“Do not worry, Kirsty. Your friend is standing beside me. You cannot see her now.”
“Can’t see who?” Conrad asked looking directly at Dante. Then his brain caught up with what he’d heard and he swung his gaze to me. “Kirsty?”
Oh, sure. Now someone gets my name right.
I realized that Conrad could see and hear Dante, but had no idea Shannon was there. That worked perfectly with my plan. Now to play the player.
“Yes, Conrad, it’s me. Kirsty. See, I can possess bodies, too. Just like you.” I did my best to keep my voice light. It hurt like hell to mask the raspiness, but I wanted him to think this body was in tip-top shape.
He crossed his arms over his chest. “What do you want?” Suspicion rode the edge of his rough voice.
“First, Conrad, I wanted to thank you for saving Theresa Mudders’ life.” His gaze flicked down to my uniform name badge. She’d died for him and he hadn’t even bothered to learn her name.
“Well, um. Of course. I couldn’t let her die.”
My resolve threatened to dissolve. Had Conrad actually done something for someone else? Someone he didn’t even know?
“How would that look at my hearing?”
But of course. It was all about him. It was always all about him.
“Ah, so you saved her to make yourself look good, is that it?”
He puffed out his cheeks, eyes jumping around, looking anywhere but at me. “Well, that was the icing on the cake, of course. But I really wanted to save Lisa.”
“Theresa,” I corrected. I drew a deep breath, actually needing one, to force the following words out. “Well, whatever your motivation, you accomplished something noble today so you deserve to be recognized for it. Thank you.” I surprised myself by realizing I meant it.
Conrad met my gaze for a moment, then he quickly looked away. He might have manipulated a lot of people into a lot of things, but he must rarely have earned anyone’s genuine gratitude. He cleared his throat but didn’t speak.
“So while you’re doing noble things, I’m asking you again if you could see your way clear to returning Shannon’s body to her. You’ve lived a long and wonderful life. It’s her turn now. You know it’s the right thing to do.”
Conrad took a step back, as if I could somehow force him to relinquish his daughter’s body. “Don’t be ridiculous. Why would I do that?”
“Firstly, because she’s fading. Unlike mine was, Shannon’s body isn’t lying somewhere with a room for rent sign on her chest. It has a soul—you. So she’s excess and excess gets trimmed. If she’s out of her body much longer, she’ll fade away to nothing.” I reached one hand through the bars, imploring him. “If she fades away, then her soul is done. Nada. Zip. She won’t go to Hell. She won’t ever get to Heaven and she won’t get reincarnated. She’ll just . . . fade.”
Conrad fidgeted, something I never thought I’d see him do. “So give her that body,” he said, gesturing at me. “You’re dead so you shouldn’t have it.”
“Right back at you,” I said, enjoying watching him squirm. “She can’t. She’s grown too weak to leap into any body but her own.” If Conrad noticed I wasn’t arguing to give the body back to its rightful owner, he didn’t mention it. He probably figured that since he didn’t care about Theresa, I didn’t either. His only frame of reference for viewing the world was his own selfish point of view. I imagined he’d always worked from that distrustful stance.
“Listen, Conrad. You know that Dante and I, as Reapers, cannot force you to give up that body, right?”
“Yes, I’m counting on it.”
“Okay. You always taught me to find common ground when negotiating, so we can both agree on that, right?”
Conrad looked both proud of himself for having mentored me well and suspicious as hell for where I was going with this. Conrad, you put the “con” in conflicted.
Finally he jerked his head up and down once. “Go on.”
“Okay. And you may know that the reason Dante and I haven’t taken Shannon’s soul back to Hell with us to file a Wrongful Termination Appeal is because of how long it took me to get my Wrongful Reapage Appeal through the system.”
“And it was denied,” he tossed in my face with glee.
“And it was denied. So we don’t want to take that chance. We’re hoping instead that you’ll see reason and give your daughter her body back voluntarily.”
“Not going to happen,” he said conversationally. He was beginning to enjoy this since he held all the cards.
“But giving Shannon’s body back to its rightful owner voluntarily will reflect positively on you when you do get to Hell. It’s the same ‘icing’ logic as you applied to saving Theresa today.”
“I’m not worrying that far in the future. I’ll have years between now and when this body grows old and dies. I’ll find someone else to give me an extension between now and then.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Conrad.” Dante had joined the conversation. He could see where I was going with this even if Conrad hadn’t yet figured it out. Of course Dante knew how Hell worked whereas Conrad didn’t. “I’m going to have to check in shortly or they’ll send someone looking for us. Our scythes have GPS trackers in them so we can’t run, we can’t hide.”
“So you’ll get in trouble. What’s that to me?”
“There are a lot more powerful people in Hell than us Reapers. Just because Kirsty and I can’t evict you from Shannon’s body doesn’t mean there aren’t some terrible and powerful beings that can. Remember Charon the ferryman you met when we brought you in? Do you really want to run afoul of him?”
Conrad began to look worried. I noticed Shannon’s manicure was a wreck—even worse than back in the precinct when he’d been picking at the plastic cuffs. Conrad had chewed Shannon’s nails down to the quick. Maybe he wasn’t as confident as he’d seemed all along.
He opened his mouth to speak, closing it again without saying anything. I could almost hear the synapses of Shannon’s brain firing. Finally, he said, “Let ’em come. I don’t believe you. I’m a demon myself now, and other than being big and scary, the gig doesn’t seem to come with any special powers other than body possession. So I think you’re lying. The only reason you haven’t reported in and got this imaginary backup to come evict me is that they don’t exist. All that’s going to happen to you when you go report in is you’ll get in trouble. Ha!”
“Are you sure about that, Conrad? Are you willing to risk your life?”
Now we wait. Let that percolate.
Conrad walked away from the bars and began pacing the length of his cell, muttering, probably forming and discarding plans. He paced and muttered, muttered and paced.
I was beginning to lose patience when he finally snapped his fingers and returned to stand before us. His eyes glittered like cheap black diamonds, accented with a little bit of red from the petechial hemorrhaging. Did I mention I watched a lot of CSI?
“All right. Here’s what I’m willing to do. If you can get someone else to sign that contract amendment granting me twenty-five more years, then I’ll vacate this body. Whether Shannon gets back into it or not is up to you.”
Bingo. This was going according to plan.
“And when those twenty-five more years are up, you’ll come quietly?” Dante asked.
“I’m going to be honest with you because I believe you’ve been honest with me. I will try and get another extension before then, but if I can’t, then yes, I’ll come quietly.”
Beside me, I heard Dante whispering, then to me he said, “Shannon says the amendment is in her office. Kirsty, do you have Theresa’s cell phone?”
I patted my pockets and discovered an early-model iPhone in a pink plastic case. Pink. Huh. I never would have considered Theresa the pink type. I checked the charge and the reception—nearly full and four out of five bars. It was a miracle. I checked over my shoulder in case it actually was, but angels, fallen or otherwise, were noticeable by their absence.