Three forms and three matching handcuffs fall out. Avery looks at him. “Are you having trouble counting? You said two guys died last night. There’s three names here.”
“Nope. Burton Gentry, Jim Hollway and Larry Faraco. Gentry and Hollway are dead and absent from the afterlife.”
“Again, that’s only two,” Avery points out. “What about Larry Faraco?”
“And that’s where it gets a little complicated.”
“How complicated?” Avery takes a look at Larry’s paperwork and it’s all blank save for his name. “There’s nothing on here.” She checks the handcuffs. Hollway and Gentry’s have their names etched in clearly. Larry’s seems to be written on with a weak marker.
“It seems Larry isn’t quite dead,” Thane says. “He’s supposed to be, but he’s not.”
“So he’s alive?”
“No, he’s definitely not alive,” Thane says.
Avery puts the paperwork and looks at him seriously. “Is this a zombie outbreak?”
“This is not a zombie outbreak,” Thane tells her.
“If this is a zombie outbreak, the Council should be handling it directly,” Avery continues. “We’re not trained for this.”
“It’s not a zombie outbreak,” Thane insists.
“How do you know?”
“Because the Council isn’t down here with Alpha Reapers doing a slash and burn,” Thane says. “It’s been, what, thirty years since we had a zombie outbreak?”
“Twenty,” Avery corrects him.
“It’s been awhile since I’ve taken my reaper certification,” Thane says.
Avery looks at him. “We graduated at the same time.”
“I have horrible retention,” he admits somberly.
“Why are you really giving this to me, Thane?” she asks him.
He gets to his feet. “Because your sister pissed off Russell and bounty on this pays well. It should cover till Russell calms down.”
“Assuming he doesn’t revoke my license,” Avery says.
“Well, then I guess you can open that boutique candle shop you’re always talking about.” He smiles. “See you around, gorgeous.”
Avery picks up Brooke outside her apartment building. Brooke’s dressed in jeans so tight they looked like were sprayed on. She’s wearing a Led Zepplin t-shirt, but the push-up bra beneath makes it look like she’s about to burst through it. She’s sucking on a cherry lollipop as she gets in the car.
“Thank you for waking me up,” Brooke says with a tone that suggests she’s not really thankful.
“What’s that smell?” Avery asks.
“Please don’t talk so loud.” Brooke holds a hand to head. “I have a slight hangover.”
“How much did you have to drink last night?”
“After you left?” Brooke thinks about for a minute, tapping her finger against her lips. “I don’t remember at all.”
Avery wrinkles her nose. “Seriously, what is that smell?”
“You just woke me up,” Brooke explains. “I didn’t have time to shower.”
Avery leans over to her sister and starts sniffing.
“Hey,” Brooke pushes her back. “Personal space.”
Avery frowns at her sister.
“What?” Brooke asks. “Why are you staring at me like that?”
“If I asked you who you were with last night, would I like the answer?”
“Probably not,” Brooke says, talking around the lollipop. She avoids her sister’s eyes. “So maybe you shouldn’t ask.”
Avery pulls out into traffic and manages not to ask for the next five minutes. Brooke picks up the envelope and starts thumbing through the info on Genty, Hollway and Faraco.
“Wow, is this the bounty?” Brooke’s skimming payout page.
Finally Avery says, “You slept with Stanley last night.”
Brooke doesn’t respond.
“I can smell him on you.”
Brook still doesn’t say anything.
Avery shakes her head. “You’re unbelievable.”
There’s a pop as she pulls the lollipop back out. “We didn’t really sleep together.”
“Brooke...” Avery starts.
“Well, what was I supposed to do?” she says.
“Not sleep with him,” Avery suggests. “And that’s just off the top of my head.”
“It’s not like I wanted to do it.”
“So, what you’re saying is that he raped you? Is that what you’re saying?”
Brooke rolls her eyes. “No, that’s not what I’m saying at all.”
“You’re saying you just had to go home with someone last night?” Avery asks. “You couldn’t bear the thought of being alone for one night?”
“Well, that’s a depressing view of it,” Brooke mutters.
“And if that’s the case, what about Steven the bartender and his magnificent tongue?” Avery says. “There’s a suggestion.”
“A great suggestion,” Brooke agrees. “If I could remember his number.”
“You can’t remember his number?”
“That’s what I meant when I said that I couldn’t remember his phone number,” Brooke says. “Look, Stanley isn’t exactly my most favorite person in the world. If I had my way I would have been with Mr. Hard Ass last night and not drinking alone at Clark’s. I have needs, Av. I have needs. Again, I was drunk, horny and a little lonely because my sister dumped me for her boyfriend.”
“I can’t believe you managed to justify sleeping with your ex-boyfriend.” Avery just shakes her head. “You are beyond messed up.”
“Lipstick Feminism,” Brooke says simply.
“I really wish you would stop saying that.”
six
“I’ve seen this place before,” Brooke says as they pull up to the hotel. It’s a tiny two-story dive that looks like it’s being held together with the illicit juices of its shady tenants.
“No kidding,” Avery parks the car.
“On the news last night,” Brooke follows her out of the car.
“I know.”
“This is where that double homicide was,” Brooke continues.
Avery stops and looks at her sister. “Brooke, I’m the one that was paying attention to the TV last night.”
“I was paying attention.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“What happened?” Avery asks.
Brooke hesitates for a moment. “There was a murder. Two people died,” she pauses for another moment, looking around. She shrugs. “That’s it?”
Avery resumes her walk up to the hotel room. “I’m so glad you were taking notes.”
Crime scene tape marked the room they were looking for. No cops were present.
They walk up to the room and Avery carefully opens the door.
The bodies are already gone, of course.
“That makes things a little more difficult,” she says. She looks back out at the parking lot. It’s mostly empty.
“If the bodies aren’t here,” Brooke starts.
“Then the souls probably aren’t either,” Avery finishes. “Let’s start with the manager.”
The front office is a cramped room with a tiny counter. The man was fat with pudgy fingers, wearing what would have been a white t-shirt, if not for all the colorful stains that covered it.
“I’m gonna be sick,” Brooke mutters as they enter.
“Sir?” Avery pulls out the brass badge from her pocket. “Avery Graves. Are you the manager?”
The fat man stares at the badge for a second before his gaze drifts to Avery’s chest.
“Winner,” Brooke whispers behind her sister.
Avery tries not to roll her eyes. She snaps the fingers of her other hand as she puts the badge away. “Sir?”
“Yeah,” the guy finally responds. Avery’s face automatically wrinkles in disgust as she spots bits of what appears to be the man’s breakfast still in his mouth. “I’m the manager. Who are you again?”
&n
bsp; “Avery,” she says and points to her sister. “Brooke. We’d like to ask you a few questions about what happened here last night.”
“I already talked to the cops,” the manager says. He looks back and forth between the sisters. More specifically, he looks back and forth between the sister’s chests. He hasn’t actually made eye contact with either of them. “And you’re not cops.”
“We’re special investigators for the family,” Avery says. A simple explanation that hardly anyone argues with.
The manager flicks his eyes back and forth between the sisters again, as his tongue worked something out from between his teeth. “Uh-huh,” he grunts, but doesn’t question them further.
“We were wondering if there’s been any other activity around your hotel since the murders last night?” Avery asks.
The manager looks in the eye. “Ain’t the murder enough? Do you know what that’s gonna do to my business around here?”
Brooke and Avery look at each other. It’s that kind of silent communication only sisters have.
“Okay, big guy,” Brooke says, stepping up to the counter. “Here’s the deal. We want to know if there were weird noises or if any of your other ‘guests’ complained about people being in their rooms who shouldn’t have been.”
The manager’s mouth hangs open a bit and his eyes give them a narrow look “Who the hell are you guys again?”
Brooke walks back over to her sister and whispers, “This is why I hate interviewing people.”
Avery pulls out a business card and sets it on the counter. “If you happen to get any weird complaints, like something’s haunting your motel, please give us a call.”
The manager picks up the card. “Haunting? You’re ghost hunters?”
“Something like that.”
The manager stares at the card a second too long and then brings his gaze back to Avery. “You talk to the cops yet?”
“It’s farther down our to-do list,” she replies.
The manager hesitates again. Avery could see the man’s tongue working against his cheek, probably picking at something else.
“I tried to tell this to the cops last night and they weren’t much interested,” he starts. “Four men went into that room,” he points over his shoulder in the direction of the crime scene. “Thirty minutes later, the tall guy leaves. Maria, my cleaning lady, discovers the bodies another hour after that. But before, my son is out in the parking lot and he swears he saw the short guy come out. He said the back of the man’s head was missing. Cops weren’t interested because my boy was smoking some weed. Wasn’t reliable, they said. I trust my boy,” he squints his eyes again. “That the sort of thing you looking for?”
The sisters walk back to the car.
“Guy’s pothead son sees a man walk out of the room missing the back of his head,” Brooke trails behind her sister.
“Could be Larry,” Avery says.
“Could be the pothead kid was on a massive high,” Brooke suggests.
Avery reaches the car and pops the trunk. She pulls two sticks out from the trunk and walks back over to her sister.
“What are you doing?” Brooke asks.
The sticks are about two inches thick and two feet long with dual feathers on the ends. They’re tapping sticks. As in, you tap them around where a soul is hiding and it pulls them out.
There are three classes of grim reapers: Wood, Cloth and Metal. Avery and Brooke’s father was Wood, therefore they were trained the same way. Unofficially, it’s called Stick Magic.
“Our job,” she hands her sister one of the sticks and a pair of gloves.
“Come on,” Brooke says, following her sister. “The souls aren’t here.”
“We don’t know that for sure,” Avery says.
“Yes, we do,” Brooke argues. “It was a double homicide. It sounds pretty traumatic. That blond reporter had a very severe look on her face last night. If the souls were still around they’d be making so much noise half the city’s reapers would be surrounding this place.”
“That’s no excuse for not doing the job right,” Avery says as she ducks under the crime scene tape.
Brooke lingers. “Are we sure this isn’t a zombie outbreak?”
“It’s not a zombie outbreak,” Avery assures her.
“Because that’s what your dreamy reaper friend told you.”
“Thane isn’t dreamy.” Avery’s tapping the wall the bed’s against.
Brooke folds her arms and cocks her hips. “Excuse me?”
Avery pauses. “He’s a little dreamy,” she concedes.
“Okay, here’s the deal: the man is drop dead gorgeous,” Brooke says, like she’s explaining the facts of life. “On a scale of one to ten, he’s off the damn scale.”
“Just get in here,” Avery tells her.
Brooke sighs, rubbing her eyes. She pulls the gloves on and follows her sister.
Paint is peeling off the walls. There are dark spots splattered randomly throughout the room and then in larger sections on the floor. Probably blood. The bed’s made, but looks wrinkled.
“I hate murders,” Brooke says. “They’re always messy.”
“At least it’s not as bad as the Bensons,” Avery says, tapping against the headboard.
Brooke starts on the opposite side of the room, near the closet, tapping the stick around randomly.
“The Bensons?” she asks.
“George and Shirley Benson,” she says. “You remember them.”
“That’s why I repeated the name with a question mark at the end of it,” Brooke replies.
“That rich couple with the dogs,” Avery says.
Brooke stops tapping and thinks about it for a moment.
“Oh,” she says. “The one where the dogs ended up eating half of them.”
“Yeah, the Bensons.”
Brooke looks vaguely nauseous. “That was really gross.”
“Hey.”
“What?”
Avery nods at the stick in Brooke’s hand. “Tap while you talk.”
“I hate this,” Brooke says after a minute or so. “I feel like an idiot. There’s got to be a better way.”
“There is.”
Brooke and Avery stop and look at each other. Neither of them had spoken. They both turn to the front door.
The man standing there is thin. Scary thin. Like all he ever eats are celery sticks and peanuts. He has a long gaunt face and is dressed in an expensive suit. He holds up a square device in his left hand.
“Spectral analysis,” he says. “It’s the latest in Reaper technology. It scans the immediate area for any displaced spectral activity,” He points to the two LED lights on the face of the device. “Red means no, Green means yes. As you can clearly see, the red light is lit. There are no stray souls here.”
Brooke and Avery look at each other again. The red light was definitely lit.
Brooke goes first. “Who the hell are you?”
The thin man smiles apologetically. “I apologize. I should have introduced myself first,” he replaces the square device with a business card which he hands to Avery, who’s closest. “Marcus Ibanez of Messor & Decessus.”
Avery takes the card. It’s a nice stock, black with purple raised letters. Something on the card makes her fingers tingle.
“We’re new in town,” the thin man says.
Avery shoots a quick look to her sister and she slips the card in her pocket. “And what exactly do you do at Messor & Decessus?” she asks.
Ibanez shrugs. “Oh. Little bit of this. Little bit of that. Think of us as a ‘reapers-plus’ organization. We like to offer a variety of options to our clients.”
“You mean souls,” Avery says.
“I mean what I say and I say what I mean, Ms…” he trails off, his glaze flicking back and forth between the sisters. “I don’t believe I caught your names.”
“That’s because we didn’t give them,” Brooke says. “We were here first.”
Ibanez smiles. “Ah, you
must be the Graves sisters.”
“We are who we are,” Avery says. “And we’ve got this bounty.”
Ibanez looks around the room. “Indeed.”
“There’s a little thing called professional courtesy in this town,” Brooke says. “It means you don’t go poaching other reaper’s jobs.”
Ibanez levels his gaze on Brooke. “Don’t be ridiculous. We at Messor & Decessus don’t ‘poach.” He turns to Avery and tosses her the device. “Just to show there’s no hard feelings,” he places his hands in his pockets and walks out. “See you around, ladies.”
Avery turns the small device over in her hand.
“What the hell was that about?” Brooke asks. “Is that who Alan was going on about last night?”
Avery doesn’t say anything. She holds the device up and flips the switch on the side. The red light goes off.
“Reaper technology?” Brooke says.
“Yeah.”
“That’s never good.”
“Nope,” Avery agrees. “Let’s go talk to Jackson,” she says.
seven
David Jackson is a detective in Century City’s homicide department. He’s in his fifties with graying hair and a stomach built from too many jelly donuts. He spies the Graves sisters ten feet down the hall from his office.
“Hell, no,” he says and scuttles back into his office, slamming his door behind him.
He slips back behind his desk. Maybe they didn’t see him.
The door opens a minute later.
“We saw that,” Brooke says, plopping herself down in one of the chairs across from Jackson.
“No,” Jackson says, holding up his hands. “No. Do not talk to me.”
Avery frowns, taking the seat next to her sister. “We haven’t even said anything yet.”
“I have got too much on my plate to get caught up in your creepy, cockamamie dead stuff,” Jackson says. He points to his door. “Get out of my office.”
The sisters don’t get up.
Jackson sighs, defeated. “Fine. What?”
“You’re working the double homicide at the Kirkland Motel,” Avery says.
Jackson stares at them for a moment and then deflates. “Seriously? That’s what you want?”
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