“Usually, I get angel, not grim reaper. I don’t even have a scythe,” the woman said thoughtfully. “Christmas angel would have earned you a lot more brownie points than grim reaper.”
She stretched out her hand toward him, urging him to take it while hoping to keep control of the tremor in her own fingers. The dead man eyed her with unconcealed suspicion and stepped back.
“But you don’t have a halo or wings, so you’re not an angel. What are you?”
The woman dropped her hand but took another slow step forward, the twinkling Christmas lights causing her skirt to cast a shadow on the corpse at her feet. The body lay face down, contorted limbs tangled beneath it.
She was acquainted with death, but she was rarely in such close proximity to its blood and stench. She dealt with revenants, risen souls who returned for one reason or another, not their messy mortal remains.
Ordinarily, she did not visit crime scenes or view corpses, but tonight she had no choice. She was the only person who could be there on such short notice—holiday rush and all—and they were reasonably sure that the revenant who stood before her now had not returned with evil intent.
But reasonably sure was not enough to guarantee her safety, so she had to be careful, be ready, be aware.
She steeled herself for what might come, all the while wondering why this anomaly had to happen at this time of year when she was supposed to be immersed in the magic of the season, with dreams of sugarplums dancing in her head. Frankly, she’d like to spend the holidays as a normal person and leave the spirits of Christmas to Dickens.
She extended her hand once more, but the dead man still did not meet her gesture.
“I’m Calla Hawthorne, and you’re Matt Carol.”
He blinked at her.
“How did you know my name? Who are you? What are you?”
Now Calla blinked at him.
“I already told you who I am. I’m Calla, and I’m a human, a living, breathing human. Homo sapiens sapiens, to be exact. I just happen to be able to see souls.”
The man’s eyes narrowed.
“You see dead people?”
Calla sighed and muttered, “Is that line ever going to go away?”
Matt didn’t seem to have heard her, having forsaken their conversation for his own thoughts.
“I’m dead, and I’m a ghost,” he said, his voice rising in panic. “Is that it? Am I a ghost? Jesus!”
“Try to calm down, Matt,” Calla said in a tone meant to soothe. “It’s been a hard day—”
“A hard day? I’m dead!” Matt growled between clenched teeth. “I’m a ghost, right?”
Calla couldn’t afford to anger him. His emotions already ran too high, and adding anger to the mix could result in peril.
Her own.
When she spoke again, she kept her voice calm and quiet.
“You’re not a ghost, but you are no longer alive either.”
Clearly frustrated, he ran a hand through his hair and massaged the back of his neck, turning to face the Christmas tree. His undulating shadow fell across a bookcase packed with DVDs and a collection of figurines from Star Wars, which stood proudly on the upper shelf.
“This doesn’t make any sense. I’m dead! My body’s right there!” He twisted his torso and pointed to the large, dark-haired corpse as if it weren’t the elephant in the room already. “But I’m standing here in my living room”—he gestured broadly at the Christmas decorations, toys scattered on the floor, and movie posters hanging on the walls—“talking to you, and yet I’m not a ghost. So I must not be dead. I must be alive.”
“I see souls of the living and the dead, and I can tell the difference. Trust me, you’re dead.”
He looked away from his body and back at Calla.
“But how? Why am I dead? What happened?” He paused and sucked in a deep breath. “What the hell is going on? Am I a vampire?” He paused again. “Oh my God, I’ll bet it was the kid who bit me in the park. He turned me, and now I’m forced to walk the night alone and live on human blood!”
Steadying herself, Calla laid a quivering hand on his arm, and his spirit body jumped beneath her fingertips. Touching him strengthened her impression of his soul, his true nature. His spirit felt volatile, calm now, but prone to erupt in violence. She sucked in a breath.
Why couldn’t Matt have been one of the good guys?
Or even a blatant troublemaker? At least then she would know what to do. She would handle the former herself. That was her job, after all. And if it were the latter, she would call Whitaker and have him take over.
But Matt seemed neither good nor bad. Or perhaps he was both good and bad.
Calla couldn’t be sure.
If Pursiful were around, he would remind her that you could never be certain, even after looking into a soul, what each one was capable of doing.
After all, Calla thought, only the Shadow knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men. (And the fact that such a reference came to mind meant that she seriously needed to get out more.)
Regardless, the heart and the soul weren’t the same thing. When emotions ran high, and circumstances were dire, sometimes good souls were pushed into doing bad things, and sometimes good souls became so warped by the circumstances of their lives that they chose to do evil despite it all. That’s why she’d strapped a knife to her inner thigh.
She didn’t like to think about what she might have to do with that knife one day.
Maybe today.
Calla offered Matt a tentative smile and nudged him through the small kitchen, where two plates, two now-cold cups of coffee, and a partially eaten pecan pie sat on a red laminate table.
“Don’t worry. You’re not a vampire, but I can’t explain it all to you here. We have to leave. Now.”
Five minutes ago would have been better.
Good as he was, Pursiful could only delay official coroner proceedings for so long, and Calla’s time alone at the death scene was almost up. She glanced back at the inert corpse on the living room floor; that corpse was actually her safety net, and she was about to lose it. If Matt had turned out to be a troublemaker, she could have used her knife to pierce the heart of the physical body, effectively banishing the restless soul and saving her own life in the process.
Killing a spirit body was much more difficult than dispatching it via the corpse, not to mention dangerous, and Calla had no wish to kill anybody—even if he was already dead.
But they couldn’t tarry any longer.
Though his soul seemed volatile, at the moment, Matt was calm, and Calla would do her best to keep him that way. If she failed, well, she would be dead.
She really hoped she wouldn’t fail. It would suck to die so close to Christmas.
“Everyone’s confused at first,” Calla said, pushing away her own doubts and fears. “Dying is a big shock, physically and mentally, but like I said, we can’t discuss the nuances of the afterlife here. We don’t have time. The police are waiting out front for the coroner to transport the body. We need to leave now or your presence will seriously complicate matters.”
“But I don’t understand,” Matt said, looking over his shoulder at his own lifeless body on the floor as he followed her out the side door. “If I’m dead, why am I still here?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out.”
Ghosts of the Past
This far south, the Atlantic Coast didn’t see much snow, but the cold bit through Calla’s too-thin clothing with frosty abandon. She grabbed her long black coat from the stair rail where she’d left it before entering Matt Carol’s house, yanked it on, and pulled the faux-fur hood around her ears. Warmer, she glanced sidelong at the revenant as she led him through the backyard toward her car, which waited on the next block.
“Yeah, that getup’s not reaper-esque at all,” Matt said, studying her choice of outerwear.
Calla blushed below her hood as she considered it herself. Okay, so her coat was a bit on the cloak side, but it didn’t mean
anything. She was about life, not death. She was!
“It’s just a coat,” Calla insisted, her voice coming out harsher than she’d intended. “Lots of women wear long black coats in winter.”
Matt raised his hands in defense.
“Okay, it’s just a coat. Whatever you say.”
Calla’s blush intensified. God, what was wrong with her?
Matt was making a joke, she knew, trying to ease his own considerable tension.
She sighed. The whole situation had been inelegantly handled from the beginning, but what could she do? This was an emergency, and they had been in a hurry. Holidays and all. She’d been at a Christmas party in the city when Pursiful called and informed her that a soul had risen and was prowling somewhere near the death scene. Ordinarily, souls took a few days to rise, if they rose at all, and she normally didn’t have to sneak into a crime scene. Her role came more after the fact.
This time, she’d had no prayer of making it to the scene before the police descended like overeager children on Christmas morning. Fortunately, the beat cops appeared to be in holiday mode, and they’d taken all the requisite photos and recorded all pertinent data without anyone noticing anyone suspicious.
Still, Pursiful had seen the situation for what it was—an ambiguous death with a missing soul—and that’s why Calla sped across the bridge to Bell Island in record time. Pursiful had kept the police at bay, lingered over his coroner duties, and then done his “delayed transport routine” long enough to allow Calla to do her job and get the dead guy out of there.
“Where are we going?” Matt asked, his voice carrying on the winter wind.
“Into the past,” Calla said. “But first, we’re getting out of this wind. I’m freezing.”
They walked in silence, which on Matt’s part could only be described as stunned.
“Here,” she said, pointing to her 1967 Mustang convertible.
“Oh,” he said, sounding disappointed, “when you said we were going to the past in your car, I was kind of expecting a DeLorean.”
“This isn’t Back to the Future,” she said, chuckling. “Besides, the motor in this baby is way more powerful than the hamster wheel they put in the 1981 DeLorean.”
Matt whirled on her, grabbing her by the throat in one swift movement that left her shocked and gasping for breath.
“I don’t give a shit about motors!” he shouted, shaking her, fingers digging into her flesh. “I just want to know what the hell is going on! First I’m alive. Then I’m dead. Now I’m being mocked by some wannabe angel who dresses like a cross between Doris freaking Day and death personified. So forgive me for being a little confused.”
“Let me go,” Calla croaked. “Now. Or I’ll be forced to hurt you.”
“I’m already dead. You can’t hurt me,” Matt said with a bitter laugh.
Calla knew she should draw the knife and show him that she could support her threat. She inched up her Doris Day skirt—Doris probably never wore a knife strapped to her thigh—and gripped the hilt in clumsy fingers.
Matt’s hold on her throat tightened, and, against her will, she made choking noises in response. Suddenly, Matt’s eyes widened in surprise. His fingers loosened on her throat, and he held her away from his body slightly.
Though he seemed to realize what he was doing, it was clear that Matt was surprised. Ten seconds ago, he was calm, but now he was standing in a storm of emotions and fears.
For her own safety, she needed him to realize that he could still be hurt, but she didn’t want him to have to die twice.
Calla unsheathed the knife and pressed the tip into the soft flesh beneath his jawline, drawing a hint of blood. Matt gasped and released her completely. He raised his hands to the small wound and stared at the blood on his fingertips.
Calla grabbed a handful of his hair and yanked his head up so he could see her face as she held the blade near his neck. She hoped he couldn’t feel the fear that quaked just beneath the surface of her skin.
“You may be dead, but I can still hurt you. You can still suffer. I can dispatch you to eternity before you even figure out why you rose in the first place. You will not touch me again.”
Matt stared at her while he recovered himself.
“Sorry,” he said finally, coughing and sputtering as he swiped his bloodstained fingertips against his trousers. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m just so confused. I’m trying to understand. You laughed at me.”
A burst of pity made Calla’s heart ache. The soul of a man was searching desperately for some point of reference, something he could use to make sense of his situation. Unfortunately, no such thing existed.
Nothing but her.
She returned her knife to its holster and opened the Mustang’s passenger door.
“So this isn’t Back to the Future,” Matt said as she gestured him inside, “but we are going into the past. Is this like A Christmas Carol? Are you supposed to help me see the error of my ways? Give me something to work with here.”
Calla sighed. “I know this is hard for you, but we’re not in a movie. This is your afterlife, and we need to get you sorted out so you can move on. The longer you stay here, the more difficult that will become.”
“What does that even mean?” he demanded, sliding into the seat.
Calla shut the door, rounded to the driver’s seat, got in, and hit the ignition.
Honestly, she didn’t know exactly what it meant. She didn’t have all the answers. Just because she could see souls didn’t mean she had a lock on theology and eternity.
She didn’t know what happened when the souls departed; she only knew the dangers of their presence on earth.
Pulling the Mustang onto the road, she shrugged. Though she had no idea where she was heading, she felt better when she could see the streetlights and holiday bulbs flashing past the windows. It gave her the impression that the case moved forward, even if it was a directionless sort of forward. Plus, driving kept Matt from trying to make a run for it.
“Who are you, anyway?” he asked “Why are you helping me? I don’t get it.”
“I’m a forensic psychologist. That’s my day job, at least. I get called in when authorities need help determining the cause of death when the situation looks ambiguous. I help them understand the victim’s mental state at the time of death, which then helps decide if the death resulted from murder, suicide, or natural causes.”
“And how’d you phrase that on your job application? ‘Talks to the dead’? Must’ve gotten you hired right off.”
“Yeah, sure, something like that,” she said. “Not all souls rise, but it helps when they do. Makes the case a little easier.”
Well, it helped sometimes. Other times, not so much. Many revenants didn’t know how they died or why, and some of them were pure evil to begin with. And then there were those who were so sullied by death that they might as well have been pure evil.
“I get it. You just want to figure out how I died so you can satisfy the system. Earn your paycheck.”
“Those are reasons, but not the only reasons. Or the most important,” Calla said. “You already know about my side job.”
“As a soul-seer?”
Calla nodded, liking the appellation.
“As a soul-seer, I help risen souls handle their unfinished business, which is usually why they rise in the first place. They have something left undone, or they’re back for justice.”
Or vengeance, she thought with a shudder.
“Okay, so you help me figure out why I’m here, and then, poof, I disappear.”
“Sort of. You move on to eternity.”
Whatever that might be.
Calla didn’t have many details on that subject, and she wouldn’t have shared them if she did. Keeping the revenant focused was the best way to ensure that they both spent the holidays in peace.
“What if I don’t want to tuck my tail between my legs and go to my eternal rest? What if I want to go back to my old life? I co
uld jump out of this car, dump my old body, and forget it all happened.”
If only it were that simple, Calla thought. She reached over and pulled down the passenger visor, flipping open the lighted mirror.
Matt stared at his reflection, his mouth working soundlessly as he studied the bright blue eyes and fine, blond hair. Then he looked down at his slim body in the pale wash of light.
Finally, he managed to say, “That’s not me. This isn’t my body. I’m not me!”
“This is your soul body,” Calla explained, “the one you’ll take with you when you go. While you’re on earth, it’s physical, subject to physical needs and frailties. Later, it’ll become wholly spiritual.”
“So this is, like, what? A reflection of my soul? Blond hair good; black mustache evil?”
“Nothing so prosaic,” she told him. Then she tried to alter her tone, sound more matter-of-fact. “Look, Matt, you can’t go back to your old life. Death calls to us all, even the living. Only with you, it’ll be stronger.”
She didn’t add that the pull toward death could lead the dead into temptation and evil. To inflict death rather than to seek their own rest.
“But I don’t want to die,” he whispered, flipping the mirror shut, shrouding the car in darkness again.
“Too late. Death happened, and you can’t go back. You can only move ahead. Finish what you came back to do, and you’ll be ready. I promise.”
He mulled over her words, growing more thoughtful. Calla was glad to see his shock wearing off.
“What happened tonight, Matt?” she ventured. “You weren’t alone. I saw the dirty dishes on the table. Who was with you?”
Matt blinked and then stared straight ahead.
“I—I,” he stuttered. And then the realization dawned. “Oh my God! That bitch killed me! She must have poisoned the pie. Or the coffee!”
“Okay,” Calla said, laying a soothing hand on his wrist. “Try to calm down.”
He flung her hand away and turned, his eyes burning hot and bright.
“She killed me and took my daughter.”
Ghosts of Christmas Present
“Who?” Calla asked. “Who murdered you and took your daughter?”
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