~ Chapter Two ~

“I’m dead.” I said it out loud. I felt I needed to say it aloud. To feel it in my mouth, passing my lips, to maybe get a better comprehension, to come to terms with it. It felt true. “I can’t stay here.” I looked at my surroundings.

I loved this apartment. I remembered back to when Gigi had first phoned me about its availability. I had jumped right on it. Prime location near downtown. Excellent price. Spacious. Third floor with a view of the ocean—well, a slight view. A huge living room, with a loft bedroom overlooking it. A small room enclosed by French doors at one end of the living room, perfect for my writing room. Cathedral ceilings. Hardwood floors. Two sets of French doors in the living room, which allowed in amazing, refreshing ocean breezes, afternoon sunlight, and beautiful sunsets.

“Lissa!” I heard him yell through the door.

This was home, my home. And now I was being forced to leave. I spun around, taking it all in. My heart bursting with the need to cry and scream and fight and argue. But there was no time. Instead I just growled and cursed to the room. I heard the soft, insistent knocking on my door and chose to ignore it.

“Usher,” I sneered flippantly. “Screw you!” I screamed towards the foyer and the front door. “And my name IS NOT LISSA!!”

I heard my door open and close, heard footsteps on the wood floor, coming toward me.

“You can’t stay here. You need to come with me. I am very sorry, sweetheart, but you have died—”

“Shut up. Get out. I’m not going anywhere with you!” I seethed at him, interrupting him as I shoved him back towards the door. How had he gotten in anyway?

“There are things I have to explain to you and we can’t do that here.”

I looked all around me, turning in a circle, trying to take it all in; the reproduction Victorian area rugs, the velvet curtains, the framed artwork, the velveteen sofa and arm chair, the antique tables, the photos of friends lining my foyer walls, the vase filled with purple orchids, the wrought iron wine rack—hard won from an auction. My place, my things. I’d worked so hard for it all. I was suddenly exhausted, depleted of my fury, spent. I stumbled back, leaned against the foyer wall, the framed movie print behind me shifting sideways beneath my back.

“I’m not done, I wasn’t done,” I said to him simply. No loathing or wrath left in my voice, only sorrow, as I began to slide down the wall.

“Rarely is anyone.” He stepped closer, slid his arms around me, pulling me up and away from the wall, and to him. I collapsed against him, something inside me waning at the same moment. I could actually feel something different about him. He wasn’t normal. He felt like he had something extra about him. Perhaps this was what preternatural felt like, I was always describing it in books, reading it in books, was this it…in the flesh…in my foyer?

“I can’t just give up, give it all up, walk away. I just got really happy again. Life just got fun again,” I spoke softly, forlornly.

“Come on, let’s go. Everything will be ok again,” he replied, spoken gently, with a reassuring quality.

And that voice, soothing…and that accent…I felt myself wanting to go with him.

This was truly insane. I was in the arms of Death. Death was holding me. And he was really cute. And he felt really good. Both ridiculously absurd observations.

But he was. And I felt no inclination to move out of his arms. It felt good there, protected, safe, and warm. And I was so cold and so scared. And so very angry. Wait! Yes! There was still that. I was angry. Infuriated. I raised my head from his shoulder and looked at him, at his face—the look on his face, was that remorse?—before thrusting him away again.

“No,” I spat out.

“Please be reasonable, there are things I need to tell you,” he entreated.

Reasonable? Was he serious...did he genuinely expect that? “I don’t want to hear anything else.” I strode away from him, to the living room.

“You’re to be a Coimhdeacht,” he blurted out.

I froze where I was.

“So you are dead, but you’re still alive too.” Trying to give me hope and repair this situation? “Merely a new you now.”

“A Kuhv…what?”

“Hold on.” He grabbed up a pen and a bit of paper from my nearby desk and scrawled out a word. Coimhdeacht. It looked nothing like it sounded. “It’s said kuhv-juhkt.” He said it slowly and I repeated it, before he stuffed the scrap into his pocket.

“Coimhdeacht,” I breathed out, barely more than a whisper. It was a strange word, felt odd in my mouth…but at the same time felt familiar, comfortable. It teased at something in my mind. But what exactly? I couldn’t quite pin it down.

“Yes. Perfect. Now, can we please get going? We can’t be here much longer.” He looked apprehensive, as if expecting someone to burst through the front door any moment.

“A Coimhdeacht,” I murmured. His words seeping into my brain. “I’m still alive.”

“Yes. Sort of. I mean, yes, definitely.” He paused, seemed to be pondering something that baffled him. “You shouldn’t be yet. You should still be all flimsy and murky.” He waggled his fingers in the air in front of him, then tapped them on his forehead, obviously mulling this over. “If you can already hang onto things, touch things, then that means that you can be seen. Seen by live people, mortals, not only me.”

He looked around my place, taking it all in, his eyebrows rising in admiration, his head nodding in approval, seemingly considering my possessions.

He picked up my mail from the side table, ruffling through the bills and catalogs.

A vague idea planted itself unexpectedly in my mind. “I should stay here; be a Coimhdeacht from here.” I glanced around, hopefully. Why go anywhere? I had a great place. I shrugged at him. “Makes sense to me.”

Liam shook his head. He looked paler than just a moment before. He looked at me and then back down at the papers in his hand. “You’re going to Seattle. Your job is in Seattle. I was sent here to retrieve you,” he stammered.

My response was to frown, to scowl. I didn’t want to be ‘retrieved’. I didn’t want to go to Seattle. Dealing with being suddenly dead was enough of a change without throwing in a relocation plan to boot.

“And since things seem to have been moved to the fast track, we need to get a move on. You’re visible now. This is going to be the second place they come after it’s discovered that the sleeping girl up on that couch is no longer breathing. We have to go…now. You’ve got to come with me…Isabelle. Do you want to try explaining any of this to cops? Why are you here in the dead girl’s apartment? How do you know her? Why are you here and she is up there dead? What’s your name?”

He stopped there, glancing briefly again at the assortment of mail, obviously to let it all sink in, or perhaps for dramatic effect.

He had a point. I couldn’t deny that. I was dead. What would I say? What could I say to anyone once I was discovered up there?

I looked around me again, at all my much-loved possessions, my charming home. I loved living here. I loved my friends and the life I’d made for myself.

How could I be expected to leave it all behind? And to be so rushed through the entire mental processing of it all just sucked royally too.

I felt so sick.

A look of concern settled on his face and he checked his watch, looked at me again, the concerned look deepening to dismay. “No. Wait. That’s not right.” He sounded really alarmed, staggered actually. His voice nearly quavered. He seemed to pale even further.

I turned and looked at myself in the gilt framed, full length mirror that was attached to my foyer wall, nearly afraid to after taking in his reaction.

“You look the same. Almost exactly the same.” I saw his reflection before my eyes settled on my own. He was frozen in his shock. “You’ve gone solid and you look the same. That’s not how it happens.”

My eyes came to rest on my image. I looked like me. Ah, relief. I was still me.

Well—as I looked at myself more closely, without the haze of looming dread clouding my vision—I was actually more like the perfected version of me.

I stepped closer to the mirror to inspect myself. My skin looked velvety soft. I reached up and touched my face, it was exactly that. I’d always had nice skin, but this was baby soft perfection, smooth, even toned, flawless, luminous.

“Wow,” I breathed out. My eyes were the most amazing hues; trapped in them were the waters of New Providence, in the Bahamas. Clear, cool, pale violet. Blending gently into rich Cyan. Fusing into Sapphire and then Persian Blue. Hypnotic.

My hair? It gleamed. It glowed. It had gone from a pretty shade of dark-honey blonde to a combination of shades. Now a gorgeous blend of warm honey and shimmering amber, with threads of radiant sunset oranges and reds, adorned my head. And my body felt stronger. I worked out a couple of times a week, but this felt different. Somehow less vulnerable. “Ok, this part I’m liking.” I smiled. And it made me stumble back a bit from the mirror. It was the dream me; the ‘me’ that was featured in my dreams.

“No. That’s wrong,” Mr. Encouragement chimed in. Rain on my parade why don’t you. “You can’t look the same.” He reached out tentatively and touched my cheek. A look traversed his face for just an instant that I couldn’t quite name. But it made me feel pleased. “You can’t look like you at all. And when precisely did this happen? You did not look like…this,” he flailed his hands around in front of me, “when we…well, moments ago!”

“I don’t look like me. Look at me!”

“I am. And it’s all wrong.”

We both examined my image. I had a certain radiance and luminosity now, coming from my eyes, from my hair, from my skin. I was thrilled with this amendment,

Liam not so much.

In fact, he looked a little ill. “Well, somebody must like you.” He shrugged, dismayed and now at a loss. He seemed much shaken by this turn of events.

“Yeah. That’s why I’m dead…ish.”

“Feck, feck—bloody hell—how did this get fecked up?” He dragged his eyes from my reflection to look directly at me. “Shit. No. That’s not how it works. Someone certainly screwed the pooch.” He held my face in his hands, examining it closely.

I tried pulling away, talk about discomfiting moments.

“You really look like this. This is what you are. This doesn’t happen. Something’s gone wrong. This isn’t supposed to happen. You should look absolutely nothing like yourself…like you did up there.” He was stammering now.

“Well, Mr. Happy…how does this work anyway. What exactly is wrong…has gone wrong?”

“I can’t go into that now. Right now we need to get the hell out of here.”

And then in a flash I was alert, ready to act, catalyzed by an inkling of a conspiracy that surged mind-bogglingly into my head. I whirled swiftly towards the loft stairs, ran up them to my bed room, the rough scheme forming in my brain taking shape more completely with every step.

Liam, startled by my abrupt exodus, took a moment to register the change and then raced after me, most likely thinking I was bolting to escape him, rather than to my true destination.

I flung the closet door open and dashed inside the semi large walk-in. I reached up to the top shelf—not hard to do at five-feet-nine-inches— and yanked down my two largest suitcases, spun and retrieved two garment bags from the rack. I threw them all onto my super comfy king size bed—oh…how I would miss that bed. I hadn’t even had it very long. I hadn’t had a boyfriend since buying it…so I’d never even…well, never mind.

A sense of urgency pushed me on.

“What are you doing?” Liam asked gruffly.

“What does it look like?” If he was going to be so surly, I would respond with ambiguity. I hurried to my dresser, quickly rifled through the contents in its drawers, pulling out all of my favorite clothes and tossing them hastily into the open bags.

“Isabelle.” He grabbed my arm. “I’m serious. What are you doing?”

I paused at the change in his tone of voice. Oh. He really meant it. He was completely somber. I bit my bottom lip. Should I anger a Coimhdeacht? What would happen if I pissed him off? My life was already gone after all, what else could he take from me?

“Fine. You win. I’m going with you.” I tugged my arm from his grip, put my hands on my hips, wary but aggravated. “I’m packing. I’ll go to Seattle with you, but I’m taking a few things with me.”

“You can’t do that. It’s against the rules.”

“Rules,” I choked out, yet further flabbergasted by all of this.

“You can’t take anything. It could be noticed missing.”

“I think I know better than to take anything that would be noticed being gone. I’m not an idiot. I also think I know best as to what would be missed, or if anything at all would be missed. You know nothing of my life.” I tossed my entire embossed brass jewelry box into the suitcase; I couldn’t bear to part with any of the items that occupied it. I did it with a little more oomph than was needed, just to get my point across.

I turned to him, glaring. “Look, Liam,” I snapped at him, but there was an edge of surrender to it. “I worked so, so hard to rebuild me life after a horrible fiasco over a year ago—I’m not even going to get into that mess—but I finally got my heart put back together, I might even want to fall in love again at some point. I got published, have a decent car, a great apartment, a handful of friends that I can honestly say that I truly care about and love, I’m not hurting for money—a total first for me—I was even saving for my place in New Orleans, everything was going perfectly…”

I threw my hands up, huffed and hastened back over to the closet, pilfering my faves from there as well, luckily all my laundry had been done or there would be a basket to go through as well, but that was mercifully empty.

I stopped and looked at him, wondering what was going on in his head, what that look on his face meant. “I’ll do this, I obviously have no choice, but I will not go into it struggling and empty handed. You, or whoever else is in on this fun, will just have to deal. Hey, consider it my severance-from-my-life pay.” I finished my tirade and swallowed hard, my heart pounding heavily, hurting, and hoping I hadn’t pissed him off. Or if I had that he wasn’t a wrathful sort. I mean, really, I had no idea what or who I was dealing with here.

I watched him, waiting to see what the reaction would be. It took only a moment for a smile to slowly spread across his face. I narrowed my eyes at him, unsure as to what he was playing at. I wondered if he could be bribed, if he could be bought off in order for my raid to continue. Our eyes locked and remained that way for just a few heartbeats.

“Feisty…I like that.” He paused looking me over. “Ok, fine, but we have to be quick. We need to get out of here. We should already be gone.”

I grinned and made a mad dash down the stairs, dragging the remaining bag behind me. Into it I tossed a copy each of my two published novels, a vast collection of flash drives and CDs—containing all of my writing files and photos—two actual photo albums, my tablet, and a few framed pix from the sofa table and break front.

And my plush gator—Boudreaux.

I was looking over the room for anything else that I just couldn’t stand to leave behind, and would not be missed, when Liam approached from the bottom of the stairs, hauling the baggage with him.

“Thanks!” I glanced over at my CD and DVD stacks. Maybe some mutual larceny would ease the climate. “Anything you want?”

He shook his head solemnly, but after glancing briefly around the room—his eyes spying my quite large CD collection—he shrugged, set the luggage down and rummaged through the assortment, picking and pulling with some deliberation. That would buy me a little time for my own personal thievery.

I hurried back up the stairs and then peeped over the railing to be sure that Liam was still occupied.

He was engrossed in his task and next to him the stack was steadily growing.

I moved to the corner of the loft and pushed back a book filled chest. It was heavy with my reading collection and was stubborn to my shoving, but my persistence paid off as it finally gave and slid with a slight groan of protest away from the spot I needed cleared. I cringed and held my breath. Beneath lay my treasure trove, my cash stash.

“You alright up there?” Liam called up

“Yep.” I held still, hoping he wasn’t on his way up.

“Do you need any help up there?”

“Nope.” I kept my voice light. I didn’t want him coming up. I waited a couple of beats to make sure. No footsteps followed his voice and I heard the tell-tale click clack of the CD cases resume. I turned my attention back to the task.

I stuck the edge of my handy hedge pig letter opener into a seam of the hardwood floor and pried until an entire two foot by three foot section was opened up. What I pulled out from that hollow-hidey space was a rather large Victorian printed hatbox. I retrieved a roll of duct tape from my craft bin and swiftly taped the box securely closed. It was filled with greenery. Wonderful wads of twenty and one hundred dollar bills!

It was absolutely stuffed full. I didn’t even know for sure how much was in there, I had stopped counting when it had reached five thousand. Getting my money out of the bank might prove difficult now that I was deceased. I was so glad I had started squirreling this away well over a year ago—my emergency horde. Well, this definitely qualified as an emergency.

I hastened back downstairs. The bedroom was as cleaned out as I could do under the conditions I had to work with. I had everything that I simply could not stand to leave behind.

“Ok. I guess that’s it.” I plunked down the hatbox with the other bags. I suddenly felt very nervous, apprehensive. What the hell was I doing? I shifted from foot to foot. I bit down on a Chanel Vamp fingernail. “What now?” It came out as nearly a squeak. I cleared my throat.

Liam gathered up his plunder, a very satisfied grin on his mug. “We take all this to my car and hit the road…now.” He rather gallantly picked up the heaviest of my gear and trudged towards the door.

I stopped for a one last glance around my life, the life that I was abandoning. This was so incredibly painful, absolute anguish.

He ran his hands through his hair. “There’s no time left. I have to get this sorted. We have to go.”

I frowned at him, tears in my eyes.

“Uh, sorry…just try to speed it up a bit. This,” he motioned at my spoils, “is entirely against the rules. I shouldn’t be helping you do this.”

“And if you had nothing to gain, I’m sure you wouldn’t be allowing it.” I paused and studied him. “So, why are you?”

He looked daggers at me. “And this…” he waved at me from head to foot, ignoring my words, “...is...I don’t know what this is about, but it won’t make anything easier if we get caught leaving here.” He looked slightly unwell. “And may I suggest a hat?” He added, tossing me a black, brushed wool newsboy cap from where it hung on my wall.

My favorite, glad he’d thought of it.