
He was yelling. I could tell from his face, but his voice was a distance away. “An alive person is summoning you to them.”
“Well, stop them!” I tried to grip his arm tighter but already I could feel the tunnel sucking me in.
“I can’t. I can’t interrupt it.” He tried to grab my hands but couldn’t seem to get a good hold on them. “The GBs are going to have both our arses for this.”
The tunnel swallowed me up and I screamed, “Fenton!”
Chapter Seven
“Well, it’s about time.” A blurry stranger stood over me, her arms folded and foot tapping. “I’ve been calling you all afternoon.”
The voice was familiar. As was the dark hair carelessly tied up in a frizzy ponytail. The woman had poured herself into a hot pink velour tracksuit with the initials “ZG” spelled in diamantés on the right breast. No makeup, no jangling accessories and cigarette in her right hand, but it was definitely Madame Zorina. And I recognised her reading room.
“I’ve been working.” I climbed unsteadily to my feet with the help of her visitor’s chair. “And do not ever do that to me again.”
She threw her hands up in the air, ash from her cigarette falling to the floor. “Well, how was I supposed to get hold of you?”
“You’re not supposed to get hold of me. I’m not at your beck and call.”
“And yet, here you are.” She smiled before taking a smug drag on the cigarette and blowing several perfect smoke rings in my direction.
I returned her smile. “And here I go.”
I marched out of her reading room, flinging the beaded curtain aside with no care as to who might see. The day had been taxing enough without adding whatever drama she was currently embroiled in to it.
“Wait! I’m sorry. It’s just … it’s been a bit of a stressful day.” Panic and a hint of desperation laced her voice.
I sighed. I should keep walking. I shouldn’t get involved in her drama. I knew it, and yet I still walked back into her reading room. It was her desperation that pulled me in. I shook my head at myself. I was such a sucker.
I flopped down in her client chair and pointed to the cigarette she was taking a long drag on. “Those things will kill you, y’know?”
She snorted. “The stress will kill me first.”
“So, what’s the problem?”
“Barry’s dead. They think I killed him.” She took another drag on her cigarette, dropping more ash onto the floor, and began to pace.
“Who’s Barry?” Why did I know that name?
“Do you have the memory of a goldfish? Barry. My client yesterday whose fiancée you were calling a gold-digging tramp.”
“Ohhh, Barry.” I snapped my fingers and nodded. “He’s dead? Too bad.”
“Too bad?” She stopped pacing to stare at me. “Too bad?”
“Oh, right.” I’d never been particularly good at these types of situations. “I’m sorry for your loss, y’know, again.”
She shook her head at me and returned to her pacing. “Un. Believable.”
“Who thinks you killed him?”
“The police.” She took another long drag on her cigarette as if it were oxygen and stared at me. “Obviously.”
“Did you?”
She paused, mid exhalation, her lips stretched into a thin unhappy line, and looked very much as if she regretted calling me. Smoke billowed from her nostrils, reminding me of an angry dragon.
“No,” she gritted out with exaggerated calm. “I did not kill him.”
I sat back in the chair. This was sounding a lot like my Jim problem. “Then why do they think you did?”
“Because I’m a beneficiary in his will.”
“Really?” Okay, I was officially interested now. Money had that effect on me, especially free money. “What’d you get?”
“Quarter of a million.”
“Pounds?”
“No, buttons,” she snapped. “Of course pounds!” Madame Zorina sucked another long drag from her cigarette.
“Wow.” I’d not been expecting that. Especially since I hadn’t thought she gave him that good of a reading. I mean, it wasn’t as if she’d predicted his death, which was information he probably could’ve used. “What’d the fiancée get?”
“Four point eight million, the house here, the one in Italy and the one in southern France.”
I whistled. “That is three whole houses and set up for life reasons to kill him. Why aren’t they looking at her?”
Beyond Dead: A Bridget Sway Novel (A Paranormal Ghost Cozy Mystery Series) Page 10