Dying for a Living (A Jesse Sullivan Novel)

by Shrum, Kory M.

  He was terribly good-looking in the fading light. His cheeks were smooth from a fresh shave and line of his dark hair made his neck and ears look kissable. It was enough to make me pause in the doorway.

  “I thought you needed time to think?” I asked.

  “I know how I feel about you,” he said. He leaned so close I could feel the heat of his lips radiating against my face. “I only need to think about how to—not—”

  He wrapped his hand over mine and everything in the lower half of my body tightened.

  “Yeah?” I said and my voice was definitely deeper.

  But instead of kissing me, he just grinned and walked into my house.

  I clamored after him, Winston at my heels. “Tease!”

  The deadbolt clanked shut just before I flipped the foyer’s main light switch and all five bulbs it controlled blew simultaneously. I made a little sound of surprise as the sparks rained down on us. I squeezed my hair, hoping it wasn’t singed.

  “Got it,” Lane offered. “Where do you keep the spares?”

  “Laundry room,” I replied. “First I break a computer. Now, I shatter the light bulbs. This is becoming a problem.”

  “You’re challenged,” he said. “It’s why you can’t match a pair of shoes.”

  “I’m a tightwad. That’s why I can’t match a pair of shoes,” I said, feeling just a tad insulted. My mind was doing the math—all the appliances I’d wrecked in the last week or so. I couldn’t connect the dots—but something was wrong with me. Gabriel. The electronics. Something.

  Lane ducked into the kitchen with the step ladder in one hand and a collection of busted bulbs in the other just as I gave up and went upstairs. He found me in the bathroom, pill bottle in hand as I manipulated the childproof lid and dug out two honking horse pills. They were white with a deep crease dividing each. I stacked them together on the sink, and filled an old glass with tap water.

  “You planning on sleeping through the whole night?”

  “If I take these now I should,” I said. “And that’ll certainly help you how to—not—” I impersonated his dramatic pauses from earlier.

  The doorbell rang.

  “No. Whatever it is, no.” My voice echoed inside the glass. “Who is it?”

  Lane went to the window and looked down to the front porch. “The cops are getting out of their car.”

  “That can’t be good.” I finished off the water and left the empty glass on the sink.

  The doorbell rang twice and urgently.

  “I’m coming.” I yelled as loud as possible with my sore throat. I glanced back to make sure Lane was close.

  He insisted on opening the door. If he wanted to be some sword-wielding knight, whatever. I just tapped my foot impatiently, waving for him to hurry up as he inspected the guests through the glass panel beside the door. He looked confused. Then once he opened the door I was confused too, if by nothing other than the sheer number of people on my porch, four altogether.

  “Are you cops?” I said and pointed at the strangers.

  “Do you know this woman?” the tall one asked.

  I didn’t say shouldn’t you be wearing badges, uniforms, or something? “Yes. This is Cindy, another death-replacement agent.” And because they didn’t let her go right away, I clarified. “Friend, not foe.”

  The one who held Cindy under her upper arm like a naughty child released her. I didn’t bother to introduce the other woman. They probably knew Gloria if they were local cops. She worked with them often enough on various cases. And neither of them had been stupid enough to grab her under the arm. Once both Gloria and Cindy were beyond the threshold, I gave the cops a polite nod and shut the door in their faces.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  Cindy’s face was bright red. No doubt she’d been crying for hours. “I need to talk to you.” Her eyes cut to Lane, her voice thick with snot. “Alone—if that’s okay.”

  “Of course,” he said. “I’m just going to put some food together for Jess.”

  “Thanks,” I told him. I squeezed his arm and he softened.

  “I’ll help you,” Gloria said and followed Lane into the kitchen. Winston was also interested. He’d always been particularly fond of the sound of clanking pots and pans.

  I led Cindy into my office. I offered her my desk chair with a gesture. She shook her head, seemingly happier to pace. So I slid into the chair myself and watched her pace my office, back and forth with her arms crossed over her chest, hands tucked under her armpits.

  Cindy’s hair was blonder than Ally’s, more of a white blond than a honey, but not full on platinum like Eve’s. Her hair was also shorter, near her chin and her big blue eyes were like glass marbles. Cindy had a little mole on her cheek and pretty white teeth to match her pretty French-tipped nails. How often did she have to redo those nails? They must get trashed during replacements. With her knee-high boots, thigh length coat and overlapping necklaces, she looked like she had walked right out of a fashion magazine. She looked like an exotic bird in the neutral landscape of my office, amongst the beige walls and white furniture. And here I was in torn jeans, a zippered hoodie and my dirty, mismatched sneakers propped on a wreck of a desk.

  “I need a minute,” she said.

  “Let’s try to make this a quick minute,” I said. “I just took some pain pills so they’ll start kicking in soon. Not sure what kind of sympathetic ear I’ll be once I am high out of my mind.”

  “I had a problem and Gloria told me to come and see you.”

  I was immediately surprised that Gloria would refer Cindy to me for anything. There was literally nothing I could do that Cindy couldn’t. She was a Necronite too, after all.

  “She thought if I talked to you I’d feel better. Or that if I talked to you, we might be able to figure this out, and that would make me feel better.”

  Eve popped into my head. “Did someone attack you?”

  She shook her head. “No, not exactly.”

  I thought she’d elaborate, but she just sort of paused, falling into a neutral pose. I refrained from shaking her. “What? Just tell me.”

  “Would you think I was crazy if I told you—” she swallowed. “If I told you I’d seen something. Something really, really, really weird.”

  “What kind of weird? Midget clown porn weird or like Ripley’s Believe-It-or-Not weird?”

  “Like a guy with wings weird,” she said.

  My throat twitched like my larynx might have a seizure. I took a deep breath. “You’ve seen him, too?”

  She exhaled as if she’d held all the air in the room in her lungs. “Thank God. I thought I was losing my mind. Not that I feel any better of course.”

  “When was your last death?” I asked. God, I didn’t want this to turn into another Rachel incident. Then I remembered all the strange questions Garrison had asked me about Rachel and wondered if this was connected somehow.

  “Nine days ago,” she said. “But I’ve got one tomorrow.”

  “Why did Gloria bring you here?” I asked.

  “Maybe she wants us to think we aren’t crazy,” she said. “But we totally are.”

  “Definitely. And shocked,” I said, thinking of the first time I saw Gabriel against the wall. “I mean, who sees—Gabriel, right?” I bit off the words ‘the archangel’ , suddenly feeling weird about giving Gabriel such a formal title.

  Cindy’s ecstatic relief vanished. “Gabriel?”

  “Tall guy, black hair and wings, crazy green eyes, stupidly gorgeous—”

  “—No. That’s not who I see.” Cindy’s fear crept into her eyes.

  “Who do you see?” I asked. I couldn’t get Rachel out of my head, the sight of her covered in her own blood. I tried to imagine finding Cindy the same way and my blood turned cold.

  “Tall guy, red hair, brown eyes. He’s got white wings and says his name’s Raphael.”

  “You’re seeing someone else?” I desperately tried to remember exactly what Rachel had said about the a
ngels, but that was years ago. All I could recall was good angels and bad angels. “But—” I kicked up proverbial gravel, the wheels spinning so fast. “What’d he say to you?”

  “He wants me to go to Church,” she said. “He wants me to go confess all of my sins.”

  I bit my lip, but that didn’t work. I couldn’t contain my laughter. “You’re kidding.”

  “No!” Cindy’s face flushed bright red as a ream of sobs burst from her lips. “He told me I’d be dead within the week and I’d better do it while I had the chance.”

  My brow furrowed, pinching together. “Raphael sounds like an ass.”

  “I don’t want to die,” she said. “I’m still single.”

  Lord, I wasn’t about to go into romance with her. Like my life was any less of a mess in this department. “Have you talked to the cops yet?”

  “Why, are they cute?”

  “I didn’t mean for a date,” I said, shaking my head.

  “If we mention this, you know they’ll lock us up quicker than honey can stick to a bee’s ass.”

  I had no idea what that meant. “That…sounds disgusting, but true, yes.”

  I always thought—because this is what Brinkley told me—that Rachel lost it because she died too much. Too many deaths scar the brain irreparably until one day it just pops. But Cindy and I had far less deaths than Rachel, and the fact that we would all have similar hallucinations didn’t make sense. Each mind is individual. Each of us would “lose our shit” as Cindy put it, in our own ways. One thing was for sure, we couldn’t tell anyone this was going on. I had no intention of being locked up and fed mashed bananas for the rest of my life.

  “Can you drive?” I asked. We needed to get out of this house so we could really talk.

  “Sure,” she said.

  I had my shoes and jacket on when Lane caught us at the door. “Wait. Where are you going?”

  “We have to run to the hospital,” I told him. “I don’t have much time before I’m loopy from the meds so I need to go now.”

  Gloria appeared with a packed dinner. I had no idea what it was but it was still warm and smelled fantastic, like sweet tomato and basil—the last taste of summer.

  “I’ll be here when you return,” she said.

  “Thanks.” I accepted the food.

  Lane wasn’t letting me go so easy. The scowl said so. I don’t know what came over me, the drugs maybe, but I was up on my tiptoes kissing him before I even realized that’s what I meant to do. His mouth was hot on mine. He tensed, probably as surprised as I was because I’d never kissed him in front of anyone before.

  I broke the kiss.

  “I’ll be right here,” he whispered. But I pretended not to hear.

  Chapter 12

  Dr. York entered the small examination room and barely glanced away from the file in his hands. He did reach down and help me up from the floor where I’d collapsed in part boredom, part pain pill high. But before speaking he hit the lights, throwing us all into darkness. A heartbeat later a small lighted box fixed to the wall flickered and hummed to life. He tacked several see-through pictures up side-by-side on the lighted box, the light beneath illuminating its shadows.

  “This is yours, and this is yours,” he said. He pointed to Cindy then me, respectively.

  I looked at my fuzzy brain picture on the right. I blinked several times, trying to clear my head enough to comprehend what was being said.

  “You see all this scarring,” he said to Cindy. “Jesse’s scarring has reduced somehow. By almost twenty percent.”

  He pulled another photograph from the file. “This was her picture from a year ago.”

  “I have no idea what this means,” I said. Apparently, I’d been leaning backwards because the good doctor pulled me upright by the shoulder.

  “It’s not entirely healed, showing some small areas of damage here as we typically see in death-replacement agents, but it’s certainly improved since the last scan. The damage is reversing itself, particularly in relation to the temporal lobe and cortex. You see here,” he said. He pointed from my scan to Cindy’s. “Every time an agent dies, they get a little tick mark like this on the brain.”

  “I thought we healed almost anything,” I said.

  “Your brain fixes your body, but the oxygen loss the brain experiences during each death can only be partially repaired. Small scarring still occurs from the oxygen deprivation.

  “And this scarring affects memory?” I asked, just to be clear.

  “Yes,” the doctor replied.

  “They sure didn’t mention that in the Become an Agent brochure,” I told him. These so-called repairs might explain my sudden memory of my mom. It might also mean that more memories would come back to me sooner or later—for better or worse.

  Cindy bit her lip. “It’s also why we go crazy, right?”

  “I do not see anything on the scans that indicate you girls are mentally unstable,” he said. Then the doctor’s eyes narrowed. “What exactly are you looking for?”

  “We told you,” I said. I rocked back on my heels and it was Cindy’s turn to push me upright. “I’ve been having these terrible headaches.”

  “And you?” he asked Cindy.

  “Just thought we’d use my brain, my completely normal, average and not-insane brain as a comparison for Jesse’s test,” she replied, her tone an octave too high.

  “How accommodating.” He clicked his pen several times as if trying to decide who was full of more crap. “Well, to answer your question, no. There is scarring but it is typical given your occupation and other than that, I see no abnormalities. Physically, you’re both fine.”

  He didn’t smile. He just studied us as if expecting us to confess the real reason for our visit. Finally he asked, “Anything else?”

  “Nope, nothing else,” Cindy replied.

  “Nothing at all,” I added.

  The doctor removed the X-rays and turned off the lighted box, leaving little spots to dance in front of my eyes. “If you don’t have anything else for me, I need to go save Cooper.”

  Cindy placed a hand over her heart. Her accent thickened. “What happened to Cooper?”

  The doctor pushed his reading glasses up and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Bullet to the throat just under the mandible. The first five vertebrae of his spine disintegrated. Every thing we’ve tried so far has failed to work. I’m out of ideas.”

  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Cindy said. “How did this happen?”

  “We aren’t sure,” he said. “We don’t know if it was part of his replacement or if he was attacked like Jesse.”

  That explained why I hadn’t heard from the charming Agent Garrison. Apparently, he had his hands full, as if chasing Brinkley or threatening me wasn’t enough.

  “I was shot like that once,” I said. “You just need a bone donor.”

  “Are you volunteering?” he asked.

  “Uh, I can’t regrow that much bone.”

  “We won’t take up any more of your time,” Cindy said, motioning to the door. “Go save Cooper.”

  After depositing a fresh piece of butterscotch in each of our palms, he disappeared. My eyes had drooped closed again. Cindy swore and plopped me into a chair.

  “When you suggested coming to the hospital I thought you’d stay lucid enough to get through the visit.”

  “Don’t judge me,” I said. “I was in pain. I needed those pills. I’m not a junkie or anything.”

  “I’m not judging you. Half of America is on pills,” she said. “But it’s difficult to talk to someone seriously when they’re falling all over the place.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I was trying to help you.”

  Cindy sighed. “You did. At least we know there isn’t anything physically wrong.”

  “We know that?” I asked. I’d heard the words “brain damage.”

  “He said my scan is normal,” she said.

  “We could be physically fine and still crazy,” I said. “But at
least we ruled out tumors, yes.”

  She folded her arms over her chest. “You don’t believe in angels?”

  “No.” I knew something was up with my brain. Stuff in there was changing, but I couldn’t help but be excited. Maybe I’d remember my dad next. Or maybe I’d spontaneously combust.

  “Raphael isn’t a hallucination,” Cindy said, challenging me.

  I didn’t want to debate. “They might not be hallucinations, but that doesn’t mean they’re real.”

  She tilted her head. “Let’s get you to bed. You’re not making any sense.”

  “I am too,” I said. I was high, but I knew what I was saying. Kind of.

  “I’m listening,” she said. Her lips puckered as if she had a mouthful of sour candy.

  “Sometimes Gloria sees stuff, and it’s not real,” I said. “She calls them cues.”

  Mentioning Gloria’s name seemed to give legitimacy to my ramblings. Her face lost its sourness and softened.

  “She’ll see something that, of course, looks really real, but really it’s more like a hint.” I searched for the right phrase. “Like something we’re sensing in the universe.”

  “How can we sense things in the universe?”

  “Like spiders,” I said. “They take down their webs before there’s ever a cloud in the sky. You know. They sense the pressure change or whatever and know it’s going to rain. Animals know when storms are coming, right?”

  She was having difficulties deciphering my slurred words so I had to repeat myself twice before she got what I meant.

  “So we’re spiders,” she repeated. “But what are we ‘sensing’ then?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But it's probably got something to do with the replacement agents dying.”

  Cindy shifted her weight. “Cooper has been going on for months about how we’re special. Replacement agents being natural evolutions of—”

  “Cooper is an asshole and an X-men freak.” I went on to explain what Brinkley had said to me about the agent attacks. When I finished I wasn’t sure if Cindy was in shock or if she was pissed at me for not making any sense in my drug-induced state.

  “Come on,” she said. “We’re leaving.”