Strange Academy (Hot Paranormal Romance) (41 page)

He noticed her work for once. Maybe her summer job (temporary assistant to the assistant manager) will turn into something better. Maybe she’ll have a position waiting for her when she finishes college. She wants the stability to take some risk out of her future.

To celebrate, she’s going to eat her peanut butter and jelly on the lawn of Millennium Park and smell the fresh-cut grass.

As she comes up to the hectic intersection, she has the right of way. Let's be clear about this; she has the right of way.

The happy girl on the bike? That was me, ten seconds before the screech of tires and the hideous crunch of metal on bone. Before the disturbing flip through the air followed by a short battle between asphalt and flesh. Asphalt won. Helmet didn’t even have a chance.

In a fraction of a second, I stood outside myself. My body lay at my feet. I felt no connection, no pain. Just surprise and sympathy for the broken shell lying on the pavement.

Dark liquid oozed out of parts of the thing that used to be me. But everything seemed distant and unimportant, even the screaming and crying coming from the stunned people near me.

Car horns blasted. People yelled. I heard someone nearby on a cell, calling 911 for a fatal accident, shouting the names of the cross streets.

Traffic stopped. The lights went on in their rhythmic cycle as if nothing had happened.

Numb, I lifted a hand and looked through my fingers, and I do mean
through
my fingers. They’d turned into a translucent window. On the other side of them, water spouted from the mouth of the video face of Crown Fountain’s blocky monolith.

“I’m dead,” I said to no one—so I flinched in surprise when someone answered.

“Definitely dead.” The voice mixed vodka-marinated femme fatale and Inga the Swedish Stewardess. It wouldn’t have been out of place in a Roger Moore Bond movie.

I turned to the right and saw an eight-foot tall warrior maiden with beefy thighs standing there in shining armor putting the “breast” in “breastplate.” Golden braids hung down from under an enormous iron helmet with bison horns. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d burst into Brunnhilde’s aria straight out of Wagner’s
Gotterdammerung
.

“Gunilla Merit Boatman?” Brunnhilde asked, folding her arms across her considerable bosom.

I cringed. Only Mom used my full name (my younger twin brothers had long since learned better). And she only used it when I pissed her off, which wasn’t often. “Just Merit, please.”

Brunnhilde scowled. Few people can scowl better than a gigantic woman holding a twelve-foot spear topped with a neck-chopping axe-head. “Gunilla is a good name. It means ‘warrior maiden.’ Your parents must have loved you very much to have given you so glorious a name.”

My parents. Something inside me stung. The dad I’d lost, gone since I was a kid. Mom, the woman who worked hard to take care of me even though the twins demanded more of her time. I’d done my best to help, being the reliable one she could depend on ever since the day Dad went to bring her and my new baby brothers home from the hospital—and never came back.

Who would Mom count on now?

Farfar, I guessed. My father’s father. The man who stepped into our family after Dad died. The winking, devious patriarch who had a way of making everything better.

I tried not to shrink under the valkyrie’s glare. “Merit’s a good name. It means... you know, ‘merit.’ It’s Swedish, too,” I pointed out.

The Brunnhilde clone waved a hand as if batting my opinion out of the air. Then she patted herself down like she was searching for her car keys. As she searched, I watched the scene of the accident out of the corner of my eye. People gathered around the corpse in a distorted circle.

Nearby, stopped in mid-intersection at the end of a skid mark, sat a crimson Audi. I walked over to the open driver’s-side door. A man, maybe forty-five years old, with deep lines at the corners of his mouth, sat sideways with his head in hands and his feet on the pavement.

“She came out of nowhere,” he said, and for a moment, I thought he said it to me. “She came out of nowhere.”

But he wasn’t talking to anyone. He just shook and stared at the pavement between his shiny brown loafers.

“I had the right of way, jackass,” I said, without much conviction. I think I’d left a few of my emotions behind in the body lying on the street. The truth? I kinda felt sorry for him. In the coin toss between dying instantly and having to live another thirty years knowing I’d killed somebody, maybe I got heads.

“Gunilla Merit Boatman.” Brunnhilde’s voice boomed over the distant sound of sirens.

“Over here.” I waved my hands to get her attention. Anything to keep her from using the G-word again.

The crowd didn’t notice her as she clanked over. Obviously, no one else could see the eight-foot giantess in full armor. Or me, either.

“That’s the man whose car you ran into,” she pointed out.

I tried to keep my teeth from grinding. “I had the right of way.”

She gave me the hand-wave again.

“You know,” I told her, “I feel like I should be freaking out right now, but I’m not.”

She shrugged. ‘You’ve thrown the spoon and left your body behind. If you’re numb for a while, it’s to be expected.”

The “thrown the spoon” thing put me off kilter for a second before I remembered one of Farfar’s thick-accented friends using the saying when someone died. Some Swedish idioms just don’t translate.

“Thanks,” I said, and meant it. Even if her voice reminded me of an Ikea commercial, Brunnhilde’s presence had a comforting effect. Then reality intruded, and so did panic. “Crap! My Tic Tacs.”

Brunnhilde kneeled right where the package of my favorite addiction had tumbled out of my backpack. A crack marred the plastic case. Tiny white ovals sat on the dark gray asphalt like orphaned children.

“These are important to you.” The way her sentence ended on an up-tilt, it sounded like a question. All her sentences ended that way. She picked up the case. Five minty treats still rattled inside.

I didn’t go into my pack-a-day habit. “Can I have one?”

“I doubt it.” She stuck the package down her cleavage. “I’ll take them with us if it makes you feel better.”

Oddly enough, it did. “So I suppose you’re here to take me to heaven?”

She thumped the butt of her spear on the ground, and the tremor it created hit a six on the Richter scale. The people around us cast nervous glances at the skyscrapers on Michigan Avenue. Maybe they could feel her, just a little. Her knife-sharp cheekbones reddened with rage. “No, you’re a good Swede. For your After, you’ll go to Valhalla.”

Not quite what I expected. “I always thought I was Lutheran.”

“Valhalla,” she repeated. “This is clear as sausage water.”

Uh, from the Mount Rushmore set of her face, sausage water was pretty clear.

My paternal grandfather, Farfar, had fed me Viking mythology with my Cheerios. I knew the tales of Odin and the Norse gods like I knew my Sunday school stories. And, of course, he made sure I knew how to swear in Swedish. “
Förbanna
.”
Damn
. “Isn’t Valhalla just for warriors?”

She spelled it out for me as if she was dealing with a dense child. “You’ll go to the hall of Odin, through the sacred gate Valgrind, where you’ll be greeted by the bearded god Bragi, lover of poetry.”

Didn’t sound too bad. I nodded.

“There, the great warriors wait to fight once more, with Odin the All-Father, at
Ragnarök
, the end of days, on the plain of Asgaard. Until that time, they train themselves by day. By night, in the hall of Valhalla, they feast on roast boar and drink ale by the barrel, toasting the bravery of their comrades and the fellowship of brothers—”

Well, I couldn’t drink legally for another five years, and pork wasn’t my favorite. My fighting skills consisted of giving my twin brothers double-headlock noogies, so I might have an adjustment period. Maybe I could get used to it. I admit the idea of a hall full of hot warriors had some appeal, as long as they showered.

“—and you will have the honor of serving at their feet,” Brunnhilde finished.

I blinked at her for a while, waiting for her to clap me on the back and let me in on the joke. The straight line of her mouth never twitched upward.

A vision of eternity stretched before me. My future set in stone. Forever. Nothing would cease, nothing would end.

And I was a beer wench.

“Is it too late to convert to Hinduism?” I asked.

“Enough!” Brunnhilde’s cry reverberated down the corridor of skyscrapers. I imagined windows breaking all the way over to State Street. “You’ll go to the hall of Asgaard. But I can’t take you there.”

“Whew,” I said, a little relieved. “Anywhere else. Really.”

Brunnhilde stuck out her chiseled jaw. “I cannot take you there
yet
. I have forgotten my pen.”

Two: Carpe Crastinum

Before I could ask Brunnhilde why she needed a pen, an ambulance pulled up, sirens screaming over the hushed whispers of the crowd.

“We go,” Brunnhilde said. “Before you’re tempted to—”

“No.” Something in the area of my middle clenched. “Maybe they’ll save me.”

Brunnhilde pursed her lips. “They won’t.”

“They could,” I insisted.

The circle of gawkers parted to let the paramedics through. Maybe I had time. I’d only been dead for ten minutes. I felt a vague achy sensation I didn’t have words for and could only guess was hope building up in my heart—well, not my heart, I suppose. Whatever ghostly organ moved my emotions around now.

“Your name was at the top of my list, Gunilla Merit Boatman. You won’t live. There’s danger in thinking otherwise.”

I ignored her. “Maybe I’m just in a coma.”

The EMS guys carried themselves with professional urgency as they knelt by my side and focused on me. Yes, they could save me, I decided. I felt a supernatural pull toward the body lying on the pavement. I should stay with it. That was my body. That was
me
.

“Seldom are the cows jumping in the apple trees to snatch pears,” she informed me. I figured she meant it was impossible for them to bring me back. “You may choose to remain. But I warn you—”

“Shhhh. They’re going to save me. I know they will.”

Brunnhilde’s spear rattled against her massive shield, but I concentrated my—I don’t know…my
energy
, my
chi
?—on reaching toward my body. I had to find a link to my old self, something I could hang on to at any cost.

The red-haired EMS guy started CPR chest compressions, while the one with the Celtic knot tattoo around his arm whipped out a stethoscope and pressed the instrument to my wrist. I knelt beside Celtic Knot, watching with fascination as he worked. Prickles of sweat appeared on his forehead.

When I thought I saw a tiny hint of a breath lifting my ribcage, I felt a thrill of power.

“They won’t save you.” Brunnhilde’s voice turned soft. “We must go. This is your chance to leave. If you stay, you’ll remain tied to this life forever. You will never know your After.”

Forever
. Her speech finally sank in. “If I stay and they don’t save me, I become a ghost?”

“You may walk the paths of the living if you please. But you’re dead and will remain so.”

No, she
had
to be wrong. The EMS guys worked until their armpits grew dark with the sweat of it. As long as they fought, I had to fight with them.

There was so much I hadn’t done. Too many things to count.

Italy. I’d always wanted to go to Rome, ever since Farfar and I watched
Roman Holiday
together. I wanted to wear big sunglasses and a scarf and order pasta at a sidewalk café near the Spanish Steps before jumping on my vintage Vespa to zoom through cobblestone streets with the sun on my face.

I’d even thought about taking Italian at the University of Illinois. But I’d worked so hard to graduate early, and what did you do with a degree in Italian once the holiday was over? No, too risky.

Instead, I’d registered for economics with a statistics minor from the University of Chicago, maybe some sociology on the side. I was due to start this fall. My studies were targeted directly at a job in the insurance industry. More practical. A degree to make sure I’d never end up an unemployed drain on Mom.

I’d stayed home from the prom to study project management. My best friend Ami had begged me to go. She’d brought a dress to my house, night-black with a single sophisticated ruffle waterfalling from the vee of the bodice. I’d refused to try it on.

That was a couple of months ago. Since then, she'd only called once. Last week she'd left a message. I'd been too nose-down in my job to call her back. Now I never would.

I'd never do a lot of things. I thought could learn Italian after I'd accomplished my goals. Every chance I'd ever had to seize the day, I'd put off, telling myself I'd seize tomorrow.

If I went with the Brunnhilde clone, I’d close the door on those deferred dreams. On the upside, Valhalla beat spending eternity as a ghost in capris with striped socks and sneakers.

Something glinted at me, bright against the asphalt. A sunshine-gold chain snaked across my body’s sunken chest and linked into the divot in my collarbone. I put my hand to my ghostly neck; of course the other end of the chain led there. Its coldness numbed my hand.

The delicate thing linked me to my body. Brunnhilde lowered the massive axe-topped spear she carried and slipped the blade under the chain, ready to cut. One twist of her weapon would sever my last tie to the material world. Panic clenched inside me. Eternity in Valhalla. No going back. Never seeing my family again.

No more Tic Tacs.

“Decide,” she said.

I hesitated. Brunnhilde didn’t.

She let the chain fall off the axe blade—intact—and turned away. She whipped the spear back and flung it, flexing her brawny bicep. Just when I thought it would split the head of a granny clutching a purse covered with plastic daisies, the spear hit an invisible
something
and stuck there, vibrating in mid-air. Granny didn’t even notice, adjusting her glasses as she shuffled toward the accident.