The Given (2 page)

“Especially that one.” Yes, Grif was the first and only person ever allowed to claim both angelic and human status, but his dual nature hadn't been intended as a blessing. It was meant as punishment.

Only the most broken souls were pressed into service as a Centurion. Assisting other traumatized souls into the Everlast was supposed to help them move past the pain and guilt of their own violent deaths, allowing them to eventually move on as well. It was a job for the hardest cases . . . and, well, Grif had proven harder than most.

Nicole Rockwell's meter had come due just over a year earlier. She'd been working undercover in her job as a photojournalist, posing as a prostitute in order to try to elicit information from women she suspected of being forced into the world's oldest profession.

Not women, Grif remembered now, but girls.

Surprisingly, in the immediate aftermath of her death, Nicole's primary concern hadn't been her near-severed head but the clothes she'd died in. She would evermore exist as a soul that seemed to have a soft spot for squeaky latex and cheap lace. How could Grif not feel sorry for that? So he'd gone above and beyond his celestial call of duty, and allowed her spirit to reenter her earthly remains long enough to change into some clothes more fitting for eternity. However, in the short time that his back was turned, she also left a note for her best friend . . . one that would have gotten that woman killed if Grif hadn't stepped in there as well.

He'd interfered, altered fate, and paid for it. Yet he still wasn't sorry. After all, Kit Craig—girl reporter, rockabilly enthusiast, and, yes, Grif's subsequent lover—still lived, and he'd do it all again in a heartbeat . . . even though she now lived her life without him in it.

Nicole shrugged one shoulder. “I'm sorry about that. I didn't mean to get you in trouble. If I'd known it would put Kit's life in danger . . .” She trailed off, and silence swelled between them. Grif wondered how much she knew of what had gone on between Kit and him in the last year. How they'd married his P.I. skills with her investigative journalism and seen an end to that child prostitution ring. How they'd put the drop on two vicious drug cartels.

How they'd fallen in love.

“Don't worry about it, Nic.” He tried to keep his voice light, but it was hard. His throat still had a tendency to close up at the thought of Kit. “We got out of it alive.” Then he changed the subject. “But what about you? Guess you didn't make it through the Tube?”

That was what Grif called incubation, the divine process of erasing all memory and emotion from a traumatized soul's mind so that it could move on into God's presence. Obviously it didn't always work that way. Grif was still haunted by his death . . . and so what? Why
shouldn't
he be allowed to know who killed him fifty years earlier?

Maybe Nicole felt guilty over putting Kit in danger the day she'd died. Maybe by letting it go now she could finally move on.

Instead, she surprised Grif again. “Nope. Didn't move on. And it's all your fault.”

He drew back. “How's that?”

“Well, you shoved me through that door, right? One moment I'm freshly dead, and the next I'm swinging from star to star, traversing universes, sipping from the Milky Way.”

“So.” Grif shrugged. “That's how it works. You go into incubation, clear your mind, then enter the Pearly Gates as angels pluck harp strings and sing hallelujahs.”

“Yeah, but first I had to listen to a lecture by Father Francis about—”

“Who?”

“You know, the angel in charge of our rehabilitation?” She rolled her eyes, and recited his official title. “Saint Francis of the Cherubim tribe. The Pure charged with rehabilitating Centurion souls, blah, blah, blah.”

“You mean Frank,” Grif said, silently adding “the immortal pain in my ass” to Frank's title. “Father Francis” appeared to each person in the form they most closely identified with authority. For Grif, it was a sergeant in a police bullpen, so he called him Frank, or Sarge. Nicole apparently had Catholic schoolgirl issues. Father Francis it was.

“Anyway,” Nicole went on, fluffing and resettling her wings behind her. “I couldn't get what he told me about you out of my mind. How you were just trying to help me. How I used your latent humanity to manipulate your broken emotions and put you in danger.” She winced again in apology. “So I decided to pay it forward.”

A decision that'd obviously gotten
her
in trouble, otherwise she wouldn't be forced to witness the deaths of her Takes before escorting them Home. “What'd you do?”

Nicole was eager to defend herself. “It was my second-ever Take, right? A murder-suicide, if you can imagine. The file said that a woman was going to shoot the man who was beating her, then turn the gun on herself, and I thought, this is the one.”

“Let me guess. You messed with the time-space continuum and stopped her.”

“That's what you did,” she pointed out, like that made it okay. Grif pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “There was a six-month-old baby in the next room,” she said defensively.

“So, what, you bound your soul to hers while it was still in her body?” That was how Grif had helped Nicole. There'd been just enough blood pumping through her veins that, with the help of his angelic energy, she had time enough to change her clothes and tidy her hair—or half of it—before totally bleeding out.

Nicole shook her head. “She was alive, and too jumpy for me to make a decent connection. So instead I lined up my chakras with her dead husband's body and animated him. It was gross, too. He was a smoker. There was tar in his veins.” Tilting her head, Nicole grimaced. “He also had a big wad of chewing gum for brains.”

“He'd just been
shot
,” Grif pointed out. “His thoughts were likely a bit scrambled.”

Nicole scoffed, which caused her wings to flare behind her in a downy white cloud. Their tips were threaded with silver and sparkled prettily as they settled. “No,
my
thoughts were scrambled when I died. This guy's mind was a book of pornographic mad libs.”

By this time, the screaming from below had been replaced with ominous silence. Someone had taken control of the situation. Grif made out the sound of sirens in the distance, though they were too far away for the humans yet to hear.

“Oh, right,” Nicole said, picking up the sound with the strength of her celestial hearing. She glanced back over the ledge, but her Take was apparently still trying to work out that he was dead, because she just sighed and crossed her legs. “So I get in his body and I'm sorting through this briar patch of mental bullshit until I finally find a memory that doesn't make me want to puke. It was one of those before-memories. Before . . . before . . .”

“Before whatever happens between two people who love each other that makes them want to kill each other.”

“Yeah,” Nicole said softly, and frowned. “And it's beautiful, you know? He's not as gross, and she's beautiful, all filled with love and hope, and so I say the words—through his voice box, of course—that are attached to the thought so that his wife can hear them. And maybe not do what she's going to do.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, ‘Margarite, you are the only good thing in my life that I never ruined.' ”

“Cheery.”

“Hey, she was shoving a smoking pistol down her throat. It was the best I could do.”

“So, lemme guess. She latched on to that good-ish memory, put the gun down, and ran into the other room to hold her baby, thanking God for her life.”

Nicole rolled her eyes. “No, she came over, and kicked her husband's corpse in the balls as she screamed that she knew he'd been fucking her twin sister all along. Then she shot him in the skull again.”

Grif stared.

“That shit hurts, by the way,” Nicole added, rubbing her forehead. “Nothing should ever touch your third eye.”

Grif was starting to regret he'd followed Nicole onto the rooftop. “So, this is your punishment for interfering? You gotta watch all your Takes die just like I do?”

Nicole shrugged, and one golden-white feather fell to the rooftop. She was molting. “Father Francis is a stickler for the rules.”

Yes.
Frank
was.

Just then, a transparent hand appeared on the ledge next to Nicole. The Take had finally found his way to the rooftop. Instead of offering to assist the dead man up, Nicole shifted to one side and sighed. “I don't really mind. Being back here, I mean. Seeing mortal turmoil and struggle. It's helping me remember.”

And that was the problem. Grif frowned. “It's supposed to help you forget.”

“Yeah, but I'm remembering the
good
parts,” she said, looking up at him, sadness etched in her face. “I remember everything from the first bite of chocolate ice cream on a hot day to laughing until your sides hurt. I recall what it's like to want something that isn't totally unattainable. Of having choice and chance. I remember how it feels to still have hope for the future, your life laid out before you like an unopened gift. You know?”

Grif nodded as the Take threw his leg over the ledge and fell gasping—sans air, of course—onto his back.

“I want more.”

Nicole's words were so soft that Grif almost didn't hear them, but when he shifted his gaze back to hers, her eyes were moist with unshed tears.

“That's not really how it works,” he grumbled, looking away. He wasn't very good with tears.

“Hey . . . hey, guys!” The newly deceased began waving his arms in the air. Like he was easy to miss.

Ignoring him, Nicole stood and crossed the rooftop to square up on Grif. “But it worked for you. You came back. You get to search for whoever killed you fifty years ago. And you found love again.”

So she did know about Kit.

“That's different,” he said, shaking his head. “It was a . . .”

He was going to say “mistake,” but it wasn't that. The love of a woman like Katherine Craig was nothing short of a miracle.

“Hey!” The dead man began stumbling their way.

“That's all I want,” Nicole said, arms out, like Grif could help her. “I died before I could fall hard, you know.”

“Maybe your Take could teach you something about that,” Grif said, as the man joined them.

“You know what I mean. I died before I knew what it was to love someone unconditionally . . . and now I never will.”

“Hey!” The man reached for Grif, screaming when his hand slid right through him. “What the hell is going on?”

Grif shifted slightly and cocked one eyebrow. “Son, you are not going to get very far in the Everlast with that kind of language.” He turned back to Nicole. “Look, maybe you're lucky. Once you know love, you also know loss.”

Nicole shook her head as the dead man turned to her. “Don't give me that ‘Woe is me' bullshit, Shaw. You got a second chance with a woman worth more than a thousand lifetimes, and then you ruined it all just because you couldn't get over your past.”

“Goddamn it! Would somebody listen to me?” The dead man grabbed Nicole's arm—now that they were both transparent, he could do that—and she immediately shifted and reversed grips, yanking so fast he fell forward. She grabbed him and held him down by the scruff of his neck. Even Grif had a hard time seeing the speed of her movement.

“Don't touch a woman unless and until she asks you to,” she growled, and stars burned in her eyes. “Got it?”

Grif snorted. “Gee, what a shocker that guys weren't crawling all over you. Oh well. Better luck in the Everlast.”

Her eyes narrowed, extinguishing stars. “You know what, Shaw? I'm not just here for a Take. I actually have a little something for you, too.”

Grif shoved his hands into the pockets of his baggy suit and lifted one eyebrow. “What?”

“It's a gift from me to you.” Nicole smiled coldly. “For breaking my best friend's heart.”

And she whirled with the speed of light, rapping Grif's skull with the bony arc of her beautiful left wing. Sunbursts exploded as his eyes rolled back in his head. He could do nothing to stop his fall, but as the rooftop rose to meet his face, he did have time for one fleeting thought.

Thank God I didn't know this broad while she was still alive.

CHAPTER TWO

T
he nightclub possessed the sultry warmth derived from quickened breaths and writhing bodies, along with the irresistible pulse of a rockabilly beat. Yet chills still shot along Kit's limbs as she walked, keeping to the edges of the dark room while she squinted through stage light and smoke, searching for what she'd lost. There. A glimpse of a broad-shouldered man just before a handful of couples, swinging to surf guitar, obscured her view. Shifting, she spotted him again, wearing a Sinatra suit and a skinny tie, a tilted fedora and beneath that, if she wasn't mistaken, a smile just for her.

Kit's breath caught like it'd been snared. She dodged the sweaty limbs of a couple marrying their actions to Imelda May's bluesy, rasping voice, which soared over the sound system and climbed into their bones. Kit's heart tripped over itself as she took two more steps directly toward the man, almost a run. Then he closed the distance between them.

Kit recoiled. It wasn't him. It wasn't Grif.

She missed him like rain. She was as parched as the cold, unyielding desert outside, longing for his voice or touch or anything to make her feel alive, or at least less desiccated. Hating herself for feeling that way, she turned to find a drink. Maybe one of the greasers would buy her a Pabst. She needed something that would go down easy and quickly.

The hand fell on her arm before she could move. The man in the fedora had caught up with her, and his fingertips trailed her wrist. His gaze was bright and playful in a face too youthful yet to be chiseled. His size was close, though. And a slow song was beginning. She might be able to close her eyes and pretend.