Esprit de Corpse

Meep!

“In fact, we’re pretty skeggin’ pleased with how this all worked out. Conrad here turned out to be a worse skegger than we thought.” Schotz rounded now on Conrad, who probably would have tried to hide behind Dante himself if his new, tattooed wrists weren’t handcuffed to the bed. “Lettin’ your daughter fade out of existence. Why, I oughta!” He raised his deactivated scythe, but I realized it was an empty threat. “Nah.” He said, turning away from Conrad and addressing his Reaper Corps again. “Me’n Jules here think you two have come up with a pretty creative punishment for this skegger. Now he’s gotta live out his twenty-five-year extension not just in a prison, but also in a woman’s body! And, you’ll never talk anybody into anything again with that voice. Bwa-ha-ha!” Schotz concluded.

“Bwa-ha-ha!” Judge Julius joined in.

“Bene!” Dante cried, fisting the air.

“Awesome!” I added. Wait. What’s so wrong with being in a woman’s body? Then something else occurred to me. “So I’m not in trouble for reaping Maddy?”

“What? Oh, no. Of course not. It’s right in the Reaper code: Thou shall not suffer a bitch to live.”

Conrad looked ashen as he struggled against his bonds, turning fifty shades of gray. “Just— kill—self,” he ground out.

“Oh, I’d advise against that course of action,” the judge told him. “See, your extension isn’t only a maximum number of years, it’s also the minimum.”

“What?” I said.

“How?” Shannon asked.

“Cosa?” Damn universal translator.

“That’s right, girlie. Er, Conrad. If you do damage to that body, you’re still stuck in it. If you do somethin’ fatal like jump offa building or drink poison, you’ll be stuck with coma-toes.”

“Been talking with Crystal, sir?”

“What? Er, right. Comatose, I mean.”

“Excuse me. Am I interrupting?”

We all turned toward the door where the uniformed cop was preventing Willa from entering the room. “I brought the contract.”

Contract? Oh, skeg. What fresh Hell was this?

“It’s okay, Officer Suzuki. She can come in.” Shannon beckoned her nervous assistant to enter. Willa sidled into the room, a large manila envelope in her hand.

“Thanks, Willa.”

Willa walked through me and opened her arms for a hug. “We’ll miss you, Shannon. You were a great boss.” She pulled back. “Except for the last day. But all the rest of the time.”

“I wasn’t quite myself that day.” Shannon glared at her father. Then she laughed and hugged her assistant back.

“Okay, here’s the contract.” After handing Shannon the envelope, Willa fled the room. But what had she meant about my friend having been a great boss past tense?

Shannon drew a sheaf of papers from the envelope—plain white bond and not parchment, thank Lucy. She flipped through the papers quickly, obviously familiar with their contents.

I crouched down and peeked at the front page. Ah, it was the contract she’d been reading when I’d first materialized. Was it only three days ago?

“It’s all in order.” She held up the document for her dad to see. “I’ve quit my job at Iver PR. I’m no longer the CEO. Or anything there.”

His new eyes bulged out of his new head. He made a retching noise I assumed meant “what the fuck?”

“That’s right, Dad. All your machinations were for nothing. I had our lawyers—no, not your buddy Gill Hammerhead. He never would have gone for it. But Ray Mora. One of their associates. Together Ray and I came up with a new business model where Iver PR is going to be run as a cooperative. A public-private hybrid.”

Conrad rasped and gasped, falling back on the pillows as if having a stroke. But between the recent revelation that he couldn’t die and the upright angle of the bed, it really lacked drama. We ignored him and Shannon continued.

“Everybody in the company was allowed to buy a share for five thousand dollars. It’ll be run as a democracy with the new CEO voted in and holding the office for a term of five years.”

“’Mocracy?” Conrad shrieked, sounding like titanium being torn in two. I covered my ears.

“The reason Frannie was so anxious to turn on me and get me put away was because she had accumulated so much personal debt from online gambling that she couldn’t raise the five thousand dollars any more than she could raise the dead.” She threw her hand over her mouth and blushed. “No offense.”

“None taken,” we dead folk chorused.

“I would have grandfathered her in but she’s far too vindictive and manipulative to keep around. After all, she studied under the master.” She glared at her father again, who beamed like he’d just been complimented. Skegger.

To avoid the reminder that I, too, had gotten my spin doctorate under Conrad’s tutelage, I changed the subject. “What will you do now?”

“I was never cut out for corporate life. I would have made a terrible CEO and the company would have foundered. Clients and employees would have been left out in the cold. My dad was actually right about that.”

Conrad smiled warmly at his daughter. On his new face, a warm smile was a terrible thing to behold. Shannon took a half step back.

But I’d seen her in action and I think she was underestimating herself. She’d really known the business. Still, if this was what she wanted she had my blessing, er, um, approval.

“So I’m going to follow my bliss. I’m returning to school to finish my Master’s in social work. And when I graduate, I’d like to work with inmates.” She gave her father a watery smile. “Probably at Vanier. But before I do that, I’m going to take all the money I made selling shares in Iver PR and use it to endow an educational grant for any inmate or former inmate who wants to study social work. It’ll be known as the Theresa Mudders Memorial Award. I think that’s only fitting, don’t you?”

“Oh, Shannon, that’s wonderful.” I hugged her tight. (Testing first that my arms wouldn’t merely fly right through her and I’d end up hugging myself. They didn’t.)

“And Kirsty, I, um . . .” Shannon pulled back from my embrace, but clutched my hands in hers. “I have to apologize. I believed my dad’s version of events even when, deep down, I really knew what had happened.” She bit her lower lip, but didn’t look away.

“It’s okay, Shannon. You were exposed to Conrad’s spell longer than anyone. It’s amazing you were able to disconnect from it as soon as you did.”

“Yes, Shannon,” Dante added. He stepped up beside us, raised a hand to lay on Shannon’s shoulder, but instead turned and caressed my shoulder. “It took Kirsty several months, Hell time, to come to terms with the manipulation she’d experienced. That you freed yourself of your father’s influence so quickly is remarkable.”

The jealousy and anger I’d felt had been slipping away, but now it kicked back in again. I tried to shrug Dante’s hand off my shoulder, but he only held on tighter, turning me gently toward him. My hands slipped from Shannon’s, so I crossed my arms over my chest.

“It is my turn to apologize, Kirsty. I should have been more supportive. While it is true that as Reapers, we must investigate every possibility, I was unnecessarily harsh with you. I should never have behaved like that. I will understand if you do not wish to be with me anymore.”

He hung his head, peeking out from under his overlong bangs. Something about his little-boy look melted my heart. I uncrossed my arms and stepped forward. His head shot up and hope shone in his eyes. I allowed him to wrap his arms around me briefly before I stepped back out of the circle of his embrace.

“Yes, Dante, you did behave badly.” I was about to get into it when I realized everyone in the room— including my evil ex-boss—was watching us like television. If popcorn put in an appearance, so help me—

We’d briefly been the couple that fought in front of their friends and coworkers. Now we were the couple that made up in front of our friends. And not just friends, but also in front of my evil ex-boss, our not-too-evil current boss and . . . what was Judge Julius to me?