by Gina Ardito
“No, that’s the end.” Sean leaned back and thrummed his fingertips on the counter in a slow, thoughtful rhythm. “You said you hoped you’d find her here. Why would she come here?”
“Beats me.”
“But this was the first place you thought to look. Why? Why here? What makes you think she’s not in the basement playing racquetball?”
He slapped his palm on the counter. “Because she doesn’t know about the basement, for one thing. For another, she was probably in a snit, and since you and she were so chummy at Ghoul Central’s Reception, I figured she’d come running to you to complain about what an ass I am.”
“Now why would she do that? What happened after I left you guys? Did you have a fight or something?”
“No…” He paused, ran a finger over his collar ala Rodney Dangerfield. “Not really…”
“Uh-huh.” Sean’s detective instincts registered the red flush creeping into Luc’s cheeks. “Let’s go back to where I last saw you and Jodie. You left Reception, Jodie followed you. I offered to escort her, but she said she wasn’t in the mood for company. I came to my room here. Where did you two go?”
“Jodie’s room.” He rubbed a hand over his chin. “No. Wait. We landed in the hallway. Jodie fell on the floor, too beaten to make it the rest of the way.”
Calling on all the skills he’d honed during his years in the NYPD, he pressed on. “So what’d you do?”
“I told her to get up. But you saw her. She was pretty banged up and had no energy left at all.”
Easy…lure him in nice and slow. “So…?”
“So I suggested we meld our energy and I’d transport her the rest of the way.”
Sean nodded. He’d melded with other bounty hunters on several occasions, usually when they’d used up so much of their energy on the fight, they didn’t have enough power to propel their quarry back to the Afterlife. Melding was fairly common in their line of work: a sort of spontaneous combustion, almost like jumpstarting a dead car battery.
“Sounds logical.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” While one set of fingers raked Luc’s scalp, he thumped his other fist on the counter. “Only one problem. Apparently, melding with a member of the opposite gender creates a fusion more mind-blowing than the best sex you ever had on Earth.”
“Yeah, but only if you’re drawn to each other.”
Luc’s jaw dropped. “Wait a second. Hold up. You knew that sex was a possibility here?”
Sean perfectly imitated Luc’s expression. “Wait a second. Hold up. You and Jodie had sex?”
Hands waving over the counter like a football referee calling a play dead, Luc shook his head. “No you don’t. We’re not going there. What do you mean, ‘only if you’re drawn to each other’?”
Too bad. Sean would have far preferred to know what that fiery honey was like in the sack. But he swallowed his disappointment and followed the trail Luc chose. “S.O.P., Luc. Standard Operating Procedure.”
“I know what S.O.P. stands for.”
“You also know that one of the reasons the Board insists we maintain a physical and emotional distance when we go after bounties is that if we’re accidentally drawn in by them, we run the risk of being absorbed and destroyed. Or did you forget that?”
“No, of course not. But Jodie’s not a bounty.”
“She’s a spirit, isn’t she? The same rules of physics must apply. If you’re drawn to her energy, she can weaken your defenses and pull you into her realm. And if she’s equally drawn to you, I figure that’s gotta create one major orgasmic release.” Curiosity finally overwhelmed him, and he leaned close, whispering through unmoving lips. “How was she?”
Luc rolled back, dark eyes shooting lasers. “Screw you, Sean!”
The reaction spoke volumes. “Lucky bastard. I’d give my left nut to share Afterlife bliss with a hottie like Jodie. Assuming, of course, I could conjure up a new nut afterwards—”
“Watch yourself, Martino.”
Sean held up his hands in surrender. “Hey, no sweat. You guys obviously have something between you, and I’m not the homewrecker type.”
“There’s nothing between us,” Luc growled.
In studying Luc’s response, what struck Sean was not the words, but the attitude. Not for the first time, he burned to know all the details behind Luc’s assignment here. Only a handful of bounty hunters wound up in the job for reasons other than self-termination. Special circumstances. That detective’s instinct danced in anticipation of a clue beneath the surface.
He would have loved to pursue the investigation further, but the purple characters on his clipboard flashed like lightning.
Naturally. Just when things are getting interesting, the Board crashes the party.
With an apologetic glance at Luc, he slapped his hand over his communication board.
“Jodie Rosalind Devlin,” the Voice announced, “endured a very difficult life before succumbing to a momentary weakness and committing suicide--”
Sean pulled his hand away as if burned. Swallowing the lump in his throat, he looked up into Luc’s quizzical expression. “The Board already knows Jodie’s missing. They’re sending me after her.”
“I’m coming with you.” Luc lunged for the clipboard, fingers splayed to palm the jumping characters.
He yanked the device away, shielding it against his chest. “No, you’re not. This bounty’s mine. I’ll get the info and retrieve her. You can either go back to sleep or meet us at Reception.”
“She’s my trainee.”
“All the more reason why you can’t go after her,” Sean replied evenly.
Luc’s desperation became a palpable entity in the room, pulsing with the rhythm of a frenetic heartbeat.
“Trust me, Luc. I’ll take good care of her.”
His eyes dulled to flat metal. “See that you do.”
~~~~
A sudden slamming door, followed by a man’s tuneless whistle, broke through Jodie’s despair. Gabe!
Drawing herself into a tight coil, she spiraled up toward the stucco medallion carved in the ceiling. Within seconds, she’d transformed to what the human eye would assume was a shaft of white sunlight.
Heavy footsteps thudded down the hall, drawing nearer, until at last Gabe stepped into the makeshift studio. He’d lost weight. The chubby chipmunk cheeks she used to love to pinch now angled sharply toward his chin. His once beautiful gray-green eyes were now bloodshot and rimmed by dark purple shadows. Had she caused that haggard look in him?
Oh, Gabe, I’m so sorry!
Guilt nearly sank her to the floorboards, but she kept spinning, drawing on every atom of fortitude she found whirling inside her.
A cool breeze rippled the air as he passed beneath her hiding place, his gaze focused solely on the painting on the easel. Shooting his weight to one hip, he stared at the image he’d conceived. “Hello, my lovely.”
The endearment—and the memories the term inspired—shattered Jodie, and she fell in graceful beads to the floor, dust motes dancing on a sunbeam. Their first meeting came to her so clearly she may as well have relived every precious second.
She strolled through the Metropolitan Museum of Art, viewing a collection of Native South American Painting and Sculpture. Inside the Gallery of Portraitures, a man sat, sketch book in hand, studying a gouache painting by a Cuban artist of the 1940’s. Curious, she inched closer to the man’s sketch. In gray and red pencil, he’d captured the bold strokes, the foliage, the shadows of dark and light.
“Lovely,” she remarked before her brain stopped her tongue.
The man started, looked up from the drawing, his eyes wide. Hazel eyes with thick brown lashes she couldn’t attain with a whole tube of mascara and a gamut of makeup specialists standing by.
“Yes,” he murmured. “You are.”
Even years later, Jodie would never really know which of them reacted more strongly to his compliment. She coughed and sputtered her way through an embarrassed t
hank you while he stammered out a bumbled but touching apology. That one clumsy interlude led to coffee in the Met’s Balcony Café, which led to dinner the following night, and so on and so on. And from that first moment together, he had always called her, “my lovely.”
All the way up to the moment of her suicide. Why hadn’t she believed him? Why had she doomed them both with one momentary weakness? Why didn’t she—
“Gabe? Sweetheart?” A woman called from the front room. Seconds later, heels clicked across the oaken floor. “Are you home?”
Jodie scurried to gather her broken pieces, only to see Gabe scrambling to throw a drop cloth over the painting.
“In the studio, Aimee,” he replied.
He turned away from the easel. A bright smile stretched his lips when the woman, a baby dressed in pink riding on her hip, stepped into the room. “How are my two lovelies?”
Jodie, perched on high, felt the slice when Gabe used her endearment on these two strangers. Blissfully unaware of his audience, Gabe strode forward and scooped up the child, nuzzling his nose in the fold of her neck. The little girl cooed and gurgled.
“She’s teething,” the woman said on a tired sigh. “So we can expect several more months of sleepless nights.”
As if to confirm the diagnosis, the child shoved a tiny fist into her mouth, drool spilling over the flat of her hand. Sharp pains, more agonizing than the shrapnel and flames she’d endured on Earth, pierced Jodie’s core. Here, then, was the life she should have known.
“Hey, little girl,” a smooth voice whispered from behind her. “You lost?”
Jodie’s attention whirled to the curious orb hovering inches from her. “Sean! How on earth did you find me?”
“I didn’t.” He took her hand, squeezed. “The Board put out an O.R.A.L. bulletin on you.”
She cocked her head in his direction. “What’s an O.R.A.L. bulletin?”
“Outside the Realm of the Afterlife.” One by one, he unfolded her fingers to count out the letters. “O, R, A, L. In other words, they sent me to fetch you like a standard bounty. Luc must have pissed you off plenty to send you down here. What did he do?”
“Nothing more than any other man.” Sighing, she turned her attention to Gabe.
“Ah,” he murmured. “Is that Gabe?”
Did she hear pity in his voice? Jodie’s gaze veered to Sean, who studied the touching scene below the way a botanist might study a forest of foreign plants.
“What do you know about Gabe?”
“Everything.” Without giving her a chance to argue, he floated toward the painting on the easel and lifted the drape. “Except why he painted this. It’s really very angry, isn’t it?”
“Wait.” A protective instinct amassed inside her, and she pivoted to Sean’s side, pushing him away from the easel. “Forget about the painting and tell me. How do you know Gabe?”
He turned toward her again, wiggling his fingers meaningfully. “You became a bounty,” he reminded her. “Which allowed the Board to fill me in on your full history.”
Shame enveloped her in a sodden blanket. Shoot. She should have realized the Board would send someone after her, and that they’d provide him with all the dirty details of her past to make his task easier. Why hadn’t she thought of that? Stupid, stupid, stupid! Once again, she’d acted without considering the repercussions. “Does Luc know?”
“That you’re gone? Yes,” Sean replied. “About your past? No. But I think you should tell him. It might help him understand you a little more.”
“Thanks, but no thanks,” she murmured and ducked her head in a penitent stance. “Besides, there’s nothing left for me here. I’m ready to go back to the Halfway House now.”
“You’re not going to the Halfway House.” Sympathy still tinged his words.
Her gaze snapped up. “Why not?”
His expression remained bland, revealing nothing. “Because you have to be reprocessed. Just like every other soul who absconds from the Afterlife.”
Her heart rose into her throat, and she swallowed the lump with a gulp of unshed tears. “Will it hurt?”
“Maybe a little.” He squeezed his index finger against his thumb. A smile twisted his lips. But if he meant to comfort her, his antics had fallen short of the distance between his fingertips.
Terror of the unknown held her firmly in its grip. What would happen to her now? Solitary confinement? Banishment? The hell Gabe had portrayed in his painting? Would she spend eternity consumed by flames?
Apparently unaware of the dread running rampant through her imagination, Sean gestured toward the ceiling. “Come on. Luc will be waiting at Reception.”
Terrific. Like that made her any more eager to move. Still, she surrendered to her fate. With a solemn nod, she followed Sean up and away.
Chapter 19
Luc stalked the Reception Area, occasionally throwing stony glares at Sherman who paced before the doors leading to the Elders’ Auditorium. But his thoughts remained firmly with Jodie. Why the hell had she flown to Earth so soon after her battle with the Fury? Did she realize the risk she’d taken? Probably not. Because with her energy stores already drained, her cells badly misaligned, and no guidance from the Board, she could easily find herself stranded in the Chasm between the astral planes. And no one, no one, wanted to wind up falling between those cracks.
Had he ever told her about the Chasm? About the spirits trapped in silent darkness for eternity? He couldn’t remember. Which meant she probably didn’t know that land of hopelessness existed. Hell of a trainer he’d turned out to be. So fixated on the idea she didn’t belong, he’d practically sabotaged her into failure. If he could do her training over again, he’d definitely mention a few things he’d overlooked the first time around. Things like details about the Chasm, how to successfully rope a Fury, and how to call for help when needed so the Board didn’t have to send out a high alert. Guilt slapped him across both cheeks, a dueler’s challenge. Maybe he should talk to Sherman, insist she needed more on-the-job training before going off on her own. And this time he’d treat her like a partner rather than an unwanted insect.
Amazing when he considered that despite the lapses in her education, she’d risen above the challenges. Time and time again. Oh, she was still way too soft for the job, as evidenced by this sporadic flight. What the hell fascination did Earth hold that compelled such drastic action on her part? The answer flashed across his brain in twelve-foot neon letters. Gabe. The hero left behind.
How do you know about Gabe?
Her voice, familiar and welcome, filled his senses. The psychic link between them pulsed, which could only mean one thing. Sean must have located her. Thank God.
Sure enough, Luc became a silent eavesdropper to her dialogue with the former detective. Although…monologue was more like it, since he could only hear Jodie’s side of the conversation.
There’s nothing left for me here.
Judging by the fatalistic way she said those words, the toneless incantation, her reunion hadn’t quite gone the way she planned. A strange pang struck him, some sort of regret by proxy. After all she’d gone through to travel to Earth, he wished she might have found some hope or promise from the journey. Unfortunately, based on the tone of her voice, she’d been dealt another disappointing hand.
I’m ready to go back to the Halfway House now.
And now she would receive another crushing blow. Even without hearing Sean’s reply, past experience suggested she was about to learn that, as an O.R.A.L. offender, she couldn’t return to the Halfway House just yet.
Why not?
Bingo. She had to come here for reprocessing first.
Will it hurt?
The crack in her voice broke his heart. That pang of regret returned, deeper and more painful now. She’d always stood up for herself, but now she sounded broken. Beaten. What had happened to the woman who’d single-handedly brought down a Fury? What exactly had she witnessed with Gabe that stole the fight out of her?
When she finally landed a few feet from him, Sean’s arm wrapped possessively around her waist, Luc scanned her from head to toe. She looked more bedraggled now than she had after battling the Lighthouse Widow. Perhaps because, after her bout with the Fury, her spirit still shined. Not quite so bright, but noticeable. Now, however, her light had dimmed, leaving her aura dull and tarnished.
Luc forced a light tone. “Welcome back.”
Despite his attempt at humor, Jodie refused to look at him, focusing her attention on some spot in the crowded serpentine line of new arrivals behind him. Her posture sagged, and as she leaned against Sean, she resembled nothing more than a puppet whose strings had suddenly snapped. Bruises still discolored her flesh, lending credence to her desperate need for rest as soon as possible. And now she’d have to go through reprocessing? This poor damsel was in serious distress. And she needed a knight in shining armor to come to her rescue. Fast.
Time to step up to the plate, Luc, ol’ boy. Be a responsible partner.
Seeking an ally, Luc swung his gaze to Sean. Before he could clearly gauge Sean’s stance, however, Sherman rushed forward, blocking his view.
“Ah, Sean.” With bowlegged strides, the ancient spirit guide neared the pair, arms outstretched. “You got her. Excellent. The Board will be very pleased with your success.” His glance flicked over Jodie with the warmth of a rabid cobra. “Miss Devlin, you will follow me, please.”
Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God…Her litany echoed in his head. Each syllable raised her anxiety level from panicked to trapped to downright terrified.
Sherman reached for her, but Luc flew forward and clamped a firm grip on Jodie’s wrist. “If you don’t mind, I’ll escort Miss Devlin inside.”
