the family did back in our day.”
“Uh-uh,” Jesse said, clamping a hand over Tony’s mouth. “You can’t talk about his old life. Sorry, Grif. Sarge’s orders.”
“Shut up, Jesse,” Grif snapped back.
“Well,” said Tony, “I wish you luck, anyway. That Craig girl is a real peach.” Then he shrugged. “For a nosy, relentless ink-hound, that is. I liked her.”
But Grif loved her. He knew that now. So he gritted his teeth, and dialed Bridget Moore’s number once more.
Chapter Twenty-Five
You’re going the wrong way,” said Grif’s backseat driver.
“No, I’m not,” he told Courtney, as he squinted up at the street sign, blew past a yellow-ish light, and steered through a section of downtown that looked better at night than on any given day.
Courtney huffed and slapped a combat boot up on the dash. “The map is upside-down, loo-sah.”
“Watch your mouth, sweetheart.” And he slapped her leg back down. Kit would keel over dead if there were boot prints on her dashboard.
“Don’t call me that,” Courtney muttered, staring out the side window. Black hair fringed her face in spikes so all that was visible of her face was one pert pale little nose.
“No one else will,” Grif muttered, hesitating before adding, “ ’cept maybe… Jesse?”
“What? Shut up!” Courtney straightened so fast she would have hit her head on the roof, if it were possible for a Centurion.
“Relax, doll.” Grif hid a smile that hid his nerves. “I don’t care about your little postmortem crush. Got it?”
Courtney regained her slump and crossed her arms. “Well, I don’t care about your Surface-skimming crush getting offed. How ’bout that?”
“Feel free to leave.” He motioned to her door.
Courtney smirked. “Feel free to take a right at the next corner.”
Grif cursed under his breath, but swung a quick right. His jaw clenched when the street he’d been looking for swam into view, but Courtney-probably sensing he was close to his edge-stayed silent. After another few blocks, she glanced over. “So why won’t this Bridget girl tell you where Kit is?”
“I don’t think she knows.”
Bridget had sounded genuinely sorry when Grif finally had gotten hold of her, and explained quickly that Kit was missing. But she’d also sounded scared. He could almost hear her mind ticking, making contingency plans for her own safety. Yet after their conversation in the bar, he was sure she’d have told him if Kit was in danger. If she knew, that was.
“And you really think
Grif threw Kit’s car into park, and shot her a hard look. “I got no other way of keeping death from touching this woman.”
Another woman he loved. Dead because of him.
With that thought Grif clambered out of the car, onto its hood, and jumped the wall leading into the Rose Lawn Memorial Cemetery. Courtney, who merely passed directly through the brick, smirked at him from the other side.
“Find me the fresh ones, Fido,” Grif ordered, and took some satisfaction at watching her smile fall.
Yet she slipped easily through the plots, navigating the pitch-black night without a misstep. Grif might have some remaining powers from the Everlast, and Anne had certainly shot him up with a mouthful of something, but it was nothing compared to Courtney’s full Centurion senses. She stopped once to crack a joke-pointing at a headstone and exclaiming, “Oh, hey! I know him!”-but a pointed stare from Grif had her continuing on until they reached an obviously fresh grave.
“Now dig.”
Courtney shook her head, but faced the grave and waved her hand in the air in a quick windshield-wiper motion. It was a necessary skill-some Takes were buried alive-and the ground in front of her shifted like it was being raked to the side. “You know, if this works, I could get in trouble for helping you. They’ll send me back to the Tube and force me to forget shit, too.”
Grif considered the fights he’d overheard between Courtney and Sarge, booming from the Pure’s office like they were being blared on a blow horn. She thought she needed more time in incubation. He always countered that that was the easy way out, that a Centurion had to work for the most important life lessons, not simply be handed them. So Grif frowned at Courtney as she continued flicking her wrist, flinging dirt. “Haven’t you been trying to return to the Tube since you reached the Everlast?”
“Yeah.” She nodded, eyes wide. “This might actually do it!”
And with that, she leaned forward, took a deep breath, and blew away the last of the dirt. When the enormous burst of dust had settled, Grif looked down and found a still-gleaming mahogany casket.
“And this is where I bow out,” she said, leaning against the trunk of a nearby oak. “All yours, Shaw.”
Grimacing, but resolute, he leaped down onto the casket. There was no room to sidestep or straddle, and he struggled for a moment to figure out how to open the thing.
“Got it down to a science, don’t they? You can practically knock on the casket next door,” Courtney called, from above. “If they only knew, huh? They probably wouldn’t bother.”
No, thought Grif, tugging at the casket. They’d bother. People did crazy things for those they loved. As evidenced by Grif’s actions now. A quick tug and simultaneous hop, and he managed to get one foot wedged in the opening. A little more maneuvering and he finally wrestled the lid open.
The first thing that hit him was the smell. Like overcooked barbecue and soured sauce. Not decomposing exactly, but sickly sweet. In return-and defense-Grif blew the breath he’d been holding directly back at the corpse, visualizing the electric coil given to him by Anne going with it. She’d been right about one thing, at least. It was time to stop fighting his angelic nature… especially when the power rushed through him like a river. The power- even just two feathers’ worth-of a Pure.
There was a flash, then a whiff of smoke, and the corpse jumped. Then, for an even briefer moment, the face of the Pure flashed over the bones of the dead. Grif waited as the smoke dissipated, and silence suitable to a graveyard once again blanketed the ground.
Then, a twitch.
And Paul Raggio’s body rose from the grave.
“Jesus Christ, who the fuck put me in this get-up?”
“Yo mama,” Courtney called down.
Paul looked up, neck cracking unnaturally with the movement, before falling immediately to one side as he squinted. His eyes pulsed in their sockets twice, and then he grimaced. “Aw, man. Not you again. I thought I saw the last of your stuck-up, grungy ass when they stuck me in the Tube.”
Grif looked up at Courtney, sucking in a deep breath while his head was tilted that way. “You didn’t tell me you knew him.”
Courtney made a face. “Contact shame.”
Grif could only nod. Death tended to accentuate a person’s more distinct character traits, and since Raggio had been a total ass prior to death, all that getting whacked had done was remove his conversational filter.
“Shaw!” Raggio’s head swung sickly to the other side. “You got wings!”
“I know.” Grif dug around in his jacket pocket for a stick, trying to not be unnerved that all the dead people could still see them, while he could not. The cigarette smoke would also help with the smell.
“Holy shit. You’re a Centurion?” Paul propped his wrists on his hips, though with no life force, no mortal coil to hold them up, they immediately slid back to his sides. “Well, I’m not impressed. We’ve already covered what happens if I don’t get over my traumatic death before my time in the Tube is up. Believe me, I’ve got no problem putting my past behind me. I mean, beam me up, Scotty. Paradise is totally where I belong. I’m not going to let
