Heather’s statement gave me pause. Not the fact that we had to wait. I understood that and agreed. There was no room for error when Steve’s afterlife was on the line. Something else entirely set the wheels of my mind racing.
“How old are you?” I asked, still overwhelmed that a secret and ancient world had existed right under my nose my whole life.
“You shouldn’t ask questions you don’t truly want the answers to,” Heather said cryptically.
My friend didn’t look a day over thirty-five. However, I was well aware that Immortals could choose their age. Gideon had offered to grow old with me. He wouldn’t die, but I would eventually. He’d stolen a piece of my heart when he’d offered that gift. In the end, I’d given him my entire heart. I’d just been stupid and hadn’t given him my trust along with it.
Crumpling the empty fry bag and adding it to the mountain of other bags on the counter, I considered what Heather said and decided she was wrong.
“I stand by my question,” I insisted, wondering what the hell she was about to tell me. “How old are you?”
“Honestly, I’m not sure,” Heather said with a tired laugh. “In the beginning I counted, but after a while, it seemed pointless.”
“Ballpark?” I asked, curious how old she could be to have stopped counting.
She looked up at the ceiling for a long moment, and then sighed. “I guess I’ve been around a couple thousand years.”
“Define a couple,” I pressed. A couple could mean two or three—even four. There was a huge difference between two thousand and four thousand.
“You’re awfully nosey, Daisy,” Heather said with a laugh. “But to answer your question, I suppose it’s closer to two thousand. Happy?”
“More like gobsmacked,” I replied, shaking my head. “How is that possible?”
“The impossible is always possible,” she replied. “You just have to suspend your belief in human reality and embrace it.”
I mulled that over for a minute and decided the wisest and least complicated plan of action would be to grab the ice cream cake out of the freezer. “Big piece or little one?” I asked Heather as I cut myself a nice large slice.
“Huge,” Heather said.
“You got it,” I told her as I plopped the rest of the cake in front of her.
“Umm…” Heather looked down at the cake with amused, open-mouthed surprise.
“You said huge,” I pointed out with a grin. “I aim to please.”
“Well, in that case, thank you,” Heather said, grabbing a fork and digging in.
“Welcome,” I said as I ate my own piece of cake. “Do you have a favorite time period? One you lived through?”
“I’ve lived through a whole lot of them. Oh, shit,” she said, pinching the bridge of her nose in pain.
“Brain freeze?” I asked.
“Yep. Give me a sec,” she said with a pained laugh.
“You gonna live?” I joked.
“Very funny,” Heather shot back, raising her brow and middle finger. “As to a favorite time period? Now. My favorite is whatever time period I’m living in. It’s a waste to long for something that’s gone. If I did that, I wouldn’t be able to get up in the morning.”
It was almost too much for my mortal brain to take in. I had millions of questions, but they weren’t relevant to what we needed to accomplish. If I made it through the next few weeks and lived to tell, I’d ask Heather so many questions her head would spin.
“How long until we’re ready to take Clarissa on?” I asked, still unclear of all that needed to be done.
“Daisy, I’ve learned a lot in my many, many, many years on Earth,” Heather said as she dug back into the ice cream cake.
“Eat slow,” I advised, handing her a napkin.
It didn’t matter if I dropped ice cream on my shitty sweats, but Heather’s suit was expensive.
“Will do,” she said, looking pensive. “Things happen the way they’re supposed to happen—when they’re supposed to happen.”
“You believe in predestiny?” I asked, surprised.
Heather shrugged. “I believe in free will. I think a plan is laid out for each person. It begins at birth and ends at death.”
“Doesn’t sound like free will to me,” I commented, as I finished off my piece of cake and dug into hers. “If what you just said is accurate, there’s no choice in destiny—therefore, no free will.”
She pushed the remainder of the cake across the table to me. It was a nice-mean move. Nice because she was sharing. Mean because I was going to polish off the whole damn thing.
“Hang on, I wasn’t finished with my thought,” she said, leaning over the table and scooping up one last big bite for herself before I demolished it. “Whether or not the person stays on the path that’s meant for them is the free will part. There are many ways to get from point A to point B.”
“Okay.” I swirled the melting ice cream with my fork. “I can follow that. But the dead no longer have free will.”
“True,” Heather agreed. “And that’s where you and I come in.”
“And the Grim Reaper and the Angel of Mercy,” I added.
Heather nodded. “With most, the afterlife is set by how a person lives their life. No outside assistance is needed.”
“Right. I know that,” I said. “But… is an afterlife in question truly just in the hands of Clarissa and Gideon?”
“To a certain degree, yes,” she said. “But when something goes wrong, a tribunal is called.”
That was news to me.
“And how many times has a tribunal happened?” I asked, feeling kind of sick to my stomach.
“Again, don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to.” Heather leveled me with an emotionless gaze.
“If I ask, I want to know,” I said, staring right back at her.
The time for making shitty assumptions was long gone. I’d upended my life by believing I knew truths that turned out to be dead wrong. Been there. Done that. Trying like hell not to do it again.
“Never,” Heather whispered.
“Repeat,” I said.
“A tribunal has never happened,” she told me.
“Never ever?” I questioned, not liking the answer at all.
“Never, ever, ever.”
“Shit,” I muttered. “Are there rules set in place for a tribunal?”
Heather nodded slowly. “There are, but since the rules have never been executed, they’re being updated.”
“Not following.”
“The rules are written in Sumerian,” Heather explained.
“What the hell is that?” I asked, getting more tense with each new piece of info.
“Sumerian is the oldest known written language,” she said. “Dates back to somewhere around 3500 BC. It was before my time and I don’t understand a word of it. So, when I said updated, I meant translated.”
“Who’s old enough to translate it? Clarissa?” I snapped, wondering how much worse everything could get before I just went for it and tried to off her evil ass.
“No,” Heather assured me. “Clarence Smith is translating it.”
“Her father?” I shouted. “I call total bullshit on that.”
Heather put her hand up to silence me. “He’s not her father.”
The hand didn’t work.
“Yes, he is her father,” I insisted, twisting my hair in my fingers in frustration. “What is wrong with you? We all worked at his law firm for years. The only reason she was able to keep her damn job was because he’s her father.”
I paused as Heather simply stared at me and said nothing. Dammit, I was thinking like a human. I believed the possible and denied the impossible. I had to shift my mindset and I had to shift it fast if I was going to succeed. Failure was not an option. This new way of thinking was going to give me gas, a freaking migraine or a nervous breakdown.
“Okay,” I said, getting up to pace my kitchen and throw away all evidence that I’d over-indulged in crappy f
ood. “Clarence Smith is not Clarissa Smith’s father.”
“Correct,” Heather said as she picked up the forks we’d used and washed them.
“I’m going to go out on a limb and say their last name is not Smith,” I continued.
“That’s a safe limb to go out on,” Heather replied.
“Mmmkay,” I said, sitting back down at the kitchen table so my knees didn’t buckle while I worked out all the new impossible that was indeed possible. “Are they even related?”
“Nope.”
“Freaking unreal,” I said, grabbing a piece of paper and a pen and jotting down notes. My mind was so full of chaotic thoughts, I knew I’d forget stuff. “Are there more like you and Clarissa and Clarence in our town?”
“While I despise being put in any kind of group with Clarissa, the answer is yes. There are more,” she said, scrubbing down my counters with a wipe, and then tossing it in the garbage.
“Make sure you put the child-lock back on or Karen the Chair Eater will eat the garbage,” I said, mulling over the bomb Heather had just confirmed.
“Got it.” She clicked it shut. “Daisy, this sleepy little town is the strongest portal in existence between Heaven and Hell.”
“Gram told me that already,” I said. “And I need to be honest with you. I’m still not sure I believe in Heaven and Hell.”
Heather was quiet for a long moment. She sat back down at the table. “You’ve seen the light and you’ve seen the darkness. Right?”
“I have.”
That was true, I just didn’t know where they led. To me, it seemed that the light was good because if its beauty. I’d watched several of my dead friends walk into it and disappear after I’d solved their problem. I knew in my heart they were going someplace beautiful.
I’d also witnessed the darkness when it wrongly came for Steve. It was chilling, and I had a difficult time associating it with Gideon. The whole mess of good and evil was so convoluted.
“So, something has to exist beyond what’s here,” Heather pressed.
I nodded. My nod was a contradiction of my thoughts, but confused was my new middle name.
“You wanted me to send Steve to the light—or for argument’s sake, Heaven—when you thought I was the Angel of Mercy. Why?” Heather asked. “Why would you want me to send him somewhere if you didn’t believe it existed?”
“I feel like I’m at a distinct disadvantage because you’re a lawyer with a few years on me,” I told her with a tiny grin. “And yes. You’re making me think, if that was your intention.”
“Thinking is good, Daisy,” she said, giving me a hug. “Keep your mind wide open.”
“Is it important for me to believe in Heaven if that’s where I want Steve to go?” I asked, feeling like a child asking for confirmation of something that couldn’t be explained.
“What’s important is justice. What you believe or don’t believe isn’t relevant,” she said, looking around the kitchen. “It’s a bit weird here without all the ghosts. I’m so used to the TV being on and silly reality shows playing.”
I sighed and realized we were moving on to other subjects. I was grateful. There was only so much impossible my brain could hold.
“A ghost was here this morning—after June and Jennifer stopped by,” I told her as she gave me an odd look. “It was a woman. I told her I couldn’t help her and she finally left after I glued her head back on.”
Heather eyed me strangely for about three seconds longer than was considered socially polite. “After the sentence you just spoke, I find it shocking that you don’t believe in the impossible.”
“What?” I asked, touching my mouth. “Do I have ice cream on my face?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t understand why you’re still able to see the dead when you quit the job.”
“Me neither. I must be a freak of nature.” I shrugged and ran my hands through my wild hair that seriously needed to be tamed. “It was difficult not to help her. Killed a little of my soul. I told her she needed to find someone else to help her. I told her the whole story. I was blown away she didn’t hightail it out of my house sooner than she did.”
“She’s probably at the nursing home now,” Heather said, standing up to leave.
An icy chill skittered up my spine and my lips flattened into a thin line. “Why would a dead woman go to the nursing home?”
“You don’t know?” Heather asked, sitting back down slowly.
“Know what?” I asked, feeling dread rise up from my toes and settle in my overly full stomach.
“They’ve gone back to Gram,” Heather said. “When you quit, the job reverted back to her.”
“Bullshit,” I snapped. “I’ve talked to Gram every day, and she’s said nothing about having dead squatters in her room.”
“She knows about Gideon leaving, and she knows about Steve,” Heather said quietly.
Hopping to my feet so I didn’t try to use the self-defense skills I’d learned from the YMCA on my kitchen table, I paced the room like a caged tiger. “She’s ninety years old,” I hissed. “She can’t handle that. She doesn’t even have the mail fraud box. I do. This is freaking horrible! She’s not well enough to deal with a bunch of dead people. Their heads fall off, for the love of everything unappetizing. Gram doesn’t eat enough as it is now.”
Heather said nothing.
“This is not working for me, Heather,” I shouted as I jogged in place, devising some kind of half-cocked plan in my head. Nothing was coming. My brain raced as erratically as my heart. No decision I made lately was a good one. I was harming all the people I loved. “What am I supposed to do? If I call the dead back to me, the darkness will take Steve. If I don’t call them back, it will kill Gram. This is an incredibly shitty position to be in. I can’t take any more shitty than I already have. Do you feel me?”
“The darkness can’t take Steve now that a tribunal has been called,” Heather said.
“The freaking rules of the tribunal were written in a dead language,” I reminded her in my outdoor voice. “How can I trust anything right now?”
“Can you trust me?” she asked.
I stopped jogging and stared at her. Right now, I barely trusted myself. Trusting someone else was risky. However, not trusting someone I loved was what got me into all of this in the first place. Heather loved me. I loved Heather. More importantly, Heather loved Steve too. She also loved Gram.
“I trust you,” I whispered.
“Thank you,” she said, walking me out to the living room and seating me on the couch. “Do you remember who I am? What I do?”
“You’re the Arbitrator between Heaven and Hell.”
“Yes. I am.” She sat down next to me. “And I’ve decreed that no one can take Steve until a ruling has been made. What I decree stands.”
“Where is Clarissa right now?” I asked, worried that she would come here and try to finish what she’d started no matter how much I trusted Heather.
“She has retreated into the light until she is called back to this plane.”
“You’re sure?” I asked.
“Positive,” Heather promised. “She was banished by Charlie. No one crosses Charlie.”
“Umm… who the heck is Charlie?” I asked, lost by the reference.
Heather chuckled. “You know Charlie.”
I had to think about it. Did I know someone named Charlie? I’d be hard-pressed to remember my own name right now.
“Oh my God,” I gasped out. “June’s Charlie? June’s Charlie is Immortal?”
“That he is,” Heather said with a smile.
“Is June Immortal too?” I asked.
Heather shook her head. “She’s not, and she knows nothing about the secret world that exists alongside the one she lives in. Charlie fell in love with June on sight. He’s simply aged along with her. Eventually, he’ll have to fake his own death and move away for a while until his children and grandchildren pass on.”
“That’s so sad,” I said as t
ears filled my eyes.
“And that’s where you’re wrong, Daisy,” Heather said. “When you live forever, much ceases to have meaning. Finding love—no matter how brief in the scheme of an Immortal’s lifespan—is something to be cherished. I would trade with Charlie in a heartbeat. He’ll have wonderful, loving memories of June for the rest of time. That, my friend, is beautiful.”
That certainly shut me up. My heart still hurt, but I understood as much as someone who had only lived forty years could. Love was indeed a rare and precious gift.
“What is Charlie?” I asked. “I mean, does he have a title like you?”
“He does,” she told me. “Charlie is the Enforcer. He represents science. Charlie is revered by every Immortal, Angel and Demon who exists.”
“So, science and religion do go hand in hand,” I said, shaking my head at the irony.
“Always have and always will,” Heather confirmed.
“Well, hell,” I said with a weak grin. “That would certainly blow the minds of a bunch of pea-brained, born-again mother humpers in our town.”
“You got that right, girlfriend,” Heather agreed with a laugh.
“And Clarence? What is he?”
“The question is, who is he?” Heather said.
“Umm… okay. I’ll bite. Who is he?”
“How familiar are you with the Bible?” she inquired.
“Not at all,” I admitted. “Is that going to be a problem?”
“Nope. Not a problem. Possibly an advantage,” Heather replied. “Do you know of the Archangel Michael?”
“You mean, like the one John Travolta played in the movie Michael?”
Heather’s laugh was real and echoed through the quiet farmhouse. “Close enough,” she said, still chuckling. “Clarence is Michael.”
“Our old boss is an Archangel?” I asked, squinting at Heather.
“Why should that surprise you? You were dating the Grim Reaper,” she said and waited for my reaction.
“Low blow.” I narrowed my eyes at my friend. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Grow thicker skin, Daisy,” Heather advised.
Whose Midlife Crisis Is It Anyway? : A Paranormal Women's Fiction Novel: Good To The Last Death Book Two Page 4
