Esprit de Corpse

by Gina X. Grant

  Chapter 12

  Immaculate Deception

  MY THROAT STILL hurt, but a few lozenges later, I had a sexy rasp and was working on a hall pass.

  “If you won’t go to a hospital, Theresa, will you at least stay here overnight?”

  I considered this. Now that I had a body again, it would need to sleep. Oh, sure. I could check my pockets to see what kind of car Theresa drove and where she lived. Oops. I should say had driven and had lived. I could explain away things like not knowing which locker was mine because I’d—Hello!—just come back from the dead.

  Both of us.

  But what if Theresa hadn’t lived alone? She could have parents, a partner, kids. It would only hurt them to see their beloved Theresa like this. Obviously the Theresa they knew and loved was never coming back, so why put them through this? No, better they remember Theresa at full capacity rather than as Reaper-pretending-to-be-Theresa-with-partial-amnesia. Not to mention the string of nightmare bruises circling my neck and eyes as red as those of many of my friends back in Hell.

  And what if Theresa’s family arranged to forcibly send me to the hospital and then I couldn’t come back here?

  No. Better I stay the night here and then get up and do my job again tomorrow. Theresa’s job, I meant, reminding myself not to get too comfortable in this body.

  Although it wasn’t like anyone would miss it . . .

  With some trepidation, I investigated an uncomfortable bulge in my uniform pants. It turned out to be nothing requiring a change in orientation but rather a heavy ring of keys. I hoped one of the small keys opened a locker. I’d wait until the night shift was well under way, then find the locker room and try them all until I found one that worked. Theresa seemed like the kind of gal who would keep a change of uniform in her locker. And I would need one by tomorrow.

  “Okay, Doc. I’ll stay.”

  “Great. We’ll transfer you to the secure ward.” He gestured toward a locked room. “It’s designed to keep patients in. But in this case, it’ll be to keep the other patients from getting at you.”

  He seemed to think this funny.

  A quick reconnoiter of the medical facility showed me a number of scary-looking patients sporting nasty bruises and wounds. And this was only the women’s section. I suddenly understood how dangerous the job of prison guard could be. That Theresa really was a saint! Had been . . . Whatever.

  I’d have to tell Mr. Kahn about this job next time he rushed through the Reincarnation Station. Might be a speedier route to a positive number in his Karmic Kredit Kolumn, I mean column, than being a member of the Frequent Diers Club, although he did insist membership had its privileges—like never living long enough to have to get a job.

  I lounged around for the rest of the day, slurping down soup and some well-chewed veggies. Damn, but my throat hurt.

  Dante dropped by, but I wasn’t inclined to hear him lecture me about how I should have known better. Blah, blah, blah. So I feigned sleep.

  Around six, the doctor left for the day, instructing the night nurse to call him should anything happen. The night nurse apparently knew Theresa. He seemed like a nice guy. When he stopped by to see if I needed anything, I asked him a favor.

  “I just want to . . .” I cleared my rough throat and tried again. Being strangled takes its toll. “I just want to go and say thank you to Conrad, I mean Shannon Iver. I won’t be long.”

  “You really should be resting. Doctor’s orders. You’re lucky not to have sustained permanent damage to your vocal chords.”

  “Please.” I tried batting my eyelashes. “I am a trained professional.”

  The nurse barked out a laugh and agreed to let me out into the hallway.

  It felt weird to have a body again. Especially one with a headache and really sore throat. Still, I kind of liked it. You don’t realize how much you miss something until you’re sucked back inside it.

  I walked along the quiet corridors following the signs for L wing. I’d reached a particularly barren section of hallway flanked by darkened administrative offices when I sensed someone behind me.

  I swung around in a low crouch, my hand automatically reaching for my scythe. The scythe that wasn’t there. Skeg. If only I’d had that kind of timely response when Conrad had first materialized in Shannon’s office, none of this would be happening now.

  “Dante!” I rasped. My Reaper took a step toward me, feet soundless on the hallway’s cheap carpeting.

  “Cara,” he responded. It occurred to me that he hadn’t called me cara since all this started. “I’m so sorry. How did this happen?”

  “I think I know. Remember when I got sucked back into my coma-toes, I mean, comatose body? I didn’t realize it at the time because they’d already unhooked all the monitors, but I must have died for a second, then gasped back to life. So when a body gets a reboot, it sucks in the nearest soul.”

  He scrubbed a hand over his face, brushing back his perpetually overlong bangs. We do have barbers in Hell, but he always returned with his hair in his eyes, which was totally crazy. I guess he liked the lunatic fringe.

  “Yes, I see that could happen. Maybe there’s a way we can work with that.”

  “Right. I’m on my way to talk to Conrad now. Where’s Shannon?” I suddenly noticed her missing. While I was jealous of the attention Dante paid to her, I didn’t want anything bad to happen to her, either. “She’s still here, right? On the Coil?”

  “Yes, I left her to watch her father. Since she has no way of reaching me, we had best get back there.”

  “Before we go, I want to say I’m sorry I’ve been acting badly. I—You—Well, you know I have this jealous streak, right?”

  “As wide as the Styx and twice as green.” Dante gifted me with his best I-love-you smile. “It’s flattering but cara, it’s also insulting.”

  I hung my head, Theresa’s straight dark braid brushed against my burning cheeks. “I know.” Now my voice cracked as well as rasped.

  “I have missed you. When you act jealous, we cannot be together.”

  My heart skipped a beat. Which was a bit unnerving now that I had an actual heart again. Did Theresa suffer from arrhythmia? “Ah, Dante.” This time I whispered, thereby avoiding all vocal frailties. “C’mere.” I held out my arms and stepped up to kiss him.

  Smack!

  I smacked all right, but not on his lips. Instead, I face-planted right through him and landed on the floor with a splat.

  “You’re not corporeal?” I asked, pushing myself into a seated position, rubbing my knee. I’d landed hard on the right one. Great, now I added knees, palms and chin to the parts of Theresa’s body that hurt. Good thing she wasn’t going to want it back because no matter how saintly she was, she’d be pissed at having it returned damaged.

  “We have been away from Hell for some time, Kirsty. As you learned during your Reaper training, our afterlifeforce diminishes the longer we are away. At this point, I can manifest only as a visible and audible spirit. As time moves on, that too will fade.”

  We had studied it in school, but I couldn’t recall that section in detail. I wished I had Amber’s photographic memory. We weren’t even two weeks out of Reaper training and already my book-learning was fading just like Dante. And Shannon.

  I stuck out my hand for a lift up, realized what I’d done and climbed to my feet under my own steam. “Let’s go talk to Conrad. Now we have something to negotiate with.” I gestured toward the body I now wore as I limped down the hall.

  “After you, Beatrice.”

  “Beatrice? Is she back?” I asked, glancing around.

  Apparently, a fading Reaper can still blush. “Kirsty, I meant, Kirsty, of course.”

  I stopped walking and turned to him, holding up a hand when he opened his mouth to speak. “Don’t. Even.” I said.

  Not having the sense to shut the skeg up
, he said, “Look, Beatrice. It’s been a rough couple of days.” A look of horror bloomed on his face when he realized he’d screwed up again. He glared at me like I was the problem, activated his scythe, and popped away. I might have been slightly more at fault on the jealousy thing, but this time, he was in big trouble.

  I’d liked Beatrice, but I couldn’t begin to compete with her.

  I made my way to cell block B in L wing, arriving to find the lights dimmed for the night. A few more steps brought me to the cell where Conrad sat on the edge of the lower bunk, staring at the floor.

  Dante stepped out of the shadows, an unrepentant look on his face.

  I chose to be the consummate professional, putting our troubles on hold until later—assuming there was a later. Instead, I looked around. “Where is she? She’s gone. Oh, my God, she’s gone!”

  “They moved her across the hall,” Conrad responded, no doubt thinking Theresa was speaking to him. His voice, like Theresa’s, was hoarse from Maddy’s attempted strangulation.

  I turned toward the cell opposite Conrad’s. Someone had cleaned it since we got here. I spotted Maddy’s spangled top tossed on the floor. Her grating snore rolled off the bottom bunk in waves. Apparently she only wanted the top bunk when there was a chance Conrad might have wanted it.

  Conrad had been sitting up on his bunk, probably feeling safe for the first time in days with two sets of bars between him and his former cellmate. He rose now and crossed his cell to face me. “They locked that crazy bitch away from me,” he croaked. While I now had the sexy voice of a late-night DJ, Conrad sounded like he had a bad case of bronchitis.

  But Dante knew I hadn’t been talking to Conrad and I hadn’t been asking after Maddy. I’d meant Shannon, of course. “Where is she?”

  “Do not worry, Kirsty. Your friend is standing beside me. You cannot see her now.”

  “Can’t see who?” Conrad asked looking directly at Dante. Then his brain caught up with what he’d heard and he swung his gaze to me. “Kirsty?”

  Oh, sure. Now someone gets my name right.

  I realized that Conrad could see and hear Dante, but had no idea Shannon was there. That worked perfectly with my plan. Now to play the player.

  “Yes, Conrad, it’s me. Kirsty. See, I can possess bodies, too. Just like you.” I did my best to keep my voice light. It hurt like hell to mask the raspiness, but I wanted him to think this body was in tip-top shape.

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “What do you want?” Suspicion rode the edge of his rough voice.

  “First, Conrad, I wanted to thank you for saving Theresa Mudders’ life.” His gaze flicked down to my uniform name badge. She’d died for him and he hadn’t even bothered to learn her name.

  “Well, um. Of course. I couldn’t let her die.”

  My resolve threatened to dissolve. Had Conrad actually done something for someone else? Someone he didn’t even know?

  “How would that look at my hearing?”

  But of course. It was all about him. It was always all about him.

  “Ah, so you saved her to make yourself look good, is that it?”

  He puffed out his cheeks, eyes jumping around, looking anywhere but at me. “Well, that was the icing on the cake, of course. But I really wanted to save Lisa.”

  “Theresa,” I corrected. I drew a deep breath, actually needing one, to force the following words out. “Well, whatever your motivation, you accomplished something noble today so you deserve to be recognized for it. Thank you.” I surprised myself by realizing I meant it.

  Conrad met my gaze for a moment, then he quickly looked away. He might have manipulated a lot of people into a lot of things, but he must rarely have earned anyone’s genuine gratitude. He cleared his throat but didn’t speak.

  “So while you’re doing noble things, I’m asking you again if you could see your way clear to returning Shannon’s body to her. You’ve lived a long and wonderful life. It’s her turn now. You know it’s the right thing to do.”

  Conrad took a step back, as if I could somehow force him to relinquish his daughter’s body. “Don’t be ridiculous. Why would I do that?”

  “Firstly, because she’s fading. Unlike mine was, Shannon’s body isn’t lying somewhere with a room for rent sign on her chest. It has a soul—you. So she’s excess and excess gets trimmed. If she’s out of her body much longer, she’ll fade away to nothing.” I reached one hand through the bars, imploring him. “If she fades away, then her soul is done. Nada. Zip. She won’t go to Hell. She won’t ever get to Heaven and she won’t get reincarnated. She’ll just . . . fade.”

  Conrad fidgeted, something I never thought I’d see him do. “So give her that body,” he said, gesturing at me. “You’re dead so you shouldn’t have it.”

  “Right back at you,” I said, enjoying watching him squirm. “She can’t. She’s grown too weak to leap into any body but her own.” If Conrad noticed I wasn’t arguing to give the body back to its rightful owner, he didn’t mention it. He probably figured that since he didn’t care about Theresa, I didn’t either. His only frame of reference for viewing the world was his own selfish point of view. I imagined he’d always worked from that distrustful stance.

  “Listen, Conrad. You know that Dante and I, as Reapers, cannot force you to give up that body, right?”

  “Yes, I’m counting on it.”

  “Okay. You always taught me to find common ground when negotiating, so we can both agree on that, right?”

  Conrad looked both proud of himself for having mentored me well and suspicious as hell for where I was going with this. Conrad, you put the “con” in conflicted.

  Finally he jerked his head up and down once. “Go on.”

  “Okay. And you may know that the reason Dante and I haven’t taken Shannon’s soul back to Hell with us to file a Wrongful Termination Appeal is because of how long it took me to get my Wrongful Reapage Appeal through the system.”

  “And it was denied,” he tossed in my face with glee.

  “And it was denied. So we don’t want to take that chance. We’re hoping instead that you’ll see reason and give your daughter her body back voluntarily.”

  “Not going to happen,” he said conversationally. He was beginning to enjoy this since he held all the cards.

  “But giving Shannon’s body back to its rightful owner voluntarily will reflect positively on you when you do get to Hell. It’s the same ‘icing’ logic as you applied to saving Theresa today.”

  “I’m not worrying that far in the future. I’ll have years between now and when this body grows old and dies. I’ll find someone else to give me an extension between now and then.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Conrad.” Dante had joined the conversation. He could see where I was going with this even if Conrad hadn’t yet figured it out. Of course Dante knew how Hell worked whereas Conrad didn’t. “I’m going to have to check in shortly or they’ll send someone looking for us. Our scythes have GPS trackers in them so we can’t run, we can’t hide.”

  “So you’ll get in trouble. What’s that to me?”

  “There are a lot more powerful people in Hell than us Reapers. Just because Kirsty and I can’t evict you from Shannon’s body doesn’t mean there aren’t some terrible and powerful beings that can. Remember Charon the ferryman you met when we brought you in? Do you really want to run afoul of him?”

  Conrad began to look worried. I noticed Shannon’s manicure was a wreck—even worse than back in the precinct when he’d been picking at the plastic cuffs. Conrad had chewed Shannon’s nails down to the quick. Maybe he wasn’t as confident as he’d seemed all along.

  He opened his mouth to speak, closing it again without saying anything. I could almost hear the synapses of Shannon’s brain firing. Finally, he said, “Let ’em come. I don’t believe you. I’m a demon myself now, and other than being big and
scary, the gig doesn’t seem to come with any special powers other than body possession. So I think you’re lying. The only reason you haven’t reported in and got this imaginary backup to come evict me is that they don’t exist. All that’s going to happen to you when you go report in is you’ll get in trouble. Ha!”

  “Are you sure about that, Conrad? Are you willing to risk your life?”

  Now we wait. Let that percolate.

  Conrad walked away from the bars and began pacing the length of his cell, muttering, probably forming and discarding plans. He paced and muttered, muttered and paced.

  I was beginning to lose patience when he finally snapped his fingers and returned to stand before us. His eyes glittered like cheap black diamonds, accented with a little bit of red from the petechial hemorrhaging. Did I mention I watched a lot of CSI?

  “All right. Here’s what I’m willing to do. If you can get someone else to sign that contract amendment granting me twenty-five more years, then I’ll vacate this body. Whether Shannon gets back into it or not is up to you.”

  Bingo. This was going according to plan.

  “And when those twenty-five more years are up, you’ll come quietly?” Dante asked.

  “I’m going to be honest with you because I believe you’ve been honest with me. I will try and get another extension before then, but if I can’t, then yes, I’ll come quietly.”

  Beside me, I heard Dante whispering, then to me he said, “Shannon says the amendment is in her office. Kirsty, do you have Theresa’s cell phone?”

  I patted my pockets and discovered an early-model iPhone in a pink plastic case. Pink. Huh. I never would have considered Theresa the pink type. I checked the charge and the reception—nearly full and four out of five bars. It was a miracle. I checked over my shoulder in case it actually was, but angels, fallen or otherwise, were noticeable by their absence.

  Good.

  “Here.” I thrust the phone through the bars. “Call Willa and tell her to bring the contract amendment to the courthouse tomorrow.”