Esprit de Corpse

by Gina X. Grant

  Conrad dialed from memory—had it only been days since he’d been CEO of Iver PR? I screwed up my forehead and counted on my fingers. There was the day he and I had died, then the week Hell had skipped when the time engineers had jump-started the time-syncing machine, then the day Shannon had been arrested. Then the bail hearing. Ten days. I shook my head. Ten days from my death to now. It seemed so much longer, even taking the missed week into account.

  Conrad left a terse order on Willa’s office voice mail.

  “There,” he said. “She’ll hear that when she gets in tomorrow and bring the amendment to me.” He pocketed the phone and frankly, I didn’t care. Let him call all the lawyers and press conferences his evil heart desired.

  “So to be clear,” I said, grasping the bars and leaning into them. My throat hurt and I was worried I might strain my injured vocal cords and end up unable to speak at all. “When Willa brings the contract amendment by, I’ll sign it in blood—Theresa Mudders’ blood—and the soul of Theresa Mudders, which is standing right here next to Shannon, will be sacrificed so you can have twenty-five more years.”

  Dante looked at me sharply. I willed him not to say anything and for once, it worked.

  “Sure, whatever. I don’t care who, as long as there’s blood on the signature line.”

  “And at that time, you’ll vacate Shannon’s body for this one and we’ll do what we can to re-ensoul Shannon.”

  “I said so already, didn’t I?”

  “Conrad Percival Iver, on behalf of her benighted Underlordship, Lucy Phurr, I hereby decree that thou hast made a Deal to which thou must sticketh.” I spat on my hand and held it out.

  “Deal.” A smarmy grin spread over the face Conrad wore, as he too spat on his borrowed palm and clasped it against mine. A single pump was enough for me and I ripped my hand away, wiping it on Theresa’s uniform.

  “Get some sleep,” I told him. “You’ve got your day in court tomorrow.”

  I turned on my heel and stalked back the way I’d come. Dante awaited me in the deserted corridor again. “Kirsty, what are you up to? You know we can’t make Deals without official sanction and you lied about Theresa’s soul being available for trade.”

  It was my turn to smile smugly. “That’s right, Fred.” He started at my use of a name other than his. “But in spite of that, I just made a helluva Deal. Lucy would be so proud.”

  Or would she? Was taking the devil’s name in vain one of the seven deadly sins?

  Chapter 13

  Clearing the Heir

  I STALKED AWAY from Dante, returning to my room in the prison infirmary.

  “Everything okay, Theresa?” The night nurse stuck his head in.

  “Who? Oh, yes, of course. Thanks, uh, Jim.” I hoped I’d gotten his name right and not sounded like I’d hit my head. I needed to be given a clean bill of health in order to accompany Conrad to court tomorrow.

  I lay in bed staring at the wall clock. Even it was behind bars. They must have worried it would make a break for it. After all, tempus fugit.

  Exhausted from having a body again, I fell asleep almost immediately. I dreamt of swarms of staplers buzzing around me like giant metal gnats. They grew scorpion-style tails similar to the dreaded gee-gnomes, only with staples for stingers. I kicked and hopped out of their metallic range, screaming for Dante to help me, but could only make muffled, underwater noises.

  Then I dreamt the swirling vortex of evil reopened, but instead of sucking things in, a figure appeared in the gateway between Hell and Heller. At first it looked like the angelic Beatrice. I smiled at her, but the smile melted off my face as the interdimensional being morphed into Rod the jerk from the Reaper Academy. Instead of a scythe, a gavel or a flaming sword, he brandished a vacuum cleaner wand hooked up to some sort of jet-pack strapped to his back. In my dream, I laughed in Rod’s face, singing “Who ya gonna call?” The laughter died on my lips when he activated the device and sucked my soul into his backpack of evil.

  “Lemme out! Lemme out! Lemme—!”

  I sat straight up in bed, lungs heaving, blood racing, heart pounding. And I had all those things once again.

  “You okay, Theresa?” the night nurse called.

  Theresa, who? Oh, right. I was Theresa. I was alive again. I pushed my hair back from my sweaty face, willing the adrenaline rush to subside. “Just a nightmare,” I panted, voice less hoarse than yesterday.

  “Time to get up anyway. Here’s your breakfast tray. I’m heading off. Day nurse has gone to get herself a coffee.”

  I nodded, accepting the food and hoping for a shower.

  Twenty minutes later I was fed, showered and lacing up Theresa’s comfortable shoes.

  On the way back from my Deal-making meeting with Conrad in the night I’d taken a side trip to the women’s locker room to scavenge some clean clothes. I pulled Theresa’s fresh uniform on and futzed with my new hair. I brushed it forward and then combed it back. After trying several complicated styles, I wove it into the short braid Theresa usually wore. She had been a very attractive woman even with a severe hair style and no makeup.

  Hands on hips, I swiveled right, then left. Theresa looked pretty good on me. She was slim, fit and pretty. Maybe Shannon could have this body if we couldn’t manage to oust Conrad from hers. It was a backup plan.

  Or maybe I’d keep it.

  I left the infirmary thinking I could stay in this body. Nobody would miss it. I’d been cheated out of mine, after all. I could have a life on the Coil and still be a Reaper after I’d lived to a ripe old age and died in my sleep.

  Dante had said he’d wait for me. Or maybe we weren’t together anymore. I was pretty pissed at him for calling me the wrong name . . . again! But I was willing to forgive him, if he apologized hard enough. If only—Ow!

  I hadn’t been watching where I was going and had walked into a door, expecting to pass right through it.

  I rubbed the fast-rising egg on my forehead. Nice. Now I had a matching set: a purple lump on my forehead plus maroon and black finger marks ringing my borrowed throat. I stepped back and opened the door first, then walked through it.

  Why would anybody want a body when they could move about the Coil without needing to eat, sleep or pee. It was liberating, freeing. Like running around naked only with clothes on.

  Besides, if I was alive and Dante was dead, could we still have sex? Would we be able to keep the romance in necromancy? Assuming we still had a romance.

  I rubbed my head some more and tried to swallow past my sore throat. My stomach felt queasy. Was that a cramp coming on? Five minutes ago I’d considered staying in Theresa’s body. Now I couldn’t wait to get out of this living carcass. Conrad could have it, cramps and all.

  I grabbed a coffee and joined my escort detail. Maddy’s usual guard had her prisoner cuffed and ready to go. In all the body swap excitement, I’d forgotten Maddy’s preliminary hearing was piggybacking on Conrad’s.

  The drive into town was busier today, largely because I had a body and a job. The job was easy: keep your eyes on your charge and your hand on your weapon. The body wasn’t. I jostled and bounced like before, once again earning myself a numb butt.

  And I had to pee. Again.

  I had my chance when we arrived at the courthouse. We guards escorted the prisoners to the ladies’ room, where one at a time we all used the facilities. While Maddy’s guard took her turn, I whispered to Conrad the final details of our arrangement.

  Then we all trooped back into the hallway and plunked down on the long wooden bench to await our hearings.

  Willa hadn’t yet shown up with the contract amendment. We’d have to deal with that after court.

  Everything hinged on that amendment.

  What if Willa really had quit when Conrad was arrested? What if she called in sick this morning and hadn’t picked up her message? I bit Theresa’s lower
lip until I tasted blood. I had no scythe now to pop over and check. Dante wasn’t in any shape to do so. Oh, wait. I borrowed a cell phone from Maddy’s guard, dialing Iver PR’s main number from memory. Impatiently, I clicked my way through the company directory, wishing we still had a receptionist. “Oh, hi. Willa? This is Officer Theresa Mudders calling from the courthouse. Your boss asked me to call you. Her hearing is this morning and she’s just wondering . . . You are? Great. See you soon.”

  One detail taken care of.

  Conrad’s lawyer, Gill Hammerhead, arrived just as Shannon was called in. We moved quietly into the courtroom, sitting where Gill indicated. It was much more crowded today, with members of the press as well as nosy people looking for free entertainment.

  No sooner had we taken our seats than we were asked to rise again. The court clerk called the proceeding to order and read the charges.

  Then the judge made her opening remarks.

  “Allow me to remind everyone here today that this is a preliminary hearing only. The Crown prosecutor will present the witnesses he intends to call should this case go to trial. Ms. Iver, via her counsel, Gill Hammerhead, will be permitted to cross-examine these witnesses.” Judge Wilson drew off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. She looked tired already and it was only ten. “Lastly, let me remind you that we are not here today to determine innocence or guilt, but rather to determine whether or not there is sufficient evidence to justify a trial. Are we quite clear?”

  The Crown called his first witnesses, Francesca Tick, to the stand. To think I’d once considered Frannie a friend. She swore on the Bible to tell the truth and reiterated what she’d heard when she’d eavesdropped outside of Shannon’s office. The court clerk played the recording of Shannon wishing me dead over the room’s audio system. Couldn’t people hear that she was just being wistful? There was no actual intent to kill there.

  But the Crown prosecutor was good. He managed to make Frannie out to be a loyal employee who had accidentally recorded her boss’s phone conversation. “After all,” he said, “If Ms. Tick had been intending to record this incriminating evidence, she would have recorded both sides of the conversation.”

  It was hard to argue with his illogic.

  Then it was Gill Hammerhead’s turn. The Crown might have been good, but Hammerhead was better. Appearing to be a nice, caring guy, he asked Frannie, “How, exactly, does one accidentally stand outside one’s boss’s office and hit record on their iPhone and then stand there for five minutes?”

  Hammerhead revealed Frannie to be the conniving bitch she really was. I hoped that would undermine her testimony. Behind me someone whispered that Gill’s performance redefined bombastic. I wished I’d hung onto Theresa’s phone so I could have looked up the original definition.

  After that, the Crown had no further questions. Frannie stepped down from the witness box, anger and frustration staining her cheeks bright red.

  I studied the judge but she was a hard read, although I finally settled on bored. Maddy’s guard had told me Judge Wilson had been around awhile and all these attempts to skew the testimony were wasted on her.

  In my borrowed heart, I found myself cheering for the Crown prosecutor. I wanted that bastard Conrad to pay for having stolen my life and then bashing my brains in. I had to remind myself that Conrad wasn’t the one on the stand here today, but Shannon. My best friend who’d had nothing to do with my death.

  But it was hard.

  I aimed an encouraging smile in what I hoped was Shannon’s direction, although of course I couldn’t see her. Dante gave me a thumbs-up from the back of the courtroom. He looked worried, though, and kept glancing at the empty space beside him. Had she faded further since I’d donned this mortal body?

  Then Detective Leo took the stand. He’d been first on scene the day of my murder. “The chain of evidence” as he called it, remained unbroken. That meant the stapler had been in police possession since it had been secured by hospital security at the crime scene. Oh, look at moi. Have I watched too much CSI or what?

  The Crown picked up a big baggie, dangling it in the witness’s face. “To the best of your knowledge, Detective Leo, is this stapler the murder weapon with which poor Kirsty d’Arc, having just awoken from a yearlong coma, was savagely beaten to death?”

  Hammerhead leapt to his feet. “Objection, Your Honor. My esteemed colleague is using pejorative descriptions and leading the witness.”

  “Sustained. If there were a jury involved, I’d direct them to ignore the Crown’s offensive adjectives, but since this is only the preliminary hearing, I’ll just direct myself. Is that okay?” She glared at Hammerhead, absolutely not asking for his approval.

  He blushed a nice dark red that matched my bruises, mumbling, “Thank you, Your Honor.”

  “If you could just answer the question, Detective.”

  “It is, but—”

  “And on this stapler, laid down in layers, were found the fingerprints of a number of people, were there not?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And whose were the final set of fingerprints on this vicious—I apologize, Your Honor. On this . . .” He paused to let everyone fill in the blank with their own pejorative adjective. “Stapler.”

  Somebody snickered in the back of the room. I whipped my head around, but several of the observers appeared to be barely keeping it together. What was funny about a stapler being used to bash in my brains?

  My head began to throb again.

  I should have tossed that thing out the window the day it reared up and slashed my hand instead of kidding myself that it had been a hangover-induced hallucination. No doubt Conrad would just have grabbed a handy IV pole to use to club me to death instead. Or worse, a bedpan! Then everyone would be laughing.

  “The final set of fingerprints on the stapler are those of Shannon Iver. But—No, don’t cut me off again. Something new was discovered this morning.”

  Hammerhead leapt to his feet again. “Your Honor, we were not apprised of new evidence. We declare a mistrial.”

  “Neither were we, Your Honor. For once, the Crown and defense agree. Mistrial.” The Crown had the very bad sense to actually return to his seat and begin gathering his papers like he was done for the day.

  “Hold on there, Counsel. Nobody’s going anywhere. This is my courtroom and I’ll decide what’s permissible and what’s not. Since both sides were unprepared for this, I figure that makes you even, so we will proceed until such time as I declare mistrial. Which I won’t be doing, because this isn’t a trial. Do I need to remind you again that this is a preliminary hearing, which exists for the express purpose of addressing these kinds of events?” She aimed extremely punitive looks at both lawyers, then, with a kinder expression, turned back to the witness box. “Go ahead, Detective. I want to hear what you’ve got.”

  Detective Leo reached for the plastic baggie. He unzipped it and drew the plastic off the stapler, still holding it by one corner of the bag.

  “As you can see, this stapler is constructed of three metal components all hinged at one end. This is the top. For description’s sake, we’ll refer to it as the ‘upper jaw.’” He pulled a pen from his pocket and used it to point at the top section, where the name of the manufacturer was printed in sprawling cursive. “Next, you have a chrome channel where you insert the rows of staples.” He pointed at the silver metal component. “The ‘lower jaw’ if you will.”

  “Lastly we have the black metal base. On this particular model, if you press this button, here . . .” He flipped it over, struggling to pull the plastic baggie out of the way, keep hold of the stapler and point with the pen. Somehow he managed. Kali would be impressed. “It swings out of the way so that you can use it like a staple gun. Like for instance to staple papers to a cork board.”

  Around the courtroom, people were nodding. The judge looked ready to kick the detective into higher gear.
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  “Our initial forensics processing revealed that the final prints on the stapler are Shannon Iver’s, as I’ve just said. But we had then sent this stapler to a consulting company with highly specialized equipment. We only received the results this morning along with the stapler itself.”

  He now used his pen to pry open the stapler’s evil jaws. The spring-loaded metal clip that forced the staples forward squealed as it retracted, sliding along the metal edges of the “lower jaw.”

  Shudders crawled up and down my spine. The back of Theresa’s hand throbbed as if she’d been the one bitten that day in my office.

  “The thing we found out was that while there was blood and brain tissue on the outside of the stapler, there was none inside where the staples are housed. So it appears that the stapler’s ‘mouth’ was closed when it was used to bash—I mean, bring an end to Ms. d’Arc’s life. Afterward, the assailant must have then dropped the stapler. The jaws would have sprung open. We experimented with another stapler of the same model and it tended to open when dropped. So, according to the evidence, it was at that point that Ms. Iver picked up the stapler.”

  “Objection!” the Crown cried.

  The judge rolled her eyes. Unlike Judge Julius, she didn’t remove them first in order to do so. “Is there more, Detective?”

  “Yes. Upon examination, we were able to determine that one of Conrad Iver’s fingerprints is divided here. Half on the top part of the stapler—the ‘top jaw.’ And half is on the silver part. The upper and lower jaws were obviously closed when Mr. Iver held it. Where his fingerprints lie, there is neither blood or brain matter.”

  “And Ms. Iver’s prints?” Judge Wilson prodded.

  “Yes, getting there, Your Honor. Shannon Iver’s prints are only on the top part, actually wrapping around the ‘upper jaw.’ That clearly demonstrates that she held the stapler while it was open. All of her prints overlay the body fluids.”

  “And you didn’t notice this the first time.” The judge peered down at him, her face bland while her eyes bore into him.