First Grave on the Right

  Elizabeth sniffed. “What do you mean? What fix?”

  “You leave a note.”

  “A note?”

  “Sure. I do it all the time. It saves me so much explaining,” I said with an encompassing wave of my hand. “You dictate a note to me, I type it—and predate it to before your death, naturally—and then it’s miraculously found among your possessions. Kind of like an if-anything-should-happen-to-me note. You tell her everything you want her to know, and we just pretend you’d typed it before you died. I even have a guy who can forge your signature to seal the deal, if you’d like.”

  “Who?” Garrett asked.

  I glowered at him in warning. What I did with the departed was none of his business.

  A pretty look of astonishment came over Elizabeth’s face. “That’s brilliant. I’m a lawyer. I’m more organized than the Dewey decimal system. She’d totally fall for it.”

  “Of course she’ll fall for it,” I said, patting her back.

  “Can I write one to my wife?” Sussman asked.

  “Sure.”

  Then we all looked at Barber, expecting him to have someone to write to as well. “I only have my mom. She knows how I feel about her,” he said, and I wondered if I should be happy about that or sad because his mother was all he had.

  “I’m glad,” I told him. “I wish more people took the time to make their feelings known.”

  “Yeah. I’ve hated her guts since I was ten. There’s really not much else to put in a letter.”

  I tried to hide the shock I felt.

  He noticed anyway. “Oh, trust me, the feeling’s mutual.”

  “Okay, two notes, then.”

  “Hey,” Elizabeth said, suddenly thoughtful, “what day is the first day of summer?”

  “Planning on sticking around that long?” I asked.

  She lifted her shoulders, referenced Garrett with a nod of her head, then wriggled her perfectly arched brows.

  “Ah.” I tried not to laugh. “It’s June twentieth, or sometimes—”

  Garrett gasped, and Elizabeth crossed her arms and smiled, smugness radiating off her in waves.

  “You’re right,” Garrett said. “Elizabeth Ellery’s birthday is June twentieth.”

  I leveled a mortified glare on her. “You tricked me.”

  “Lawyer,” she volleyed, as if that explained it all.

  Yeah, I liked her a lot. I strolled back to my chair and plopped down with my usual fanfare.

  “She tricked me,” I said to Garrett.

  He grinned. But his grin was different. It had changed, and I realized why.

  “Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no,” I said, wagging a finger at him. “Don’t even start with that crap.”

  “What crap?” he asked, all innocence and awe.

  “The crap where you look at me like I have all the answers to every question in the known universe. I don’t. I can’t see into the future. I can’t read your past. I damn sure can’t read your palm, whatever the hell that’s about. I can’t—”

  “But you’re psychic, right?”

  “Dude,” I said, leaning over the desk, “I’m about as psychic as a carrot.”

  “But—”

  “No buts!” I had serious issues with the p-s word. We’d never really bonded. I threw my hands over my ears and started humming to myself.

  “That’s mature.”

  He was right. I stuck out my tongue anyway, then put my hands down. “Listen, even I have more questions than answers. I’m fairly certain my abilities are more closely related to schizophrenia than to anything supernatural. Ask anyone. If I were edible, I’d be a fruitcake.”

  “Schizophrenia,” he said doubtfully.

  “I hear voices in my head. How much more schizophrenic does it get?”

  “But you just said—”

  I held up an index finger to stop him. Though a middle one would have been more to the point, I had to explain before I lost the ground I’d just gained. “Look, when people are in the position you’re in now, when they’re almost to the point of believing in what I can do, they pull out all the stops. They quiz me, ask me stupid questions, want to know where the next earthquake will hit or what the winning lottery numbers will be. Seriously, have you ever read the headline ‘Psychic Wins Lottery’? I’m not psychic. I don’t even know if such a thing exists.”

  “Tell him what you are,” Elizabeth chimed in excitedly while Garrett flipped through his notepad.

  I flashed her a desperate shut-up-or-die look. It didn’t work. Probably because she was already dead.

  “Seriously,” she said, “just tell him. He’s starting to believe you now. He’ll think it’s cool.”

  “No, he won’t,” I whispered through my teeth, forgetting that I was the only living person in the room who could hear her.

  “A person sensitive to things beyond the natural range of perception.” Garrett looked up at me. “The definition of psychic.”

  “Oh, well, okay. Maybe,” I said. “But I still hate the word. And its implications.”

  “Fair enough,” he said with a shrug. “And I won’t what?”

  “Think it’s cool.”

  “What? Your abilities?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Then what?”

  Then what? I guess if he really wanted to know, I’d hit him with the whole enchilada dinner. I was on a roll, after all. Why stop now? Not even my dad or Uncle Bob really knew the extent of what I was. I’d never needed to tell them. They believed me, and that was good enough. But since I really didn’t care what Garrett thought of me …

  “Fine,” I said with a challenging edge to my voice. “I’ll tell you everything. If I do, will you leave?”

  After a pause, he agreed with an almost imperceptible nod.

  “I’m a … I’m kind of a … I’m sort of like a … well, damn.” I gritted my teeth and just blurted it out: “I’m a grim reaper. Well, the grim reaper, actually.”

  There. I’d said it. I laid it all out on the table, cleared the air, bared my soul, all the while vowing that no cliché be left unturned. But he didn’t flinch. He didn’t laugh. He didn’t shoot out of his chair or stalk out the door. In fact, he didn’t move at all. Not an inch. I wondered if he was still breathing; then it dawned on me. This was his poker face. His gray eyes stayed locked on mine as I waited for his reaction, but he wasn’t going to give me one. I had to admit, his poker face was pretty good. I had no idea what he was thinking.

  “I think he believes you,” Elizabeth said as she bent over and looked at him before glancing back at me.

  So she would have no choice but to see the doubt in every line of my face, I formed my expression carefully.

  “How does that work?” Garrett asked at last.

  I refocused my attention on him. “You said you would leave.”

  “If,” he countered, “you told me everything.”

  Dammit. “Okay, how does it work? Hell, I don’t know. It just does.”

  “I mean, what do you do?”

  “Oh. I help people cross.”

  “Cross?”

  “Um, to the other side?” I said, wondering just how clueless he was.

  “How?”

  Geez, he was persistent. “Excuse me.” I jumped up, scooted the office-furniture version of a love seat forward, then sat back down. The lawyers had eased closer, wanting to hear every word of the story as well. “Can you guys sit down? You’re making me nervous hovering like that.”

  “Oh, sure,” they said, and all three squeezed into the seat. I fought back a chuckle.

  “How?” Garrett repeated.

  Back to the third degree. A long breath slipped through my lips as I considered everything I’d been telling him. This stuff could be used as ammunition against me. It had happened before, by people I’d trusted much more than Garrett. Still, we’d come this far.

  “Basically,” I said, exaggerating my reluctance in the tone of my voice, “I try to help them figure out why the
y didn’t cross. Then I lead them to the light.”

  “What light?”

  “The light. The only light I know of,” I replied, using the escape and evasion tactics I’d learned from a first lieutenant I dated in college.

  “Uh-huh,” he said, not falling for it. “What light?”

  I hesitated. Some bits of information were just more sacred than others. Some were reserved for the departed only. It wasn’t like the truth of what I do would help him believe me. More likely, it would send him running for the door. Come to think of it …

  “Me,” I said with a hint of self-righteous arrogance lifting my chin. I felt like I was back in middle school, begging the bully to challenge me.

  After a thoughtful moment, he asked, “You?”

  “Me,” I repeated, with just as much arrogance. Go ahead, Mr. Skeptic, make my day. Challenge me. Prove me wrong. As if. “Apparently, I’m very bright.”

  I suddenly realized what I’d done. I’d said too much. I’d let my pride go to the party, and it ended up auditioning for Girls Gone Wild. It was so grounded.

  Garrett sat back in his chair and let his gaze travel over every inch of me that he could see before relocking with mine. “So you help them figure out why they didn’t cross.”

  No way to weasel out of the damned conversation now. No wonder pride was one of the seven deadlies. “Yes,” I answered.

  “And then you lead them to the light.”

  “Yes.”

  “Which is you.”

  “Yes.”

  “So when we cross,” Sussman said, “it’ll be through you?”

  I glanced at him. I figured he was creeped out by the concept—one that could be considered sacrilegious on a thousand different planets—but he seemed fascinated. “Yes, you’ll cross through me. Grim reaper,” I said by way of explanation.

  “Wow,” Barber said. “That’s about the coolest thing I’ve heard all day.”

  “You’re a portal,” Garrett said.

  I shrugged. “I guess that’s one way of looking at it.”

  An intrigued smile spread across his face as he studied me, making my nerve endings prickly with suspicion.

  “He is so into you,” Elizabeth said.

  I ignored her and glanced at my watch. “Gosh, look at the time.” Where the heck was Uncle Bob?

  “So the spirits that don’t cross are just hanging out on earth, walking through us without a care in the world?” Garrett asked, not ready to give up his quest.

  I sighed. This could go on for days.

  “No. They exist in the same time and space but on a different plane. Like a double-exposed picture. I’m just able to be on both planes simultaneously.”

  “Then that makes you pretty amazing,” he said, appreciation shimmering in his eyes.

  This was too much. I was still prying my jaw off the floor, metaphorically, that he believed anything I said.

  “So, how about it? Let’s go get some coffee,” he suggested again.

  “But I just explained everything.”

  “Sweetheart, I doubt you’ve even scratched the surface.” When I hesitated, he said, “We can go as friends.”

  I scowled, just a little, then reminded him, “We’re not friends, remember? You’ve made that painfully clear over the last month. We’re not pals or buds or anything else even remotely resembling friends.”

  “Weekend lovers?” he offered.

  That was it. I didn’t know what game he was playing—though I was fairly certain it wasn’t Monopoly … or checkers—but I refused to play along. I stood and walked around the desk so I could stand over him. Menacingly. Like Darth Vader, only with better lung capacity. After a meaningful stare-down, I pointed to the exit. “I have work to do.”

  He glanced at the door I was pointing at, the one through which I was suggesting he leave. “You have work to do? On that door?” he asked, all teasing and smart-assy.

  “What?”

  “Are you going to paint it?”

  “No.”

  “I suggest a deep, rich brown to go with your hair.” He stood, reversing the situation to tower over me. After another stare-down, one with a different meaning entirely, he leaned in and said softly, “Or gold … to go with your eyes.”

  “I think I just came,” Elizabeth said.

  The other two lawyers, after clearing their throats, had the decency to step out of the room. Elizabeth reluctantly followed them into the reception area, otherwise known as Cookie’s-god-danged-space-and-don’t-you-forget-it.

  As Garrett waited for me to agree to have coffee with him, I saw it from the corner of my eye. The blurry Superman thing. It moved so fast that by the time I turned my head, it was gone. It had moved to my other side, brushed my arm, feathered across my mouth, then dived inside me, pooling in my abdomen, oozing warmth throughout my entire body.

  My insides quaked, and I threw back my head with a startled gasp. Garrett stepped forward and grabbed hold of my arms to keep me from falling. Only then did I see the bewildered expression on his face. He pulled me closer. Then the feeling left me and Garrett shot backwards, as if a violent force had shoved him.

  He stumbled, caught himself, then looked at me. We both stood stunned and wide-eyed. I toppled toward my desk, leaned against it to keep my knees from buckling.

  “Was that … one of them?” he asked, absently rubbing his chest where he’d apparently been shoved. He glanced around wildly before placing a disconcerted scowl on me.

  “No,” I said, trying to slow my breathing, “that was something very different.”

  What, I didn’t know. But I could guess, and I didn’t like the direction my guesses were heading. Could it be the Big Bad? If so, why here? Why now? My life didn’t seem to be in any immediate danger.

  Fear was difficult for me to hide. I rarely felt it. But surely Garrett sensed it in me now. The thought of him seeing me afraid grated more than a little.

  Then another scenario came to mind. Of all the times I’d seen Bad, he’d never brushed against me. He’d never even touched me, and he certainly hadn’t dived in for a swim in my nether regions. Maybe it wasn’t Bad at all.

  I scanned the room, probably looking a little desperate. Was it Reyes? Could it have been him? Could he have been … jealous? Of Swopes? Was he serious?

  I rushed to the door and asked everyone, “Did you see anything? Did he come this way?”

  Elizabeth, who had been sitting on our sage green reception sofa, jumped up and said, “You lost him? How could you lose him?”

  “Not Garrett,” I said, possibly a little too impatiently. “The dark, blurry guy.”

  Cookie was slowly beginning to realize we had company. She eased up out of her seat as if a cobra were perched on her desk. “Charley, sweetheart, do we have clients?”

  “Oh, yeah. I forgot to mention that. Everyone, this is Cookie. Cookie, we have the three lawyers who left us last night. The ones I told you about. We’re working on their case with Uncle Bob. Okay, now, did anyone see him?”

  The lawyers questioned each other with sideways glances and shrugs. I let a hapless sigh slip through my lips and slumped against the doorjamb.

  You’d think, me being a grim reaper and all, I’d have connections, ways of obtaining Blurry Guy’s identity. But since the only connection from the other side I’d ever made was that of Bad, aka death incarnate, inquiries proved difficult.

  Then I noticed an odd shadow in the corner, one that undulated and shifted under the morning light. It was him. It had to be. I straightened, pried my fingers off the doorjamb, and eased into the room, trying not to scare him away.

  “May I see you?” I asked, my voice too shaky.

  Everyone looked toward the corner, but only the lawyers saw him, too. All three took a wary step back, so in synch, the movement looked choreographed, while I stepped forward pleadingly.

  “Please, let me see you.”

  The shadow moved, disintegrated, disappeared, and reappeared before me in the sam
e instant. Then it was my turn to retreat. I stumbled back as a long tendril of smoke raised, and suddenly an arm was braced against the wall beside my head. A long arm that angled up to a tall shoulder.

  The lawyers gasped as the entity materialized before them, as smoke became flesh, as molecules meshed and fused to form one solid muscle after another. My gaze had yet to linger past his arm, sliding from the hand steadied against the wall—a hand that, even with the wear of hard labor, was beautiful—to the long, sinewy curve of a steel-like forearm. A rolled cuff, an oddly bright color, encircled the arm below the elbow, but above that, a biceps strained against the thick material, attesting to the strength it encapsulated. Then my gaze slipped farther up to a shoulder, wide and powerful and unyielding.

  The entity leaned in before I could see its face, pressed the warmth of its body into mine, and bent forward to whisper in my ear. It was so close, I could only make out its jaw, strong and shadowed with at least two days’ growth, and dark hair in need of a trim.

  His mouth brushed my ear, sending shivers down my spine. “Dutch,” he whispered, and I melted into him.

  This was my chance, my opportunity to ask if he was who I thought he was—who I hoped he was. But I’d spiraled back into my dream world, where nothing worked right. My hands had a will of their own as they lifted to his chest. The bones in my legs dissolved. My mouth wanted only one thing. Him. His taste. His texture. He smelled like rain during a lightning storm, earthy and electric.

  I curled his shirt into my fists—whether to push him away or pull him closer, I wasn’t sure. Why couldn’t I see him? Why couldn’t I just convince myself to step to the side and look at him?

  Then his mouth covered mine and I lost all sense of reality. My world took his form, became his body, his mouth, his hands, skimming over me, surveying the hills and valleys of all that was me, his moon. His very own satellite seduced into his orbit by the sheer will of his gravity.

  The kiss deepened, grew more urgent, and my body responded with a quiver of desire. He groaned and pushed farther into me, his tongue delving between my lips, not just tasting, but drinking every part of me, melding my soul with his.