Eternally Yours 1 (4 page)

“Ha!” Sherman cackled. “She’s got you pegged already, Luc.”

Steam rose up Luc’s neck, but he simply glared at them both.

Chapter 3

Luc’s steely gaze narrowed on her, and a shiver raced down Jodie’s spine. But she tamped down her natural inclination to apologize for her rudeness. Instead, she focused doe-innocent eyes on Luc’s unpleasant stare.

God, he had movie star-slash-pirate looks! Silver eyes
flashed above a perfect nose in a tawny-complexioned, angular face. Thick, straight black hair, glossy as a crow’s wing, brushed his shoulders. In appearance, the man was sheer perfection. In disposition, though, he left a lot to be desired.

“Congratulations, Ms. Devlin,” Sherman announced. “You’ve just become a bounty hunter.”

“Not yet, she hasn’t,” Luc growled. He’d relaxed his posture, now lounging in the chair in one smooth curved line. Still, arrogance rolled off him in waves—from those flinty eyes, to the taut muscles beneath his smartass “I See Dead People” t-shirt, to thighs hard-packed into faded black jeans.

Jodie glared straight back, refusing to cringe or so much as blink.
Since arriving in this place, this
Afterlife
, she’d been mind-fucked in a thousand different ways. But this cold-blooded reptile, Luc, with his know-it-all behavior would bear the full brunt of her indignation. All because he looked at her with the same easy dismissal as everyone had on Earth…for at least three lifetimes.

“Now, Luc.” Sherman’s tone turned wheedling, an exasperated parent attempting to reason with a spoiled toddler. “You don’t want to upset the Board.”
“Why not? The Board has no problems upsetting me.” He brushed imaginary lint from his shoulder.

Which reminded her. H
ow come she was wrapped in some purple shower curtain while he had the freedom of familiar clothing? As soon as Death’s Stand-up Comedian left the room again, she intended to ask Sherman what she had to do to ditch the shroud in favor of her own garments.

“I believe you two are well-matched,” Sherman
replied, still in that dulcet cadence meant to soothe. “And obviously the Board believes you’ll work well together.” He clapped twice in rapid succession. “So, hop to it, you two. Luc, take her to the Halfway House. Get her a room.”

“Halfway House?” Her attention swerved from the haughty Adonis in black to the friendly gnome in white. Immediately
, memory cast her back to all those foster homes of her youth. Her hands curled into tight fists at her sides. Not again. Never again. She would
never
again allow bullies to antagonize her into tears.

In coming to terms with her past, Jodie had learned a valuable lesson. Too often, she’d allowed others to make decisions for her. Well, no more. No more easy dismissals, no more swallowing resentment, no more silent suffering. After all, as Serenity had pointed out, if she didn’t know her own worth, how could she ever expect anyone else to value her?

No, the time had come for Jodie to take control of her life. Too bad she’d had to die to figure out that much.

Sherman, however, ignored her outburst, his focus solely on Luc. “A
wait word from the Board on your next assignment.”

Luc’s expression mirrored her resentful thoughts as he
shot to his feet and turned toward the door. “I’m here to serve.” He jerked his head in Jodie’s direction. “Come on, newbie. Let’s go home.”

~~~~

The Halfway House resembled a cheap motel, one with hourly rates and special “fantasy suites” in the basement. But, of course, fantasies did not exist here.

When Luc opened her door, Jodie stepped inside the drab room and shivered. “Nice.” Acid dripped from her tongue, but she didn’t hold back. “Are all the rooms here as shabby, or did you pick this one especially for me?”

Leaning against the door jamb, h
er new trainer shrugged, his face impassive, arms folded over his chest. “Every suite’s the same.”

Lovely.
Black walnut paneling made the small accommodations appear to close in on their occupant. To the left of the entrance sat a long wooden counter with two high-backed stools. The utter desolation of the room brewed silence between them like burnt coffee. The only noise came from the corner where a wind machine hummed a dirge.

Jodie
gingerly touched the vibrating vent on the machine. “Is this what I think it is?”

“A
n air cleaner,” he replied. “Well, the Afterlife’s version anyway. Look.” He ran a finger over the sleek top and sides. “No on-off switch. No plug. It doesn’t exactly work the same way the ones on Earth work, but the goal is the same.”

She quirked a brow. “Which is…?”

“To eliminate any possible scents from the air. Odors trigger memories. And the Board frowns on memories.”

“
Yeah, well, they seem to frown on suicides, too,” she murmured.

“Shit.” Luc stared her up and down, disapproval etching deep lines in his brow. “You’re a suicide?”

A huge fireball of embarrassment clogged her throat, sending heat into her cheeks, and she nodded.

“I should’ve known.” He jerked his dark head toward her scarred hands. “What’d you do? Set yourself on fire?
Please tell me you’re not some religious fanatic.”

Hiding her hands in the voluminous folds of the toga, she glared at him.
“Not that it’s any of your business, but no. I’m not a religious fanatic and I didn’t set myself on fire.”

If she could set anything on fire, it’d be him. With
twin lasers she’d shoot from her eyes. Until she’d reduced the arrogant jerk into a glowing spot on the ugly orange carpet at her feet. Oh, yes, she could picture him there, sizzling to nothing more than another black scar in a cornucopia of old stains.

“So why did you
kill yourself?” His mocking tone interrupted her private fantasy. “Some guy broke your heart?”

Her eyes widened. “How did you know that?”

With the slow grace of a panther on the hunt, he strolled closer. “No great stretch. It’s why most women commit suicide. Over some idiot.”

Could she kill someone already dead?

“Gabe wasn’t an idiot.”

“No?” He
hitched a hip against the first stool, and then tapped two fingers on his chin. “Let me see. You’re here—dead by your own hand. And he’s still on Earth.” He arched a brow, questions shining in his diamond eyes. “I take it he’s very much alive? Which means one of you is an idiot. So, who is it? You or him?”

Me
. But she wouldn’t admit that. Not to him. Not to anyone. “What about you? Who was the idiot in your life? You or her?”

His posture
turned to granite, stiff and unyielding. “Me. Definitely me.”

She folded her arms over her chest.
“
You
killed yourself over a woman?”

“Hell, no.”

Bitter laughter exploded from her lips. “No, of course not. Men don’t commit suicide over women. They do it over business problems or gambling debts or drug addiction. Some secret vice that no one knew about until it was too late. What was your vice?”

“Marriage.”

She cocked her head. “Excuse me?”

“Never mind.
” He waved a hand, and then turned to encompass the rest of the room in one sweeping gesture. “As you can see, you’ve got everything you’ll need to be comfortable here.”

Was he kidding?
Mud huts in Central America were cozier.

“Oh, yeah, there’s plenty here to occupy me.”
Strolling the small area, she catalogued the discrepancies. “No television, no radio, no books, no windows.” When she reached the opposite side of the room in about ten steps and found nothing to touch or fiddle with, she frowned. By God, the walls looked practically sterile in their emptiness. “Where are the scenic paintings of a country road in autumnal splendor or an empty white wicker chair on a sunny, flower-filled porch, sleeping cat optional?”

A smile crept into his features, and for a moment, she
glimpsed a charming man behind the viper in black. “The Board forbids anything that might bind a soul to Earth. Not even a clock is tolerated.”

“Really? Why?”

“Time holds no sway here in the Afterlife.” He sighed. “Except for those like us, who tick off the days, the hours, the minutes, serving the Board in some low-level capacity until we can at last, move on.”

She shook her head.
“Welcome to Death’s waiting room.”

This time, the smile remained, and even broadened.
With a chuckle, he pointed his finger like a pistol. “That’s good. You might make it in this job after all.”

“
Yeah, right. I don’t know how my high school guidance counselor missed such an obvious career path. From child of Third World aid workers to Death’s Bounty Hunter in one giant leap. How bizarre.”

He
clapped, and then rubbed his hands together as if warming them. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I could use a little shuteye. So if there’s nothing else you need right now, I’m going to head over to my room and sleep until the Board nags me—
us
—for another bounty.”

Gaze d
rawn by his mention of the only other furniture in the room, Jodie strode to the double bed with its harvest gold coverlet. She pressed her hands down, and coiled springs dug painfully into her palms. The pillows looked as if they had more lumps than day-old mashed potatoes.

“I thought spirits didn’t need sleep.”
Not that the bed offered enough comfort for peaceful slumber.

“
Spirits
don’t need sleep,” he said. “Nor do they require food, showers, sex, or other obsessions of the living. But bounty hunters like us straddle both worlds. We’re not full spirits, but we’re certainly not human anymore, either. Whatever we are, after a sojourn on Earth, we return dirty, drained, and famished. Trust me. There have been plenty of times I’ve fought a battle to decide whether to eat, sleep, or shower first. Sleep always wins for me because the other two can be taken care of while I’m recharging the old battery. Except when Sherman beckons me to return to Earth immediately.”

One palm over his mouth, he yawned and stretched. The t-shirt tightened over his abdomen, and muscles rippled above the jeans’ waistband.

“Earth?” Her attention veered from his sculpted abs to his face, seeking some hint of a smile or glint in his eyes that said he teased her. She saw none. “We really get to visit Earth?”

“Of course. How else do you think we recapture souls? The bounty we’re after are spirits who, for whatever reason, remain on
Earth. Sometimes they have issues that keep them bound to their past lives; sometimes they’ve escaped from here and run. Whatever the reason they’re there, we go in and haul them back to the Afterlife.”

“Often?”

“All the time.”

Gabe. His name flashed into her mind like a struck match.
If she got down to Earth, she could see Gabe again. Maybe she could reach him somehow. Tell him she loved him. That she’d made a mistake. That if he could just hold on, somehow, she’d find a way for them to be together again.

This time, forever.

~~~~

In Luc’s dream, an ear-piercing screech drew his gaze up from the jagged rock face. Far off in the distance, a mother erne’s chocolate wings dipped through azure pudding sky, thrusting the bird toward some aerie overhead. Probably a brood of chicks somewhere above him awaited their mid-morning breakfast.

Dangling from Slanting Cracks Wall in upstate New York, Luc inhaled deeply, tasting dusty air infused with the heady tang of freedom. Freedom from the investigation into Amity-For-All’s role in the Salvadoran debacle. Freedom from the pressures of his crumbling marriage.