Esprit de Corpse

Swap till You Drop

I SPRANG FREE of Theresa’s body, phantom throbbing in my head and neck fading quickly. I cracked my neck, delighted to be pain free again. I felt free, alive . . . well, not alive, of course. But good. Really good.

The sound of choking drew my attention back to the crisis at hand. I spun to see Maddy sitting astride Shannon’s body again, choking the life out of Conrad.

And also choking the Conrad out of Shannon.

Shannon’s face had gone burgundy and her eyes bulged. It was still prettier than Conrad’s demonic features—features that were beginning to overlay Shannon’s again.

Conrad’s fingers scrabbled around the dirty floor. He knocked against the stapler, which lay on the tiles where I’d dropped it. He wrapped his fingers around it and, using the last bit of strength Shannon’s living body possessed, raised it high. Seeing his motion, Maddy twisted to face the stapler without ceasing her stranglehold on his neck.

Another staple clicked into place, wee fangs glinting in the cold fluorescent light. Conrad smashed the stapler wildly at Maddy, managing to hit her in the throat. She coughed and spat blood, her hands spasming on Shannon’s neck. Maybe they loosened a little, but not enough. Conrad’s arm descended slowly to the tiles; once on the floor, nerveless fingers released the stapler almost gently.

Conrad ceased to struggle.

The next second, I watched a pair of scaly gray horns poke out from Shannon’s forehead, now smooth in the peace death brings . . . usually. Her face turned a brighter shade of red—more demon and less asphyxiation. Without disturbing Shannon’s dead body, Conrad sat up and climbed out, right through Maddy.

Behind me, the door splintered, a small crack appearing in the reinforced wood.

Hand on my scythe, I turned back to Conrad. “Conrad Iver. I hath come to take thine soul to . . . Oh, shit. Hide!” I screamed at Conrad while pointing to the mirror. “You have a reflection. They can see you!”

For a moment I feared Conrad wouldn’t care, but apparently he did. “Where?” he yelled, panic in his voice as the door splintered again. This time the blade of a fire ax put in a brief appearance before being yanked back out.

“There! Quick!” I pointed to a small door at the back near the stalls.

Conrad charged toward it, ripped open the locked door and dove inside what turned out to be a supply cupboard. He tripped over a wheeled washbasin and brought a year’s supply of toilet paper cascading down on his head. He’d been able to pass through Maddy as he’d exited Shannon’s body, but he was solid and visible now. Demons couldn’t manifest and disappear like Reapers could.

I felt strangely calm amid the chaos. Maddy lay where she’d fallen, blood seeping slowly from the wound in her neck. I took half a second to enjoy her pain, my hand going to my own now-bruise-free throat.

Theresa’s body lay lifeless, twisted unnaturally on the cold white tiles. Her soul had already risen unto Heaven, so I figured her body’s death was okay. And Conrad was stuck in a supply closet in a bathroom designed for the opposite gender. Oh, sweet irony. At some point I’d laugh about his predicament, but this was so not the moment.

Now that I was a pure spirit again, I could see Dante and Shannon. Dante looked pale and wan, whatever wan meant, but Shannon? Shannon was almost completely transparent. Not much more to her than a faint outline. I had to get her into a body stat!

Before I could figure out what to do next, the door burst open.

Courthouse security poured in, as many as could fit through the bathroom door. As a single unit, all weapons trained on Maddy—guns, Tasers—the whole arsenal. She lay on her back, groaning. One hand rubbing her head where I’d hit it. It bled a little, dark blood oozing onto one lone yellow tile on the otherwise white-tiled floor. Her other hand poked gingerly at her throat. Judging by the blood running down her neck, Conrad had inflicted major damage.

“Hands on your head, Maddy Stryker!”

“They already—”

Are, I finished mentally. Her voice grated and squawked, sounding like a cross between an angry duck and metal being shredded to pieces.

A gurney appeared at the doorway, but with so many in the room it wouldn’t fit. In seconds, half the security personnel exited, leaving room for the medical team to charge in. One EMT focused on Theresa while the other tended to Shannon.

Both women got emergency paddles, but after only a few shouts of “Clear!” the EMT at Theresa’s side closed her eyes and called time of death. He quickly joined the other at Shannon’s side. Together they administered a much more sophisticated form of CPR than Conrad had done on Theresa yesterday.

There might still be a chance!

I leapt through various personnel to where Shannon’s outline fluttered in a corner. “C’mon, Shannon. C’mon. I tried to grab her arm, but my incorporeal fingers slipped through her insubstantial body. “Shannon. Go to your body. Now! Last chance.”

Shannon seemed to hear me. She nodded faintly and began drifting slowly across the room. “C’mon. C’mon!” I encouraged, staying where I was. No way was I going down that road again.

“Somebody call it,” I heard.

“No, no. Wait! You have to wait!” I yelled, biting all my nails at once. Where was Kali when I needed her? “No, Not you, Shannon. Go! Go!”

Shannon drifted closer. A glance across the room showed me the faintest flicker that could be Dante. I didn’t have time to worry about him now. At least he was as far from Shannon’s body as he could be and still be in the room.

Having its soul nearby must have kicked the body into gear because just as the EMT drew a breath to call time of death, Shannon’s body drew a breath of her own. And in doing so, inhaled Shannon’s pale spirit back where it belonged.

Shannon coughed. Seconds later, an EMT slipped an oxygen mask gently over her face. She blinked her eyes open.

“I’m okay?” she rasped. “I’m me again?”

The EMT smiled at her. I might have noticed he was really cute. And probably so did Shannon. “You are, indeed, you, Ms. Iver. Can you tell me what day it is?”

Whoa. That was a hard one. How ’bout starting with the year and working up to it?

Another EMT had finished bandaging Maddy’s head and neck. The guard responsible for her grabbed her hands and cuffed them roughly behind her back. Gripping her by her sizable biceps, the EMT and the guard helped Maddy to her feet.

“What’s that?” the guard asked, picking up the parchment contract from the floor. It was flipped to the signature page where Conrad had left it when he’d finished photographing it. Due to the scuffle, the contract looked like it’d gone through hell. It was now torn, bore several overlapping footprints and a giant pool of bright red blood.

Wait, what? Blood? Not mine—well, Theresa’s. I’d only bled a dark drop or two on the yellow pages. Yellow. Of course! That was why the floor beneath Maddy’s head had seemed yellow when the rest of the tiles were white. The contract amendment was now awash in Maddy’s bright red blood. She’d lain on it when she’d been knocked off Conrad, bleeding from both the gash in her neck he’d inflicted and the head wound where I’d left my own mark.

And because Maddy had a soul and Theresa didn’t, her blood on the signature line actually meant something.

Oh, no. It meant Conrad was going to get his twenty-five-year extension after all. Now what was I going to do?

Unlike Dante, who was weak from being away from Hell for so long, I’d gotten my batteries recharged by being in Theresa’s living body. It was up to me to salvage this fiasco.

In my mind’s eye, I replayed every time Dante had manifested. Again I wished for Amber’s eidetic memory.