Kiss Me Deadly: Tales of a Paranormal Romance

smeared her face and arms with ash where it rubbed off on the flimsy pillow overnight, covering the soft glow of her flesh. Outside of her quarters, there was movement, a scuffing against the cobblestone path.

The dorm coming to life, she imagined.

Freshly gray souls gathered themselves up for the day, readying to bind paper, go on collection runs through sanctioned cracks into the world of the living, or join up with their salvage teams, lining up to get instructions for the day from their Station Agent.

She found she missed Manny and her friends in the Latin Quarter dorms, but most of all Luisa, one of the twin poltergeists on their team. She’d have helped her to think this whole Nick/Amie thing out.

Velvet peered up at the towering pagoda; its faded red paint chipping away like dry skin. She noticed a faint hue on the cobble at her feet and wondered if the whole of Vermillion were sprinkled in the color, if it all came from the pagoda or if there was something else at play here.

She wondered lots of things.

Whether Manny and Howard met in Purgatory or whether they knew each other when they were living. She imagined that the card players in the courtyard were previous participants in the World Poker Tour that seemed to be on TV every day when she’d come home from school when she was alive.

But mostly she wondered about anything, just to stop thinking about Nick.

It was a pleasant morning otherwise, and she found herself wandering uninterrupted into the secret paper orchard behind the temple compound. Gravel grated under the soles of her combat boots, and the paper leaves and wire branches crinkled in the dark breeze. Overhead, the sky glowed with passing souls, like shooting stars. There seemed to be thousands that day, speeding past. Constant reminders that the rest of them were all stuck in the City of the Dead until their time came to dim and fade away.

The souls mocked her—all blinky and happy. She imagined them flipping her off as they passed on to heaven, or wherever.

Jerks.

“They’re beautiful,” Nick said as he stepped into the garden.

Velvet said nothing.

He didn’t try anything as stupid as touching her. He had enough sense to know she was still angry. But he did keep talking. “I don’t know what you heard last night Velvet, but you have to believe me, I was asleep.”

She shrugged as though she didn’t care. As if the whole thing were behind them and they’d moved on to a strictly business relationship, for that was all it should have ever been.

For chrissakes, they worked together.

“We have a job to do,” she said and strode off in the direction of the little bronze door.

But when she got there, she realized she’d have to disrobe in front of him. In front of the one who’d wronged her. She suddenly felt vulnerable and clenched her arms around herself.

“You’ve got to give me the benefit of the doubt here!” Nick lunged in front of her, forcing eye contact.

Or attempting to.

She looked away. Did she have any doubts? Was there reason to believe he hadn’t been involved?

Only one.

Amie had gone straight to him, after Velvet had shot her down. That part didn’t make sense. But the stuff she was saying was so ugly. And, well, she had been as topless as a diseased stripper, too.

She shook her head and opened the wooden hamper next to the metal door in the wall. Starting to pull her boots off, she nearly fell over, but Nick was there to steady her. His strong hands on her shoulders, his breath on the back of her neck, lips so close to that sensitive flesh.

“I love you, Velvet,” he whispered. “And this thing with Amie isn’t going to change that. And your doubts aren’t going to change that. And Amie sure as hell isn’t going to change that.”

Something in her softened and she craned her neck a bit and nodded that she’d heard him.

Softened but not accepted.

Velvet stuffed her clothing into the box and used the key to open the little door, revealing the portal crack behind it.

* * *

A moment later they were speeding through the freshly cleaned kitchen. Hair-netted sous-chefs chopped onions into piles like anthills, and pots of sauces were lined up on the stoves bubbling with salty tomatoey lava and rich cream. It must have been lunch. Fewer customers ringed the white tablecloths, and only a handful of waiters bustled around, none of whom was Emile, hiding his bruises behind sunglasses.

“Where are we headed?” Nick spoke in as delicate a manner as someone as deep in crap as he was should.

He was getting good at this part, Velvet noted. Meaning: dancing around the issue at hand. Of course, he’d said everything he needed to, regardless of its implausibility. And to be honest, Velvet’s doubts were gaining on the circumstantial evidence. No matter how she played it out, the timing seemed off.

What was the girl up to? Trying to seduce both of them?

That was just plain weird, if not the most slutty thing ever.

She didn’t answer and, instead, swept through a door marked office and straight to the single file cabinet in the dark room.

“Whatcha doin’?” Nick asked.

Velvet traced the word employees on one of the drawers and forced her head through the metal, cramming her hands in the sides of the cabinet. Ghosts don’t glow enough to draw attention to themselves in the daylight, but in a pitch black space, it was enough. She thumbed through the files until she found Emile’s address and withdrew.

“2622 Colonial. Let’s find the waiter.”

She ran from the room, an idea starting to form in her head. Why had they been called to find Abner Conroy, when clearly Amie was not a busy salvage team? Why couldn’t Amie’s team find him themselves? Why couldn’t Amie’s team provide some, even a little, protection to Emile?

“If Amie and Vermillion really needed our help, why has she been so mean?” Velvet asked as they ran down the street. “And then alternately so aggressively sexual ... and not just with you?”

Nick’s brow arched.

“What do you mean?”

Velvet stopped, shrugging limply. “Before I caught her in your room, she’d come to mine.”

He shook his head, the idea not quite catching. “Amie came on to you? What?”

Velvet ignored the panicked tone in Nick’s voice and, in one smooth sidestep, plunged into a stranger waiting at the bus stop, asked a passerby for directions to 2622 Colonial, and stepped back out, leaving the person only slightly confused.

Velvet stared at the woman she’d just recently possessed. Her face was scrunched up like she thought something was wrong but she couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was.

And that was it. That was the thought bouncing around in Velvet’s head, just underneath all the Amie- anger.

“She’s trying to confuse us,” she said.

“Sexual subterfuge!” Nick shouted.

Velvet shook her head. “What?”

“It’s like this,” he said, suddenly animated and waving his hands around wildly. “You watch enough spy movies, and you start to catch on. Amie is like Mata Hari.”

“Who’s that?”

“She was a double agent in World War I. Seduced guys on both sides of the war and funneled information back to Germany. Eventually they beheaded her.”

“I know someone in need of a good beheading.” Velvet started in the direction of Emile’s apartment.

“So yeah. She’s using both of us, but for the same purpose.” He said the last words emphatically, as though he’d figured everything out and was exonerated entirely.

Velvet didn’t have the venom in her to correct Nick—it wasn’t like Amie was getting valuable information from them, nor were they on opposite sides of a war. She waived it off. “And what about Abner Conroy? Or Emile? How