Debriefing the Dead (The Dead Series Book 1)

by Kerry Blaisdell

  There’d be no point in letting Jason come to Turkey with us if I didn’t trust him. But the thing about suspicions is, once you have them, they tend to stick. And the bottom line was, I knew almost nothing about Jason’s past, his present, or his future plans.

  Except that he had cash, could drive a boat, and would schlep me and Geordi across the Mediterranean at the drop of a hat. Which pretty much all worked in my favor, and didn’t have an apparent benefit for him, besides maybe hiding him from the Dioguardis. Who’d only be interested in him because of me.

  I blew out a breath. They heard me and turned, Geordi looking solemn as ever, Jason with a big grin lighting his face.

  “Look what we found!” He held up something small and rectangular, and as I got closer, I realized what it was.

  “Geordi’s passport! Where was it?”

  Jason rested his other hand on Geordi’s shoulder, looming behind him like some sort of bizarrely protective bird of prey. Geordi let him, and a little more tension eased out of me.

  Jason said, “When you didn’t come back, we men decided to stretch our legs. Then Geordi here needed to answer the call of nature.”

  “I peed in the bushes,” Geordi piped up, startling me.

  He’d been so quiet, but now he had that look little boys get when allowed to pee outside. Like he’d gotten away with something, and the fact that it involved a body part girls didn’t have made it even more special. Of course, I have a commode in the shop, but why spoil his fun? He looked almost normal for a second.

  “Cool,” I said, earning an actual smile, which warmed me even more.

  “Anyway,” Jason said, “the passport was out here on the sidewalk. Lily probably dropped it in all the commotion.”

  This was a stroke of luck. Without the passport, my complicated existence would be even more of a pain. I took it from Jason and flipped it open. Thank God. As soon as she left Nick, Lily’d gone back to Finch, and the passport listed that as Geordi’s surname. If asked, I could either explain he was my nephew, or pretend he was my son. I didn’t know exactly how far-reaching the Dioguardis were, but my thought was, very far. Maybe even in Turkey. Flashing the passport of Geordi Dioguardi around could set off a bunch of red flags.

  Though I suppose Nick’s family would know Lily’s maiden name and add “Geordi Finch” to their list of seven-year-olds to track down. Duh. Maybe I should have used a fake name after all.

  Maybe I should start now.

  I turned to Jason. “Do you know anything about getting fake ID’s?”

  He looked a lot less offended by the question than I would’ve liked. “I don’t. But I know someone who does.” He paused, then added casually, “He can take care of Nick’s car, too.”

  Great. I think.

  ****

  We drove back to my place, and Geordi and I switched to the Peapod. I still didn’t have my keys, but I added “hot-wiring a car” to Jason’s list of previously unknown talents, and we followed as he drove the Beamer to his friend’s place.

  I didn’t ask what “taking care of” the car meant, but it sounded smart. For one thing, it had a GPS unit, and if the Dioguardis didn’t already know Nick was missing, they would soon, and would put a trace on his car. For another, it now seemed politic not to leave my psycho ex-brother-in-law’s car at a crime scene about which I, once again, planned to pretend total ignorance. Not that there was any “scene” left, but still.

  Physically, I felt better and better, like I’d never been dead. Except I was starving. The cheese had evaporated long ago, and my stomach was about to digest itself if I didn’t eat again soon. When it growled, Geordi giggled, and I marveled at the adaptability of children. Lily’s death would hit him hard, but right now he was in survival mode. So was I.

  Could I really track down the Rousseaux and take the rock? Michael had called me resourceful, but this was out of my depth. Where does one get the experience needed to defeat Satan’s minions? I didn’t even go to Mass regularly. Okay, at all. The extent of my knowledge of Good and Evil was that—hopefully—Good won. But I had no clue how to make that happen.

  And before I could defeat the Rousseaux, I had to find them. Another monumental task. Turkey isn’t exactly small, and I didn’t know the first thing about tracking people down.

  Maybe Jason did.

  And…back to my suspicions. Just because he’d played the playboy, and had suddenly dropped the act, didn’t mean everything was a lie. Twice now he’d offered me unconditional friendship, right when I needed it. I’d leaned on him when Vadim died, and wanted to lean on him now. Who else did I have, besides Geordi? And he needed me to be strong.

  I glanced in the rearview mirror. Forget Monsieur Lebeau’s bedtime. It was long past Geordi’s. And mine. At least he didn’t have to drive. He’d fallen asleep with his head on his backpack, looking sweet and troubled and about to break my heart.

  How could I ever leave him? How had Lily?

  How had she left me?

  Ahead of us, Jason turned right onto a side street, and two blocks later, stopped near a dark tenement fronted by a tiny weed patch of a yard, which was mostly taken up by an old, rusty American Eagle motorcycle parked on the dead grass. Another car had turned off the main route behind us, but disappeared around the first corner, leaving us alone on the deserted street. We’d been driving for twenty minutes, and I had no clue where we were. Smart. If I planned to defeat badass demons, I should pay more attention to what I was doing.

  Jason got out and came toward us. I put the car in neutral—I didn’t want to shut it off, in case we couldn’t start it again—then opened the window.

  He held out a hand. “Passports?” I gave him ours, and he glanced at Geordi, sacked out in the back, then said, “Wait here. It won’t take long.”

  Which was fine, except I had no idea where “here” was. This didn’t look like the greatest neighborhood, but then, people who faked passports and “took care of” dead creeps’ cars probably didn’t live the high life. Or maybe I was prejudiced by the rundown apartment buildings, wash lines linking them window to window, like a bizarre multi-level spiderweb. Or by the quantity of stripped down cars on the street, many up on blocks and missing essential parts, like wheels or engines.

  Across the street, someone had attempted to turn their building’s weed patch into a garden, and the hope implicit in the miniature roses and half-stunted marigolds bordering the walk heartened me. Maybe in daylight, this was a very nice middle-class quartier, like my own.

  Yeah, right.

  “Hurry back,” I said to Jason.

  He flashed a quick grin, then was gone.

  We’d been waiting about five minutes when I heard the first sirens wailing from the main street behind us, followed shortly by a second set, then a third. Something big was going down, and I held my breath, praying they wouldn’t come this way. They passed our street and instead turned off a block or two farther along, and I let out my breath in relief.

  This was good for two reasons. First, it meant whatever crime was committed hadn’t happened right here, allowing me to maintain my illusion of safety. Second, les flics wouldn’t be swarming around, noticing a stolen BMW in a non-Beamer neighborhood, with the missing mafia owner’s ex-sister-in-law parked behind it. And, oh-by-the-way, Mr. Mafia’s kidnapped son in the backseat.

  A cool breeze brought the spicy sent of the roses from across the way into the car, and Geordi let out a soft whuff! and shifted in his sleep. I turned to power the window up, then stifled a shriek when I saw the man right beside the car, glaring at me. Why hadn’t I heard him run up? His chest heaved with large, gasping breaths, and sweat darkened his clothes.

  Not sweat—I looked closer and saw blood. Lots of blood.

  “Police—aidez-moi!”

  He gripped the car door, filling the window. His light-colored shirt was shredded, his chest sporting a gaping, ragged hole—probably a gunshot. From my limited knowledge of physics, and my own recent experience, it looked
like an exit wound, and appeared to be right where his heart should be. He shouldn’t have been able to stand, let alone threaten me. His eyes were wild, and heat rolled off him in waves. Plus, the stench was awful, acrid and metallic and sickly sour-sweet, and a wave of nausea clawed my gut.

  “Aidez-moi!”

  I scanned the block. Where was Jason? Even from a few blocks away, the cops might hear if I honked or screamed, but I didn’t want to involve them if I didn’t have to.

  “I’ll help you,” I said to the man. “But please, step away so I can get out. I can’t do anything, stuck in the car.”

  The man’s eyes focused on my face for an intense moment. The corded tendons in his hands stood out in sharp relief, and his knuckles, white from his hold on the doorframe, were scraped and dirty. Maybe he’d been in a fight before he got shot. We stared at each other, and I willed my heart rate down, forcing my expression to stay neutral. After what seemed like hours, he released the door and stepped back.

  The second he moved, I put the car in gear and floored it.

  Or, I tried to. The downside to eco-friendly cars—or at least, to my eco-friendly car—is they only go sixty minutes on a charge. Normally, this isn’t a problem, as I only drive a few miles a day, and charge it overnight. But today I’d driven it all day, back and forth between the shop and the docks, then my apartment, and now the long trip here, never thinking to plug it in.

  So instead of the dramatic, low-speed getaway I’d planned, the car wheezed once and died. But not before the man figured out what I was up to. He snarled, baring his teeth, and reached through the window. I tried to raise it, but he got an arm in and wrenched the door open, then pulled me out by my shirt, lifting me off my feet.

  “Aidez-moi!” he demanded, shaking me until my teeth rattled. “Help me!”

  “All right!” I gasped. “I’ll help you—what do you want?”

  Our faces were inches apart, and some of his blood probably smeared my shirt. He searched my face, looking for something, and then abruptly let go. I fell hard on my knees, scraping them and my palms on the pavement.

  “Tu le sais. Qu’est-ce qui se passe?”

  I froze. What the hell? The same thing the man at my building had asked: What’s going on here? And like Monsieur Lebeau, this new guy had also said, you know.

  What did I know?

  I shivered. He’d said “police”, and I’d thought he was asking me to call them. But—was it the cops who shot him? Or someone else? I never could distinguish the different types of sirens, but I hoped at least one of the emergency vehicles I’d heard was an ambulance.

  “You need a doctor,” I said, trying to sound calm. I rose and took a step toward him. He didn’t appear to be armed and getting him away from Geordi was still my main goal.

  He shook his head, more sorrowful now than anything else. “Trop tard. Où dois-j’aller?”

  Too late? Where should he go? How the hell should I know?

  And yet… Again, the same question posed by Monsieur Lebeau.

  “Hyacinth—why are you standing in the middle of the street?”

  I turned. “Jason! Thank God! This man needs an ambulance. I heard one a couple blocks away—can you take him?”

  Jason frowned. “Are you feeling okay?”

  “I’m fine. He’s the one in trouble.” I gestured at Mr. Shot, who swayed on his feet.

  Jason stared right at the man, then back at me. “Who’s in trouble? Hyacinth, you aren’t making any sense. Let’s get you back in the car.” He moved toward me and I jerked back.

  What the hell was going on?

  I turned to Mr. Shot. The wildness was gone from his eyes, replaced by resignation. He lifted a shoulder, looking even sadder than before. “Il voit pas. Seulement toi. J’suis mort.”

  His words hit like the proverbial ton of bricks and it all came together. The man on my street who Jason hadn’t seen. Monsieur Lebeau, wanting to know if he should go up or down. And now this man.

  No wonder nothing he said or did woke Geordi. No wonder Jason was confused.

  He doesn’t see me. Only you. I am dead.

  Holy shit.

  Chapter Eight

  “The wise man’s eyes are in his head; but the fool walketh in darkness; and I myself perceived also that one event happeneth to them all.”

  ~The Bible, Ecclesiastes 2:14

  Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.

  “Hyacinth?” Jason’s tone said he thought I’d had one too many shocks, thereby losing the ability to distinguish reality from insanity. I turned back to my new friend, who shrugged again.

  “Tu m’vois. You are here. You must know what it is I should do.”

  “But I don’t,” I said helplessly, earning another look from Jason.

  Why was I here? Not here, on this street. Why was I here, where this man could see me? Why could I see, hear, smell—even touch—him?

  And Monsieur Lebeau. Sadness swept through me. He must have been dead, after all. Of course, so was I. For some reason, I kept forgetting that. Talk about denial.

  But maybe therein lay the explanation. I was dead, but reborn. Michael had said I wouldn’t be “alive per se.” Did that mean I was literally more dead than alive? That other dead people sensed a connection and sought me out? But why? For what purpose?

  And why did they all think I knew something?

  My impression from Michael was that he needed to be at the deathbed of every newly dead soul, except those who didn’t believe in him. But if another guide never showed up…did those nonbelievers hang around on Earth forever? Monsieur Lebeau was Catholic, but we’d had more than one discussion about what really happens after death. Maybe he was still uncertain, and I’d reassured him, helping him decide to go up after all.

  There were no stairs here, and I got no strong sense whether this guy should go up or down, or nowhere at all. It wasn’t my job to shepherd lost souls anyway.

  I did get a sense from Jason’s tense form a few feet away that if I didn’t start acting sane soon, he’d take matters into his own hands.

  “I’m fine,” I said to him. “Really. I…thought I saw something. Must’ve been my imagination. Let’s go.”

  Jason nodded with obvious relief and moved to the passenger side of the car. I started to get back in the driver’s seat, but the dead guy reached out an imploring hand.

  “Please. Tell me where I should go.”

  Jason crammed himself into the tiny front seat and turned away to check on Geordi, so I shook my head at the guy and said under my breath, “Sorry. Can’t help. Gotta go.”

  “You cannot.”

  “I’m sorry. I have to.”

  “Non. Tu comprends pas. You cannot leave—your car won’t start.”

  Well, hell. Trust a dead guy to have a better memory than me.

  Jason faced forward again and watched me through the windshield. “I dropped an earring,” I said, then turned away before he told me to forget it. I pretended to search the street while saying in a low voice to the dead man, “I still can’t help you. I don’t know what to do.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  His tone was so ironic I looked up, startled. Now that I wasn’t afraid of him—largely because he’d stopped manhandling me—I noticed he was actually pretty good-looking. About six feet tall, with a compact build—solid-looking shoulders, lean through the abdomen, or at least, what was left of it, and narrow hips. The bullet that killed him had ruined his pale blue dress shirt, but his tan slacks and shoes were relatively clean. He looked to be in his mid-to-late thirties, so not much older than me, with medium-blond hair just long enough to tousle. His jaw was firm, his nose angled, as though it had been broken a time or two, and there was a slight worry crease between his brows. It was too dark to determine the color of his eyes, but I thought they might be a light hazel.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  He hesitated, then must have decided I was okay, or at least unable to harm him further.
/>   “Eric.”

  I noticed he gave no last name, but then, he was dead, and we stood on an empty street in the dark of night. First names probably sufficed.

  “Hyacinth,” I said and held out my hand.

  He shook it, his skin warm, like Monsieur Lebeau’s. If I’d thought of it at all, I’d assumed the dead were cold. But so far, that wasn’t the case. Of course, I’d only touched two souls so far, both newly dead. Maybe the cold came on later, when life was farther away.

  “What happened?” I asked, indicating his chest.

  He looked down and frowned, as though he’d forgotten what killed him. Then he gave a sad half-smile. “Wrong place, wrong time. I was caught in the crossfire.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “De rien.”

  I didn’t have much time. Jason was already impatient, and we had to get moving. But I’m not a hardass, and being recently dead myself, I had some inkling of how upsetting this might be.

  “Look, I really wish I could help. But I don’t know what to do. And we—my friends and I—really have to go now.”

  “Take me with you.”

  “What? Why?”

  He only shrugged. He knew even less about my situation than Jason, and I was starting to feel like Dorothy on her way to Oz, skipping along the Yellow Brick Road, collecting strays.

  “You’re dead,” I said. “I can’t have a dead guy trailing around after me.”

  “Look,” he said reasonably, “I have nowhere to go. You are here, you see me. Perhaps you are to guide me somewhere. Je t’assure—the first exit I see, I will take. Eh bien, I will not get in your way or ask what it is you are doing. Who knows? Perhaps I can help you.”

  He looked so hopeful. I mean, I know men need a purpose. But he was dead. Wasn’t that a big enough challenge? He seemed so lost, though. Could I really walk away?

  No. No lost puppy dogs—or cute dead guys.

  I turned to the Peapod just as Jason got out, scowling at me. “Hyacinth—we have to go. Now.”

  Shit. I’d forgotten again. “The car won’t start. The charge ran down.”

  “I have a car,” Eric said, and I turned sharply back to him.