First Grave on the Right

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 same 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