“You must. You cannot move forward until we’ve exami
ned your past. Each tragedy we endure, each mistake we make, teaches a lesson that we carry with us into our next lifetime. Be strong, Jodie. Review these moments, and discover the truth your fear kept from you.”
Bands of steel wrapped her spine, strengthening her, borrowed from Serenity she supposed, but she’d take the courage anywhere she could get it.
“Pain and fear often make us act foolishly,” Serenity advised. “Do not judge yourself harshly for your mistakes. Together, we will discuss every incident, every person you’ve met, every reaction you’ve ever had. I will help you learn from the weaknesses that have held you back. But you and I must now view your last moments on Earth.”
On a painful swallow,
Jodie fixed her attention to the visions in her head.
A
panicked Gabe pounded on her apartment door. “Jodie! It’s me. Gabe. Let me in, please. I don’t understand what happened, but I’m sorry.”
When she didn’t answer his shouts, he
used physical strength, slamming his shoulder against the door.
Bam! Bam! Bam! Crack! Bam! Bam! Bam! Crack!
At last, t
he continuous impact reduced her door to splintered wood, and he stumbled inside, screaming her name. He raced through her living room, down her hallway, and even into her bedroom before he pushed open the bathroom door. Where he found her in the tub, still and breathless. “Oh, Jodie, no!”
He pulled her from the cool
ing water, placed two fingers against her throat to feel for a pulse. Finding none, he whipped out his cell phone and dialed 911. “I need an ambulance! Hurry! I think my fiancée tried to kill herself.”
Fiancée.
“Oh, God,” Jodie wailed as she watched Gabe’s torment, the frantic life-saving attempts he’d made. Useless. All for nothing. “What have I done?”
“You didn’t believe in yourself,” Serenity told her. “Did not believe yourself worthy of love. And now you are seeing the repercus
sions of your impulsive actions.”
Despite her agony, she forced herself to watch
Gabe cradle her naked, dripping body. He brushed the sodden hair from her face. “I love you, Jodie. I love you so much. Please come back to me, my lovely…”
Even now,
Jodie cringed at the puckered pink skin of her arms and legs, so glaring under the bright string of bathroom lights. So far from perfect. But Gabe had never cared about her scars. He’d always told her she was beautiful, inside and out. Why hadn’t she remembered that when she needed to believe those words the most?
E
mergency sirens screamed in the background while Gabe continued to vainly apply CPR. Then, the world went black.
Jodie opened her eyes, found Serenity’s sympathetic face. Drained, devastated, and hollowed, she managed to eke from her clogged throat,
“I screwed up big time, didn’t I?”
Before Serenity might reassure her, J
odie covered her face with her hands and wept her tear ducts dry.
~~~~
Inside the crowded Welcome Level, Luc grabbed the captain’s sleeve before the old ghost wandered off and disappeared in the throng. “Come this way.”
Elbowing through the milling crowds of befuddled new arrivals, he weaved in and out of lost souls, past the harried staff
who struggled to keep the lines moving and maintain order amid chaos. At last, he stopped outside the double-doors that led to Sherman’s office and turned to the silver-haired receptionist seated at the massive white marble desk to his right.
“Wow, Luc.” Eyes fixed on him, Samantha ran a finger over her glowing clipboard, capturing data the way a blind woman might read Braille. “That was fast!”
He pulled the captain forward. “What can I say? I’m good at my job.”
“No, silly,” she replied. “I mean the Board just had me contact you. I thought you were here to answer the summons.”
That familiar spider of suspicion crawled up to his nape, and he palmed the fine hairs dancing there. “What summons? What does Sherman want from me now?”
She shrugged. “Beats me. He doesn’t tell me why; he only tells me who. And this time, he wants you. So…let’s see the shirt. What have you got today?”
“Ah, of course.” With an air of expectancy, he pulled the t-shirt taut over his chest, making the blood-red letters clearly legible on the black cotton. Lucky for him, Samantha always got the joke.
“‘I See Dead People,’” she read, and then smirked. “Cute.” Swiveling her chair, she turned her attention to the silent eighteenth-century seaman. “You must be the captain.”
The old ghost doffed his hat and bowed. “Aye, milady. Captain Edmund Fitzhume at your service.”
“I’m honored.” She extended her hand.
Booted heels clicking, Captain Fitzhume grasped her hand and pressed her fingers to his lips. “No, madam. It is my honor entirely.”
Samantha’s cheeks glowed, and she used the same hand to fan her flushed face. “I’m sorry you won’t be with us longer. The good ones always come and go too fast.” Her calculating gaze scanned Luc from head to toe
with icy attitude. “The bad boys stay around here forever.”
While
Luc flashed a grin intended to knock her knees out from under her, he grabbed her hand and repeated the old coot’s kiss to her fingers, but with far more lingering over her knuckles. “We bad boys are the ones who make this place interesting.”
With a loud tsk, she yanked her hand away. “Interesting, my foot.”
He hooded his eyes and leaned close enough to taste peppermint on her breath. “If that’s what it takes to pique your interest, Samantha, sweetheart, remove your shoe.”
“Only if I can shove it up your ass!” She brushed him away with a brisk wave, but not before he caught a mischievous smile flash across her features. In an instant, the expression melted to her usual business mien as she rose. “Your reservation is all prepared, Captain. If you’ll follow me, I’ll take you to your spirit guide.”
“Please.” The man’s face crinkled into lines of worry. “What will happen to me now?”
This time she picked up his hand, patted him gently. “You have nothing to fear, Captain. You’re about to be reborn into a new life. It’s an exciting time for you.”
“But how will I know what to do?”
“Trust your spirit guide. Many of the lessons you learned in your former lifetime will help you deal with your new incarnation. Having spent so much time earthbound, you’ve already seen much of the modern world.”
“No, I haven’t.” His gaze swerved from Samantha to Luc and back again. Panic increased the volume of his voice. “I never left the cemetery.”
Samantha
patted the old man’s arm. “Now, now. Everything will work out. You’ll see. Luc, why don’t you go in to Sherman’s office while I take care of the captain?”
In other words, get lost.
Luc could take a hint. Besides, he sucked at warm-and-fuzzy coddling. With one last hot glance meant to throw some sexual tension into Samantha’s Mother Hen routine, Luc strolled forward. The double doors leading into Sherman’s inner sanctum hissed open as he neared them.
“Okay, Sherman, I’m here. What’s the emergency?”
He stopped short. A woman, seated in the chair nearest Sherman’s desk, looked up at his interruption.
In this perfect
netherworld, she was all imperfection. The odors of Earth’s ozone, flowers, and human skin clung to her like a signature perfume, which meant her arrival here was recent. A storm cloud of dark hair framed a porcelain face so delicate, if someone dropped her, he’d bet her cheekbones would shatter. Ocean blue eyes, tear-shimmered, reflected a tidal wave of broken dreams.
The temporary lavender toga all new arrivals wore draped her completely, and he couldn’t discern her size or shape. But the way she sat, like a dove poised for flight, compelled him to scoop her up and run away with her.
Odd. That urge must have come from some leftover human reaction hidden deep in his psyche. Who knew he had any human qualities left at this stage? But in a place where every soul reflected beauty and poise, her fragility stirred unfamiliar emotions in him.
“Sorry,” he murmured and turned back to the door. “I’ll wait outside until you’re done here.”
“Luc! Come in, come in!” Sherman shouted from the opposite end of the desk, waving him in with wide sweeps of his arms. “Excellent.”
Funny.
Luc hadn’t even noticed the ancient spirit guide standing there.
“You must have been on your way in when the Board contacted you,” Sherman added. “I take it you snagged Captain Fitzhume?”
“Of course.” Folding his arms over his chest, he shifted his weight to one hip. Didn’t he always return with the goods?
One out, one back
.
“Excellent, excellent.” The old man pulled him farther inside and gestured to the empty chair beside the pretty young woman’s. “Sit.”
Sherman always wanted him to sit. Topping the diminutive man by a good twenty-six inches, Luc found perverse pleasure in remaining on his feet whenever they met. It was his way of maintaining some semblance of control around the old man. Today would be no different.
“Sit,” Sherman repeated.
Luc shook his head. “Thanks, but I’ll stand.”
After a long moment of internal struggle, Sherman finally nodded. “I wanted you to meet our newest arrival, Miss Jodie Devlin. Jodie, this is Luc Asante.”
“Mr. Asante.” The dove looked up, hand extended.
“Call me Luc, Miss Devlin.” He clasped her fingers between his own. Rather than the soft smooth skin he expected, roughened edges scratched his palm. As she gracefully removed her hand from his, he noted scar tissue marring what should have been flawless flesh.
Scars? Who carried scars in the Afterlife? Only those who hadn’t yet been fully processed. Christ, she was brand spankin’ new—showroom new. And while he mentally measured exactly how new she might be, her uncertain gaze lingered on the words emblazoned on his T-shirt until she finally drew in a deep breath.
“Luc.” Disapproval edged the single syllable. “I’m Jodie.”
“Ah, isn’t this nice?” Sherman exclaimed. “It’s wonderful to see you two getting along. Wonderful.”
His suspicion spider returned, marching in double time down his back. “Oh?” He arched a brow in Sherman’s direction. “Why should it matter if we get along?”
“Because she’s your new trainee.”
Invisible hands slammed his shoulders, and he sank into the chair.
Oh, hell no
. “No,” he said aloud. “Absolutely not.”
“It’s a new pilot program devised by the Board,” the spirit guide replied.
“Tell the Board I respectfully decline their request.”
Sherman spread his hammy hands wide. “You’re our best hunter. It only makes sense that you start training the rookies when they come in. The Board is not requesting, Luc. The Board is insisting.”
“I don’t care what the Board insists. She’s not cut out for bounty hunting.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed to slits, anger emanating from her aura in waves. “How do you know what I’m cut out for?”
“No offense, sweetheart,” he replied smoothly. “But you’re too fresh. Too new. Too raw. I mean, look at you for God’s sake.” He gestured from her tear-stained cheeks to her scarred hands.
The hands shot to her hips. “Well, I do take offense,
sweetheart
,” she retorted. “What makes you an expert on me?”
“I don’t need to know you any better than what my senses told me the moment I walked in here. You still smell of Earth and sun so you must have arrived on the last wave. You’re already overemotional, judging by the way your eyes glisten and your snippy attitude.”
“Let’s not measure attitude, pal. You’ve got enough diva in you to belt out
La Traviata
.”