Being compassionate had bitten me in the ass repeatedly. Why stop now?
“Do I know you?” I asked, realizing it was an unfair question since there was nothing I could do for her. Making her leave so she could find someone who could aid her was what I should do, but…
Who in the hell that could be was anyone’s guess. The gift had been passed from my gram to my mother, and then to me. As far as I’d understood, we were the only line of Death Counselors. But since the dead hadn’t come back, I took some comfort at the possibility that there were indeed more than just Gram and me in the world.
“Sssiiiiiiinngea booooooouuns,” she repeated in a broken whisper.
“Let me explain,” I said, unable to decipher her words. “I used to be the Death Counselor, but I messed up.”
She waited and stared at me with sad, sunken eyes and a trembling body.
“Messed up is actually a mild term for it, but I’m not a big cusser. I mean, I do say shit and damn, but the F-bomb would have worked in my last statement, and I’m not really good with that one,” I went on as if the conversation we were having was even remotely normal. “You don’t really need to hear about my prowess or lack thereof with profanity. So anyway, my dead husband—Steve—came back to tell me he was gay and…”
What in the hell was I doing? The dead woman wasn’t my therapist.
But wait… She needed to understand why I couldn’t help her. The truth didn’t always set you free. It was complicated and horrifying in my case, but if the travesty that was my life could convince the gal on my couch to seek help elsewhere, then so be it.
“I thought I’d gone insane,” I told her, moving across the room and sitting next to her on the couch. “I didn’t tell anyone that there were ghosts all over my house and following me to the grocery. I mean, who are you going to tell that to without them having you locked up in the loony bin? Right?”
The woman simply stared.
There seemed to be no judgment in her eyes, or more likely, she had no clue what I’d just said. It didn’t matter. I’d finish what I’d started and, at the very least, she might think I was so unhinged she’d leave. I didn’t want her here, but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings either. She was dead, for the love of everything unholy. She’d already been through enough.
Plus, being Southern dictated my polite manners. Being Southern could seriously suck.
“So… umm… I figured out a way to communicate with my squatters,” I continued. “It’s called dead man mind-diving… or dead woman, to be nonsexist and fair. In a moment of absurdly inappropriate dead-humor, I thought about having a t-shirt made.”
She didn’t laugh.
I didn’t blame her. My comedic skills were sorely lacking, and it was one of those jokes that you had to be there to get.
“Sorry about that. So, then I embarked upon a life of crime and committed a misdemeanor for my dead friend Sam. I don’t regret it at all. However, I’m not cut out for ten to twenty in the state pen. You feel me? I was completely relieved I could use a Ouija board to help the others. Mail fraud is the other illegal hobby I took up. I sent post-dated letters and cards to the loved ones of my dead guests so they wouldn’t have unfinished business. Risky? Sure, but it was way easier than breaking and entering.”
The woman politely nodded. She lost her head. Reaching forward, I caught it in my hands and handed it back to her.
Standing up, I sighed. “Hang on a sec. Stay here.”
Sprinting to the garage, I convinced myself gluing her head back on didn’t mean I was taking the job back. I couldn’t. It would endanger one of the people I loved most in the world. However, sending the poor woman on her way knowing that her head was firmly attached was the right thing to do. It would suck all kinds of butt for her to wander around without a head.
As long as I didn’t solve her problem, a little superglue surgery was fine.
“Can you hand me your head so I can glue it back on for you?” I asked as I sat down next to her again.
Not a sentence I thought I would ever speak.
She had propped it back up on her neck. With what I thought was a smile—it was hard to tell since most of her jaw was gone—she carefully handed me her head.
Turning it at an angle so her eyes weren’t staring at me, which would have freaked me out, I used two full tubes of superglue. It was slightly excessive, but I wasn’t in the business of gluing body parts on anymore. I didn’t need to be careful about overuse. Plus, I had no clue how far she would have to travel for help. Extra glue could hopefully keep her head attached to her body for months if she was careful.
“For this to work, I need to hold it in place for two minutes,” I explained, making eye contact again since her head was no longer in my lap. “But since it’s your head, I’m gonna do it for three minutes. Cool?”
“Sssiiiiiiinngea booooooouuns,” she told me.
“Umm… okay,” I said, looking around for my dogs.
Donna the Destroyer wasn’t actually a dog at all even though she resembled one. I’d found out she was a Hell Hound and could understand the dead better than I could. I’d barely blinked an eye at the news. Since I was hanging out with deceased people, gluing on appendages and living a life of crime, the fact that my puppy was a denizen of Hell was the least of my problems. Plus, I adored her.
Karen the Chair Eater could not see the dead. However, she could dig a hole in the yard the size of a refrigerator without an ounce of shame. She’d eaten all of my mums and had room-clearing gas for thirty-six hours. Again, I didn’t bat an eye. I simply held my nose and loved her anyway.
The dogs were nowhere to be found.
“I don’t understand you,” I said apologetically.
“Sssiiiiiiinngea booooooouuns.”
“Mmmkay,” I said, glancing down at my phone to see if the three minutes were up.
There was no way I could hug her and go into her mind to talk to her. I’d figured out the system by trial and error with a little help from Donna the Destroyer. It hurt like a mother humper to mind dive, but it worked. The dead’s voices were as clear as if they were still alive.
But I wasn’t the Death Counselor anymore. I’d be risking Steve’s afterlife if I did.
“Singea Bonus?” I tried. “Is that your name?” I’d never heard a name like that before, but if she was from another country, she could have an unusual name.
She tried to shake her head, but I had a darn good grip on it.
“Sssiiiiiiinngea booooooouuns.”
“Not your name?” I asked. “How about Sissy G. Boons?”
She reached up and gently touched my face. Her skin felt like dry paper. I was still amazed that the ghosts were somewhat corporeal even though I could see through parts of them.
“Naawwwooo,” she said.
Breathing in through my nose and slowly out through my mouth, I fought back every instinct I had to help her. It wasn’t in my nature to walk away… but I had to.
Standing up and moving to the other side of the room now that her head seemed like it wasn’t going to tumble off of her neck again, I put some distance between us. If I hugged her so I could understand her, the darkness might come back for my dead, gay best friend and former husband. I’d stopped it from taking him by quitting. Taking the job back on wasn’t possible. It was a risk I was unwilling to take no matter how much this woman moved me.
“Look,” I said, hoping I sounded firmer than I felt. “I’m going to tell you my story in a nutshell, and then you have to leave.”
“Sssiiiiiiinngea booooooouuns.”
“Right,” I said, twisting my hair with my fingers and forcing myself to take a seat across the room. “I already told you that I can see the dead. Well… actually, you could probably figure that out since we’re having a conversation of sorts.”
The woman stared at me and clasped her hands politely in her lap. She was quite easy to talk to and it felt kind of good to lay it all out on the table, so to speak.
&nb
sp; “Here goes nothing. I turned forty. I had a mind-numbingly boring job as a paralegal. Turns out my bitchy, sex-obsessed, evil ex-boss Clarissa happens to be the Angel of Mercy. I seriously want to kill her for what she did, but apparently, you can’t kill Immortal people. Who knew? That’s incredibly unfair and total bullshit, but I’m getting ahead of myself. However, I would like to point out—probably more for myself than for you—that nothing is as it seems to be. Movies have very bad information in them about good and evil and I’m a freaking idiot for assuming so many things that were dead wrong. Oops, sorry about the dead thing. I should have just said wrong, not dead wrong. That was rude,” I said apologetically.
She tilted her head slightly to the right and waited for me to keep spewing out my heinous life story. I was wildly relieved that it stayed on her neck and didn’t fall to the floor and roll around. Superglue was some amazing stuff.
“Then the dead started showing up. I got a dog, and then I got another one. I committed a misdemeanor or two, and then found out from Gram that I was a Death Counselor. It would have been great to have known that shit a little earlier, but whatever. Then to make weird even weirder, Steve—my dead, gay husband—showed up to apologize. His unfinished business was to help me find a man who could love me the way I deserved to be loved. I forgave Steve because that’s how I am and he’s my best friend. I do have to add that I was kind of shocked that I didn’t know my husband was gay. I didn’t think I was that person. You know?”
I was also kind of shocked that the dead gal on my couch hadn’t left the house screaming in terror. She was either brave or she didn’t understand a word I was saying. Or she was possibly Southern, like me, and was too polite for her own good.
“In the past month, I’ve grown some fairly massive lady balls. I fell in love with the Grim Reaper and screwed that up to the point of no return. I didn’t trust the right person and I might have damned Steve to the darkness. The only way to stop that from happening was to quit being the Death Counselor. Steve isn’t supposed to go to the darkness. He’s meant for the light.”
“Yausssss,” she said with a very careful nod.
My gaze jerked to hers and I stared with surprise. I thought she wanted my help. Was I wrong? Did she have a message about Steve? I was pretty sure she’d just agreed with my assessment that Steve was meant to go to the light.
“You know Steve?” I asked, feeling light-headed and shaky.
Never again was I going to assume that I knew what the hell was going on. It had almost ended me. Lately, my mind was filled with thoughts of ending myself after I made sure Steve was okay. My future without Gideon was so bleak it made me ill.
“Naawwwooo,” she said.
“Wait,” I said, squinting at the ghost. “When you said yes, did you mean that Steve is supposed to go into the light?”
“Naawwwooo.”
“Is he supposed to go to the darkness?” I asked as my eyes narrowed dangerously.
I wasn’t real sure how to fight a ghost, but if she had come to take Steve into the darkness, she was about to lose her head again, and I wouldn’t give it back. Was she a bad dead guy… or girl? Were there dead politics I knew nothing about? The absurd possibilities were endless.
“Naawwwooo.”
We were getting nowhere fast. My gut had led me vastly astray recently, but the woman on my couch didn’t seem evil—just sad, lost and in need of help. I wasn’t the one to do that. She needed to leave. Just her being here might make the others think it was okay to come back. As long as I wasn’t the Death Counselor, Steve could stay on this plane until I destroyed the vicious Angel of Mercy and made things right. Of course, there was a fine chance that I would die in the process, but at this point, it might be a welcome escape.
Looking down at my hands, I felt like crying. I wanted to help her. It wasn’t going to happen.
Closing my eyes, I tried one last time to make her understand. “I can’t help you. You need to find someone who can. I’m sorry.”
When I opened my eyes, she was gone.
Chapter Three
“Daisy, what are you doing?” Heather asked as she walked into my kitchen, took off her cashmere coat and busted me.
My head snapped up and I gave her a small guilty smile. My dogs were useless as far as watchdogs went. They were still sound asleep at my feet. I loved them anyway.
Heather looked exhausted. Normally, she was pulled together and very attractive. Her short pixie cut framed her lovely face and highlighted her big blue eyes. My friend was long, lean and strong. Not today. Today her eyes appeared dull and lifeless. She had the very same circles under hers that I sported underneath mine. Heather was dressed professionally in a beautifully cut business suit, but it was like putting a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound.
I hoped she had some news, or at the very least, a plan. If the news was bad, I wanted to avoid it for a few minutes. Pretending like things were normal—a bizarrely relative word right now—even for just a short time was a luxury. However, my friend had asked me a question and I was going to answer her.
“I’m eating French fries,” I said, stating the obvious since it was pretty hard to deny. Of course, the pile of delivery bags littering the kitchen counter was also a good indicator as to what I’d been up to for the last few days.
Right after the dead woman disappeared, I decided to drown my sorrows in unhealthy calories. I had plans to run on the treadmill later since there was no way I would leave Steve alone at the house. Last night I’d logged twenty miles on the old machine without breaking a sweat. My dogs had seemed impressed. I probably should get my sweat glands checked. It was a strange new occurrence I couldn’t explain, along with my vastly improved eyesight. Midlife changes were mysterious. So far, they weren’t all that bad, but not sweating had to be unhealthy—kind of like my lunch. Whatever. It was on my very long to-do list. I had far bigger problems than not sweating and being able to see without glasses at the moment.
Heather sighed, sat down next to me and pilfered a few fries. “These are good,” she said, chewing on one of the ass-extending potato sticks. “Where did you get them?”
“Billy’s Burger House. They deliver and it’s two-for-one day.”
“Where’s the other bag of fries?” Heather asked, giving me a lopsided grin.
“In my stomach,” I replied. “Along with the cookies June brought over this morning. And I will add that those cookies were better than sex.”
“Don’t know what kind of sex you’ve been having,” Heather said with a chuckle. “But cookies are not better than sex.”
“The last sex I had—and I hesitate to label it as sex—was with Stan the Two-Minute Man.”
“The one with the hairy back?” Heather asked, scrunching her nose in distaste.
“Yep,” I said with a shudder as I drenched a fry in ketchup and popped it into my mouth.
“Then I retract my statement,” Heather said, sounding like the lawyer she was. “These fries are definitely better than sex with Stan.”
“Thank you for your support,” I replied, wondering what her reaction would be if I pulled the ice cream cake out of the freezer that I’d had delivered from the Dairy Freeze yesterday.
“You’re most welcome,” Heather replied with a small grin. “You should think about becoming a lesbian. Much easier and way more fun.”
A smile pulled at the corner of my mouth. “If I liked vaginas, I’d be there in a hot sec. Unfortunately, I’m fonder of the male anatomy.”
Heather was an out-and-proud lesbian—an anomaly in our small Southern, God-fearing, Georgia town. For a while, Heather and my bestie from childhood, Missy, had seen each other. I didn’t know the details of their breakup, but I suspected it had to do with Missy’s hellfire-and-brimstone upbringing. It made me sad that two people who clearly had feelings for each other felt they couldn’t be together because of the homophobic opinions of idiots who believed they were following the word of God.
I still wasn’t certain
if God existed, but if he did, I was pretty damn sure he wouldn’t take issue with it. Good people were good people. Period. I would hope that character ranked higher than the gender of the person who you loved. The silver lining was that Missy and Heather were still friends. I would never be able to choose between them, and I was wildly relieved I didn’t have to.
“Do you have news?” I asked as my stomach clenched.
Heather sighed and pressed the bridge of her nose. “First, tell me this. Can you still see Steve?”
I nodded. “I can.”
“Has his condition changed at all?”
Heather had seen Steve in his coma-like state three days ago. I’d called her and she’d arrived shortly after I’d stopped the darkness from taking Steve by quitting my job as the Death Counselor.
Steve was in the bedroom we’d shared before he’d died in a car accident over a year ago. He’d come back to apologize for ruining my life. He hadn’t ruined my life. Our lack of intimacy had messed with my head for years, but that was on me as well. He was and would always be someone I loved with all of my heart.
Now he was upstairs lying in a vegetative state… kind of. His dead body was rigid and his pale coloring was now dark gray. Holding back a scream every time I checked on him was difficult, but I reminded myself it was Steve—my best friend in the world. It would never matter to me what he looked like on the outside. His insides were beautiful.
“He’s the same,” I said quietly. “No changes that I can see. He’s not trying to communicate as much except for a few words here and there.”
“He can hear you?” Heather asked.
“Yes,” I told her as the pit in my stomach grew larger. “Can we go after Clarissa yet?”
My stomach was now churning with fury or possibly the combo of cookies and fries.
“When we have an air-tight case,” Heather said flatly. “Not a second sooner or we’ll lose. She’s been around for millions of years. The bitch has something on everyone.”
Whose Midlife Crisis Is It Anyway? : A Paranormal Women's Fiction Novel: Good To The Last Death Book Two Page 3
