Grave Destinations

by Lori Sjoberg

  She didn’t really need the lights to fulfill her duties, but she turned them on anyway. The brightness added a sense of security while dealing with the ugliness of death. Taking note of every detail, she searched the room to make sure she was the only living being present.

  The cabin was actually a suite, much larger than the sorry excuses for cabins down on Ruby’s deck. The suite had two distinct sections: a sleeping area dominated by a king-size bed, and a sitting area complete with a sleeper sofa, dining room table and four high-back chairs, and an entertainment center with the usual electronics. The sliding glass door led to a private balcony, which at the moment afforded a view of the moon peeking through the clouds, its light reflecting off the choppy ocean waves.

  A short, slender woman lay stretched out on the bed. She appeared to be no older than twenty-five, with long brown hair and a fair complexion. Tattoos marked her arms and ankles, while a simple gold barbell pierced her belly button. Her body was stripped naked as the day she was born, and she was absolutely, positively dead.

  “Well, at least you died with a smile on your face,” Ruby murmured as she stepped closer to the foot of the bed.

  The woman’s soul had already broken its bonds with the flesh and was hovering about two feet above the mattress. It still retained its human form, a hazy figure unaware of the fact it no longer needed to conform to its prior bodily constraints. Its movements were erratic, confused, and distressed by its sudden change in condition.

  “It’s okay, sweetheart, I’m only here to help.” Ruby reached out with her mind, latching on to the woman’s spirit and drawing it toward her. To soothe the soul she sent out wordless reassurances, promises of peace, of answers, of a resolution for all its earthly troubles.

  The soul gave only a token resistance, merging with Ruby’s body in a wash of warmth and unsettled energy. Little by little, it distilled to its base form, a swirling mass of condensed power with enough strength to fire the human spirit. The energy spiked when the soul became fully aware of the death of its body, its essence a tangled knot of confusion, disbelief, and panic.

  What? Dead? No, that can’t possibly be right. I’m on vacation, dammit! If I’m dead, who’s going to take care of my baby girl? It better not be Darryl, that good-for-nothing son of a bitch. Oh, God, I never got around to making a will! Who’s going to get all my stuff? Oh, no, no, no …

  Ruby closed her eyes while she concentrated on containing the soul, shielding her mind from the barrage of alien emotions. It was either that or feel everything the soul was experiencing, and she held no desire to ride shotgun on another gut-wrenching journey through the stages of grief.

  Five minutes later she was ready to leave, eager to put space between herself and the corpse. Acting on impulse, she snatched the room key off the nightstand and slipped it in her front pocket. She took one last look at the body, wondering how the young woman had died. There were no marks on her skin, no obvious signs of trauma to hint at a cause of death. The only pharmaceuticals in sight were a bottle of ibuprofen and a prescription for birth control, so overdose was probably out of the question. And then there was that goofy grin on the woman’s face, so disturbing when considered against the pallor of her skin and the faint stench from her final bowel movement.

  Stumped, Ruby filed the information in her mind for future reference and headed for the door. In all her years, she’d never encountered an unscheduled death. Or was it scheduled, and no one bothered to inform her?

  The second she got back to her cabin, she grabbed her cell and started dialing. She began with Dmitri, the recently appointed leader of her unit in Orlando, but got dumped straight to voice mail.

  “Great.” Now what? She sure as hell wasn’t going to try Samuel. Even if she had his number saved in her list of contacts, the big boss gave her the creeps. She thought about it and then called the only other person she could think of who might be able to point her in the right direction.

  “Hello?” The voice sounded husky, and feminine, and more than a little sluggish.

  “Sarah? Is that you? Did I wake you up?” Shoot, in all the excitement, she’d forgotten about the time. She’d been trying to contact Sarah’s other half. He was Ruby’s former mentor, her former lover, and her longest and closest friend.

  “No, I’m awake,” Sarah replied, and Ruby realized she’d just interrupted something besides sleep. She heard a low masculine voice in the background, one she immediately recognized as belonging to David. “So, uh … how are you doing?”

  “I’m all right.” Ruby bit her lower lip while she tried to think of something intelligent to say. She’d only met the woman once, back when Sarah was still mortal and had yet to cross paths with Fate. Anyone who made David that happy was okay in her book, and she got the impression Sarah liked her as well. Still, some women got their panties in a bunch when another woman called their man in the middle of the night. Hopefully, Sarah wasn’t the type. “How’s your training going?”

  “Oh, it’s …” Sarah paused, as if searching for the right choice of words. Finally, she said, “It’s fine. Different. Six months, and I still have so many questions. I can’t wait to get my lab up and running.”

  “Your lab?”

  “Yes, of course,” she said, her voice lifting with enthusiasm. “David and I rented an apartment with an extra bedroom so I could set up my lab equipment. You know, tests to run, hypotheses to confirm or disprove. I’m looking forward to putting some blood and tissue samples under the scope.”

  “Sounds … interesting.” She’d heard about Sarah’s mortal career at a medical research facility, the one destined to serve as her place of death. David had altered destiny to save her life, an act of insubordination that nearly damned his soul. In the end, Sarah surrendered her mortality to set things right and ensure David’s safety, and Fate had rewarded her sacrifice by binding their souls and bringing Sarah back to life as a reaper.

  “It is. But you didn’t call to listen to me ramble on about cell cultures. I take it you wanted to speak with David?”

  “You got it. If it isn’t too much trouble.”

  “Not at all, I’ll put him on. It was nice talking with you.”

  “Likewise.”

  “This better be important,” David said the second he came on the line, not bothering to mask his irritation.

  “Sorry to interrupt your fun, Soldier Boy.” Ruby smiled in spite of herself. She and David shared a long history, and it pleased her to see him finally happy. That said, she still enjoyed giving him grief every now and again. “It’s a little early to be knocking boots, don’t you think?”

  “It’s never too early. Or too late. You know better than that.”

  Ruby laughed. “Point taken.”

  “I assume you’re calling for a reason?” he asked, always one to cut to the chase.

  “You could say that.” Ruby kicked off her sandals and sat on the bed. She scooted back a bit so she could lean against the headboard. “I’m working a party of one and ended up double-booked. You ever run into that scenario?”

  Silence.

  “Never,” he said almost a full minute later. “Where are you?” Oh, he was going to love this one. “I’m on a cruise ship, somewhere off the coast of St. Angelique.”

  “But you hate—”

  “You don’t need to remind me,” Ruby said, cutting him off before he finished his sentence. “I suspect this is Samuel’s idea of a sick joke. He made Dmitri assign this one to me.”

  More silence. “What was the cause of death?”

  “I have no idea. There weren’t any obvious signs.”

  “Male or female?”

  “Female.” Ruby inhaled deeply before rattling off the pertinent facts. “I found her inside her cabin a little after three this morning, buck naked in bed with a grin on her face like she’d just won the Powerball. No obvious signs of damage to the body, no pills nearby, no suicide note.”

  “Huh. Hold on a sec.” There were a few moments of muff
led conversation from David’s end of the line. “You sure it wasn’t natural causes?” The wariness in his voice put her on edge.

  “Positive. The expiration woke me from a sound sleep. If it was natural, the soul wouldn’t have been hanging around fifteen minutes later when I entered the room.”

  More muffled talking on David’s end. “Have you run this by Dmitri yet?”

  “I called him first but got voice mail. Since I couldn’t get hold of him, I thought I’d see if you’d ever run into anything like this.”

  “No. Never heard of it happening, either.” David blew out an audible breath. “This sounds really fucked up, Ruby. Let me make some calls, see if I can find out anything on my end. In the meantime, call Dmitri back. Leave a message if he doesn’t pick up. Otherwise, his nose will get pushed out of joint if he thinks you’re bypassing him and going directly to me with your problems.”

  When David and Sarah transferred to Miami, Dmitri became the leader of Ruby’s unit. She’d known Dmitri since the early eighties, and got along with him well enough, both on and off the job. As bosses go, he was fair but strict. By nature, he was more territorial than a wolverine.

  “You worry too much,” Ruby said. “Besides, I already left him a message.”

  “Good. The last thing I need is Dmitri crawling up my ass because he thinks I’m sticking my nose in his business. You know how he gets.” He said something to Sarah, too low and distorted for Ruby to make out. Then his voice came back over the phone, sounding the way he always did when he wanted to make you feel better about something. “Hang tight, Dawson, and be careful. Keep your eyes and ears open for anything out of the ordinary. I’ll pull in a few favors and get back to you as soon as I can.”

  Chapter 7

  Six hours and three showers later, Jack still felt like shit.

  Sated and satisfied, the curse lay dormant, the only good thing to come from the previous evening. Despite his best efforts, Jack’s thoughts dwelled on his nocturnal activities, of sex and sweat and tangled sheets. A desperate act to appease the beast before it staged a hostile takeover. Then he thought of Ruby and a fresh round of guilt gnawed away at his conscience.

  Accepting her invitation would have guaranteed disaster. She stirred his emotions as well as his blood, a lethal combination when it came to his baser nature. In his weakened state, he would have inevitably lost control, leaving him powerless as the curse latched on to her life force and drained her dry.

  The knowledge offered no buffer of comfort, so he shifted his focus to Jolie Duquette, his last, best hope for breaking the shackles that bound him to the bane of his existence. If Duquette’s abilities matched her reputation, he’d be free of the curse by the time the ship disembarked from St. Angelique.

  The possibility lifted his spirits and set his mind to racing. To imagining a life without the incessant demands of the beast, free to experience emotions he’d long avoided for the sake of maintaining control. A growing hope pushed back against the loneliness, filling him with the yearning to sever the ties to his solitary existence.

  The crowded bus screeched to a stop, jarring Jack from his thoughts. The ride had taken him far from the southern tip of the island, with its shiny new buildings and squeaky-clean streets. So pristine, so beautiful. So blatantly artificial. Not that the tourists seemed to mind. Most of them were too busy basking on the beaches or scuba diving off the coast to notice the desperation lurking beyond the borders of manufactured paradise. Armed guards patrolled the perimeter of the tourist sector, while the remainder of the island wallowed in a pitiful state of decay, still struggling to recover from the devastation brought on by Hurricane Emmaline two years before.

  Taking in his surroundings, Jack spotted a tiny, bright green building on the opposite side of the road, the marker he’d been given to indicate his stop. He let go of the tattered handgrip hanging from the ceiling and wove a path to the front of the bus. Once there, he gave the driver a few coins in exchange for directions to Jolie’s home. The old man stashed the money in a dented metal lockbox before rattling off a series of rapid-fire instructions in heavily accented Creole, one hand still gripping the steering wheel as the other pointed toward a rutted dirt road bearing east.

  Against his better judgment, Jack followed the driver’s instructions, walking busy narrow streets past people of questionable intent. He was venturing deep into the hillside slums, an area typically avoided by tourists and anyone else with a lick of common sense. The air outside hung hot and humid, thick with the stench of poverty and decay.

  Already, he’d felt a hand slip into the back pocket of his jeans, looking to swipe his wallet or anything else of value. Watchful eyes tracked his every movement, probably sizing up the potential of their latest mark. If he made it back to the ship with only a mugging, he’d consider himself fortunate.

  Since street signs were nonexistent, he relied on the landmarks the bus driver had given him. He took a right at the burned-out building, then a left at the crumbling remains of a church. The road worsened the farther he walked, deteriorating to a muddy pathway between what looked like an old school bus tilted on its side and a massive pile of trash. A barefoot boy, no older than eight, rummaged through the mound of junk, presumably scavenging for anything of value. Scrawny and jaundiced, the child eyed Jack with open mistrust, muscles bunched as if ready to flee at the slightest hint of danger. It was enough to make Jack’s heart sink.

  More than an hour had passed since he’d stepped off the bus. At this rate, he’d need at least two hours to return to the wharf—one hour for walking, plus an additional hour’s drive. Not to mention it probably wasn’t a very bright idea to be outside the security of the tourist corridor when night fell over the tiny island. If he didn’t reach his destination soon, he’d have no choice but to turn back.

  Finally, just as he was thinking about giving up, he found the place he was searching for. Like most homes in the area, it was no more than a shack, a ramshackle hut built from scraps of aluminum siding, rotting plywood, and what looked like the hood of an old pickup truck. A dingy white sheet hung loose over the doorway, an intricate vertical pattern scrawled down the center in red and black spray paint.

  A mangy tabby cat lay curled by the front entrance, its gnarled stub of a tail flicking back and forth across an old straw mat. Jack took a step closer and the cat hissed, the hair on its back standing on end. Another step and the cat’s show of bravado came to an abrupt end as it darted away from the doorway and disappeared into a nearby alley.

  A chill swept the air when his feet touched the mat, the sudden change in temperature sending shivers across his skin. An unseen presence, sinister and foreboding, wrapped around his body and crept into his thoughts. It urged him to flee while he still had the choice, to return to the ship before something far worse than the curse happened to him.

  “No.” Not now. Not when he stood so close to freedom. Fighting against the fear, he rapped lightly on the wood beside the entrance, the material so flimsy it vibrated beneath his knuckles.

  “Come in,” a woman’s voice called out from inside the shack, her accent a mixture of Creole and Spanish.

  Jack pushed the sheet aside and stepped into the dimly lit room. He didn’t see much in the way of furniture, just a card table and two folding metal chairs. The table had nothing on it save for a single lit candle, a clear glass bowl filled with water, and a small cluster of dried plants. An old wooden bookcase filled the nearby corner, its shelves haphazardly packed with books, pictures, statues, and an odd assortment of unidentifiable paraphernalia. The scent of blood filled the air—fresh, if he wasn’t mistaken.

  An old woman emerged from an opening at the back of the room, her ebony skin creased deeply with age. She was short but big-boned, with long dark gray hair pulled back in an intricate braid. The housedress she wore was a patchwork of colors, bringing an unexpected punch of effervescence to the otherwise dreary room.

  She walked with a cane, even though she showed no tr
ace of a limp, stopping a few feet from Jack. Her eyes narrowed as she studied him, and then widened with what appeared to be shock.

  “Demon!” she hissed. Teeth bared, she took a defensive step back so the table acted as a barrier between them.

  “What? No!” Jack took a step forward and she raised the cane, gripping it like a player at bat. “I’m not a goddamn demon. I’m cursed. I was hoping you could help me. You are Jolie Duquette, right?”

  The old woman’s head cocked a little to the right, her amber eyes regarding him with an intensity that came close to making him squirm. With obvious distrust in her voice, she asked, “You swear not to harm me, demon?”

  Jack raised his hands, palms up in a gesture of surrender. After all he’d gone through to reach this moment, he’d do everything in his power not to blow it. “I promise. And stop calling me a demon. My name is Jack. Jack Deverell. I was told you might know how to break the curse.” He crouched down far enough to reach the wallet strapped to his ankle, pulled out a hidden stash of bills. “I can pay you. I have cash.”

  Jolie shook her head as she lowered the cane. “No. No curse. Demon.” She pointed to the chair on the opposite side of the table. “Sit.”

  Reluctantly, he sat down, the cool metal creaking under the weight of his body. The hairs on the back of his neck were standing on end, his eyes scanning the room for signs of hidden danger.

  “Relax,” Jolie said, still watching him with wary eyes. For some strange reason, knowing she trusted him about as much as he trusted her made him feel better about the whole situation. She took the other seat and extended her hands halfway across the table. “Give me your hands.”

  He complied with her request, lightly setting his palms over hers. Jolie’s skin felt warm to the touch, her calloused fingers running along the lines and curves of Jack’s hands like a blind woman reading Braille.