Jodie jumped onto the bed as if she’d seen a rat. “What
is
that?”
“That,” Luc said, picking up the clipboard, “is the Board. Apparently, we have a task to complete.”
Chapter 5
D
rawn by the dancing purple lights, Jodie inched toward Luc and the glowing clipboard. Her expression must have communicated her confusion because he sighed with all the exasperation of a teenager teaching a senior citizen to use email.
With a bent finger, he
beckoned her closer. “Here. Look.”
When she stood a hair’s breadth from him, he grabbed her wrist, and set her
palm atop the screen. The scattering characters jumped through her fingertips into her nerve impulses.
Meanwhile,
a soft, feminine voice whispered inside her head. “…You’ll be retrieving Kristin Esterby…”
She blinked and stared at Luc. “Who
is that?”
“The woman
speaking in your head or the one we’re going after?”
“The one speaking.”
He waved a dismissive hand. “The Board’s representative, I suppose. I just call her the Voice.”
“As in the voice of God?”
Awe slammed the backs of her knees. Dropping the clipboard, she gripped a stool to stay upright and came in contact with Luc’s seated behind. Tingles surged through her bloodstream, like electric shocks after removing a fork from a live outlet.
“Easy there.”
In contrast to her distress, Luc’s posture turned fluid, one long draught of water in a parched desert. With his hands beneath her arms, he set her firmly back on her wobbly feet. “I don’t know if the voice belongs to God, per se. She’s more a representative of whoever’s in charge here in the Afterlife. Maybe that’s God. Or Satan. Or Death. Or a giant panda named Boru Magoo. Whatever Supreme Being fits the profile for you, I guess.”
Sh
e studied his eyes, found his mercurial orbs dancing with inscrutable sparks of light. Humor? Did he dare laugh at God? Or did he really believe a giant panda ruled the vast universe?
“Who do
you
think is in charge here?” she asked.
He slouched against the stool’s spindled back,
fingers laced behind his head. “Don’t know, don’t care. I just do my job. Which is something you should be doing.” He jerked his chin toward the clipboard vibrating on the carpet. “So rather than wondering who’s behind the Voice, pay attention to what the Voice is saying so we know where to find our target.”
“All right, all right
.” She scooped up the Board and slapped her hand on the screen. “Jeez.”
“…Socialite
Kristin Esterby passed away suddenly in 1999, without a will and with little left of her once massive holdings but a crumbling estate and a few hundred thousand dollars in life insurance. Since her death, her siblings have waged an all-out war to gain control of this pittance.”
While her mind absorbed the details through the pads of her fingers, she kept her gaze locked on Luc’s
bemused face. “This is like a bizarre version of
Charlie’s Angels
. I don’t suppose you ever saw that movie either. I wonder which character I would be.”
“I’m not sure.
I didn’t see the movie, but I remember the television show.” His fingers drummed his chin. “Which one was the suicide again?”
Her breath erupted in a
long sigh. God, would he never let her live that down? Or up? Or whatever? “You know, I’m more than just a loser who killed herself.”
“I sure hope so,” he muttered. “Otherwise,
I’m going to get awfully tired of dragging your sorry butt around with me on these jobs. Now prove I’m wrong and finish getting the particulars so we can head out of here.”
Despite his insults, e
xcitement ignited sparklers inside her. “You mean we’re going back to Earth? Now?”
“As soon as you get all the info, yes.”
Squelching delight, she returned her attention to the Voice.
“You will find Ms. Esterby roaming around the attic of her estate, which is located
between the coordinates of thirty-six east and seventy-four south.”
Jodie paused, removed her hand from the clipboard again. “Shouldn’t I be writing this stuff down?”
Luc shook his head. “Nope. No need. Once you’ve heard the details, they’ll be stored in your memory until your task is completed. Just be sure to listen to the full message.”
“Okay.”
Refocusing on the Voice, she listened intently to the sad tale of poor, spinster Kristin and her grasping relations.
When the story ended, the glowing characters dimmed, and then went black.
Jodie placed the clipboard on the counter. Still the Voice hummed inside her, repeating the information like subliminal Muzak.
Luc rose. “Done?”
She nodded.
“Ready to go?”
“Sort of.” Her gaze dropped to the ugly ochre carpet. “Except I don’t know how to get there.”
“Relax,” he said. “That much I’m supposed to show you.”
“Can I keep my clothes on this time?” The words flew from her mouth before she could think twice.
Now
,
his
gaze dropped. “Umm…yeah. Sorry about that.”
Good. At least the guy had some sense of decency
—sporadic, but evident, nonetheless. She didn’t think she could face eternity, or however long her new employment would last, catching souls with a guy who had none. She waved a hand, partly to dismiss him, but also to fan the heat suddenly bursting in her cheeks. “Skip the apology and promise me you won’t do that again.”
“I didn’t do it the first time. I was trying to picture you in the prime of life
. How was I supposed to know the image that would come to mind was you, naked in bed after mind-blowing sex?”
Her heart plummeted to her feet. “Oh my God! You saw
that
much?”
His head shot up, eyes flashing
and hands upheld in surrender. “Hey! Don’t blame me. It’s not my fault your life was so miserable your happiest moment was post-coital.”
No way would she admit she’d never experienced anything close to the bliss he’d envisioned with his Vulcan mind-meld shenanigans. Instead, she set her fisted hands against her hips. “That’s an awfully big word for a Neanderthal like you.”
Eyes narrowing to apostrophes, he slouched until his knuckles skimmed his shins. “Oh, forgive me, lady,” he said, his voice thick, stumbling, and heavily accented. “Please to teach me manners so I don’t cross you again.” He hobbled toward her in the same hunchback posture. “I shall kiss the hem of your gown to show my obeisance.”
For every step he thumped closer, she danced back two. The anger in his expression
sparked radioactive waves as his intensity honed in on her. Finally her back slapped the wall, and she shot up an arm to brace for the coming explosion.
Instead,
rich, throaty chuckles bounced off her eardrums.
Peeking through the crook of her arm, she watched him straighten
to his normal stance. The façade of amusement slipped over his features again as easily as a harlequin’s mask.
“
Skittish, aren’t you?” He turned back to the counter where the clipboard sat, dark and graveyard silent. “Relax. Even if you had any inclination toward sex with a Neanderthal like me, I’m not sure it would be possible in our current forms. We’re energy, not human, remember?”
“Could we get off
—”
Whoops! Very poor way to phrase that!
And judging by his quick reversal, eyebrows arched, he’d caught her Freudian slip. Time for some serious backpedaling.
She spoke again, this time each word carefully chosen and succinct.
“Could we veer off the topic of my sex life and return to Kristin Esterby’s dilemma, please?”
H
is broad grin ignited flames in her cheeks that licked through her bloodstream. “Sure. But a few ground rules before we leave here.”
Suspicion s
napped her to full alert. “And they are?”
“
First.” He held up one finger. “You do what I tell you. No argument. Deal?”
Simple enough.
So far, so good. “Deal.”
“Second
.” Two fingers now hovered near her face. “I do all the talking. You just watch and learn.”
Much as his arrogance irked, e
agerness to return to Earth had her nodding like a puppy waiting for a ball to be thrown. “I can do that.”
“Lastly,
put aside the animosity you have against me or my gender. Okay?”
The eagerness evaporated, and h
ackles prickled her nape. “Who said I had any animosity?”
“
No one.” He folded his arms over his chest, shot his weight to one hip, a cowboy sizing up the new gunslinger in town. “But if you committed suicide because of a man, and found yourself here with your future totally screwed, it stands to reason you hold some bitterness toward men in general. I don’t want to continue to be on the receiving end of all the resentment you harbor. Especially on Earth.”
His sanctimonious manner set her hackles
marching in double-time over her nape. “Can we please stop scrutinizing my personal life and get on with tracking down Kristin Esterby?”
“Absolutely. You ready?”
“I don’t know.” She looked down at her toga, pulled the hem away to display her bare feet. “Can I go like this? In a toga? Barefoot?”
“Since you don’t know how to conjure anything more, and I can’t help you without picturing you naked and
blissful…” He wagged his brows; she ignored him. “…you have no choice but to go in the toga, barefoot. Shall we get on with it?”
She slapped her hands at her sides. “
I guess so. What do I have to do?”
“Close your eyes.”
Was he testing her? She couldn’t tell. Her brain played a quick game of
Truth or Consequences
, but came to one inevitable conclusion. What was the worst that could happen? After all, she was already dead. On a sigh of surrender, her lids fell, cloaking her in blackness.
“
Good girl.”
She gritted her teeth to keep from snapping something sarcastic
at her trainer’s praise.
“
Now picture yourself as a giant ball of fireworks.”
Ridiculous. S
he almost told him so, but the power of suggestion filled in the details. She actually
felt
herself transforming into a bottle rocket. Tingles pricked her soles, sparking upward in a pleasant aura. The hiss of a lit fuse filled her ears. An electric halo enveloped her. Her flesh feathered, and she transformed into a horde of flying vibrations, a thousand red-hot hummingbirds taking flight.
“See
Earth,” Luc directed with the tone of a hypnotist drawing a subject under his spell. “See our location. See yourself standing in an old attic. Feel the cobwebs clinging to your skin. Notice the inches of dust clouding up from the floor. Feel how it tickles your nose. The shadows of lifetimes of clutter surround you. Can you see it all?”
No. S
he saw the exterior of a Tudor-style mansion complete with high privet hedges, walls of flowering rhododendrons, and a prismatic rose garden. A lemonade-cool breeze refreshed her as she hovered over lush green grass. Jodie didn’t know why, but the strangest thought popped into her brain, and she uttered it aloud in a thick British accent. “‘Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.’”