An Excerpt From: THIS SIDE OF DEAD

Copyright © KELLY FITZPATRICK, 2011

All Rights Reserved, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.

Chapter One

CC bellied up to the Sizzler salad bar. Yum.

She went in for the red grapes with a pair of plastic tongs like she was playing the game Operation. One eye closed, she gave the other eye all the power. The tip of her tongue stuck out for balance. As she snagged a small bunch of grapes, one of them plopped into the Italian dressing, sinking quickly to the bottom, which was okay seeing how CC didn’t care for Italian. It wasn’t the country or the people or the language, just the dressing.

Another grape fell to the tile floor and rolled off under the table of some geriatrics dining way past their bedtime. She looked both ways for witnesses to her salad bar faux pas. Nope. Only happy, smiling, laughing families enjoying a meal out.

One lone grape found its way to her plate by fate or happy accident. CC sighed contentedly.

With her plate full—more like heaping—she weaved a path back to her table where Brad waited. Easing into her seat, she said, “This was a great idea.”

“I’m full of ’em.” He raised his bottle of Bud. They clinked the longnecks. “To us.”

“You’re so effin’ romantic, Brad.”

Winking at her, he said, “You ain’t seen nothing yet, baby.”

She wondered if that meant what she thought it meant. Visions of oral sex danced through her mind. Yeah, baby! CC did a mental check. Not my birthday. Not our anniversary. Not Valentine’s Day or Super Bowl Sunday. Brad wasn’t great at oral—too sloppy. No attention to detail. He needed an anatomy refresher. He wasn’t great at sex in general. But what guy was? Women were the masters of adapting and overcoming, making the best of a bad situation. Settling. What choice do we have? Ahem.

Brad shoveled his seven-course meal of steak and all the fixings into his mouth like he was trying to set some sort of land speed record. He pushed away from the table when done, leaning back in his chair. CC feared there was a burp coming on and half expected him to unfasten the top button of his slacks. Thankfully, no. It was bad enough he still wore his nametag over his shirt pocket.

He glanced at his watch. “Get seconds if you want.”

“I haven’t finished my firsts,” CC pointed out.

“I’m just saying it’s an all-you-can-eat buffet.”

She braced herself for a lecture about how she should order an entrée with her salad, thereby reducing the price of the salad bar, and then take the entrée home in a to-go container for later. It was his famous price-per-ounce theory of dining out.

She knocked over his coffee cup while poaching a French fry and he smiled one of those you’re-so-gosh-darn-cute-like-a-one-eyed-three-legged-dog smiles.

“What?” CC mopped at the mess with a pile of napkins Brad had requested when they were first seated. “Do I have something between my teeth?” She slid her tongue along her top teeth.

“No.” He shook his head. “I want to remember you just the way you are right now.”

A klutz with spinach between her teeth? “Why?”

“I wanted to do this while you were at the salad bar getting seconds.” He leaned forward.

“Do what?” Dump me? Ditch me?

He reached into his inside jacket pocket almost in slow motion. He came out with a small box. Her heart attempted an escape from the confines of her chest with hammering force.

Offering the box, Brad said, “Cecilia Denton…?”

“Yes,” she squeaked.

At Sizzler? Seriously? She scanned the area for a hidden camera. CC had fantasized and dreamed of the perfect proposal. Sizzler was never a part of her romanticized vision. Considering the slow progression of their relationship, CC had started to wonder if Brad was indeed Mr. Right. Would Mr. Right propose at Sizzler? But yeah sure. Why not? They had met at Sizzler and it was sort of a running gag that he’d picked her up at the all-you-can-eat buffet—with a fifteen-percent-off coupon, no less—and then took her home in a to-go container.

He flipped the lid. Angels sang. Ancestors wept. CC’s best pal, Joann, would say, “About damn time.” CC was more inclined to say her relationship with Brad had aged to perfection. The important thing was she and Brad would be one of the happy, smiling, laughing families enjoying a meal out.

“Happy anniversary,” he said. “My plan was to loop the ring over the neck of the beer bottle. Fun, right? It’s adjustable.”

What, do I have huge sausage digits? Did he say anniversary and adjustable? CC decided she must be dizzy from excitement. “Why don’t we just slip it on my finger instead?”

She held her left hand out, carefully extending her ring finger. Brad slid the ring on her pinky and squeezed the ends together in a strangle hold of adoration. She flipped her hand over, examining the ring from all angles. “It’s a toe ring.”

Shaking his head, he said, “No.”

“And it’s not our anniversary.” And he didn’t ask me to marry him. And he pinched it around the wrong finger. “We met in April.”

He winked at her. “We did it in May.”

So it’s a manniversary.

“Those are real, genuine diamonettes,” Brad said.

“They’re lovely.” She squinted. “What’s a diamonette?”

“It’s complicated, but I’ll try to simplify.” He began using his hands as he described the process. “They’re lab-created diamonds that are flawed. So they crush them up and glue them onto the ring.”

CC scrunched up her nose. “Like factory seconds?”

Pointing his finger at her, he replied, “Exactly. This is my pledge to you that someday…in the future…I plan to…you know…”

She winced. “Marry me?”

The inquiry looked like it pained him more than passing a kidney stone. “Ask you to…you know…be engaged to…you know…”

“Marry you?” she repeated.

“Yes.”

In the car on the way home CC held the ring up to the light of the passing street lamps, shop windows and traffic lights. The street lamps were bright. The shop windows with their neon were sparkly. The traffic lights were shiny. The ring—not so much.

She’d dreamed of some day owning a ring that shone like one of those movie premier lights they flash into the night skies. Hold it up to the light and Batman would show up and ask, “What’s the emergency, ma’am?” And then she could ask him to give her away at her wedding…you know…someday…in the future. CC giggled to herself.

She felt the all-too-familiar bump bump bumpity bump of the old Crossroads Bridge. Built in the forties, it had always given CC the willies. As a child, it had reminded her of a dinosaur lumbering across the river to eat her and use her bones as toothpicks. As an adult, she didn’t want to share the bridge with an oncoming bus due to how narrow the bridge became in the midsection.

“Why are you going this way?” she asked.

“Traffic.”

The evenly spaced lights reflected resplendently on her new diamonette ring, distracting her from the morbid notions she had about the bridge.

A pedestrian in the shadows of the bridge’s columns caught her eye, disturbing her joy. The figure peered over the rail and peeled away a coat, letting it drop to the ground. CC tensed. I’ve got a bad feeling about this. The person climbed the safety rail, glanced briefly over his shoulder at their approaching headlights, and then jumped from the bridge and into the swift running river below.

No! Her heart seized. “Stop!”

“What? Why?” Brad asked.

CC reached out and grasped his sleeve. Her other hand clutched at her heart. “Just stop.” No other cars were in sight. Brad hit the brakes. CC’s body lurched forward, stopped only by the safety belt. She unlatched the clasp and flung open the car door.

“Cecelia!” Brad called after her.

She was only vaguely aware he pursued her. Grasping the rail, she leaned and saw a body thrashing in the water. The fall hadn’t killed him. Not this. Not today. Not again. She couldn’t save her parents all those years ago. She’d failed to save her little sister. Without thought for her own safety, CC scaled the rail. Doesn’t look that far, she thought right before she leapt to the icy water. Regret hit her the second the thousand pinpricks of painful freezing water did.

Over the sound of the rushing river, she heard the faint sound of her own name called out. It faded and dissipated like dust scattered in the wind. CC struggled to paddle toward the shadowy shore. Screw the jumper. What was I thinking? Diving into a river of melted mountain snow was not like diving into the city pool on open-swim day. It was lunacy.

The current battered her downriver toward the tree-lined bank. Freezing cold river water slapped her face and splashed into her open mouth instead of the air she sought. Suddenly she rammed into something solid. Correction, someone solid. Determined not to die in vain or die alone, she seized onto him with aching, icy fingers, pulling him toward the shore so she could kill him with her bare hands.

Nothing in her life had ever felt quite so nice as the mucky ground beneath her feet. A gust of wind blew across her wet clothes, sending a cold shiver coursing through her head to toe. CC labored to drag the dead weight of the jumper to a dry patch of ground beneath an umbrella of leafy trees. With that done, she plopped down to catch her breath, but then remembered Brad was nearby, probably worried sick. She stood on the edge of the riverbank, waving her arms over her head, and yelled for Brad. The bridge was nothing more than an obscure green skeleton in the distance. Brad could no more see her than she could him. So she turned her attention back to the floater.

CC fell to her bare knees next to him. Her body vibrated like…like…well, like a vibrator. The skirt she wore stuck like a second skin to her thighs. Crumpled on the ground next to her, the jumper looked like he needed a chalk outline, followed closely by a body bag and one of those cozy drawers at the morgue. She pulled her heavy, soaking-wet sweater over her head, throwing it aside with a splat. A t-shirt clung to her chilled skin, but she felt like she’d shed twenty pounds of wet weight. CC put her ear to his chest to check for a heartbeat, respirations or any sign of life.

Nothing. No breath. No heartbeat. Not much in the warmth department. Work with me here.

She tilted his head back, clamped his nostrils with her thumb and index finger and did her best impression of mouth-to-mouth. You will not die. You will not die. CC faked a few chest compressions. She’d forgotten many things since high-school health class, not the least of which was CPR. You will not die. It looked so easy on television. Still nothing. She shivered above him, her teeth chattering like castanets. Tilting her head, she decided he looked peaceful, as if he were sleeping. She swept the wet hair from his forehead before making another attempt at breathing life into him, if for no other reason than his mouth still held some warmth and life and a faint smile.

“L-listen up, d-driftwood, wake up and b-breathe or I’ll kill you,” she said.

“Give it up, sister,” someone said in a gravelly, Dirty Harry-mumble whisper.

CC whipped her head around, one direction, and then the other. “Who said that?” Silence. She scanned the darkness in all directions. “Who’s out there? H-help me. H-help us.”

“Can’t help the dead.” A man stepped out of the darkness, his skin ashen against the black of his clothes hanging off his scrawny frame. Cheeks hollow, stringy hair, grungy attire. A strung-out street person, if she had to guess. Great.

“I don’t have any m-money.” So get lost if you’re not going to help me.

“Can you hear me?” he asked. His gaunt, lifeless eyes reflected wide-eyed disbelief.

CC ignored him to resume compressions. Above the rush of the river, a train whistle faintly blew in the distance.

He circled her, snapping his fingers like a poorly acted revival of West Side Story, singing la la la la la off key. No twigs snapped beneath his feet, nor did any leaves rustle as he shuffled around her. CC worried the cold water had adversely affected her hearing.

“What? Are you s-starting a band?” She tried once more to breathe life into the body laid out before her. “M-make yourself useful and get help.”

Dirty derelict dude stepped closer. “You can hear me?”

“D-do I stutter? Oh. Wait. I g-guess I do.” Der. “D-do you have a cell phone, buddy? Call 9-1-1.”

He patted himself down. “Can you see me?”

I wish I couldn’t, unless you have a cell phone. “The Invisible Man you’re not,” she said with a well-deserved eye roll.

Pointing at the body, he said, “He’s a goner. Take my advice, let him go.”

“Are you a d-doctor now?” Dr. Dirty-Derelict-Dude. Unlikely.

“Take my word for it, he’s way past doctoring.” He pivoted and circled her in the other direction, stopping to dance a jig. “What am I doing now?”

CC shook her head. Out of frustration, she clasped her hands together, raised them high above her head and beat her fist on the chest of the body with the full force of the strength she had left, which wasn’t much by anyone’s estimations. Her jumper gasped for air, spit out river water, followed by coughing up what sounded like a perfectly good lung. His eyes sprung wide open before he relaxed and closed them again.

She barked out a laugh. “Not so d-dead now, Doc.”

“Name’s not Doc.” He squatted and leaned over the newly revived guy with interest.

The guy I just saved, thank you very much. She raised her hand to the bum and waited for a high five that never came. “Jeez, you smell.”

“You smell too,” he said defensively. “Nothing smells quite so vile as the stench of the living.”

Whatever.

CC placed two fingers on the carotid artery of her previously-on-the-brink-of death,-now-clinging-to-life-by-a-thin-thread patient. A little something she picked up watching ER. Glancing at the bum, she said, “I know I’ll regret asking, but who are you, anyhow?” And what, pray tell, are you doing in the woods at this hour?

“Me? I walk the Earth with a heavy burden.” He shook his head woefully, going so far as to sigh. “I’m known in many places by many names. Names that strike fear into mortal men. But you can call me Marvin.”

I knew I’d regret asking. “Well, Marvin, feel like hiking out to find some help?”

Marvin shook his pinhead again, not woefully, more nuh-huh style. “I don’t do that sort of thing.”

“No?” CC tilted her head. “What sort of thing d-do you do?”

“I take lives.” Marvin stood. “I don’t save ’em.”

That’s what I was afraid of. He had the look of a psycho serial killer, freshly escaped from the worst-of-the-worst section of the mental hospital. CC covertly reached for a fallen tree branch lying on the ground near her feet. She wrapped both her icy hands firmly around the widest part. She sprang to her feet, swung with all her might and clobbered the self-proclaimed taker-of-lives upside the head.

The branch shattered into tiny pieces of kindling. Marvin moved not at all except to scratch his head with his disturbingly long pinky fingernail.

Had she lost every ounce of strength she’d possessed or was he a superhuman bum? “What are you?” she asked.

His head pivoted eerily in her direction, sending the mother of all shivers down her spine. Bloodshot eyes stared back at her. “You might know me as the Angel of Death.” He paused dramatically, like he’d waited all his born days for someone to ask this crucial question. “Ring a bell? No? The Grim Reaper perhaps?”

Her mouth fell open and stayed that way. Am I dead? Is he nuts? Am I going nuts?

In the absence of her answer, he said, “Just Death then.”

“Where’s your scythe?” she demanded. “And…and your black hooded cape?” He wore black all right—baggy jeans, a t-shirt and a hoodie, all covered with a black raincoat. If he were a gentleman, he’d offer her his coat. Him being Death and all, she might not take it.

“That’s a fallacy, a myth. I don’t know where that started.” He reached into his back pocket and she stopped breathing for a couple beats. “I have no use for a scythe. I carry a good book on account of all the waiting I do though.” Death flashed her a dog-eared copy of Nora Roberts’ latest.

Her patient coughed and she returned to his side, smoothing his hair with her hand. Comforting him comforted her. Even with him unconscious, CC liked him exponentially more than Marvin, a.k.a. Death. Her jumper moaned.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk. I don’t think he’s gonna make it,” Death said, shaking his head mournfully. “He’s wet, cold, probably injured from the fall. Might even have internal bleeding.” Death rubbed his hands together maniacally. “Obviously he’s lost the will to live. I don’t think I’d be remiss in taking him now.”

She threw herself over the torso of her charge and he moaned under her weight. “Over my dead body.”

“Now that you mention it…”

“Back off!” CC said.

“I was only going to point out that you look a little pale,” Marvin said, clearly trying to impersonate someone who cares, but missing the target as far as CC was concerned. “Human bodies are frail. You really should get out of those wet clothes before…”

“Oh you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Pervert.

“I have no carnal interest in those who live,” he said.

“Ew!”

Sirens cut through the silence of the night. Marvin, the Angel of damn Death, swung his attention toward the sweet sound of salvation that carried on the wind. They’d have blankets. Dry clothes. What CC needed was one of those Saint Bernards with a cask full of brandy…or Starbucks coffee with brandy.

“You see, Marvin, they’re coming to help us.” She clasped her hands on her jumper’s face. You will live, damn it!

Thankfully, she had been here to save him like she wasn’t there to save her sister all those years ago. Her sister Krista hadn’t jumped to her death. She’d drifted peacefully off to death after ingesting a handful of pills. The note she’d left behind said, life’s a bitch, then you die.

“No.” He sniffed the air, his nostrils flaring in the breeze. “I smell death. They don’t come for you—yet.”

She scoffed. “I think there’s something wrong with your sniffer. You struck out here today.” Not that she entirely believed him to be the Angel of Death, but CC believed he believed. That made him plenty dangerous enough.

“There’s nothing wrong with my sniffer.” He pointed his crooked finger at her one-foot-in-the-grave human anchor. “Just because he’s not dead yet doesn’t mean he’s alive.”

“That makes zero sense.”

“You watch your attitude, missy.” Marvin dramatically sniffed the air around her. “Pneumonia isn’t out of the realm of possibilities for you.”

CC gasped. “That’s Obsession by Calvin Klein you smell on me, not potential death.”

The sirens were closer. Not nearly close enough.

The Grim Reaper’s attention wandered off toward the sound. “I’ll be right back.” He took two or three steps into the darkness and then blended away into night.

“We’ll be gone,” CC muttered. “Wake the fuck up, fish food!”