Kiss Me Deadly: Tales of a Paranormal Romance

luxuriant cursive. Letters are so romantic, she thought and shot a suspicious glance in the Station Agent’s direction.

The woman cocked her brow, daring Velvet to ask.

“Now, Amie will accompany you on the journey to Vermillion. She’s to be your guide. I’m sure that won’t be a problem.”

“Oh no, not at all,” Velvet said. But what she meant was:

Huge problem. Ginormous problem.

* * *

The next morning came terribly early.

Velvet set her bags on the dark platform and sneered at the commotion coming up the ramp. Amie had somehow coerced Nick into carrying her luggage—the biggest trunk in the world. Probably via a little helpless woman routine that made Velvet want to throw up nerve endings in a nice wet sparking pile ... preferably all over Amie.

Nick was, of course, polite about it, but underneath, Velvet searched for a clue that he was seething with irritation, as she was.

He’d better be, she thought.

“Thank you sooo much,” Amie said, her face tortured into what was supposed to be a pretty smile but looked like constipation, as far as Velvet was concerned. “I don’t know what I’d have done, if I didn’t have a strong man to help. I suppose it should teach me to pack lighter, huh?”

Those things at the ends of Velvet’s arms were called fists, and she was pumping them furiously and debating whether to hammer them into the girl’s face. It seemed like the only logical response. Stereotype much?

Nick put the epic leather trunk down next to his girlfriend’s carpetbag. Velvet reached down and made sure there was a gap between the two, even just an inch—you never could tell where the dreaded asshole virus would strike next, so precautions are often necessary.

“Good morning, Amie.” Velvet choked the words from her vocal chords. What she’d wanted to say was: Are you wearing skin-colored headphones? Because those ears are massive! Damn.

And at least that would have been the truth. With ears as large as Amie’s, you don’t wear your hair back. It’s just not okay. Ever.

“Ah.” The girl’s face brightened dramatically when she saw Velvet. “You look so pretty today, with your hair up like that.”

Yes, Velvet thought, I have normal, human-sized ears. I can wear it like this.

Amie reached up and stroked a length of dreadlock hanging from the pile atop Velvet’s head. Velvet resisted the urge to jerk away and simply eked out a curt smile.

Nick ran up next to them, his blond hair flopping about on his forehead and a grin plastered across his face that she hoped wasn’t genuine, though she suspected actually was. It was her curse to be in love with someone so nice. And the fact that he was legitimately hot—and not just average, as all her living boyfriends had been—filled her with two things: pride and proprietary jealousy.

Her eyes ricocheted off Nick’s brilliant smile and back toward the girl who was eying not Nick, as she’d suspected, but ... her. Amie was watching her in an odd, assessing way.

“How long did you say this trip would take?” Velvet asked.

“No more than a day. So, plenty of time for us to get to know each other. Won’t that be great?”

“Awesome,” Velvet said sarcastically.

Nick on the other hand was excited. “Can’t wait. It gets so boring hanging out in the Latin Quarter. Same old ashen souls wandering the streets every day. ‘Hello, how are you?’ ‘Fine and you?’ Ugh. Vermillion, though. Now that sounds exotic to me. Like Chinatown or something, but with less hobos.”

“Mmm. Sweet and sour,” Velvet said. “Remember that?”

Of course he did. Everyone in the entire City of the Dead could get in on that conversation as though someone had wheeled up a watercooler or screamed “gossip!” in a crowded cafeteria.

“The barbecue pork with hot mustard was my favorite.” Nick’s eyes rolled into the back of his head as he searched for the pleasurable memory.

“Fried chicken feet at Uncle’s Dim Sum.” Amie added, trying to join in.

Velvet startled, her mouth agape. “Chicken’s feet?”

“Oh yeah, they are delicious ... and so crunchy. You could just suck the skin right off the bone...”

The girl continued to wax nostalgic about her disturbing meal, while Velvet glanced at Nick, happy to see that his face was a sour as hers. Uncle’s Dim Sum must have been a mental institution. Maybe Amie just thought it was a Chinese restaurant. She seemed easily confused.

Nick leaned over to Velvet and whispered, “Um ... no. That’s so not delicious.”

Thank you, Velvet thought. Chicken’s feet are for one thing, so that chickens can walk around a barnyard. What’s next, a big plate of fried beaks? Gross.

She glanced back at Amie and noticed that, at some point during the exchange, she’d stopped talking about gross things that weren’t actually food and was staring directly at the two of them. Velvet shuffled her feet uncomfortably.

“That’s probably something you have to be brought up eating. It just kind of sounds...” Nick searched for the word. “Different. To us. You know?”

Amie’s face softened, and she nodded, agreeing. “Sure.”

Thankfully, the funicular creaked into the station at that moment. A rickety wooden car with several doors down each side, each fitted with fringed café curtains and brass handles, jerked and heaved as it came to a stop before them. The doors opened and a fresh crop of souls, not an hour between their death and arrival in Purgatory, flooded out onto the platform. They were truly strangers. As strange as they come, ash spread on their skin in a sloppy amateurish way and the glow of lingering nerves beaming from patches of cosmetically neglected flesh. Souls who’ve been around know to ash generously. The glow can be a real eyesore.

Suffice it to say, they looked a mess.

And for once, Velvet was glad she wasn’t responsible for their education.

She glanced at Nick, and thought of their first meeting, months ago, in that gothed-out storefront, amidst tons of black candles, stuffed ravens, and one unscrupulous fortune-teller named Madame Despot who was in possession of an imprisoned soul—a sixteen-year-old sporto guy, the kind Velvet wouldn’t ever have even talked to had she been alive. Nick. Velvet and her team had been sent to free him and arrest the Madame.

At the time, Velvet was in the body of a particularly crotchety-looking nurse in her mid-fifties, so it was probably a tad inappropriate to be crushing on the unnervingly hot spirit that spilled out of Despot’s shattered crystal ball. It’s not that she was being pervy, exactly, it’s that she wasn’t in her seventeen-year-old ghost form. But that didn’t stop Velvet from eyeing Nick greedily. Even balled up in a fetal position, sandy hair tussled and blue eyes drilling into her brain like lasers, Nick was mesmerizing. And he’d taken to the afterlife so quickly, with aplomb even.

New souls sort of shuffled and moped. Nick stood proud, broad shoulders erect, like he were still alive, and in many ways, of course, he was. More alive than anyone she’d ever known. She’d saved him that day, and later he’d returned the favor. She guessed they’d saved each other.

He tossed their bags on the rack atop the funicular and opened the door for the two young women.

“Such a gentleman,” Amie said.

There was something in both the words and the tone that irritated Velvet. Though at that moment, nothing the girl said would have filled her with a warm happy feeling.

Velvet slipped into the funicular and sat back on the long bench, making sure she was between Nick and Amie—there’d be no casual brushing of hands or flirting on her watch.

Not. A. Chance.

The funicular, really no more than a low-tech train pulled along on a single rail, ambled a path through the boroughs, districts, and shantytowns of Purgatory. The Latin Quarter, where they lived, gave way to Little Cairo with its flapping awnings and wide-open markets. In the real Cairo, there’d have been the rich scent of spices piled high in metal bowls, instead of the fragrance-free pigments sold in the City of the Dead. Fantastically colored wool