Gina Grant: Esprit de Corpse

“But that didn’t pan out so well, did it?”

He snapped his mouth shut on whatever he’d been going to say next, his lips thinning into a pale, straight line. His face began to darken, so I hurried on before the coming storm.

“I assume you didn’t spend the last . . .” I checked my watch. Thank Lucy time was aligned for once. “. . . ninety minutes waiting for me to show. You already tried the ecto-thingie. With no luck. You couldn’t find Conrad and so you came here, to his office, as I suggested. Which surprises me only because I didn’t even think you were listening to me.” I gave him a look that I intended to be both smug and challenging.

“But you had no luck, either, I see.”

Okay, he had a point. The smug part of my expression drained away.

“No, but it’s early days yet. Hours,” I corrected. “You said Conrad had to take the long way so he should be here any time now.”

“Surely after the extensive and exhaustive Reaper training you have undertaken, you don’t mean to just sit here and wait. We shall do it my way and I’ll hear no more about it.”

I pushed off the door frame and got right up into his chauvinistic (but handsome) face. “Now you listen to me, bucko.” I was mad. Really mad. I’d never called anyone “bucko” before in my life. I wasn’t even sure what it meant, although the first syllable reminded me of an interesting and appropriate four-letter word. “Just because you’re seven hundred—”

The lights dimmed and flickered. I clapped my hands over my ears to shut out the terrible screeching noise like universes ripping apart. Suddenly, a massive, horrific demon complete with horns and forked tail appeared before us. Shannon looked up from her client call. “Callyouback,” she squeaked. She didn’t so much hang up the handset as drop it somewhere near the cradle. I could tell from her trembling jaw and brand-new lack of breathing that she could see it, too.

As Dante had done, the demon had materialized facing Shannon, who cowered behind the big oak desk. With his back to us, he hadn’t noticed Dante and me.

I could see him clearly now, his personal twister left somewhere along the slippery slope or the dusty red trail. Conrad’s new demonic form filled the room, his horns scraping the ceiling tiles, raining white flakes down on his shoulders like the dandruff of the damned. His hooves and the spike at the end of his tail were the same articulated gray chitin as his curved and pointy horns. Leathery wings sprouted from his shoulder blades. They didn’t look like they’d support his weight and might have evolved less as flighty appendages and more as extra places to stick talons.

From where I stood, I couldn’t see his face and I was very, very glad. I had enough to take in as it was. He was the most horrible creature I’d seen on the Coil or in Hell, the conservative business suit doing nothing to dampen his overall ghastly appearance.

“Hello, dear.”

I nearly jumped out of my skin. His body may have grown oversize and grotesque, but his voice hadn’t changed. It was the same light, smarmy tone that had wrapped his junior account exec around his little finger, which was now scarlet, clawed and not so little.

“Dad?” Shannon whispered through chattering teeth. She leaned as far away from the scary monster as the ergonomically correct chair would allow, while at the same time reaching out one hand toward him. Talk about your mixed messages.

“I thought you said he couldn’t teleport,” I whispered to Dante.

“Must have gone to see whoever it was that ensorcelled your stapler and got a onetime pass,” Dante answered, keeping his voice low and his eyes on demonic Conrad.

I ground my teeth and leapt forward, thrusting myself between Conrad and Shannon, just as I had done a year ago with Conrad and Dante. “Conrad!” I shouted, gaining his full attention.

And I was immediately sorry I had. His eyes. Oh. His eyes were the worst part. They were soft and human, like a puppy trapped in that bloated and loathsome body.

I almost pitied him as he crouched to avoid hitting the ceiling.

Almost.

But any pity I felt was instantly displaced by an overwhelming urge to do something, anything, to hurt this man who’d stolen my life. An atavistic impulse kicked in—and when I say kicked . . . I did! Just as I’d kicked Dante in the brimstones back on the road to Hell, I kicked Conrad in his overgrown shin with all my might. And face-planted on the carpet as my coma-toes, and then my entire body, passed right through him.

“You!” he cried, fear in his voice. But his eyes weren’t on me. They were on Dante.

I hauled myself up off the carpet to stand before Conrad, yelling and waving my arms at him. But just like Shannon, he wasn’t even aware of me.

But Dante he could see.

My Reaper stepped up beside me, overlong hair and sexy black robe billowing about him as if the winds of justice blew for him alone.

“I, Dante Alighieri, Reaper First Class, by the powers vested in me, hath come to collect thine soul and escort it back to Hell! ”

Gosh, he was so cute when he did that. I hadn’t appreciated his commanding performance the first time he’d come for Conrad’s soul and taken mine instead, but now I did. My knees grew weak and my heart pounded. Five more minutes of his manly Reaper act and I might find myself forgiving him.

He brandished his glowing scythe, holding it high and threatening.

Behind me, Shannon had finally caught enough breath to start screaming.

Oops, I’d forgotten all about my own scythe. If I’d been thinking straight, instead of fighting with my boyfriend, I could have reaped Conrad’s giant crimson ass by now.

I yanked my scythe from my waist. But before I could activate my shiny repurposed farm implement, before Dante could swing his scythe, Conrad dashed around us, his hooves gouging great holes in the carpet tiles. He banked off the big oak desk, charged ’round the front and dove beneath it, out of sight.

Shannon’s screams cut off abruptly. She ceased cowering in her dad’s chair. Instead, she sat up straight like a cheap mannequin with rebar up her, uh, back, eyes glazed, expression dazed.

I ran around—okay, through—the desk, but I didn’t see how Conrad could fit under it. And when I checked, he hadn’t. Where had he gone?

And then Shannon looked up. She had her father’s eyes and I don’t mean she’d inherited his genes for eye color. She actually had his eyes peering out from her otherwise familiar face.

She opened her mouth, but no scream sounded. Instead Dante and I were treated to one of those classic villain bwa-ha-ha! laughs.

Should have seen that coming, I thought, retracting my scythe.

As the laugh faded away, a small moan drew my attention. Behind the big executive chair, half hidden under the credenza, a second Shannon lay sprawled. While the one in the chair seemed solid and earthbound, the one on the floor had a hazy, ethereal quality.

“Dante,” I whispered from the corner of my mouth, turning my focus back on Conrad, who was now wearing his daughter like a bespoke suit. “He’s displaced her soul! Get him out! Get him out of her!”

Dante’s personal wind had dropped away, leaving him with nothing more than tousled hair. More tousled than usual, that is. “I don’t know if we can. Or if we’re even allowed to.”

I turned to face him, tears blurring my vision. “What do you mean ‘allowed to’? He’s stolen her body just like he stole my life. We have to get him out. I know there aren’t many laws in Hell, but surely there’s a law against this!”

Dante moved up beside me again, lowering his scythe. “I don’t know, Kirsty. After all, possession is nine-tenths of the law.”