Dead and Buried: A Bridget Sway Novel (A Paranormal Ghost Cozy Mystery Series Book 4)

by Jordaina Sydney Robinson

  “We have other business. Be good.” Richards fashioned his hand into a fake gun, shot at me again and then they walked away. Why did he keep doing that? Didn’t he realise that made him look like an idiot?

  “I’ll be two seconds,” Sean said, lifting two fingers to illustrate his point and then dashed off in the same direction as the GBs.

  I stood by the door minding my own business until a loud series of bangs echoed out from the stairwell. I was about to check several people hadn’t fallen down the stairs at the same time when the door flew open. Considering it was a super heavy fire door I half expected an avalanche or some other natural disaster to pour through. I’d been close.

  “Why are you lurking here?” Janice demanded as the door closed behind her.

  “Because my induction training officer told me to.” I gave her my widest, happiest smile because, at that moment, I was doing exactly as I’d been told.

  “Where’s your identification?”

  “He’s gone to get it. That’s why I’m standing here. Exactly where he told me. Exactly like he told me.” I gave her another wide smile.

  “He shouldn’t have left you here without identification.” Janice pulled a notepad from her pocket, flipped it open and clicked her pen. “What’s his name?”

  “He was doing exactly what the GB told him to do. If anyone is to blame, it’s the GB. His name was Treble. T-R-E—” I pointed to her poised pen. “Are you getting this down? T-R-E-B-L-E.”

  Voices drifted from the stairwell. Janice threw a furtive glance toward the door and then clicked her pen off. “Just do as you’re told,” she said and walked away.

  “I am,” I called after her. Hadn’t I just explained that?

  Janice frowned over her shoulder at me before she disappeared around the corner.

  “He can say that all he wants but it doesn’t change the facts.” A voice echoed out from the stairwell. Fredrickson. The GB who accused me of stabbing Jeremy.

  “He makes a good point, though,” another male voice said. Not quite disagreeing, more like cajoling the other guy to agree.

  “I don’t think he does. Mediums serve a purpose and having more would be helpful, that’s true, but their numbers don’t change the fact that we simply need more boots on the ground, Neals. Until we can change the recruiting process—”

  The handle of the door twisted and it opened a crack. I was torn between staying exactly where I was and moving. I was pretty sure I was going to be in trouble either way.

  “Change it how?” Neals asked.

  “We could start hiring women,” Fredrickson said and both laughed.

  They were still laughing when they opened up the door and found me waiting on the other side. They stopped when they saw me.

  “And why would female GBs be funny?” I asked.

  “Were you eavesdropping?” Neals accused me.

  “Nope. You’re both loud.”

  “Where’s your ID badge?” Fredrickson asked.

  “Right here. It’s right here.” Sean jogged toward us, waving the badge in the air. The GBs watched him approach. Neals snatched the badge out of Sean’s hand when he reached us.

  I whistled. “Rude.”

  “Bridget.” Sean shook his head at me.

  “What? Snatching is rude. Just because he’s a GB doesn’t mean he’s exempt from good manners, does it?” I placed my hand over my chest and affected a sugary sweet tone. “I’d have thought they’d have to be the epitome of excellent manners since they’re in such a public role.”

  “That is a good point, Bridget,” Sean mumbled.

  “I know.” I held out my hand to Neals, who was still holding my badge. “Can I please have my identification back now, Officer?”

  Neals looked down at his hands and frowned as if surprised to find himself holding it. He checked my identification for the first time.

  “Bridget? Bridget Sway?” he asked.

  “Is that a question? Because you are literally holding my name in your hands.” I leaned forward and stage whispered, “Is literacy not an entry requirement for the GBs, only the right genitalia?”

  “Bridget!” Sean gasped and then held his hands up. “I am so sorry.”

  I pushed his hands down. “Don’t apologise for me, Sean. They were both laughing about how women couldn’t be GBs.”

  Sean frowned. “Why would that be funny?”

  “I don’t know, Sean. Maybe these two gentlemen, who the Bureau of Ghostly Affairs deem worthy of upholding the law and seeking out justice, will be able to clarify that matter for us both.”

  “Don’t eavesdrop.” Neals pointed a corner of my badge in my face and then slapped it back into my hand. He didn’t want to give it back but there was no reason for him to keep it. And he clearly didn’t want to get drawn into a gender politics questioning session with Sean.

  “As I previously, and very politely, explained, I wasn’t eavesdropping. You were loud,” I reminded him.

  “Okay, our newbies are waiting,” Sean said, nudging me past the GBs and into the stairwell. “For the record, Bridget, I think you’d make an excellent GB.”

  “Thank you, Sean.” Since I was quite familiar with GBs I kind of felt like that was an insult but I knew he meant it as a compliment, so I treated it like one. “Are there always this many of them around Arrivals?”

  “Sometimes there are, sometimes there aren’t.” Sean shrugged unconcerned and headed down the stairs.

  I followed him, clip-clopping in my heels. I didn’t exactly wish for my Oz safety net but I did wonder if I’d always found it so hard to navigate staircases in heels. I couldn’t remember it being a problem before. And then, on the third flight down, I realised why. In life, I’d have taken the lift.

  We made it down into the parking garage and Sean held the door open for me. The Bus of Death was circling the car park. I knew, from my community service, this was so the passengers still thought they were en route. Depending on the passengers, stopping the bus could result in riots.

  The Bus of Death came to a screeching halt in front of us. The door creaked open and a slew of people poured off the bus. Some dropped to their knees in what I assumed was relief to be back on solid ground. I rode the bus with Charon on the weekends. I recognised that feeling.

  “You need to work on your timekeeping, my little Bridget. I was getting dizzy,” Charon called down from the driver’s seat while Sean’s head twanged back and forth between us.

  “You know him?” Sean whispered and I nodded. I couldn’t tell if Sean was worried or impressed by that.

  “Sorry. GB intervention. Talking of GBs …”

  “I didn’t harm them,” Charon called over Sean’s beckoning welcome to the escaping passengers. “I simply explained to them how important collecting the newly deceased on time was. And I very much liked the sticker notes on your parole officer.” Charon grinned at me. I was guessing that Oz might have taken a few jibes about that.

  “I figured you might have lumped him in with them.”

  “I would have.” Charon angled his rearview mirror to look back along the inside on the bus. I had no idea why he had the mirror—he never used it for driving purposes. “Off. Get off. This is the end of the line,” Charon yelled without moving from behind the driver’s seat.

  “Absolutely not. Take me back,” demanded Jeremy.

  “There’s nothing back there for you.” Charon grinned over his shoulder at his reluctant passenger. He did the face morphing thing where he layered a monster’s face over his own. It looked reptilian and when Charon spoke there was a hiss to his voice. “Get off my bus!”

  “No. I demand to see your supervisor,” Jeremy called from the back of the bus.

  Charon glanced to me, grinned then closed the bus’s door.

  “Is he leaving? We’re one short,” Sean said as he walked over to me, counting the passengers again.

  I shook my head. I’d seen how this went. “Nope, there’s still a passenger onboard but he needs a li
ttle encouragement getting off the bus.”

  “Oooh, maybe we can help.” Sean stepped toward the bus and I held him back.

  “You don’t want to help.”

  “No?” he asked and I shook my head.

  A high-pitched scream ricocheted out of the bus and around the car park. I sighed, Sean cringed and the passengers, who were already off the bus, huddled together. The doors of the bus rattled as if someone were attacking them. Abruptly it stopped. They opened. A grinning Charon was holding a truly petrified Jeremy by the collar a foot off the ground. Jeremy’s legs were moving as if he were on a treadmill.

  “He’s going to run,” Charon warned and let go of Jeremy’s collar.

  Jeremy tripped down the stairs of the bus and landed directly at my feet. His eyes travelled up my body as if they didn’t really want to but couldn’t help it. When he finally reached my face I waved down at him. Jeremy choked down a scream. He pushed himself to his feet and ran.

  I whistled as I watched him. “Look at him go.”

  Sean nodded. “Yep, he’s fast. I hope you can run in those shoes.”

  “Me? In these shoes? No, these shoes aren’t for running. They’re not even really for walking. They’re for standing around and looking amazing in.”

  “Guess you’ll have to chase him down barefoot then. Trainee Inductioneers’ prerogative. It’s only fair you guys get the fun jobs.” Sean stared longingly at the running Jeremy.

  “The fun jobs?” I asked.

  Sean nodded and began clapping on his clipboard. “Brid-get! Brid-get! Brid-get!”

  “What’s he doing?” I asked Charon.

  “He’s cheering you on while you chase the runner down.” Charon gestured to Jeremy, who, in running blindly away from the bus, me and Charon, had run to the other side of the car park where there was no exit.

  “I’m not chasing him down,” I said.

  “He’s off my bus now so he’s your responsibility. And look at the encouragement.” Charon pointed to the still chanting Sean, who seemed unperturbed by the fact I still wasn’t chasing anyone.

  I scowled at Charon, who laughed in response. I scowled at the still chanting Sean, who kept chanting in response. And then I scowled at Jeremy, who was too far away to properly appreciate my glare. I took my shoes off and placed them carefully by Sean, then took three stomping steps toward Jeremy before I realised that, dead or not, stomping barefoot on concrete hurt.

  “If he carries on like that they’re not even going to let him into Arrivals, let alone through,” Charon said as he caught me up and we watched Jeremy pounding on the bricks as though he expected someone to open up a section of wall and let him through.

  “Where will he go if they don’t let him into Arrivals?” I asked.

  Charon shrugged. “Figure of speech. They’ll let him through the initial door but they’ll whisk him off elsewhere before he’s even filled out his forms.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to chase him down?” I asked. “I’ll bring you pastries on my next shift.”

  “That is tempting, my little Bridget, but I’d much rather watch you lasso the runner.”

  “Compromise?” I asked.

  Charon nodded. “I’m listening.”

  “You help me catch him and I won’t tell every passenger on every shift until the end of my community service what a great listener you are.”

  Charon blew out a breath and stared at Jeremy, who’d given up banging on the wall and was now tapping his way along it, I assumed looking for weak spots. “I don’t know. I think it might be worth it.”

  I pouted at him. Charon smiled, placed a hand on my shoulder and tunnelled us to directly in front of Jeremy. I was pretty sure that was to freak Jeremy out more than to help me.

  “Please, please …” Jeremy begged as he cowered down on the floor.

  “Please what?” I asked, feeling a little sorry for him. Charon could get a little excitably mean when people refused to get off his bus. Or do what he wanted in general.

  “Please. I don’t want to be dead.”

  “Who does? It sucks.” I moved to crouch in front of him, feeling a wave of empathy. I hadn’t taken to dying that well either. Although it didn’t help that Charon had lied to me about it to start with.

  Jeremy looked up at me. His eyes were full of fear. “Can’t you take me back?”

  “Take you back where?” I asked.

  “Home. Take me home. I promise I’ll never tell anyone about this. Put me back in my body. I won’t even do shows anymore if you don’t want me to.”

  “You’re dead, Jeremy. There’s nothing I can do to change that.” I doubted that he would be able to keep those promises anyway. I was pretty sure that as soon as he was back in his body he’d be organising a press tour so he could tell everyone about his afterlife adventure. With me painted as the villain. I wondered how many more years community service I’d get for that.

  Something in him snapped back into place and Jeremy pushed to his feet, smoothing his hair out of his face. His expression relaxed back into that smug smile I was so familiar with. “I demand to speak to the person in charge,”

  I stood up and stepped back. “Well, that was a really creepy switch.”

  Charon nodded, eyeing Jeremy with distaste. “I don’t like him.”

  “The person in charge. Right now.” Jeremy snapped his fingers in my face several times.

  I pushed his still snapping fingers down. “Okay, well, I don’t have God’s direct line so how about we get you through Arrivals first?”

  “You don’t want me to speak to anyone so I won’t tell them,” Jeremy said.

  “Tell them what?” I asked.

  Jeremy jabbed his finger right in my face. “That you did this on purpose.”

  I was about to explain that I hadn’t done anything and then a thought occurred to me. “Prove it.”

  Charon arched an eyebrow at me. “Really? How is this going to get him back over with his group?”

  I gave him a shrug and focused on Jeremy. “You’re right, Jeremy. You remember who you were meeting? Well, they told me you were going to be there and we killed you together.”

  Jeremy shook his head. “She wouldn’t.”

  “Well, she did. She was the one who stabbed you, not me. Why don’t you put some of the blame on her?”

  “She would never do that.” Jeremy did a weird side to side neck jerk that made him look like a deformed chicken. “Her brother would never get through university without me. This is all you.” Jeremy waved his hand at me before I could say anything else. “I demand my phone call.”

  I laughed. “Your phone call? What do you think this is?”

  “Well, however you communicate with each other I demand access to that system.” Jeremy gave me a shrug that said he had no clue about this whole afterlife stuff and he wasn’t happy about being ignorant.

  “Who do you want to contact?” Charon asked.

  “I have a contact and I want to … contact him.”

  Charon laughed. “You want to contact your contact?”

  “Yes. He saw you, Bridget. He knows. When he finds out I’m dead and you killed me, he’ll sort it all out. He’ll put me back in my body and everything will be okay.”

  “He who?” I asked. Could he mean Tommy? Would it be Tommy? I was positive that Tommy had some super secret, super cool job. Was he using Jeremy for something? What could he be using Jeremy for? Or maybe it wasn’t a he at all and Jeremy was trying to throw me off.

  “As if I’d tell you, sweetheart.” Jeremy looked me up and down. “You’d probably put in a sexual harassment claim and get him fired.”

  “Yeah, that’s not exactly how the afterlife works, Jeremy, and suddenly, I’m a little more sorry you’re dead.”

  “Why? Because you’re going to be in so much trouble for killing me?”

  “No. Because when you were alive I could ignore you. I don’t know whether that’s going to be as easy now you’re on my plane of existence
.”

  “I could cross him over again if you like. Accidents happen,” Charon offered as casually as asking me if I wanted chocolate sprinkles on my ice cream. “That way no one would know what you’d done.”

  “He’d know. My contact would know,” Jeremy spluttered.

  “Your contact knows about the second plane of the afterlife?” Charon asked with heavy scorn in his tone.

  “Yes. He knows all about it. He knows everything.”

  “So your contact is God?” I asked and Charon laughed again. “Because if you think that then we have a whole other issue.”

  “He knows about the second plane. He knows all about it,” Jeremy said, aiming for smug and coming up a few feet short.

  “So, I’ll cross you three times and take you to the third plane of the afterlife. Your contact won’t find you there.”

  “Yes, he will,” Jeremy spluttered.

  Charon shrugged. “Okay. I’ll skip all the other levels and take you straight to Hell. No one comes back from there. Shall we do that?”

  “You can’t,” Jeremy shrieked. “You can’t do that.”

  Charon grinned. “Pretty sure I can. So tell my little Bridget what she wants to know or that will be your next stop.”

  Jeremy folded his arms and tossed his head like a five-year-old. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  Charon reached out and gripped Jeremy’s wrist. They disappeared. Sean’s chanting stalled. Until then I hadn’t realised that he’d been keeping it up. Without it, the car park was eerily quiet. Several long seconds ticked by and then Charon and Jeremy reappeared. And they were smoking. Or Jeremy was. Like kindling does before the fire catches. And he smelled like sulphur.

  Charon grinned at me and dusted what looked like a flake of ash from his suit. “He said his contact is called Wallace.”

  “What does Wallace look like?” I asked Jeremy but his eyes had glazed over. I was pretty sure it was going to take a little while for him to bounce back, if he did bounce back. I sighed and turned to Charon. “Did you break him? I’m going to be in trouble with Sean if you broke him. It’s only my first week.”