Recalled

by Cambria Hebert

  “They seemed to know you,” he said, walking closer to the window and staring out into the dark. “At the clinic.”

  “Yeah. I intern there a couple days a week. I’m studying to be a doctor. Which explains why I can only afford this place.”

  He was silent a moment, then he said, “You save people.”

  The tone of his voice was a little odd and I wished I could see his face and not his back as he spoke. “Well, not really, but I hope to help them.”

  When he didn’t say anything else I leaned back into the cushions and said, “I haven’t done anything like what that man did for me.”

  “It always comes back to him,” Dex said quietly.

  “What’s your connection with him?”

  He swung around to face me. “I told you I don’t have one.”

  “I think you’re lying.”

  “What makes you so sure?” he said, stalking toward me. His dark-blond hair stood out around his head and behind his black-rimmed glasses his green eyes were wide.

  “Call it a hunch,” I replied, beginning to wonder if baiting him in this empty apartment was a very good idea. I mean, really, I didn’t know him hardly at all.

  He made a scoffing sound and looked up.

  Everything about him changed in an instant.

  He seemed to do a double take and then he stood there silently, staring like he’d forgotten we were talking.

  “Where did you get that?” he said, moving toward the aqua painted chest of drawers near the door.

  “The dresser? At a secondhand shop.”

  “No,” he said. “That.” He pointed at the little card with the picture of the beach that the man at the morgue gave me.

  “Why, do you like it?” I asked, trying to keep my voice casual.

  He looked at it for long moments, then shrugged. “It’s okay. I saw something like it at the mall the other day.”

  “So it doesn’t mean anything to you?”

  He turned away. “Why would it?”

  “It belonged to the man who died.”

  He seemed shocked. I couldn’t decide why. Was it because he wondered how I had it? Was it because he was lying and knew all along whose it was?

  Or was it because he really didn’t know anything and didn’t know why I wouldn’t let it go?

  “I thought you said no one knew who he was?” he said, not looking back at the picture, but looking at me.

  “I went to the morgue to see if they would tell me anything. They still didn’t know who he was but the doctor there, he gave me that. He said it was in the man’s pocket.”

  “You went to the morgue?” he asked, disbelief on his face.

  “Yes. I thought I might get more in person than on the phone.”

  “Why? Why do you care so much about someone who… who you didn’t even know?”

  “But I do know him. Maybe not in the sense you mean but, I…” I shook my head, letting my voice fall away. He wouldn’t understand.

  “But, what?” he pressed, finally looking interested in the conversation.

  “I was with him when he died,” I said quietly. “I sat there with him after he did something that half the people I know wouldn’t do for me. I might not have really known him, but his final actions right before he died told me an awful lot about him.”

  “You can’t judge someone off one thing they did.” He argued.

  “He stole from me, too,” I admitted, voicing something I hadn’t thought about until now.

  “Stole?” he said, his voice hollow, but then he sat down on the coffee table right across from where I reclined on the sofa. I was right, he was more interested in this guy than he wanted me to believe.

  I nodded. “When I got home from the accident that night, I took off my apron and my tips weren’t in there. At first I thought maybe I lost the money on the street during the commotion, but then when I was at the morgue the doctor mentioned he had twenty-four dollars in his pocket.”

  “So?” He shrugged.

  “So, that’s how much I was missing. Before the bus came I almost slipped and he caught me,” I said, watching him closely, remembering when he caught me in the diner the night we met how he said, “We keep meeting like this.” But he gave no reaction; his face was blank so I continued. “I think he probably picked my pocket.”

  “And this is the guy you think of as a hero?” He scoffed, his eyes focused on the floor.

  “I don’t care about the money. He looked cold and hungry. He probably just wanted a hot meal.”

  He stood up from the table like he was agitated and paced to the window again to look out into the night. “Maybe he was a jerk and took advantage of you.”

  “Maybe. But I don’t think a jerk would’ve come back to push me out of the way.”

  He didn’t speak for a long time and I thought he might not say anything else, but then he turned and came back over beside the couch. “I’m glad you have something of his. That seemed important to you.”

  “I really just wanted to know his name.” I yawned. I was starting to crash from everything that happened.

  “Sorry, I can’t help you,” he said so sincerely that this time I found myself wondering if he told the truth.

  “I bought those flowers for him. Since I couldn’t take them to his grave, I brought them home.” I tried to force my eyes open wider, wanting to stay awake, wanting answers.

  He walked over to the vase and looked at the small bunch of daisies, reaching up to finger the delicate white petals. Then he pulled one out, wiping away the water at the end of the stem on the leg of his jeans. He brought the flower over to me and lowered himself onto the edge of the coffee table, holding it out. “Well, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind sharing. You’ve had a pretty rough day and since I kind of owe you, for feeding ya bad chicken and all, this one can be for you.”

  I looked at the flower. It’s perfectly formed smooth petals were open and trusting. It revealed the center of itself so willingly that I found myself sighing.

  “Why can’t people be as easy to read as a flower?”

  I hadn’t realized I spoke the thought out loud until Dex answered, his voice a mere whisper.

  “Because people are flawed.”

  I smiled and brought the flower to my nose to take in its bright scent. “Maybe that’s why people like flowers so much. Because they aren’t.”

  “Only girls like flowers,” he said with a smirk. He looked cute with his preppy glasses and messed up hair.

  “Especially when a guy is the one giving them.” Was I flirting? I must be delirious from all the medicine.

  He stood up. “I should let you rest.”

  “Is something wrong?” Okay, so clearly I was lousy at flirting.

  “No,” he turned back. “I should go.”

  I yawned as he moved toward the door and I saw him glance again at the little card with the beach on it.

  “The doctor at the morgue said the reason they couldn’t identify him was because his body disappeared. Can you imagine? Who would steal a body from the morgue?”

  His shoulders tensed. “Are you serious? That’s sick.”

  He made a face like it upset his stomach. There wasn’t a hint of guilt on his face. Maybe I’d been wrong after all. Maybe he really didn’t know anything. I guess it was kind of crazy to believe the guy who’d just given me a daisy was a body snatcher.

  “Are you going to be okay? Do you need anything?” he asked after I said nothing else.

  I shook my head. “I’ll be fine.”

  He unlocked the door and opened it, glancing back once more. “Maybe I’ll see you again.”

  “Maybe,” I echoed, knowing full well I would.

  I lay there for long moments after he’d gone and replayed our conversation over in my mind. Dexter Allen Roth was quite the puzzle. I couldn’t tell yet where all the pieces fit, but once I had him all put together, I had a feeling he would make a very interesting picture.

  With that thought, I went to
bed.

  I took the daisy with me.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Ghost - The spirit of a dead person, especially one believed to appear in bodily likeness to living persons or to haunt former habitats. The center of spiritual life; the soul.”

  Dex

  I took the stairs two at a time. I had to get out of this building. There was this draining tug and pull action going on inside my chest and I wanted it to stop. It made my stomach clench and my hands shake. Part of me was sickened with everything that happened tonight, and the other part of me was disappointed it hadn’t ended in death.

  I was like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, only I couldn’t tell which one was the real me.

  I reached the first floor and let out a sigh of relief… Then I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. A dark shape seemed to float around the corner—the same looming shape that passed by Piper’s window upstairs. I’d stood at the window, trying to catch a glimpse of it, but I never did. Probably because it was dark, just like the night—until it shifted and moved. That’s the one thing about the dark. It doesn’t move.

  I pushed off the bottom step and took chase. When I got around the corner, there was nothing but the door leading outside. I slammed through it and ran out onto the sidewalk. The shifting shadow disappeared around the side of the building and I went after it, running into a dark, narrow space between the two brick buildings.

  It was completely dark here and whatever had been there was gone. In fact, it was so still between the buildings that I began to think I was imagining things. Hell, I probably was.

  I turned to go back out onto the street when someone spoke. “You’re the new Escort.”

  I turned back, once again seeing nothing at all. “Who’s there?” I demanded.

  “Please don’t tell him she saw me.”

  “Who?” I replied, looking for any kind of movement.

  Then something shifted; the shadows seemed to form into a shape. A shape that really wasn’t a shape. It was very familiar… “Where are you?”

  “I’m right in front of you.”

  The muscles in my back bunched, expecting a fight, but no threat ever came. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I was able to make out more movement, but still no definite shape.

  Then it dawned on me.

  This was some kind of ghost. Some kind of in-between being, like I was before I got my new body. “What are you?” I asked.

  “I’m like you, except I don’t have a body.”

  “You’re dead?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Are you a ghost?”

  “A ghost haunts. I don’t haunt.” He sniffed, offended.

  “Then what are you doing lurking around Piper?”

  “I’m working. Watching her is my job.”

  “Who hired you?”

  “The same guy that hired you.”

  “You’re an Escort?” I asked.

  “Yes. A Ghost Escort.”

  “I thought you said you weren’t a ghost.”

  He made a sudden movement and this time I saw him spread out like smoke. He looked exactly like I had before I got this body, except he wasn’t purple. He was black.

  “They call us that because we’re nearly invisible, like a ghost. That’s why we’re the ones who watch the Slated.”

  “The Slated?”

  “Yes, you call them Targets.”

  “So you were hired by the same guy—rich, kinda eerily cheerful—but you didn’t get a body?”

  “Ghost Escorts don’t get bodies. The fact that we don’t have bodies is to our advantage.”

  He was the one at the college campus. It’s the reason he was able to be behind her one second, then yards in front of her the next. “So you can just appear and disappear, just like that?”

  “Well, it’s a little harder than that, but once you learn it’s easy.”

  “So I’m not supposed to see you?”

  “You’re supposed to, but other people aren’t.”

  Made sense. If I didn’t know better, I’d think I was standing here talking to myself.

  “You can see me because you’re an Escort. We can all see each other. Though, I’ve never seen a purple one like you.”

  “How’d you know I was purple?” I asked, holding out my arms to make sure I still had my body.

  “It’s how we recognize each other. The color of your essence surrounds your body, but only fellow Escorts can see it.”

  “You mean like an aura?”

  “No. An aura changes colors with your feelings. Your essence never changes.”

  I thought about the man surrounded with the ring of red. Turns out I wasn’t crazy. I’d seen another Escort—another killer.

  “How many of us are there?”

  “I don’t know. There aren’t as many Ghost Escorts as there are Death Escorts.”

  “I don’t understand why you’re watching her.”

  “When a person is chosen to die—Slated—they basically become property of our boss. He likes to know what his property is up to. You, uh, are taking longer than expected to finish the job, so he sent me here to watch her and make sure nothing was wrong.”

  “Nothing is wrong,” I said, my hands balled into fists at my sides. “I don’t like being spied on.”

  “I’m not spying on you. I’m spying on her.”

  “Are you going to tell him I tried to kill her tonight and failed?”

  “Not if you don’t tell him she saw me.”

  That’s right. Piper saw him at the college and she wasn’t an Escort. “How come she saw you?”

  “I don’t know. That’s never happened before.”

  “She’s very perceptive.”

  “I noticed,” he said wryly.

  I wished I could see him more clearly. He actually didn’t seem like that bad of a guy—for a sorta ghost. It might be nice to have someone I could talk to about all this. But not a friend. I didn’t have those.

  “So what’s your name?” I asked.

  “Storm.”

  “For real?”

  “Something wrong with my name?”

  “Nope. I just think it’s kinda ironic your name is Storm and you look like a rain cloud.”

  “Yeah, well, I guess I was born to be a Ghost Escort.” It sounded like he was grinning.

  “Seriously, though, why would you agree to not have a body?”

  “The alternative is worse,” he said.

  I shrugged. I don’t really know why, but the idea of being sent to hell didn’t scare me. Maybe because I always knew that’s where I would go. Or maybe because I pretty much lived in my own personal hell all my life so it was nothing new.

  “So you’re going to keep watching her, huh?”

  “That’s my job,” Storm said. “And if I don’t do it, I don’t get paid.”

  “Gotta get those Benjamins.”

  “Hey, it ain’t all about the money,” he said. “Ghost Escorts get paid in other ways too.”

  “What do you mean?” What other ways are there?

  “Time off,” he said meaningfully.

  It took me a minute to realize what would be so great about getting time off from following people around.

  Then it dawned on me.

  “He lets you have a body?”

  “Right outta that freaky closet of his.”

  I grinned. “It is pretty creepy.”

  “Well, I guess when you’re the ultimate death dealer, having bodies in the closet it just like having cereal in the pantry.”

  The ultimate death dealer?

  The darkness around me shifted and I felt him move. “I better get back. I’m on the clock.”

  I guess being reminded he could spend some time in an actual body made him anxious to finish his job. “So you aren’t supposed to kill her? Just watch her, right?”

  “Killing would be hard to do without any hands.”

  “I don’t know. I almost killed her tonight without lifting a finger.”

/>   “That was a pretty good move, by the way.”