Read Cheat the Grave Online

Authors: Vicki Pettersson

Cheat the Grave

Cheat the Grave

The Fifth Sign of the Zodiac

Vicki Pettersson

For Denise Rapuano—for exemplifying the
grace and strength of a true goddess. Sola
would be mad with jealousy.

Contents

1

Dying isn't as painful as you might think. I've done…

2

The bus dropped the lot of us mid-downtown, and while…

3

The other teams returned by midnight, exhausted from the hunt…

4

“What are you doing here?”

5

I left immediately after Tripp. Warren hadn't been exaggerating when…

6

I had to return to the bus, of course. Or…

7

Las Vegas actually dozes in the early morning hours, resting…

8

After beaming some overly cheery farewell, and donning my shades,…

9

I drove. Specifically, after Skamar dropped me at the guard-gated…

10

I left the destroyed Bentley in Caine's front lot. Let…

11

The supernatural community at large could move around in ways…

12

I stood, my chair bumping over the aged floor, wondering…

13

I awoke to a heavy wet rag being dragged across…

14

Much of the Zodiac world was hidden beneath the known…

15

I emerged from the rogue's lair hesitantly, squinting like a…

16

So they took me back to Vegas to do what…

17

“I'm going to take a few of these for you,”…

18

I was back at the Archer estate a half hour…

19

“That is one nosy twunt,” Cher said, cocking her head…

20

Dusk still came early in February, so night's fingers slipped…

21

I couldn't tell who'd called me. Between the whirring of…

22

“What are you doing here?”

23

I abandoned the idea of killing the Tulpa in lieu…

24

I knew the Tulpa had survived Skamar yet again when…

25

Of course, the agents of Light followed. Once over their…

26

“You sure you want to do this?” Io asked when…

27

Winter's dawn along the Mojave flats was as beautiful as…

28

Despite my morning trek across the desert, I was the…

29

I'd been thinking about weapons and fighting and blood, about…

30

Every person asks themselves how they're going to die. Most…

31

The soft ceremony of morning's birth in the desert is…

32

The run-in with my mother settled something inside of me.

 

Dying isn't as painful as you might think. I've done it twice now, and each time the woman I thought I was fell away with relative ease, almost as if she was late for an appointment and glad to be gone. As hard as it was at the time, the only real casualty in my first death was my identity. Good-bye, Joanna Archer. Good-bye, strong and able and tough; hello to an exterior so sweet I might as well be clothed in a fucking candy wrapper.

But it was the second death, the one that'd cost me every foothold gained after taking over my sister's life and identity that really stripped me to the bone. In the ten weeks since, I'd been forced to rehab my blond, glossed, enhanced body as vigorously as a recently awakened coma victim, while hoping the work I'd already done on my mind would hold fast. It had, but there was no mistaking my losses. This time, good-bye twenty-first century superhero. So long to strength beyond a mortal's. Farewell even to what I'd fleetingly mistaken for true love. The kicker? After all those losses, dying had turned out to be just another life experience.

Which wasn't to say it got any easier.

“But third time's a charm,” I muttered, gazing balefully down at the newly delivered letter as my driver rocketed past the multi-casino district, City Center. The doorman hadn't known who it was from, just said some courier—probably a kid off the street who was slipped a twenty and an envelope with my name on it—had given it to him an hour before. I'd have to talk to the buildings staff about allowing strange missives and packages up to my high-rise apartment. After all, Olivia Archer wasn't a mere celebutante anymore, or just a former Playmate and potential heiress. She was a mogul who effectively owned more of Las Vegas than any other living being.

“But I don't think that's why someone's threatening to squeeze my beating heart in their palm,” I muttered as we flipped onto Vegas's most famous road, heading midtown. Pulling the note from my pocket, I read it again.

Stay home tonight, and you will be safe. Leave, and your organs will be sliced from your body one by one.

Not even a clue as to the sender, though that was no surprise. Nobody from the paranormal underworld had contacted me since I'd been cast from the troop. Despite losing every power that had once made me one of them, the leader for the agents of Light, my
former
leader, had ordered my once-allies to neither contact nor extend me any greater protection than they did the rest of the general population. This, despite the fact that if the Shadows learned of my now-human status, Las Vegas's mortality rate would see a precipitous spike.

You'll be safe.
I had to laugh. God, had I even been safe the day I was born?

Of course, anyone who knew me—the real me, Joanna—wouldn't be surprised to find I went out anyway. My cat, Luna, had tried to persuade me otherwise, winding through my feet as I dressed, tripping me up like she thought the whole thing was a bad idea. But what could I do? Olivia's best friend, Cher—now
my
best friend—was throwing a bachelorette party for her stepmother, Suzanne,
a woman who must have been born under the Universe's luckiest star. The loving relationship with her stepdaughter underscored that, but she'd recently trumped even herself by becoming engaged to a man who was both a billionaire and a prince. They were set to wed a week from now, on Valentine's Day.

Besides, I thought now, pulling to a stop in front of the world's tackiest party bus, I'd once battled in this city's paranormal underworld for the mortal right to freedom of choice. Now that I was once again merely mortal—after those who'd once called themselves my allies had tossed me in a desert wash with other broken, discarded, used-up objects—I chose normal. I chose those friends who chose me.

I chose to keep living beyond death.

Yet I still hesitated when confronted by the shining silver bus door. Sure, this was a part of Suzanne's month-long wedding festivities, a series of events that had set tongues wagging worldwide. Her fiancé had long been considered one of the globe's most eligible bachelors, an international textiles magnate who hailed from an Indian dynasty, and had homes on every continent.

But, man, a double-decker could hold a lot of trouble.

It's not too late to turn around, I thought, my too-smooth fingertips clinking unnaturally against the plastic. Their marblelike uniformity and pearlescent polish was one of the “tells” of my former involvement in a paranormal life, and should a Shadow see it, they'd know exactly who I was. Was an evening spent in a party bus worth risking that? I mean, there'd been a lot of recent nights when I'd kill for a glass of Belvedere…but to
die
for one?

“C'mon, Jo,” I muttered to myself, straightening. “Can't turn down the promise of body glitter and temp tattoos, can you? Besides, how many people could say they've been on a bus with a disco ball before?”

But humor aside, a part of me was honestly worried. If the Shadows had discovered my identity, the bachelorette
bus might turn into the lead car of a funeral procession. Yet some couriered letter telling me to bolt my door wouldn't help then. If anything, the missive merely underscored my continued need to convince the world I was my flighty, over-exposed sister.

But I took a moment before boarding the bus to look out over the city I'd once fought to protect, alongside a troop of supernatural beings I thought were my friends.

Fuck you—whoever you are—for being an armchair superhero, and standing on the sidelines while I shoulder this mortality. Fuck you for accepting the sacrifices I made for your world and then throwing me away like trash. Fuck you for bottling your power like it's your personal supernatural bong while I emptied mine out over this city and its people
.

I didn't care if those in the Zodiac underworld believed fate was preordained. So what if my return to mortality had been written in the stars, in the dark matter between them, in advance, or in permanent ink? I gave up my life twice to save the collective asses of those who called themselves superheroes, so a letter intended to keep me safe after the fact meant nothing.

Besides, I thought, turning from the city. Here's what
I
knew of fate: it cared nothing about good intentions.

 

Becoming my younger, flashier, murdered sister had forced me to reconsider the way I moved through the world. After all, why use a deadly weapon when the crook of a manicured finger would just as well do? Yet I'd found a surprising strength in defying the world's relatively low expectations of Olivia…or at the very least in using them to my advantage.

I'd also found an unexpected strength in Cher and Suzanne. True, they'd actually once been my antifriends—women who didn't understand a woman who didn't understand women—but during my recent recovery from a sacrificial near-drowning, when all my superhero allies
remained tucked safely in an underground sanctuary pretending I no longer existed, these two flighty, bright socialites had unerringly stuck by me. Yes, they believed I was Olivia, but their show of relentless friendship meant there was nothing I wouldn't do for them now. Even in my jaded postheroic state—even when I couldn't save loose change, much less a life—I'd willingly lay down my own for theirs.

“C'mon, Jo.” I set my bare shoulders and knocked on the neon-trimmed door. After all, I was already here, defying a homicidal warning, and strapped into my big-girl halter top. If I could get through the first Jell-O shot, I'd probably be fine.

Then the door swung open. “Oh fu—”

A hip-hop/choir remix drowned out the rest of my curse, and my gaze caught on the turntable rising from the driver's seat. Cher stood behind it, decked out in curvy silver satin, blond hair set in seductress waves, her right hand pressed against headphones while the other scratched a beat. She was shaking her hips in time to the needle's drop, but she straightened and squealed when she spotted me waffling in the doorway. “Livvy-girl!”

She motioned me up the rubber steps, and I eased forward like a paranoid marine. No, I didn't expect to find otherworldly terrorists swilling Cristal, but the two lucite stripper poles arrowing out of the vehicle's middle were nearly as terrifying.

The bus's other dozen occupants caught my ascension through the mirrored walls, and greetings and liquor-infused smiles burst forth in raucous stop-motion beneath the fractured light of, yes, a disco ball. I waved back, hid my wince, and they resumed imbibing, applauding, and pole dancing. The bus wasn't even moving yet.

“Check out the old-school mixer!” Cher yelled, as I reached her side. “We're going to sing Bollywood songs on this here bachelorette bus. I swear, Las Vegas won't have ever seen a bash like this before!”

And the burnt-out party girl that was my beloved home-town had certainly run through a number of bashes. I glanced around warily. The lights, people, alcohol, music—a heap of sensory blocks atop already dulled senses. I began to reconsider the wisdom of coming at all. “I might have to leave early,” I told Cher.

She finally fell still. “Why, are you sick? Is it fatal?”

Potentially.
“Um…tomorrow's the big board meeting, remember? I've been preparing.”

And I had. Binders scattered every flat surface of my living room like giant autumn leaves. Yet despite spending weeks studying the Company Bylaws, the Shareholder Agreements, and something called a Private Placement Memorandum, I still didn't understand half of them.

“Don't you have people for that?” she asked, scratching another beat with long, silver nails—acrylic across vinyl.

“I'm
the one taking over Archer Enterprises.” At her blank stare, I added, “And I want to, you know, make dear old Daddy proud.”

May the cruel, greedy bastard rest in peace
.

“Then it's all the more vital to your burgeoning business sense that you're out tonight.” She tossed her hair authoritatively.

“How?”

“Because come tomorrow you'll be sucked into the corporate machine, never to don lucite heels at nine a.m. again. No more liquid lunches. No more ‘Mimosa Mondays.' If you think about it, this is your last night of normalcy. Ever.”

I snorted. Cher's idea of “normalcy” had never included disemboweling a homicidal supervillain as a prelude to Mimosa Monday.

A male voice sounded in my ear. “Finally.”

Whirling to determine if this statement called for an air kiss or a death blow, I found myself within swatting distance of a pretty man wearing black wrist cuffs, eyeliner,
and a fitted net for a shirt. Not kill, I thought with relief…though he probably wasn't angling for my kiss either.

“I'm Terry,” he said, drawing close, then as if I didn't know, “You're Olivia Archer. I follow you in the papers. I've been wanting to shoot you for ages.”

I reconsidered killing him until he held up a camera and looked at me expectantly.

I unclenched my fist. “Sure.”

Terry shot off a quick series of photos as I struck poses meant to highlight certain body parts, unable to hear more than snatches of his chatter about celebrities he'd shot in L.A. before moving to Vegas. Unfortunately what I did hear included boastful accounts of erstwhile pop divas climbing from limos sans undergarments. “The society women followed suit for a while, but then they clued in to the upkeep.”

Again that expectant look.

Not
this
society woman, I thought, gifting him with a closed-mouth smile. “I'll be by the pole.”

And so I mingled, tossing air kisses, accepting a champagne flute, but painstakingly avoided the poles of iniquity. By the time the bus finally revved its engine, a professional had taken over DJ duties, Cher was at the side bar, surrounded by bottles like some glossy, gilded mad scientist, and her stepmother, the woman of the hour—or the past month, as it were—finally arrived.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the DJ said in a streetwise baritone, “please welcome to the par-tay, the future princess of the finest fibers, the westerner who won the heart of the East, our Texan treasure, and soon to be Mrs. Arun Brahma…Su-zanne!”

The packed bus rocked on its wheels as everyone rose to their feet, cheering as Suzanne ascended to a hip-hop version of the wedding march. Terry's camera literally went into spasms, though I couldn't fault his excitement. Suzanne, poured into hot pink leather cut both too low and too
high, was the money shot. She milked the moment, flashed a diamond to rival the Hope, and draped herself against the first pole. Her eyes caught mine and she straightened before winking and taking a quick swing.

“Oops.”

More cameras flashed.

“It's okay, Suzie,” someone encouraged. “If you don't fall off the pole at least once, you're not really trying.”

Suzanne pushed herself from the lap of a thrilled “husband of” and patted her hair back into place.

It was embarrassing to fall off a stripper pole when you were twenty, but when you were forty-something? You prayed for early dementia. I grabbed a shot glass from Cher and went to assist with the murder of a few hundred brain cells. “You okay?” I asked Suzanne.

She shrugged off the shame like it belonged to another. “Yeah, I'm just not warmed up yet. It happens to me in class all the time too.”

“They have classes in pole dancing?” I asked, before giving myself a mental head slap. It was Vegas. They probably had classes in threesomes.

“It's good exercise.”

I raised a brow. “You could go to the gym.”

“Oh, no honey,” she said in her trademark southern drawl. “Those weights are heavy. Here, help me out.”

Reaching under the giant DJ turntable, Suzanne opened a mirrored trunk. A moment later bright fuchsia feathers flew my way. “Boas?”

She tossed me a half dozen more strands, and motioned for me to pass them out. “Arun, my one true love and future king, has arranged a scavenger hunt for us. He's giving away a world cruise on his private yacht as a prize.” The women nearest us gasped, and the news spread like a brush fire. “We have to leave the bus to collect the clues, and this is how we're going to differentiate ourselves from the teeming masses.”

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