by Jenn Burke
I remained frozen behind Meredith’s rolltop desk, despite the fact that neither figure would see me. I was invisible, incorporeal, one step removed from the living world, as insubstantial as a ghost. Hell, I was a ghost—just one who had a living body most of the time.
The bigger figure was on top of the smaller one—and, well, the first place my brain went was sex. Duh. Except...the language of loving wasn’t there. Their bodies didn’t undulate. They didn’t flow. There was no familiar rhythm, no distinctive butt-thrusts, no grunts of exertion, nothing. Only a man on top of a woman, though I couldn’t be sure. When I was in my ghost form on the otherplane, living beings seemed shrouded in cotton and fuzz, indistinct and detailless. But I could tell he was straddling her, his hands on either side of her head, his arms braced...
Wait—his hands weren’t on either side of her head. They were around her neck.
I never proclaimed myself to be a hero or even a good guy. For fuck’s sake, I sneaked into people’s private spaces as a ghost to “recover” items for interested parties—heirlooms my clients wanted back, contracts they shouldn’t have signed, or, occasionally, information they could use for leverage. I wasn’t ashamed of it. My abilities were a tool, and anyone else would use them the same way. On top of that, I found that most of my targets had done something not-so-nice to put them on the radar of the folks who knew how to acquire my services.
All that aside, deep down I’d thought that if I was ever faced with a life-or-death situation, I’d find some tiny thread of heroism rooted somewhere inside my psyche and act.
But fear—shock—rooted me to the spot. Logic said nothing could hurt me. They couldn’t see me, couldn’t feel me—other than a cold breeze if I got too close—and they damn sure couldn’t touch me. But I remembered dying. I remembered the disbelief, the fear and the pain before the shock of nothing.
That’s what she’s feeling. That thought broke the bonds holding me, and I lurched upward with a vague notion I’d grab something, anything, to use as a weapon—
Except it was too late. The woman’s legs kicked once more and she went limp. I held my breath, waiting for her to move again, but the life faded from her, peeling away the obscuring layers of the otherplane to reveal her features as she became as dead and inanimate as the furniture surrounding us.
Long golden hair. Iconic red cat-eye glasses sitting askew over dull, lifeless blue eyes. A fifties-style white blouse with tiny red polka dots and red stitching, one button popped at her neck.
My target—Meredith Montague.
I’d never been around someone at the moment of their death, so I had no idea if her spirit would join me on the otherplane. I didn’t know if I wanted that or not, to be honest. There should be something more than her body on the ground, as inert as the chair beside her, but what would I say? I didn’t want to be the one to explain to her that her life was over. But there was no mystical light and no indication that Meredith’s soul would come shake my hand on its way to her final destination.
The man sat back on his heels, his hands resting on his thighs, as he looked at the body on the floor. Then he got up. I watched him warily, shrinking back as he got close. His shape was...weird. On the otherplane, most people’s figures were muted and obscured, as though they were wrapped in layers and layers of translucent gauze.
But this man...his figure was the dark, slate gray of an impending storm. It had jagged edges, as though a thousand razors extended from his clothes and skin. An aura of danger surrounded him—not an actual, visual aura, since even in the otherplane I had no ability to see that kind of thing. It was more of a sense. A warning that this was someone I did not want to mess with, a warning that went beyond what I’d witnessed.
He gave no indication he saw me as he made his way to the side bar, looked out over the grounds lit in the late-afternoon sunshine for a moment, and then poured himself a drink.
With a dead body on the floor behind him, he poured himself a drink.
In some ways, the casualness was more horrifying than the murder. I mean, I could be callous and self-centered, but not on the level of ignoring a dead body in the room. But the murderer—the monster—sipped his drink slowly. As though he had the right to be there.
I shook with the need to leave, to go, to pretend the past hour hadn’t happened. Rising from where I was hunched behind the desk, I started for the wall with the big window overlooking the gardens—only to freeze as I realized the murderer’s eyes were locked on me.
They were blacker than black, fathomless pits that would have probably looked like normal, everyday human eyes were I not in the otherplane. But they sent a chill racing through me—fear, horror, wrongness. I begged my feet to move, and this time, they did. I raced through the wall, out of the house, and away, welcoming the numbness that spread through my brain and body.
I managed to make it a block away before I threw up.
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Not Dead Yet by Jenn Burke,
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Copyright © 2019 by Jennifer R.L. Burke
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ISBN-13: 9781488036279
Graveyard Shift
Copyright © 2019 by Jennifer R.L. Burke
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