Kiss & Hell

by Cassidy, Dakota

  Damn, damn, damn it all to Hell and back. Next week was too late. They were here now. “Do you work here?”

  Her next reply was hesitant. “Yes, but I no alone!”

  Delaney’s eyes pled with the one eyeball in the crack of the doorway. “No, it’s okay. I understand you’re afraid to talk to me, all showing up at this late hour. Look, I really need your help, and I’m only here for a short time. I’m a friend of Clyde Atwell’s. You know the guy who lives—er, lived down the road?”

  Her one eye filled with sympathy. “Ack! Yes. Is bad what happen to him.”

  “Yes. It was bad, but we’ve been out of touch for a while, and when I dropped by, you know, unexpectedly, well . . . his house—it’s gone.” Tears weren’t hard to summon; they formed in the corners of her eyes for Clyde’s loss.

  Instantly the eye went cloudy with concern. “Oh, I sorrrry. His house—it explode. Was very, very bad.”

  “Do you know what happened?”

  Her tongue clucked, a sound almost deafening in the still of the night. “Boom! Big boom. I was cleaning the bathrooms and I hear. Was so bad.”

  Bad. Yeah. She got that. Delaney sniffed, hoping she could contain this sudden need to bawl buckets of tears. Whether it was lack of sleep or the fact that she was more than likely going to be staring at some cold, gray headstone with Clyde’s name on it sooner than she expected, she didn’t know. With a gulp, she asked, “Was there a funeral? Somewhere I can pay my respects?”

  The door popped open a bit wider, revealing a petite woman dressed in a patchwork robe and blue, fuzzy slippers. She made the sign of the cross over her chest. “Oh, no. No funeral. He’s no dead. Is a miracle. Thank Jesus.”

  Delaney’s breathing stopped. “Wha-what?”

  Her light brown eyes blinked. “He’s no dead. He’s in hospital.”

  Delaney had to grip the door frame to keep herself upright. Clyde wasn’t dead. He’d survived that mess back there? It would be nothing short of a miracle if he’d lived through that. That couldn’t be right. How could he have been wandering around in Hell for all that time, able to do all the things demons are supposed to do, if he was still alive? If he wasn’t dead, what the fuck was he?

  But hope, desperate, yearning hope, made her force her tongue to perform and ask, “Wait, he’s not dead? Clyde Atwell isn’t dead? Are you sure?”

  The woman’s head, securely wrapped in a white towel, nodded. “I sure. Very sure. I’m sorry for you to come to see him like this.”

  “Where is he? I mean, if he’s in the hospital, what hospital? I—I’d like to . . . visit. Yes, I’d like to visit him.”

  “I don’t know nothing. I jus’ know he’s not dead. The mister and missus, they have his cat. Madre de dios, what a mess he was. His hair burned, but he’s okay. He was so hungry. The mister, he say to take the cat and feed him.”

  Sweet mother. Relief so sharp it was like a knife cutting through her soul made her gasp. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. I told you, I sure.”

  Delaney’s head spun with a thousand questions, all of which she had to ask with care because this woman didn’t speak English very well. “Have you heard anything about Clyde’s condition?” Because it damned sure couldn’t be good after an explosion like that.

  “I don’ know nothing, I told you. Now I go.” She waved a hand in the direction of the rental car with a shiver. “Is cold. I tell the mister you come, okay?”

  “Okay,” she barely muttered, hardly noticing the closing of the door.

  Her mouth was hanging open. She knew it because gusts of chilling air swirled around in it, but she almost couldn’t move. Her feet were icicles—unwilling to take the signal from her brain that movement to the car, where heat was wafting from a vent, was critical to warming them up.

  Delaney’s hands held fast to the front of her coat.

  Clyde was alive.

  She couldn’t think that word enough.

  Alive.

  Living.

  So not dead.

  Yippee and skippee.

  In a millisecond, the feet that had been unwilling to uproot themselves became all motion. She practically stumbled to the car, latching on to the door handle and flinging it open with a grin.

  The car light over Clyde’s head beamed. With life.

  Life.

  Like alive life.

  “I take it from the grin on your face my neighbor’s an upstanding guy?”

  “I think you have to drive. Because I can’t.”

  “Reason being?”

  She threw the keys at him. “I can’t. I’m shaking. When I tell you what I just found out, I don’t know if you’ll be able to drive either. We may have to call the paramedics. Maybe we should just stay put while I tell you.”

  “I’ll drive, and you’re not making sense, Delaney.”

  “None of this makes any sense, Clyde.” Slamming the door, she went around to the passenger side of the car. “Drive. Hurry, before I have apoplexy. We need to get back to the hotel.”

  Clyde slipped past her, the look of concern on his face clear under the starry night. He got in the driver-side door, turning the key in the ignition. “Speak, Delaney. You’re freaking me out now.”

  She shook her head in astonished disbelief. “Well, it’s good news, if that helps.”

  “What would help is if you’d stop looking like you just saw a ghost because on you, that just doesn’t look right. You see them all the time. What happened?”

  “Hypotenuse is alive. He’s at your neighbor’s farmhouse with the people who own it.”

  Finally, Clyde smiled in a sad sort of fond way. “I’m glad. I don’t know if I could’ve forgiven myself for offing H. He was a good cat. So that’s what’s freaking you?”

  “That’s not all.”

  His nod was all-knowing. “I should’ve known. So what happened? Please tell me no one else was hurt . . .”

  There was just no other way to say it. “You’re alive.”

  Clyde didn’t miss a beat. Not a single swerve of the wheel. Rock steady as always. The only hint he might be as shocked as she was came in the way of the roll of his tongue in his cheek. “Repeat?”

  “You’re alive, Clyde. You’re alive. Omigod! You’re alive!” she shouted, her voice rising with each word she managed to sputter, not caring that her joy about this news had come out of its closet in all its festive, revealing glory. Laughter spilled from her throat, tears wet her eyes. It didn’t make any sense at all that he was here in the car with her, yet his body was in some hospital. But Clyde was still breathing. Somewhere. She was fully aware she was teetering on the brink of emotional overload, but she didn’t care. Clyde, according to the neighbor’s maid, was alive. What a fucking spectacular word.

  “So a thought?” he offered in quiet tones.

  Delaney slapped a hand over her mouth, searching for calm reason. “What?” she managed.

  “If I’m now only sort of dead, does this mean I can really do myself in if I run us off the road and straight into a tree?”

  Glancing his way, Delaney saw he fought to retain the control he was so practiced at. After a long shudder of breath, she replied, “I’m sorry. I should have driven, but you’re always so rational, I figured it was better if you did. Just stay calm and listen to what I just found out. Keep your eyes on the road, because even if you’re only semidead, I think, anyway, I’m not, and I don’t want to be. We have shit to do.” She filled him in with as much composure as she could muster about what the maid had told her, giving as many of the details as she’d garnered from their language-hindered conversation while Clyde kept the car at a steady pace, his facial expression never once even flinching.

  “Say something to me, demon.”

  “You no longer have the right to call me demon, ghost lady.”

  True that. He’d have to be dead to be a demon. And Clyde wasn’t dead. He wasn’t deceased or dearly departed either. No sir ree, Bob. “You’re right. So say something to m
e, not so dead Clyde.” Excitement that was hard to tamp down rose once more.

  “This would be one of the times when I’m supposed to display passion, right?”

  Her fingers gripped the sleeve of his jacket when he pulled into the hotel’s driveway. “Yes, Clyde. Passion would be good. Better if it didn’t have to be on command, but still good. You’re alive, Clyde. I don’t know where. I don’t know how in the fuck you survived that, but there it is, and if you don’t at least give me a hell to the yeah, I’m going to explode.”

  “Hell to the yeah,” he said, dry as a bone.

  “Oh, come on, half-dead guy! This is huge. Monumental—ginormous—tremendous. Work with me, would ya?”

  His hands tightened on the steering wheel, his face unreadable under the glow of the hotel’s sign. “I’m still absorbing.”

  Delaney couldn’t contain herself anymore. She grinned, giddy with excitement. “Okay, you process, I’ll get a happy on. Don’t you see? It explains everything! Jesus. That’s why we can’t find an obituary for you, Clyde—because you’re not dead! You’re alive—in a hospital somewhere. What I want to know is why there was no police report—arson, something. This had to be big news out here in Nowhereville. Why it wasn’t reported in at least the local papers is beyond me. But that’s neither here nor there right now.” Delaney paused, taking another stilted breath as realization washed over her again. “Omigod—this is—is—amazing, and crazy, and amazing.” How in the fuck did this happen? How had Clyde been able to pull off being out of his body for this long? But it also gave her hope. If Clyde was in a hospital somewhere, he was alive.

  And she was überpsyched about that.

  Because it meant he could stay.

  With her.

  She looked around as though she’d spoken the words out loud. Disentangling herself from the grip she had on Clyde’s arm, she sat back in her seat.

  “What hospital am I in?”

  “Crap, I have no idea. I could just barely understand what she was saying, but I understood the alive part. That’s all that matters. You’re alive. Alive, Clyde Atwell. The rest shouldn’t be too hard to find out. What I’m having trouble with is how your soul got out of your body and landed you in Hell . . .”

  “Not nearly as much trouble as I’m having with it,” he commented in wry observation—still showing no signs of even a glimmer of happiness.

  However, Delaney was now lost in finding a theory about what had gone wrong. “It makes no sense. I just don’t understand this. Your soul’s all wandering around like you actually exist on this plane—you manifested, you can touch things—but your physical body’s in some hospital?”

  Clyde shrugged his wide shoulders in what almost looked like indifference. “Don’t look at me. You’re the ghost expert—got some ghost friends you might consult about it?”

  “No . . .”

  “Well, you might if you—”

  “Got that life you keep trying to talk me into. Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Stop knocking my self-imposed seclusion and let’s get to the business at hand—which is figuring out where you are. And getting you out of there.”

  “I suppose my chances are grim if I’ve been in the hospital all this time—I’m probably in a coma, and I bet I’m pretty crispy. My chances of surviving were . . .”

  Clyde’s voice became all slo-mo, warbling in and out, leaving her only a word or two about percentages to pick from the gobbledygook of slurred sentences.

  Because out of the blue—epiphany—stark realization—total understanding—had just wailed her like a punch to the gut.

  Holy. Shit. A coma . . . she grabbed at Clyde’s arm again, almost unable to string her thoughts into a coherent sentence. She bounced up and down on the seat. “Remember that lady that showed up—the ghost lady who spoke German or some foreign language?”

  “I do. The typical blame on your part was involved. Then my usual apology for throwing a monkey wrench in your ghost communications. What about her?”

  “Right! That’s her. She said Das Koma, remember? She kept saying it over and over. I don’t know who she was, but when we get inside, we’re looking her and those words up online.” Delaney’s thoughts blurred together, stringing triggers of memory. Discovery, much the way it always does, claimed her thoughts in one fell swoop. The missing piece of the puzzle fell into her lap like manna from Heaven. All she had to do was put it into the puzzle to complete the picture. “And the doctor with the decapitated head, remember him?”

  Clyde blanched with a shudder. “Unfortunately.”

  “We thought he was saying uma—but I’d bet my left ovary he was saying coma!”

  Clyde’s frown deepened, but Delaney pressed onward—her quest for an answer was right at her fingertips. “Don’t you see, demon? The spirits were trying to give us clues all along. Whoever the German chick was, she was trying to help us—help you. She knew you were in a coma.”

  “Then who’s the doctor?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Does it really matter? Sometimes spirits, if they can help, even if the information they bring you is disjointed and often confusing, will try to help if they’re invested in some way in seeing you cross over.”

  “So how’s the doctor or the German lady invested in me?”

  “Didn’t you say your mother had a doctor whose head was decapitated in a brutal accident?”

  “I did. But he didn’t sound at all like the description you gave me. He was older. Not some young guy.”

  “I’d bet my right ovary he manifested in the way he most liked his physical appearance when he was alive, which was young and blond. And he wants to help because I’m guessing, during your mother’s illness, you were pretty good to her.”

  “You’d better stop handing over ovaries if you hope to have those children someday. You know, with the guy you’ll find once you get that life?”

  Delaney knew he was teasing her, forcing her to continually face her boxed-in life the way he did, but his words had a tinge of regret she wanted to cling to. Savor. If Clyde was still alive, and could recuperate, would he choose her when his spirit no longer needed guidance? Thinking about that right now was selfish. There was no time for self-indulgence and pansy-ass behavior. Not now.

  “Okay, so if he was an older doctor when he died, he was probably vain enough to miss his youthful form. So in death he chose to manifest in the body that pleased him most. I’d bet my uterus he’s got pics online somewhere. If you can remember his name, that is. Maybe from the hospital he worked at—something. There has to be something.”

  “Stop handing out your birthing bits so casually. And Dr. Watson. Gordon Watson was his name. But I can’t remember the hospital my mother was in. In fact, now that I try, I can’t remember any of the area hospitals. One of those blank spots again. And don’t feed me that shit that it’s convenient for me to forget. Why would I want to forget I’m still alive and not tell you where the hell I am?”

  Talk about clinging to one stupid remark. Okay, okay, okay. She’d been caught with her pants down. But they had bigger issues to address than her calling him a liar. “How about we don’t argue about your integrity now? Let’s just get inside and get online. We’ll order a pizza and start digging. You can’t be far.”

  The elevator ride to their room was spent in silence, Clyde brooding and Delaney lost in the possibility that his body still ticked somewhere—that somewhere in North Dakota, no matter the shape he was in, Clyde lived.

  His heart beat.

  His pulse throbbed.

  He breathed.

  His body had life.

  She couldn’t think any further than that.

  She wouldn’t.

  seventeen

  Delaney typed in the words das and Koma only to come up dry. Maybe she was spelling them wrong. She took a trip to Babel Fish, punching in the URL on her laptop while Clyde sat on the chair, facing the bed she sat cross-legged on. She’d been so absorbed in figuring out who the woman with the doily on her head was,
she’d forgotten that Clyde had just found something out that changed the landscape of his life in an enormous way.

  She’d just have to be overjoyed for the both of them because Clyde wasn’t feelin’ it.

  Looking up, she took in his face, so somber and serious. “You still absorbing?”

  “Yep.”

  “Okay, sponge. Well when you’re done, you let me know. I could use some help deciphering this das Koma thing and figuring out who that ghost was. It sounded just like the word coma, but I need to double-check. With the way our luck’s run lately, I’m probably wrong and it’s another clue to whatever’s going on that we’ll miss if I don’t get it right. Thinking back, she had big heavy skirts on and that doily on her head. I’ve seen that somewhere . . .” Delaney drifted back off, typing in the word Koma on Babel Fish, an online foreign language translator. “Aha! It does mean ‘coma,’ only it’s spelled with a K in German . . .” Okay, so the woman had been trying to relay Clyde’s condition to them. But why and who was she that she’d stepped up to the plate on Clyde’s behalf, and if they figured out who she was, what difference would it make? She hadn’t reappeared. Maybe all she’d wanted to tell them was that Clyde was in a coma. Mission accomplished.

  “Describe her dress again,” Clyde ordered.

  Delaney eked out as much of the memory as she could. She’d been fuzzy and distorted due to Clyde’s presence.

  “That doily on her head sounds familiar. Here, gimme the laptop.”

  Delaney let him have it, pleased he was finally taking an active role in getting them closer to finding his body.

  “Did she look like this?” He tilted the laptop to show her a grainy portrait of a woman.

  “Holy shit—yeah, that’s her. Who is she?”

  “Well, it makes sense if we keep following the pattern that half of the dead medical profession is trying to give us clues. The picture is Florence Nightingale, probably the most common, well-known name associated with nursing, and she did speak German among other things.”

  He was right—it did make sense. Perfect sense. “Florence Nightingale showed up, even in death, to help you. That’s monumental. And how do you figure shit like this out? You’re way too smart for your own good, ya know that? I never would have made the association.”