Instead, I paid attention to the one physical sensation I associated most with death: the stomach tug. Every time I died this happened. There’d be a tug through my abdomen as if a string were tied around my waist and through my belly button.
I focused on the tug and the growing sense of separation, fascinated and lulled by it. The ceiling above me went in and out of focus, but there was no vortex, no black hole of death, no—
Then something happened—something bad.
When Eve climbed on top of my dying body still collapsed on the floor, I was forced to accept that something was definitely wrong with this replacement, and I was in big trouble for it. Her hair was down and in disarray. Her shirt had been left unbuttoned and the white lace of her bra peeked through either side. At least her skirt was back to where it should be.
But then she settled her weight against my chest, reached under the bed, between the mattress and box spring and pulled out a large kitchen knife—the kind Ally used to chop zucchini.
You’ve got to be kidding me, I thought. Followed closely by, God I hope you’re wearing your underwear.
She pinned me to the floor with her knees as if I could actually go anywhere even if I tried. I barely kept my eyes open despite the desperate urge to see what the hell she was going to do.
My eyes were closed when the knife first pressed to my throat and I tried my damnedest to open them. They fluttered enough to see her crying. For a moment, her hands relaxed as if she wouldn’t do it. Then a deep voice spoke somewhere out of sight, in a tone used to issue a command or a threat.
Her resolve returned.
“I’m so sorry,” she said and broke the skin with a burning slice. “I have to.”
Before I could really freak out about what was happening, or even consider the fact that I couldn’t resurrect if decapitated, the tug through my abdomen gave a final jerk.
Then I felt nothing at all.
Chapter 5
I was somewhere quiet and clean. Clean because of the strong smell of antiseptics and lemons. Warm hands were on me, adjusting me, molding my body against a mound of pillowy softness. Someone kept saying my name.
Brinkley stood in the doorway, a stark contrast to the interior of the simple room: one bed, one lamp, and a curtain-drawn window for the sake of my burning eyes. I’d woken up at the funeral home before, waiting for Brinkley to pick me up just like now, so why did this feel different?
“I’m cold,” I told Brinkley, feeling again the warm hands on me though he remained in the doorway, me in the bed. “I hurt everywhere.”
“Walk with me,” he said. Just like that we were in a cemetery as old as Nashville itself. He was forced to angle his body and squeeze between the close set of the headstones. The ancient monuments leaned toward one another confidingly as we approached.
“I worry what he’ll do to you, once he realizes what you are.”
“Who?” I asked. I scanned the headstones and the cemetery. We were alone and it was strange to see so much stationary space. There was always someone here, at Mount Olivet’s, black knee-length coats, flowers wrapped in cellophane or tissue paper. Now, there were only us, the headstones, and the trees, which stretched their bony branches down over us, protecting us. The landscape was too still, too silent. Except for da dum da dum da dum pulsating, where was that coming from?
Stone angels and hollowed trees bent easily in the wind, everything was so cold. Da dum da dum da dum. I put my hands in my pockets. Had I been wearing this jacket before? Where did this sudden press of heavy fabric come from? The wind in my hair still moved like warm hands.
Brinkley wavered as if made of water. “Do you remember him?”
“Who?” I asked. I watched horrified as his face began to melt.
He wasn’t Brinkley anymore. Not really. “Know thy enemy. Know thyself.”
“Who are you?” I asked and took a step back, but I didn’t really move. I couldn’t.
“I’m your friend,” he replied as if it was true. But he wasn’t Brinkley. Brinkley didn’t have green eyes or a wide-set, full mouth like that. Whoever this was wore Brinkley like a suit.
Still my body refused to move. “Where is Brinkley?”
Jesse. Can you hear me? Don’t you give up on us, damnit.
I turned around at the sound of my name but didn’t see anyone, only the little black bird from before perched on a tombstone in the distance.
“Listen to me.” Brinkley’s voice echoed through the cemetery but when I looked back, I didn’t see him anywhere. He’d disappeared, leaving me alone in the chilly cemetery with that bird, his voice carrying on the wind.
“Listen, listen,” the bird said. Opening and closing its beak like a crude puppet. “Listen.”
The one bird became three. Three became nine until a multitude of birds filled the cemetery. They screamed and flapped from narrow branches, cold stones, listen, cawing from the wings of poised angels, to drown out the echo of Brinkley’s voice. A horde of them like black blisters bubbled on the surface of the cemetery’s dying lawn.
“Brinkley,” I yelled, scared. “Brinkley, where are you?”
The birds melded together as a single black wall. This wall drew itself up, up even higher than the tallest oaks. It cast a shadow over the cemetery, over Nashville’s cityscape behind me, and washed out the last bit of sunlight. The skyscrapers too, with their eyes of glittering glass, watched from the distance until the shadow obscured the windowpanes with smoke.
And for just a moment I saw a face in the black mass. Like a face from a half-recalled memory, soft around the edges.
I stumbled backwards away from the dark wall of birds, but caught my ankle on something. I tripped. The sinking sensation in my guts rose and I jerked, scared to be falling.
“Brinkley!” I screamed, still hoping he’d come to my rescue. My throat vibrated for the first time, giving weight to the word. It burned like hell. There was too much light suddenly and the echoing da dum da dum I’d been hearing became my wailing heartbeat amplified through the monitor attached to my finger by a tiny cuff. “Brinkley?”
“Shhh, shhh, it’s okay,” Ally squeezed my hand. “We’re at the hospital.”
Eve—on my chest with the knife—right. The world shifted, coming into focus, yet Brinkley lingered. The smell of him, something like cinnamon and aftershave, tied me to the dream. “She was crying.”
I tried to sit up. Ally helped me by positioning the pillows. She spoke a mile a minute, but I was still half-lost in the cemetery—trying to remember that face I saw for just a moment, bubble up in the blackness before fading again. Did I know that face? “Wait. What?”
“Lane hid the camera inside the lamp,” she repeated. “It’s a good thing too because if he hadn’t we wouldn’t have seen her try to cut off your head.”
She gave some brief explanation about using the hotel’s wireless signal through his laptop, that these cameras were like the ones he’d installed at work, blah, blah blah.
“How long was I out?”
“Two whole days,” she said. “The database doesn’t have any entries for decapitation, but you weren’t completely decapitated anyway. You just lost too much blood.”
I lost blood all the time, so my AB+ blood type came in handy.
Replacement agents started an online database where we could log in and input what kind of death we experienced and how long it lasted and what sort of recovery time it took. With new entries coming in all the time, we can crosscheck a whole bunch at once, which keeps the estimations pretty accurate.
If Eve’s replacement had been normal, asphyxiation typically cost four hours. Decapitation or any kind of brain damage isn’t listed since Necronites don’t usually survive, but if it was a proper entry, Ally, Kirk, and Brinkley would’ve known what to expect and how to help me recover the quickest.
“Let me see.” I took the compact mirror Ally offered. I pulled the gauze down enough to see underneath. My skin was purple and bulging through little bla
ck stitches along my throat. Blood crusted and flaked between the black strings.
“Damn, I’m like Frankenstein’s monster,” I said, pouting.
She made a half-hearted gesture toward my chest. “It won’t scar like your autopsy.”
“Why would she try to cut off my head? Who cuts off peoples’ heads?” I asked. What was this growing void in my mind? Shock?
“Maybe she’ll confess,” Ally said. “Lane knocked her out with one punch. She’s in custody.”
I was genuinely surprised. “He hit a girl?”
“He said he believes in gender equality,” she answered, her voice cold. Clearly, they’d not become friends in their joint hall duty or in their efforts to save me.
I tried not to picture myself bleeding to death and failed. I imagined just what it might look like with my body in Lane’s arms, blood trailing all over the hotel’s cream-colored carpet. In my imagination, my head flopped all over the place, barely attached, as Lane stepped through the sparkly glass doors onto the sunny street.
“What about the guy?” I asked.
“He got away. It wasn’t until Lane replayed the tape that we saw him duck into the bathroom as soon as he heard us at the door. We ran right past him and he slipped out.”
“I want to see that tape,” I said.
“Too bad, the cops took it,” she replied and wiped my sweaty bangs off my forehead. “I’m just glad Lane installed the camera and stole Eve’s key card.”
“What, why?” I took a sip of water that she offered.
A rough knock at the door drowned out whatever she said next. A man entered with quick, purposeful steps. He wore a suit and his hair was slicked in a good-boy part across his forehead. His face was shaved. I bet he was older than he looked, which couldn’t be more than forty. Then again, I look like a Girl Scout on most days.
“Ms. Sullivan, as long as you’re coherent, I need to speak with you.”
“I’m heavily medicated.” No one had actually told me I was medicated, but I’d have guessed from the thick paste feeling in my mouth and how my eyes felt a bit too wide and slightly off-centered.
“This will be brief,” the suit replied. He came to the end of my bed, looking at Ally with a stare that certainly said ‘get the hell out of here.’ Instead, he said, “Can we have a moment alone, Ms. Gallagher?”
Ally didn’t look the least bit intimidated by this guy. When she stood up from her chair I realized she was half a foot taller than him.
“I’ll be outside if you need me, okay?” All the tenderness had returned to her voice. Eve’s attack must’ve really scared her if she’d forgiven me for screwing Lane already.
Once alone, the suit took Ally’s seat by the bed, scraping back the chair to a less intimate distance. He did extend his hand. “Agent Garrison,” he said. “Ms. Sullivan, if you can answer a few questions, the bureau would appreciate it.”
“Which bureau?”
“Your bureau,” he said. He said your as if to imply ownership, like we were in the same club. “FBRD.”
“Where’s Brinkley?” I asked.
Something dark danced behind his eyes. “Let’s come back to that. Can you tell me what happened today?”
“I just watched,” I said, blushing. Or at least I thought I was blushing. I certainly felt the heat rise in my face. “I don’t have any fetishes, if you’re asking about that. Most of my jobs have nothing whatsoever to do with sex, just death. This is the first sex job I’ve ever taken.”
His brow furrowed.
“Okay, that came out wrong. I wasn’t having any kind of sex. Actually she didn’t even have much sex—I think she was one of those dominators.”
“A dominatrix?” he asked.
“I was just trying to do a replacement. I did not pay her for sex if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“Let me be specific.” Clearly, he wanted me to focus. “Why did Eve Hildebrand try to kill you?”
My feelings hurt, along with everything else. “I don’t know why. I think I’m a pretty okay person. Will her review count? Since she tried to kill me, I don’t think her review should count.”
He shifted in his seat. “Did anything strange happen in that room?”
I arched my eyebrows. “Everything strange happened in that room.”
He touched the bridge of his nose as if I were stressing him out. Hello? I was the one who’d just been attacked here.
“Look,” I began. “One minute I was holding her hand to replace her, the next minute she’s on my chest with a machete.”
“An actual machete?”
“Well, no, but a really big knife.” I made a chopping motion with my hand.
“Have you ever met Eve before?”
“No.”
“Would you consider yourself suicidal?”
“What? No.” I frowned. I didn’t see any connection between those two statements. Maybe I was higher than I thought. “Not at all.”
In case he thought I was of low moral fiber I added, “And I didn’t even want her to be choked, but I let it happen because that’s what I was taught.”
“Yes, we don’t challenge fate,” he said. “But you see, you didn’t tell me anything about her being choked, only that she was having sex.”
I backed up and told him the whole story from the beginning, starting when the last guy showed up. I finished my statement by asking, “Why would she do that? If she wanted to kill me, couldn’t she just put a bullet in my brain?”
“Not if she wanted it to look like a replacement gone wrong,” he replied.
“It was definitely a replacement gone wrong.”
“Ms. Sullivan, remind me how you came to be an agent,” Garrison said. He leaned his weight into the armrest.
And I wasn’t high enough on painkillers to overlook this out-of-nowhere question. The smell of smoke and burning flesh threatened to overtake me again. Why was Eddie’s death so horribly vivid for me? Thinking about it around this agent made my teeth ache. How much did Garrison know? Surely Brinkley hadn’t ratted me out, right?
I decided a half-truth was safest. “I died in a barn fire. When I woke up two days later, Brinkley was there to recruit me. He’d brought me a cherry coke.”
Garrison nodded like he already knew this. “And your autopsy scar?”
“The jerk coroner freaked out and made a phone call when what he should have done was close me up.”
“Why did you accept his offer to be a death-replacement agent?”
“I love cherry coke.” And because I didn’t want to go to prison. “I also had medical bills and no job prospects. I needed to do something with myself.” The taste of ash flooded my mouth.
“Did he tell you why he chose you?”
“I’m rare,” I said. Duh. “We aren’t Cabbage Patch kids. You can’t just grow us.” The military tried that with AMPs and failed horribly.
“Didn’t you want to go home?” he asked.
I chose another half-truth. “I think it would’ve been too hard for her to look at me without thinking about what happened.”
“Your mother?” It wasn’t really a question. Garrison leaned forward. “Because her husband Eddie died in that fire too.”
I traced the cross-stitch pattern of my blanket with my eyes.
“Yeah, her husband died too.”
I didn’t dare say anything else. Brinkley had taught me that when in doubt, keep my mouth shut. This just so happened to be one of the first times I felt the pressing need to execute that right. Garrison finally broke the silence. “I have just a couple more questions. Why did you leave St. Louis?”
“What does this have to do with Eve?”
“Did something happen in St. Louis? Did something happen that made Agent Brinkley relocate you?”
I didn’t answer immediately and he shook me.
“What happened, Ms. Sullivan?” he asked. He thought using my name so much would make me pay attention. Frankly, it just annoyed me. He shook my shoulder again.
“Stop that!”
“Tell me what happened in St. Louis and I’ll let you sleep. Why did Brinkley move you?”
“A few agents died and Rachel got sick,” I told him. The room looked funny and dis-proportioned. Was the morphine kicking in? “Rachel got sick and Brinkley said—”
“Said?” He was on the edge of his seat.
“He said we needed to leave St. Louis before I got sick too.”
“Do you mean Rachel Wright?” he asked. He barely waited for me to nod.
“I don’t want to talk about that.”
“You realize you’ve broken the law, don’t you? If you don’t cooperate, I can make this much harder for you,” he warned.
“If I had a dollar for every agent who threatened to make my life miserable,” I muttered. The heat of my anger made my face hot and pushed the dulling effects of the drugs back a bit. Bringing up Rachel was a low blow. Now he wanted to threaten me? “I was told to do a job and I did it. I can’t help it if the client was a prostitute. I didn’t break the law just by being in the room with her. I didn’t pay her for sex or anything illegal.”
“When you agreed to become a death-replacement agent, you signed a contract agreeing to abide by our laws. You broke the law when you contracted an unauthorized replacement,” he said. “The rules we’ve established regarding death-replacing are specific and necessary. Disregarding them carries steep consequences.”
“We have the paperwork, and I know my contract,” I said. “In no way did I violate it.”
“There was no paperwork,” he said. “That’s $100,000 and a year in jail. At least.”
“Yeah-huh,” I said. “Brinkley wouldn’t break the rules like that. I know because he’s been shoving them down my throat for the last seven years. Eve was the one who’d tried to cut off my head,” I said. I tugged at the gauze, but accidently scratched the wound with a fingernail and cried out against the pain shooting all the way to my toes.
“Our division is working very hard to repair our image. We can’t have any replacements that would compromise the efforts of thousands of people, Ms. Sullivan.”
Dying for a Living (A Jesse Sullivan Novel) Page 5