“Not an issue,”
he said with his right hand upraised. “Promise.”
Oh, yeah, right.
If she had a dime for every time she’d heard that line, she’d be the richest
woman in the Afterlife. Not that money meant anything here. For now, though,
she let him have the last say on the subject. The sooner she finished with him,
the sooner he’d be out of her office, and the sooner her equilibrium would
return. Hopefully. “Good. Let me explain to you how this department works.
Probation is for those on Earth who, in a moment of weakness, attempt suicide
but are pulled back to the living through human intervention, luck, or a
combination of the two. It’s our job to make sure they don’t try again, which
requires constant monitoring, especially immediately following a failed
attempt. Unlike bounty hunters, we do not travel between the realms.”
“Why not?”
She arched a
brow at him. “Excuse me?”
“Why don’t we
travel between the realms?”
“Because unlike
bounties, our offenders are still very much alive. There are stringent
guidelines against the dead directly fraternizing with the living.”
“Directly
fraternizing?”
“Yes.” Why all
the damn questions? Was he testing her? Or was this his way of causing
trouble—by feigning stupidity?
“As opposed to
indirectly fraternizing,” he stated flatly.
“Yes,” she
repeated with so much emphasis, she wound up hissing. “Do you want to hear this
or not?”
“Absolutely. I’m
listening. Just taking it all in. I’m a former NYPD detective, you know. We
like to make sure we not only have the facts, but understand the whys and
wherefores, as well.”
An NYPD detective?
Oh, great. Just what she needed. A constant reminder of her son’s loss. Because
the Afterlife didn’t suck enough already. No wonder this guy got her back up.
More than testosterone, she must have smelled “cop” on him.
“So now,” he
said, leaning back in his chair, “would you please explain to me what you mean
by ‘direct fraternizing’? Don’t all those ghosts on Earth fraternize with the
living?”
“Spirits and
ghosts on Earth
haunt
. They have no direct contact. They moan, they
leave vapor trails, toss orbs, some can even project their images across a dark
room. But true direct contact is impossible, as far as I know. Much as we’d
love the opportunity to speak face-to-face with our offenders—to be honest,
direct contact would make our jobs a helluva lot easier—there’s just no way.”
“So how exactly
do we communicate with our…” He paused, eyes staring at the far corner of her
office while he considered his next word. “…subjects?”
“You can call
them ‘offenders’ or ‘cases.’ I’m sure, as a former NYPD detective, you’re
familiar with both those terms?”
“Yeah, sure.
Okay, how do we communicate with our offenders?”
“We invade their
dreams.”
Sean blinked.
Surely he’d misunderstood her. After all, Xavia Donovan, his new boss, was like
that old Winston Churchill quote: a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an
enigma. With her mahogany skin, a platinum blond spiky haircut shorter than his
own, and a voice as dark and fragile as smoked glass, she kept tossing
surprises his way.
On the outside,
she looked tough, no-nonsense, and displayed an attitude to match. Yet, beneath
that ballsy exterior, he sensed a soft center—a sort of urban Tootsie Pop.
Chocolate, of course. His favorite flavor. Why he suddenly remembered that, he
didn’t know. But once the image popped into his mind, he couldn’t erase it. His
mouth actually watered. When was the last time he’d craved any kind of
food—junk or otherwise? Certainly not since his arrival here. Until now.
In an effort to
remain focused, he stared at the four bare walls around them. Her office
reflected the same stark contrast he’d noted in Xavia’s personality. Nothing
about the furnishings hinted at the woman who utilized them. With no earthly
reminders permitted, she couldn’t exactly conjure up a photograph or a vase filled
with her favorite flowers. Yet, she’d somehow made this sterile space her own.
The air charged with vibrant energy, more signatory than a favorite cologne.
“Is there a
problem, Martino?” she demanded. “You’re not still processing the
direct/indirect contact issue, are you?”
He considered
the question. “No, I’m all caught up on that. But…” He paused, tilted his head
to stare at her from a new angle. “We invade their dreams? Is that what you
said?”
“Do you know a
better way to communicate between realms?”
“Well, no,
but…their dreams? Isn’t that kind of…oh, I don’t know…illegal? At the least,
immoral?”
“Sez who?” She
slapped her palms on her desk, fingers curled around the edge. “This isn’t
Earth. And our main goal is to prevent future tragedy. As a suicide, you must
have been regaled with tales of all the lives lost or never conceived because
of your selfish and capricious decision to end your life.”
Yeah. It was
part of every suicide’s orientation to the Afterlife. After choosing Verity
from the Council of Elders to become his personal advisor—like an Afterlife
Jiminy Cricket—she and he had reviewed several of his past lives to discover
the mistakes he made lifetime after lifetime.
What he had
experienced that first day still haunted him when he slept. Besides, the
fateful night in Bed-Stuy with the kid, he’d seen three other incarnations of
himself, each one littered with subliminal messages of his inability to stand
up for his convictions, with horrific results. For him, those glimpses into who
he’d once been only served to explain his inability to deal with the kid’s
death at his hands.
According to
Verity, though, he missed the larger picture. So he was stuck here, serving the
Board, until he came to terms with his failings and corrected them.
“Here in Probation,”
Xavia said, drawing him back into their conversation, “we ensure others don’t
know that pain. We save lives. We protect the future. There’s nothing immoral
in that.” With the clipboard in her grip, she rose, tall and lithe, her brick
red sheath-style belted dress enhancing her height and lush figure. Goddamn,
she had more curves than the racetrack at the Indy 500. And he bet she was just
as dangerous. “Come on.” She strode around the desk. “I’ll show you what I
mean.”
Opening the
office door, she led him out to the quiet floor where a dozen other people sat
at as many desks. Heads stayed down, attention wholly focused on their
clipboards. He could’ve shouted, “Fire!” and he’d bet no one in the room would
flinch. Whether their attention remained riveted due to their cases or due to
the intensity of their leader, he couldn’t speculate.
Xavia finally
stopped at the lone empty desk in the rear of the open space and pulled out the
task chair. “Sit.” When he complied, she set down the clipboard in front of
him, horizontally, and stretched it to a larger size. “Watch.”
Like a
mini-movie screen, the clipboard lit up to reveal a hospital room. Propped up
in a bed, Isabelle Fichetti glared daggers straight at them. Sean sucked in a
breath.
“Relax,” Xavia
murmured, her voice dark honey near his ear. “She can’t see you.”
Really? He
looked again. So who was the target of all of this woman’s animosity? Was there
someone else with her? As if a television camera panned the scenery at his
command, the image pulled back to reveal a man seated in a chair at the foot of
her bed. Aha. A know-it-all doctor with salt and pepper hair and black-rimmed
glasses perched on the edge of his needle nose lectured her in stern tones.
“You were very lucky, Mrs. Romanelli—”
“Fichetti,” she
corrected harshly. “My name is Isabelle Fichetti.”
The doctor
frowned. “We have more important things to discuss than your name, Isabelle.
Like why you swallowed all those pills.”
Folding her arms
over her chest, she clamped her lips into a thin line.
“You took a
drastic step. Would you like to tell me why?”
Isabelle simply
continued to glare, stony silent. Anger heated her aura to white hot.
“I’m not leaving
here until you talk to me, Isabelle.”
“Oh, well, in
that case, you might want to rethink the brown boat shoes with your tan slacks
and beige shirt. The whole ensemble screams, ‘I dress in Garanimals.’ There.
Are we done now?”
From his
viewpoint in a faraway realm, Sean smirked. She had style. Gone was the pain
he’d sensed on his first examination of Isabelle Fichetti. Despair still
lingered, but she’d buried all her hurt feelings deep down beneath a bottomless
well of sarcasm. For self-preservation? Probably.
“Why did you try
to kill yourself, Isabelle?” the doctor pressed.
Asshole.
Sean heard her
as clearly as if she’d shouted the word.
Beside him,
Xavia snorted. “My kind of woman. I’ll leave you two to get better acquainted.
When you’re through here, come back to my office, and I’ll fill you in on the
rest.”
He barely
registered Xavia’s departure as he focused entirely on the couple in the
hospital room on Earth.
“I didn’t try to
kill myself, Dr. Valentine.” Isabelle’s glare firmly dared him to challenge her
statement. “I just couldn’t remember the last time I took my pain pills. I
double dosed.” She shrugged with exaggerated doe eyes and furiously batting
lashes. “Oops.”
“You swallowed a
thirty day supply, Isabelle.”
“Math was never
my strongest subject.”
“Neither was
drama.”
Sean winced at
the verbal slap. To Isabelle’s credit, she didn’t leap out of the bed and
launch herself at him. Oh, she wanted to. He actually felt her muscles tense to
spring, and he automatically whispered, “No. Don’t.”
Her body relaxed
as she leaned back against the upright part of the flexible bed. Had she heard
him? No. Impossible. Ridiculous. She had probably reconsidered her violent
reaction on her own.
“We’re done
here, Dr. Valentine.” Ice chilled each syllable.
The doctor
locked his hands behind his head. “No, we’re not.”
In response, she
grabbed the remote tied to her bedrail and flicked on the television, turning
up the volume to its highest level. Dialogue from a soap opera rattled around
the walls.
With a heavy
sigh, the doctor rose from his chair, reached up, and turned off the
television. “Don’t make me restrain you, Isabelle.”
“You’d like
that, wouldn’t you?” she snapped. “Tying up a woman. You get your rocks off
that way, Doc? Hey, this is L.A., where fetish is the norm. Believe me, I’ve
heard about worse kink. There was one guy I knew who had a thing for young
girls. I’m talking pre-teens. Know how he finally beat it? By beating
them
.”
She leaned forward, arms folded over the sheet covering her chest. “Know how I
know?”
The doctor
didn’t even blink. Never spoke. He simply returned to his chair and waited.
“Because he was
married to my mother. Hell, he probably still is. He used to sneak into my room
at night and stand over my bed when I slept. Once or twice I woke up. When he’d
notice my eyes were open, he’d drag me out of bed by my hair, make me stand
against the wall, pull down my pajama bottoms, and beat me with his belt. The
booze would surround me like fog. Especially since he’d get so hot and
bothered, he’d start panting and breathing heavy against my neck.” She
shivered. “After a couple of those episodes, I pretended to stay asleep every
time he came into my room. It was easier to lay in the dark and listen to what
he did to himself than to endure the pain of enforced participation. I tried to
tell my mom about what he was doing, but guess what? She chose to believe him
over me. Chose to stay with him. Big surprise, right?” Tears filled her eyes,
and she drew her knees against her chest, tightening into a ball. With her head
tucked inside her arms, she peered out at the psychologist.
His expression
remained as blank as the television. No passion, no outrage on her behalf. On
the other side of the living, Sean the observer, growled. How could anyone hear
such a tale and not be moved by it? Unless, of course, the doctor—like the
mother—didn’t believe her.
As if to confirm
Sean’s suspicions, Dr. Valentine shook his head and sighed. “You’re right,
Isabelle. We’re done here. I’ll come back later.”
To Sean’s
surprise, though, after the door closed behind the doctor, Isabelle relaxed
against her pillow and smiled.
Why did she tell
the truth if she didn’t want to be believed?
~~~~
With the odious
Dr. Valentine gone, Isabelle wasted no time in grabbing the phone and dialing
the responsible party. She knew exactly who she had to thank for waking up in
this hell. After five rings, the answering machine clicked on. Listening to the
recorded spiel, she gripped the receiver with enough pressure to bleach her
knuckles.
“I know you’re
there, Justin. Hell, it’s not like you go anywhere. Don’t think you can avoid
my call. Pick up the phone.
Now
.” The sound of fumbling on the other end
of the line didn’t mollify her frustration.
“Belle, is that
you?” Justin asked with hesitation, then continued in a rush, “OhthankGod. You
don’t know how you scared me. The doctors wouldn’t let me stay when the
ambulance brought you in because I’m not family. I tried to tell them I’m the
closest thing you’ve got—”
“Enough,
Justin.” This was so not the time for him to play the “closest thing to
family” card. “How soon can you pick me up?”
“Huh?”
She repeated
each word slowly, succinctly. “How… soon… can… you… pick… me… up?”
Even miles away,
she sensed his hesitation in the heavy pause between them. “Do you think that’s
a good idea? I mean, if I hadn’t found you when I did yesterday? Five minutes
later, and you’d be dead right now.”
Five minutes.
Five lousy minutes? Oh, for crying out loud! How unlucky could she get?
“Why’d you do
it, Justin?”
“Why’d
you
do it? To get into the Cliché Hall of Fame as another failed actress who
couldn’t live without the public adulation?”
Her breath left
her lungs in a drawn-out hiss. One of the things she’d always loved about
Justin was one of the things she also hated most about him: his razor honesty.
“What the hell do you know about it? You gave up a long time ago.”
Justin had been
cast as the geeky neighbor boy with a crush on Bethany in the later episodes of
“Shipp Shape.” Unfortunately, since he made no attempt to hide his
homosexuality on-camera or off, the romantic interest had fizzled without ever
creating a spark in the audience. Unfazed, after his two seasons on the show,
Justin had cashed in his chips and left Hollywood to keep house with his life
partner.
“I walked away.
You could too, you know.”
Yeah, right.
“And do what? I’m not like you. I don’t want to open up some stupid antique
shop and become one of those losers who only signs autographs at conventions
twice a year.”
“Because your
life is much more glamorous? Cattle calls, rejections, divorce court, hospital
rooms. Golly, it must be sooooo fabulous to be you!”
“If it were
fabulous, I wouldn’t have tried to kill myself, now would I?”
“Oh, sweetie.”
He sighed dramatically, and she grinned. Victory was at hand. “I’ll come get
you if that’s really what you want. Give me an hour or so. We’ll get you
discharged and then you’ll come stay with Tony and me.”
Hmm… Maybe
victory wasn’t quite as close as she thought. “Actually, I’d rather go home.”
“Too bad. I’m
the one signing the discharge papers. That means I’m responsible for you. And
I’ll be damned if I’m going to leave you home alone where you can pull another
suicide attempt like this one.”
“You can’t keep
me at your place forever,” she replied. “Eventually, you’ll have to let me go
home.”
And when I do…