Affairs of the Dead

by A. J. Locke

  “That works too,” he said a little hoarsely. He caught my mouth in a kiss that was spicy both literally and figuratively. I might have to find a way to sneak the hot sauce in once we made it to the bedroom again.

  “I’ll be right back, have to go to the bathroom,” Micah said, kissing me before getting up.

  When he walked off I thought that this would be the perfect time for me to throw Andrew’s gift back at him and storm out. That wouldn’t take more than a minute. I grabbed the box from my desk and headed to Andrew’s office, opening it without knocking, as per usual.

  Andrew looked up from the file he was looking through and smiled when he saw me holding the box. His smile faltered when I threw the box onto his desk though. It slid across the sleek surface and landed in front of him.

  “What the hell is that about?” I said, folding my arms across my chest and assuming a hostile stance. Andrew opened the box and held up the necklace.

  “You don’t like it?” he said. “I thought it suited you perfectly. I can exchange it for something else. There was a lovely butterfly pendant that had multicolored stones. Perhaps you’d like that better instead?”

  “No,” I said, forcefully enough that it made him pause and raise his eyebrows. He lowered the necklace. “Why the hell are you buying me expensive gifts all of a sudden? I don’t want it.”

  “Why not?” Andrew said. “I know many women who would be happy to receive this.”

  “Then give it to one of them,” I snapped. “Or maybe even your wife.” As usual, mention of his wife brought out no guilt in him. He chuckled and stood up, coming around to the front of his desk and leaning against it. I backed up a few steps to put more distance between us.

  “You got hurt, and I was concerned,” Andrew said. “The necklace was a get-well present.”

  “I had a concussion and bruised a few ribs,” I said. “That doesn’t warrant a damn diamond necklace, Andrew.”

  He sighed as though he were dealing with a cantankerous child. “Then I was just trying to convey my affection to you,” he said. “What’s wrong with that?”

  “I end up in the hospital and instead of coming to see me, you bury a necklace under the junk on my desk and wait for me to come and find it? Then I was supposed to run in here and throw my panties on the floor to thank you, right?”

  “Well…” A slow smile curled his lips and I felt sick. All those times I had bent to his will, I thought we had a mutual thing going, but he really had all the control. He knew he could get whatever he wanted from me because I wanted him too much to say otherwise. Oh, I was feeling very sick.

  “This is not how you show you care,” I said. “Micah dropped everything and came to see me. He even drove my car home for me!”

  Andrew’s eyes immediately narrowed, and I regretted my words. I hadn’t meant to say anything about Micah, but now it would be impossible for Andrew not to draw a conclusion about us.

  “There is nothing that Micah can do for you that I can’t,” he said, his voice sounding steely.

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” I said. “Because you see, Micah doesn’t only want to bend me over his desk and have his way with me without caring about what I want. All I am to you is a tighter piece of ass than the one you go home to. You think you own me, but you don’t.”

  Andrew strode forward then and grabbed hold of my upper arms before I could step out of the way. This conversation had already gone on longer than I’d planned. I had to get out of here.

  “No,” Andrew said, and he actually shook me. “You’re mine, Selene. You came to me, batted your eyes, flashed your cleavage, whispered sin into my ear. You started it, and I am not letting you go.”

  I swallowed hard, feeling more than a little afraid of the wild look in his eyes. The fact that he was right—I had started it—made me feel even worse. He had taken control though, and now I felt like an animal that had teased its predator instead of running away and was caught and about to be eaten.

  “Look, Andrew, it’s over. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t be bought with expensive gifts, and what you have to offer me is no longer enough.” I struggled to get away, but he just gripped me tighter.

  “It’s not over until I say it’s over,” he said fiercely, his face thrust close to mine. He started fumbling with my clothes, and I definitely knew it was time to get away from him. “I let you slide on work and give you the best fuck you can imagine, and this is how you repay me? You throw my gift back in my face?”

  He pushed me until my back was against the wall. The impact was jarring enough to stun me for a moment, and he was none too gentle about the way he yanked my jeans open and unbuttoned my shirt, taking absolutely no care about the fact that my arm was in a sling. My bruised ribs screamed in pain. I struggled as hard as I could, feeling more enraged than afraid, and tried to scream, but Andrew pressed his hand over my mouth, rendering me silent.

  “I want you,” he said, desire starting to mix in with his crazy anger. I could already feel him hard and ready, but I was far from turned on. Andrew had my shirt and jeans undone, and he thrust his hand into my bra, squeezing my breast roughly in a way that wasn’t pleasurable.

  That was it. If Andrew thought he was going to force himself on me, he had another thought coming. The more he tried to ravage me and suppress my struggles, the more I felt myself growing warmer. Something built up inside me; my necromancer power was responding like it had in the alley with the body-jacker, even though this had nothing to do with a ghost being around.

  I felt a surge of power go through me and thrashed my body as hard as I could. Andrew lost his grip enough for me to raise my good arm from where it had been pinned at my side and shove him back. And he didn’t just stumble; he flew back, slammed into his desk, and collapsed to the ground. He grimaced in pain, and I knew he’d hit his back pretty hard. He looked up at me, stunned.

  I took a rigid step forward, my hands balled into fists and my body shaking with anger for this man who thought he owned me just because I’d slept with him. Well, that was my mistake, and I was going to correct it, even if it meant come tomorrow I was out of a job.

  “I am not yours.” I said each word slowly and forcefully, and when I pointed a finger at him, he actually flinched. “And this is over. If you ever touch me again, Andrew McNabb, I swear I will kill you.”

  My power surged inside me as I spoke. I had never felt like this before. I almost wanted to latch onto him and throttle him, but I forced myself to stalk out the door instead, slamming it behind me. Once on the other side I sagged but kept moving forward, wanting to put as much distance between myself and Andrew as I could.

  I fumbled to button my shirt and zip up my jeans, but halfway down the hallway, I looked up and saw Micah standing there. I froze.

  Micah’s mouth was open, his eyes were wide, and a look of growing horror was creeping over his face. Oh no, this wasn’t happening. Micah was staring at me walking from Andrew’s office with my pants and shirt open when not ten minutes ago, we’d been kissing. There were no words to convey how horrified I was at what I knew he was thinking.

  I quickly finished zipping up my jeans and stepped forward, reaching out to him. “Micah, it’s not what you think! He tried to—” I stopped talking, because the look on Micah’s face was so absolutely devastated that my throat grew tight as tears welled in my eyes. If you could visualize heartbreak, it would look exactly how Micah’s face looked right now.

  My anger at Andrew completely subsided, quickly replaced with the worse kind of emotional pain I had ever felt. Without saying a word, Micah turned and walked out of the suite. I wasted no time in running after him.

  “Wait!” I pleaded. “Micah, just hear me out, please! It’s not what you think!”

  “The hell it isn’t!” he yelled. “Just stay away from me. I can’t believe I ever…I can’t…” His voice caught and he looked at me with so much hurt, it felt like my heart was going to shatter.

  The elevator doors opened
and he got in without even a backward glance. I pounded my fist against the closed door and screamed, angry and frustrated and devastated.

  Chapter Sixteen

  When I got home, I tried calling Micah, but he didn’t answer. Not that I thought he would. I left him voicemails and text messages, but he didn’t respond. I didn’t know if he would ever speak to me again. I was beyond desperate to explain everything that had gone on between Andrew and me.

  Even though Micah and I hadn’t been anything to each other all the months I was sleeping with Andrew, I knew how it would look to him that I had been having an affair with our married boss, especially if he thought I had waited until he went to the bathroom to run in and have a quickie. For the first time, I felt the shame I should have been feeling about carrying on with Andrew. Nothing could have hurt worse than the look on Micah’s face last night, not even if he had stood there and screamed at me for an hour.

  I thought staying home on my recovery leave would be the best thing to do given the situation I was in with Andrew and Micah, but after attempting to do that for one day, I was on the verge of throwing myself in front of a bus. Micah’s not responding to me was driving me crazy and had completely overshadowed any fear I had about being fired. I had barely even thought about the fact that Ethan still hadn’t come back, but I honestly wasn’t too worried about him. If another necromancer came across him and realized how strange a ghost he was, I’d hear about it.

  Therefore, I decided to go to work and try to talk to Micah face to face while waiting for the hammer to drop from Andrew. If he was going to let me go, I wasn’t going to hide from him, and I figured I could at least make an embarrassment out of him as I was tossed out of the suite. By eleven thirty Thursday morning, I had reached the office.

  When I entered the suite I walked up to Amy’s desk and tried to sound casual as I asked,

  “Amy, is Andrew in?”

  “No,” she replied. “He took a personal day yesterday and today.” Probably because of his bruised back.

  “But he did call and left a message for you.”

  My heart immediately sped up. Had he told Amy something that would brand me as a scandalous whore around the office? Amy was a gossip if there ever was one. She was rummaging around on the floor and grunted as she heaved a stack of overstuffed folders onto her desk and pushed it toward me. My eyes widened.

  “He said that whenever you came back to work, this was your new assignment,” she said. “He said you’re off the case with Micah, and instead, you’re to organize Larry’s file.” She sounded a little too happy about that.

  My jaw almost hit her desk, and I felt myself getting pissed. That bastard Andrew wasn’t going to fire me; he was going to keep me around and punish me. Larry’s file was an infamous tome that floated around the office, getting pushed off one person’s desk and forced onto someone else’s almost as soon as it landed. Since Larry had been around for so long, he had accumulated a lot of paperwork, and over the years, it had spiraled out of control until it turned into this mess of folders that had absolutely no order.

  “Andrew says he expects to see progress when he returns,” Amy added.

  I just bet he did. What a bastard.

  I gave Amy a tight smile and picked up the stack. I had taken my arm out of the sling because it was beginning to piss me off, but my ribs were still sore and it wasn’t enjoyable to pick up the pile. I wasn’t about to ask for help though. I took the folders and made my way to my desk, dropping them onto my chair because there wasn’t room on my desk.

  I was fuming over Andrew’s childishness, but this was better than being fired, right? Unless this was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to the tasks he planned to assign me, which it most likely was.

  Before I attempted to clear enough room for me to start working, I headed over to Micah’s cubicle with trepidation in every step. I wasn’t expecting him to even grace me with eye contact, but I was going to try to speak to him and hoped he wouldn’t blow his fuse and expose me for the harlot I was. I probably shouldn’t be poking the beast when the suite was far from empty, but not being able to talk things out with Micah was leaving me feeling restless and distracted, and I couldn’t start to do any work without talking to him.

  He probably saw me coming from the corner of his eye, but he never looked my way, just continued to stare at his computer screen. Even though I could see only the side of his face, I hesitated and almost turned around. His jaw was clenched so tightly, his teeth were probably crying out from abuse. I stopped a few feet away and waited a heartbeat, but he still didn’t look at me.

  “Micah, we need to talk. I want to explain everything to you. Please, can’t you give me that much?” I kept my voice low because these cubicles were packed so tightly, there was no hope of having privacy.

  “Were you sleeping with Andrew?” His voice was low and flat. I felt my heart constrict.

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  “Then this conversation is over.” There was a steeliness in his voice that almost rivaled Andrew’s.

  I wanted to implore some more, but I had a feeling if I kept pushing him, he would explode and this would get embarrassing. Some people were already giving us sidelong glances as though they picked up on the tension between us.

  So much for trying to make things better. I wanted to ask him how things were going with the case, but I knew there was no chance he would tell me anything. I sighed and tried not to hang my head as I walked back to my desk. The only thing I could do now was work and hope it would distract me. I would try to talk to Micah later; maybe all he needed was some time to cool down.

  Yeah, time would fix this. I wanted to bang my head against my desk. Instead, I settled for clearing it off and booting up my computer. Just as I was thinking Andrew could go fuck himself and I should just quit and go work somewhere else, I opened my e-mail to find a message from Andrew with yesterday’s date. My heart was suddenly slamming against my ribs as I read it. It was short and to the point, and it pissed me off.

  Quit, and I’ll make sure no other agency ever hires you. You know I have the power to do it. You’re mine.

  I had to sit back and take a few slow, deep breaths to calm myself down. What a bastard. If Andrew thought I was now going to be his punching bag he could think again. If he wanted to screw me in a different way now, he’d see that I was up for the challenge. I closed my e-mail, dragged Larry’s file over, and plunged in.

  * * *

  Before I knew it, three hours had passed, and I had made very little headway with my file organization. It had taken me about thirty minutes even to come up with a strategy for how I was going to get these damn files in order. Finally, I created a list of categories and started to make piles, putting similar information together. It was still daunting though, because when I thought I had all my categories set, I came across information that didn’t fit any of them and had to come up with new ones. My miscellaneous pile was bigger than any other.

  I was going through a tattered folder that seemed to be making my job a little easier since it held mostly personal information on Larry, when something caught my eye. I pulled out some papers that were stapled together and had pictures of people along with a paragraph about them.

  The first picture was Larry’s, below him was Leslie, then there were two elderly people that I read were his parents. The picture below that was what had caught my eye, because there was something about the man in the image that gave me a strong sense of familiarity. Even his name looked familiar. Didn’t I know someone named Michael Griffith? Michael was listed as Larry’s half brother, and when it finally clicked, the gasp I released was loud and forceful enough to cause some of the people sitting nearby to glance at me.

  Michael Griffith was Trevor’s real name, and the reason his picture looked only vaguely familiar was because of how much he’d changed his appearance when he’d been found out as a reanimator and gone into hiding. Trevor was Larry’s brother? Not once had Trevor ever mention
ed having a half brother when he’d worked here. He had talked about his two sisters but no brothers. Then again, seeing as Larry was a criminal, it made sense that Trevor wouldn’t have talked about him since that could have jeopardized his position at AOD. I wasn’t surprised that no one had made the connection between Michael and Larry, considering that Larry’s files were a disorganized mess that we largely tried not to think about. The wheels in my head were turning, and I felt like I was finally on the path I should be following, but I needed to look into something before I could try and bring my leaps and bounds together.

  I used our research software to look into Athena, specifically all the people she had been responsible for discovering as reanimators. It didn’t take long for me to find Michael Griffith’s name on that list. I sat back and frowned, thinking about how all of this might fit together, because my trail of thoughts was trying to get me to conclude that it could be Larry in Ethan’s body. For all the research Micah and I had done on who could be connected to the murders, Trevor and Larry fit the mold the best. From a recent conversation with Trevor, I knew how bitter he was about how far he’d fallen once he’d been found out as a reanimator, and Athena was directly responsible for that.

  Had he then chosen to get his brother into a physical body and use him to exact revenge on Athena? And Leslie had been Larry’s cheating wife. Maybe Larry had exacted some revenge for himself? It had seemed like Leslie wasn’t too keen on the fact that Larry’s ghost was still hanging around. Maybe that was because she figured his unfinished business might have to do with…

  “Revenge for cheating on him,” I whispered, my eyes growing wide. Larry had a laundry list of other unfinished business, sure, but what if the ultimate one, the one we couldn’t legally help him with, was getting revenge on his philandering wife?