by Gina Ardito
Her emotions boiled over, and she sank to her knees, wailing in grief and rage. The unfairness of it all, the crushing disappointment, the pain of watching another life fade away into nothing...how long would she be forced to relive that hellacious moment before the Board let her off the hook? She couldn’t do this anymore, couldn’t face another loss, couldn’t identify with another grief-stricken mother. If the Elders had assigned her this department as a method of torture, they’d outdone themselves. At this point, she wished hell did exist. Burning in a pit of fire for eternity didn’t seem so horrid when compared to the eternal torment she dealt with after each loss here.
Maybe she should take a page from Sean’s playbook and ask for a transfer. She doubted Uriah would release her, though. The whole idea of this assignment was to teach her a lesson. Probation—and the cases she worked while in this department—were all part of her karmic justice.
Who was that guy in mythology chained to a rock who had his liver pecked out by an eagle every day, only to have the organ grow back overnight to feed the bird again the next day? The Elders had chained her in the same vicious cycle. Except, in her case, the organ she continuously lost and regrew was her heart. Drawing her knees to her chest, she buried her head behind folded arms and wept.
A quick drumroll of knuckles from above snapped her gaze up and into Sean Martino’s concerned face as he leaned against her desk. “You okay?”
Great. Just what she needed. An audience. She swiped her hands across her teary eyes to hide the evidence of her pain. “Didn’t I tell you not to disturb me in here?”
He shrugged. “Actually, no. You didn’t. But, for the record, you already looked pretty disturbed before I came in.”
“Well, you’re adding to my distress,” she retorted.
“Uh-huh.” His tone stayed bland, his expression emotionless. “Wanna take a walk?”
“Don’t you have work to do?” The last thing she wanted was prolonged exposure to a nosy former cop. “A certain actress who requires your undivided attention?”
“She’s in good hands right now, which is more than I can say for you.”
Nerves shattered, and her reply came out a feral growl. “I fucking hate this place. Do you know that?”
The shadow of a smile creased his lips. “Welcome to my world.” He held out his hand. “Come on. Take a walk. I wanna show you something.”
With a great deal of reluctance, she took his hand and rose on unsteady legs. Christ, she trembled like some newborn giraffe. To cover her embarrassment, she hid her weakness behind a veil of sarcasm. “What is this? A date?”
“A game. Play along, Xavia. It might help you feel better.”
Nothing would make her feel better. “I fucking hate games, too.”
Still, she allowed him to lead her out of the office, past the other employees whose focus remained concentrated on their clipboards. Which, she considered, she should order Sean to do as well, but he had managed to pique her curiosity. And hadn’t Uriah insisted they spend time together? So...okay. She’d see where this led, but keep her eyes and ears alert at the same time.
“Let me tell you a story,” he said as they strode down the hall and toward the descending staircase.
“Uh-huh.” The farther they walked from their department, the more anxiety skittered along her neural network. Where was he taking her? Did hell exist after all, and did he know a shortcut there?
“A while back, I returned from a hunt that got me all wound up. At first, it wasn’t much different than a lot of other bounties I wrangled. This was a guy in San Francisco in the early 1940’s. I don’t remember his name, but for the sake of the story, let’s call him George. He and his wife were staying in some fancy hotel. Late one night, they have a few drinks in a local bar, head upstairs to their room. She goes into the bedroom to ‘slip into something more comfortable,’ if you catch my drift.”
Sean craned his neck over his shoulder to waggle his brows at her, and she waved a hand at him in exasperation. “Yeah, I get it. What’s the point?”
“Be patient. I’m getting there. So, the wife steps out of the bathroom, but George is gone, and the French doors leading to the balcony are open. Wind’s blowing the curtains around. She figures he’s outside, right? She goes outside...no husband. Then she hears a scream from below. She leans out, sees a body lying on the flagstone path eight stories down, bent at all impossible angles. But she recognizes the dead guy’s suit. It’s her husband. She screams and collapses right there on the balcony. A crowd gathers, and the police are called. The cop assigned to the case eventually closes it as a suicide. But there’s always this cloud of suspicion lingering over the widow. Did she push him out the window and then make it look like a suicide? I mean, obviously, it’s not a suicide, or I wouldn’t have been sent to retrieve him, right? He would’ve arrived here like the rest of us and served a sentence in some department.”
“I’m still waiting...” she grumbled.
He didn’t take offense, leading her past a series of doors she didn’t recognize to a narrow staircase, while he continued his tale. “Well, see, here’s the thing. I get the call from the Board to go after George, who’s been haunting the eighth floor since his death. When I arrive at the hotel, I’m expecting to hear George confirm my suspicions that the wife was a murderess. Instead, George tells me his wife was innocent. The cop killed him. The cop’s moonlighting as the muscle for a local crook, and George owed the crook money. Big time money. The cop followed them out of the nightclub that night, sneaked into the hotel room, pushed George off the balcony, then slipped out again, all while the wife’s in the bathroom. Then he made sure the case landed on his desk. He did a brief and incomplete investigation and closed it as a suicide. Nice twist, right?”
At the bottom of the stairs, she folded her arms over her chest and shifted her weight to one hip. “And your point is...?”
He still offered no reaction. Not a blink, not a frown, not so much as a huff at her retort. For such a miserable soul, Sean Martino had the patience of Mother Teresa. She, however, had as much patience as the Warner Brothers’ cartoon Tasmanian Devil.
“Okay, okay. I’m getting there. Now, lemme tell you, that scenario did not sit well with me. I mean, I kept thinking about how the Board was intimating something about my integrity by sending me after the victim of a crooked cop.”
She turned around, aimed for the staircase again. “Fascinating, but I have work to do.”
Sean grabbed her arm and yanked her back to face him. “Be patient. It’ll all make sense in a minute.”
Holding up an index finger, she proclaimed, “One minute.”
“That’s all I need.” He released his hold on her and started forward again. “Back in those days, whenever one of us used to get worked up after a bounty, my buddy, Luc, and I would come down here to talk it out, you know? You may not realize the amount of emotional pull a bounty hunter experiences on a job. We have to be part empath, part sheriff, part amateur shrink. It’s a delicate balance, and it can take its toll on a weaker hunter.”
“Gee,” she remarked with acid. “I can’t imagine how difficult that must be for all you guys.”
“Yeah, yeah. This isn’t a pissing contest, Xavia. Pay attention. I’m trying to show you something.” Continuing to ignore her pain, he headed to the lone door in the corridor, twisted the knob, and ushered her inside. “Come, look at this.”
The room resembled a storage space after an apartment fire: concrete walls littered with scorch marks and an open area with painted lines, forming a rectangle about the size of half a tennis court on the scarred floor. Around them, wooden crates, branded with odd symbols in black, built towers of varying size and shape. Sean stopped near the line on the far right and rolled his hands in the air, creating an orb of vivid purple light.
“When I came down here with Luc after that bounty, I was enraged. Once I started talking it out, though, the scenario seemed to lose its insulting effect for me. The direct op
posite happened to Luc. He kept insisting the wife had to be the villain. Luc was a nice guy, but he hated to admit he was wrong about anything. And he had this hang-up about women back then—didn’t trust ‘em. I think that was left over from his last life. Of course, this was before Jodie arrived. That particular day, I’d never seen him so furious. It was almost like the betrayal had happened to him, instead of some poor sap in 1940’s San Fran. Anyway, to distract us both, I pulled together an orb and hurled it like this...” He demonstrated, flinging the ball of energy toward the far wall, where it hit with a hiss and ricocheted back, zipping so close to Xavia’s face the heat warmed her synapses. With his open palm, Sean slapped the orb, and it zinged to the wall again.
She gasped with delight. An otherworld handball game!
When it bounced back to him a second time, he let it drop to the ground with a sizzle before fading into nothingness. “It felt so damned good to hit something. So we kept at it. We called it orb ball.” He grinned at her. “Something tells me you were pretty good on the city handball courts during your days on Earth.”
“What makes you say that?”
“The gleam in your eye I noticed when I slapped the orb.”
She hated to admit he had a point. In that brief flash of time, Xavia forgot about Malik. Forgot about Uriah. And Noah. Now, she smiled at Sean, a challenge in her eyes. “You put a helluva spin on it.”
“Think you can take me?”
“I can definitely run you around the court,” she admitted.
“Good. I could use the distraction. And I’m betting you can, too.” Another roll of his hands produced a new orb, this one in a screaming red hue. “You ready?”
Xavia bent slightly at the knees, focused her attention on the glowing fireball. “Go for it.”
“Wanna make it interesting?”
She relaxed her stance. “How?”
“Loser tells the winner a secret.”
Suspicion slinked up her spine. What devilment was he up to? Her forehead furrowed. “What kind of secret?”
“Any kind she feels comfortable divulging.”
She? Oh, he did not just say that. She was going to wipe the floor with this arrogant cockroach. “Or any secret she demands he tell her.”
He held out his hand. “I take it we have a deal?”
“Oh, we have a deal,” she replied as she shook on their agreement. “Be prepared to get your butt waxed, Martino. When I’m through with you, you’re gonna be baby-smooth.”
~~~~
He whipped the orb at the far wall. The ball of light careened toward Xavia and, in a blur of kinesis, she connected, slapping the orb in a rebounding trajectory. On its next bounce, Sean aimed for the lower corner, hoping to bank his shot and throw off his opponent’s rhythm. No dice.
She lunged, slammed the crazily spinning missile to the right, and on his next attempt to retaliate, he missed by a fingernail. The orb flew past, hit the ground, and snuffed out on a hiss.
“Your point,” he conceded.
Barely breathing hard, she spun a new orb, this one a neon orange. “You can’t say I didn’t warn you, sucka.”
He let her win, of course. She needed the victory. While he had no idea what caused her breakdown in the office, the tantrum, coming on the heels of whatever had occurred between her and her Elder Counselor, had left her more brittle than kindling. He knew the sensation well, and understood how smacking orbs released the helpless rage. During the match, he kept her on her toes, sporadically taking the lead then falling behind by a point or two, only to smash an orb past her and catch up again.
When the score became twenty to eighteen in her favor, she offered a victorious smile and flipped a hot pink orb into play. “Game point.”
The orb sailed into the lowest part of the wall, ping-ponged off the corner, and brushed past his outstretched hand to land on the floor with a dying sizzle. He dropped his arm to his side and straightened his posture before turning to face his victor. “That’s the game.”
“Don’t feel bad, Martino,” she said, her smile glittering halogen white. “I’ll give you a chance to get even.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I have a feeling I’ll be playing this often.” She sobered. “Thanks. I needed that.”
He gave a quick nod in reply.
She held out her hand, waited for him to take it, and gave him a firm, determined shake. “You’re all right, Sean Martino. A pain in the ass, but all right, just the same.”
Fluttering his lashes with the exaggeration of a silent film ingénue, he clasped his hands to his chest. “Golly. That must mean you like me. You really like me.”
“Don’t get carried away,” she retorted, her lips twisted in a grimace. “I really like Brussels sprouts, too. Doesn’t mean I want a steady dose of ‘em.”
He chuckled. “Okay, then, since you won today’s Great Orb Challenge, I guess I owe you a secret. What’ll it be?”
Heaving a disgusted sigh, she sank onto the floor against a stack of crates and brought her knees to her chest, hugging herself inside her very own comfort cube. “What do you miss about life, Sean?”
He quirked a brow. “That’s it? That’s the great big secret you wanna know?”
“No, but since you let me win, I’m letting you off easy.”
“I didn’t let you win.” Her head shot up, expression sharp, and he amended with a self-deprecating grin, “Okay, maybe I didn’t give the game my all. But it’s not like I had to tie one hand behind my back or anything. You’re really good.”
“Not good enough that you would play fair.”
He shrugged. “Don’t be offended. I’ve got more experience down here than you. And I figured you’d been beaten up enough today.” He sat beside her, his back to the crate-less wall, and cocked his head to stare at her with curiosity. “You wanna talk about it?”
“Not really.”
“Come on.” He jabbed an elbow into her arm. “I was right about orb ball, wasn’t I?”
Her eyes misted, and she scrubbed her hands over her face. “I lost a kid today,” she said through her splayed fingers. “He was sixteen.”
He sucked in a sharp breath. “Wow. That’s tough.”
“You have no idea.” She dropped her head back to her knees then burrowed beneath her folded arms. “I’m a major league screw-up here.”
“Oh, knock it off.” He pecked an index finger into her hunched shoulder until she lifted her gaze again to glare at him. “You’re the department head so you can’t suck that bad.”
“Go haunt a house!”
Good. He’d managed to get a rise out of her. An excellent start.
“Can’t.” He offered an apologetic shrug. “My inter-realm privileges were revoked when I was transferred to your department.”
“Fabulous.” Acid dripped from her lips. “My lucky rabbit’s foot must have come from Frankenbunny.”
Funny how he preferred her sarcasm to the self-pity she’d donned during her office tantrum. Xavia’s natural aura shone gold with emerald highlights. But whatever troubled her now had tarnished her colors, like silt in a freshwater stream.
As a detective on Earth, he knew how to get a witness or victim talking even when the trauma numbed them or hurt so much they preferred to forget. Sure, it sucked at times, to manipulate the devastated into reliving painful memories. But it was a necessary evil. And a talent that came in handy when dealing with the bitter spirits on this side of life, as well. Those old cop instincts still flourished inside him. So he’d keep needling her until she broke.
“What happened?” he asked, his tone soft as a lullaby. Easy, impassive, with a hint of concern flavoring each word. “To the kid?”
“I don’t know.” She twisted her hands, pulled at her fingers. “He was bullied in school, opted to take the high dive. His mom found him hanging in the basement, barely alive. They got him to the hospital, but he lingered in a coma. I couldn’t pull him out. No matter what I said, no matter what dreams I came
up with for him—and believe me, I went Big Time—nothing worked. He just...gave up.”
“I’m sorry. That must have sucked. Was this the first time you lost one?”
“You mean, since I lost my fifteen-year-old son on Earth?” Her voice shook on the confession. “No. Malik was my fourth.”
“Out of how many?”
“What the hell does it matter how many?” Sparks flew in violent arcs from her form. “You think if it’s four out of a million, their lives have less meaning than if they’d been four out of a hundred? One more dead black boy don’t matter, right?” She shoved her arms out straight, and for a brief moment, Sean was able to see the vicious slices, oozing life’s blood from her slashed veins. “This is what I did when my son died. Because he mattered to me. They all matter to me!”
“Easy.” His hand shot up in surrender. “That’s not what I meant. If I upset you, I’m sorry.”
Her posture sagged, and her muddy aura darkened to shadow-gray. “Did you have kids, Martino?”
He shook his head. “Can’t say I did.” In any of the lives Verity had shown him. In fact, he usually died alone. And miserable.
“Then you can’t possibly understand. Not that fathers really get it anyway. No one suffers the way a mother suffers when she loses her child. Long before anyone else knows anything—sees the bright eyes and the first smile—a mother carries her child beneath her heart. For nearly a year, he’s a part of her. You can’t separate one from the other. What she eats, he eats. What she feels, he feels, too. And after birth, as that child grows to adulthood, his mom nurtures him. And the situation reverses. What the child feels, the mother feels. Every scraped knee, every careless word, every tear that child sheds is etched in her heart.” She leaned her head against the wall and closed her eyes. “If I had known my boy would die before his sixteenth birthday, I might not have given birth to him. Or I’d have given him up for adoption in the hope I could change his destiny. Because all the good memories—and I have plenty—can’t soothe the agony of knowing I’ll never see him again. Not in any lifetime. In my greatest moment of weakness, I damned us both for eternity.”