by Tara West
But she didn’t hear him. In fact, she was too busy unbuckling the cop’s pants to worry about crazy ghosts.
“They can’t hear you, Stan,” Grim grumbled as he impatiently waved him over. “Come on, let’s go.”
Stan turned toward Grim with a wild-eyed expression. “Hell, no!” he screamed before diving back into the pool.
Disregarding Grim’s earlier command to lie low, I stepped out of the shadows. “Why don’t you go in after him?”
“I can’t.” The edge in his voice sliced through the air between us, making me feel cold, unwelcome, insignificant.
I didn’t know how this guy managed to make me feel a torrent of negative emotions with two words, but he had. He reminded me too much of my cocky, condescending law school professors, more validation for why I had to drop out of that hell hole.
I wrapped my arms around myself as I watched Stan paddle with more fervor. He was definitely not getting out of the pool anytime soon. This was going to be a long night, which sucked on so many levels. Not only was I forced to endure the aloof company of the totally hot immortal who’d just passionately kissed me moments earlier, but I had to watch some naked, bloated guy make an ass of himself while his hooker gave a cop a blowjob. Well, at least someone was getting lucky tonight.
“Do you have any idea who I am?” Stan said haughtily after his shiny marble head popped up above the water. I recognized that tone. It was the same tone my boss, Mr. Schwartz, used whenever he tried to bully a client, another lawyer, or more often than I cared to admit, me.
Grim’s bunched shoulders were strung so tight they looked ready to crack. “You’re dead is who you are. Now get moving. I’ve got a schedule to keep.”
“Why can’t you go in? Some other protocol?” I asked in a huff. “You’ve already broken the rules twice tonight. What’s one more time?”
Grim’s stance was almost as rigid as his stiffy had been earlier, as he watched with stony features while Stan paddled through the water. Finally, he opened his mouth as if to speak.
I waited, wondering if he was going to say something.
“I can’t swim.” He’d spoken so softly, I wondered if he’d said anything at all.
“You’ve got to be shitting me.” I waved a hand at Stan. “That pool is like four-feet deep. Just walk the hell in and get him.”
Grim answered with a quick shake of the head as he folded his arms across his chest, eyeing Stan with disdain. “Ain’t gonna happen.”
Well, geez, here I was thinking that my life, or afterlife, couldn’t have gotten any weirder, and my death escort turned out to be hydrophobic.
“Shouldn’t that have been a prerequisite at the Grim Reaper School of Retrieving Lost Souls, to not act like a big pussy around water?”
A fire lit beneath his eyes. For a split second, my knees weakened, and it wasn’t out of lust. I’d seriously pissed Grim off with that last comment, but I didn’t care. I’d never been very good at staying inside boundaries.
“Don’t judge me,” he ground out, sounding like a grizzly bear who’d woken up too soon.
Ignoring his scowl, I turned up my chin. “I’m trying hard not to.”
“No, I mean don’t judge me.” He pointed a finger toward the sky. “That’s the Big Guy’s job, and he takes offense when others try to do it for him. He doesn’t revoke Penthouse passes often, but he always makes exceptions.”
Ooh, was he bluffing me? I crinkled my eyes and studied his features for any sign of deceit, but without any admissible evidence, it was hard to tell.
“Fine. I won’t judge you,” I called over my shoulder as I walked past him toward the edge of the pool. “I’ll just do your job.” Slipping off my heels, I dove into the water.
Dragging a naked, tubby guy out of the pool was a lot harder than I’d initially thought it would be. I thought one of the benefits of being dead was I wasn’t supposed to feel pain? But the frigid water sliced through my skin as if I was being cut open by a thousand tiny knives. What the hell had I been thinking when I dove into that pool? My poor nipples were so hard, they could cut diamonds. I tried to envision myself at the beach, burying my chest in hot sand, but that whole mind over matter shit wasn’t working.
To make matters worse, Stan pulled me back as he resisted my attempts to yank him to the water’s edge. Considering he wasn’t much taller than my five-foot-five frame, he was strong for a little guy. In the end, the only thing that worked getting Stan out of the water was persuasion, and I didn’t mean me begging him to get out. I meant my perky, pebbled nipples that were about to carve holes out of the clingy fabric of my black dress. Apparently, Stan was a tit man. Luckily, in addition to my pudgy thighs, I’d been endowed with breasts to match.
As soon as I popped my chest above water, those things beckoned to him like twin lighthouse beams calling a ghost ship to shore. I swear the pool filled up another foot with the drool hanging off his lip. Facing him, I slowly backed up the stairs, trying to keep far enough away from his outstretched hands as he followed me like a zombie in a trance.
I tried really hard to ignore the loud slurping and groaning noises behind me as Hello Kitty hooker got the cop off. So glad to know that one of Seattle’s finest was working diligently keeping his citizens safe. No telling who else that hooker would have propositioned if he hadn’t occupied her time.
Grim wedged himself between us as Stan was about to get a free feel of my girls. He handed each of us towels, and I quickly dried off before wringing my hair onto the concrete.“Are you okay?” Grim asked me, blocking Stan, who was trying to charge me like a cantankerous bull with a festering butt-sore.
“Sure.” I shrugged. Well, I’d meant it to be a shrug, but it ended up being more like a convulsive shake. Damn, it was cold! “Can we get out of here?”
“Yeah,” he said before he snapped around, growling at Stan. “Will you wrap a towel around that thing? There’s a lady present.”
Stan had let his towel fall to the ground, and he was thrusting his hips back and forth like he was some kind of stud horse.
“I see the lady,” Stan said as he peered around Grim’s massive arm and waggled his eyebrows at me. “Shove off, Mac, so I can get better acquainted with her.”
When I saw Grim pull his fist back, I knew what was coming next. I just couldn’t believe it. In one fluid movement, Grim had knocked the guy out cold.
“How did you do that?” I asked as I stumbled backward, nearly tripping over my own feet.
But Grim didn’t answer as he rolled Stan onto the towel and tied it around him. Then he hoisted the guy over his shoulders like a marine would carry a wounded soldier. “Let’s go.” His gruff tone was coarser than sandpaper.
“You know, if you were a little nicer, your job would be a lot easier.”
Grim pushed past me and trudged toward the gate. “Don’t tell me how to do my job.”
I rolled my eyes as I trailed after him. Then an odd thought struck me as I clutched the towel to my chest. “So those people over there. Don’t they see a towel floating through the air?”
“No,” he said as he undid the latch on the gate and pushed it open. “We’re not in the same dimension.”
I stopped, feeling as if I’d struck a brick wall. I knew my mouth was hanging open, but I couldn’t help it. I tried to shake the fog that had settled in my brain as I stared up at him. “I’m trying to wrap my head around that.”
“Don’t worry yourself over it,” he said in his usual indifferent tone. “After a day in the Penthouse, you’ll forget all about the first floor.”
The first floor? He must mean Earth.
“I hope you’re right.” I followed him down a gravel walkway lit with bright lights that sprang up beside trim bushes. When Grim didn’t respond, I added, “I’d like nothing more than to forget this day.”
Well, the death part I’d like to forget, but that kiss. Damn. Just thinking about the way his lips had melded to mine made me soak my panties. Good thing they were
already wet from the pool.
Since Grim had apparently become a mute, I was forced to walk the rest of the way in silence as I focused on his tight, round behind. Not because I wanted to gawk at his gorgeous glutes, but I was trying to keep from staring at a rather large, hairy mole on Stan’s flabby back.
We walked through a set of double glass doors and ended up in a lobby with shiny marble floors and a small elevator flanked by potted plants. The elevator dinged loudly as the doors slid open. An elderly couple strolled off hand-in-hand, and before I could get out of the way, they walked right through me.
“Ewww.” I shivered before flinging myself into the elevator. Dropping my towel to the ground, I felt up my legs and arms to make sure I was still intact.
Grim chuckled as he stepped inside and inserted a large brass key into a shiny silver slot. “How do you think they’d feel, knowing they just walked through a ghost?”
The elevator was cramped to begin with as Grim filled what was left of the tiny space. I had to flatten myself against the back wall to keep my nose from pressing into the mole on Stan’s back. The guy reeked of chlorine and vodka, and there was some other smell, too; sickly sweet, reminding me of fermented eggs. I wasn’t quite sure, but I thought it was coming from the mole. Ewww times infinity!
I thought I heard Grim swear when Stan started shifting around.
“One floor to go,” he grumbled, “and I’ll be rid of this snake in the grass.”
Snake in the grass? Who says that anymore?
But for once I had to agree with Grim. I couldn’t wait to get rid of Stan, either.
When he twisted the key and punched the number two, the elevator lurched and my heart along with it. I’ve never been a big fan of heights. I had a hard enough time dealing with my third-story apartment.
A computerized woman’s voice sounded through the overhead speakers, naming off the first and second floors as we made our ascent.
We came to a jerky halt and the door squeaked open. I hesitantly followed Grim off the elevator and gasped when I saw what awaited us: almost the exact same lobby, except the two potted plants each drooped to one side, looking like they hadn’t been watered in ages. The shiny marble floor was seriously dull and streaked with shoe marks. I spun a circle around the lobby before quickly following Grim through the glass doors.
I was immediately struck by the balmy air outside, so humid, it mingled with my damp skin as heat seeped into my bones. Then I made the mistake of breathing in that air, and almost choked. The smell outside was worse than a rotting colostomy bag. Yeah, mom had forced me to volunteer at a hospice with her every Christmas Eve, and I usually got stuck doing bathroom duty. I had to cover my nose to keep from gagging, that’s how powerful the stench was.
“What’s that smell?” I wheezed as I tried to keep pace with Grim.
“There’s a dumpster nearby,” he answered tersely.
What the heck?
No single dumpster made that smell. Maybe a landfill full of road kill.
Only a few outside lights were working, and I nearly tripped over an overgrowth of limbs from bushes that crowded the gravel walkway. Thank God, I was able to steady myself, or else I would have plowed face-first into Stan’s mole.
“This place is a shithole,” I grumbled.
“Yep, but it sure beats the basement.” Grim spun around, totally indifferent to the moaning naked guy draped across his shoulder. “With several counts of tax fraud, adultery, and embezzlement, he’s lucky he didn’t get stuck there.”
“Why didn’t he get sent down there?” I whispered as I glanced at the gravel beneath my feet. I didn't know why I was expecting flames to shoot out of the ground. As hot as it was outside, my skin broke into gooseflesh at the thought of getting sentenced to the fiery pit of doom.
Grim opened the wooden gate, which looked eerily similar to the one at Stan's condo pool, except the boards were weathered and buckling in several spots, and the rusty latch looked ready to fall off its hinges.
It swung open with a creak, and Grim stepped inside, heedless of Stan's moans as he banged the guy’s head against the latch.
Grim repositioned Stan on his shoulders. “His investment firm raised over two hundred thousand dollars for terminally ill kids last year.”
“That was nice of them.” I managed to squeak as I followed Grim, careful not to step in one of the many holes in the chipped decking.
As we approached the green sludge that should have been a pool full of water, I realized the origin of the smell. Gah! The thing looked like a mosquito breeding ground. Hadn't they ever heard of chlorine in Purgatory?
“Stan was in charge of the fundraiser, which is why he gets into level two.” Grim walked to the edge of the sludge, staring down at the layer of slime and leaves that had to be two inches thick.
“And you say I’m going to the top?” I tried to keep the rattle out of my voice.
Stan had raised a lot of money for terminally ill kids and he’d only made it to the second floor. Shouldn’t he have at least been assigned a few levels higher?
“Yeah." Grim turned to me. “What’s the matter?”
"Nothing." My voice was as flat as a day-old soda.
That assessing look in his eyes made me feel as if he was undressing me, and not in a good way. No, this felt more like his eyes were twin lasers, boring holes into my soul, and he wasn’t happy with what he saw.
He was probably wondering what I was wondering.
How the hell had I gotten into Heaven when the only good deed I’d done was scrubbing toilets at a nursing home? And to be perfectly honest, I hadn’t even done that well. Usually, I just sprayed some disinfectant around the room and called it good.
My mom, on the other hand, volunteered almost every day. She’d tried to get me to help her on the weekends, but after several years of making up excuses, she finally got the hint. Ever since that fateful day in December when I’d found myself jobless and unable to afford groceries, she’d suckered me into repaying her loan by volunteering on Christmas Eve.
Somehow, Mom had found a way of manipulating my community service into a life sentence: a tradition of miserable holidays in exchange for eggs and diet soda. After the incident with Mrs. Johnston’s catheter, they didn’t trust me with the patients anymore, so I’d been relegated to toilet duty.
And this had gotten me into Heaven?
How much of a dick did you have to be to get stuck in Purgatory?
Stan was stirring more by this point, sounding like he had a mouthful of marbles as he grumbled, “Put me down, affhole.”
“Whatever you say.” Grim grunted before dropping Stan into the pool.
I shrieked and jumped back as green goo splattered everywhere. Stan’s head lolled to one side, his eyes rolling into the back of his head. He made this grotesque gurgling sound as he sank beneath the sludge.
“Is he going to be okay?” I asked. I wasn't sure if Stan could drown since he was already dead, but the guy was half conscious and probably swallowing enough ick to give him the runs for a week.
Grim flashed that annoyingly condescending smirk I was coming to loathe, no matter how badly I wanted to kiss those sexy lips.
“He’s not going to die twice, Ash.” He walked past me to the gate.
I chased after him. “So he’ll just wake up with a mouthful of nasty pool water?”
He chuckled as he held open the gate. “Something like that.”
“Don’t you think that’s a little cruel?” Scowling, I jabbed his chest. “I mean, the guy just died.”
“The guy’s a creep.” Grim thumbed over his shoulder. “Back to the elevator,” he commanded, like I was his dog and he wanted me to fetch his slippers.
Sheesh. Grim must have been channeling his inner-caveman, because he definitely wasn’t oozing with gentlemanly qualities.
I jutted a hand on my hip and gave him my diva glare. “I liked you better when you were kissing me.”
Even in the low light, I could
see his cheeks flush. I flashed a triumphant smile and turned on my heel, swaying my hips as I walked away.
I pressed against the back wall as Grim’s broad frame filled up most of the elevator. What little space there was left seemed to be inhabited by his sour mood.
The elevator inched its way up with agonizing slowness as the computerized woman called off each floor with a perky voice that contradicted Grim’s aura.
He made a big show of checking his watch and muttering what I thought was a curse under his breath. “I was supposed to be off an hour ago. I probably missed happy hour.”
Happy hour? Like at a bar?
This whole afterlife concept was beyond confusing, and since Grim wasn’t volunteering any information, I knew I’d have to drag it out of him. “So you work like a nine-to-five job and then go for drinks? Who’s going to escort other dead people when you go home?”
He shot me an impatient glare. “One of the thousands of other Grims working the night shift.”
My jaw dropped. “There’s more than one Grim?”
I hope the others are more pleasant than you, buddy.
“There’s not enough hours in the night for me to pick up every lost soul.” He crossed his arms, looking down at me with a scowl. “But you need not concern yourself with the workers on the thirteenth floor, where you’re going.”
Did I hear resentment in his voice? I had no idea how I’d earned my wings, but it wasn’t my fault God was letting me into Heaven.
To say the remainder of our time alone was awkward was a major understatement.
I clenched my hands and a nervous jolt rocked my stomach as the elevator opened with a ding.
“Access granted,” the elevator’s smooth voice purred. “Welcome to the Penthouse.”
This was it! I was going to Heaven!
Oh-My-Freaking-God! Wait a minute. I didn’t mean to think that. Sorry, God. Oh-My-Fabulous-God! Better?
Shit. I hadn’t even gotten through the pearly gates yet, and I was already calling His name in vain.
