Last to leave was Shannon. She looked tired and drawn—hardly the picture of corporate power.
“Hi, Shannon. Long time no . . .” But of course she couldn’t hear me. I’d forgotten. She continued along the hall with her head down, reading a document as she walked. I moved over to walk behind her. Panic gripped me when I saw it was a contract. But then I saw it wasn’t printed on parchment and relaxed.
I could tell, though, that it wasn’t some ordinary client contract. I caught a few words, peeking out between her hands. It read like something big and overarching, probably to do with the company. Well, of course. She’d just been appointed CEO, so she’d have to sign something, right?
I followed her down the hall. In my mind, she’d taken over my office when she’d taken over my accounts, but that didn’t appear to be the case. In fact, as we passed by I saw it was Frannie who sat behind my old scratched desk. Same old desk accessories. I took a quick inventory but she had a new plastic stapler. Not the vicious metal one that had attacked me that day, beginning all my troubles. No wonder Dante had accidentally arranged for the wrong one to be retrieved for my appeal.
So where had the right one ended up?
A vague recollection nipped at my brain, but movement within my old office distracted me before I could grapple with it.
Frannie looked up as Shannon strode past. She glanced away again quickly, eyes narrowed and mouth hard. Was she not happy that Shannon was now in charge?
Shannon stopped in front of the VP’s office. I knew it was hers because the credenza displayed a picture of a very young Shannon with her mother. I’d never met Shannon’s mom; she’d died when Shannon was small. I might ask Sybil to pull up her records and let me know where she resided these days.
But instead of entering, Shannon moved on down the hallway, heading into the big corner office that had been her father’s. I guess it, along with the entire company, was hers now.
The overall atmosphere was a big downer. So Conrad had died. Big deal. It’s not like he was a great guy or anything. But no doubt a lot of these folks had fallen under his spell. It must be quite a surprise to find out the guy you hero-worshipped was actually a self-centered, murdering bastard. I know I’d been shocked as all hell when I’d finally put the pieces together. Maybe these people hadn’t reached the “I loved that guy only to find out he was a total skegger” stage of grief yet. They would have been exposed to his magical charisma right up to the day he died. Me? I’d been out from under his spell for a year now.
Plus being clubbed to death by the guy could really knock over his pedestal.
Shannon entered the office, closing the door right in my face!
How rude.
I reached out to turn the handle only to miss. Clumsy. I tried again. Oh, for the love of . . . I wasn’t missing; I couldn’t grasp the handle. I tried pushing the door open next, but my hand went right through it. Now how was I going to . . . ? Right! Through the door, of course. My hand was no longer solid on this plane. How soon we forget.
I slapped myself in the forehead.
Ow!
My hand was solid enough for that.
I slipped in through the door—literally—feeling foolish that I’d forgotten how things worked up here for me now. I shouldn’t be too hard on myself, really. I’d probably spent only a total of twelve hours on the Coil after my initial reapage. And even then, I’d been only half dead so things weren’t the same as now.
I patted my scythe, a habit most Reapers seem to fall into, even in public.
Once inside, I surveyed my ex-boss’s former office. It hadn’t changed much. I noticed he’d removed every picture or award associated with me: the group shot from the company picnic, the picture of us accepting the Canadian Public Relations Society Award of Excellence, the picture of Shannon and me and our dates on prom night. Instead, other faces, both familiar and strange, stared back at me from the artfully grouped photos on the wall. Conrad, of course, smiled charismatically in every shot.
The office itself seemed cavernous without Conrad’s powerful presence. The oversize furnishings dwarfed Shannon as she swiveled into the impressive executive chair behind Conrad’s big oak desk.
I plopped myself down in one of the guest chairs as I had in Schotz’s office. Only now, no one was around to reprimand me. I hunkered down, prepared to wait.
A knock at the door signaled Shannon’s last meeting before lunch. The entire account team arrived, bearing new creative for Shannon’s approval. I watched her work, impressed at how much she’d learned about running a public relations company, at how well she was doing.
Within minutes, I was bored to death. Well, I was dead and bored. The order didn’t matter. While public relations had once been my life’s work, I now found it dull. Reaping was my afterlife’s work and I kept up by reading the trade publications, like Reaper’s Digest and Good Housereaping.
If Conrad was going to show, I wished he’d do it soon. The novelty of being back was quickly wearing thin.
I just wanted to scythe that welching skegger and go home. Dante and I needed some private time to work out our problems. I needed to apologize in new and creative ways for touching his scythe.
Oh, damn. I’d forgotten that my family had moved in with us. That was going to put a damper on apologizing, new and creative. I knew they had decided to stay in Hell and open a restaurant, possibly purchase a franchise of Claire Voyant’s Oracles of Deli even though neither of them was psychic. They were really short on Karmic points though. Maybe I could talk to Claire about reducing the franchise fee. Much as I loved them, I really liked Dante and me having the apartment to ourselves.
I hoped they hadn’t signed anything—nothing good ever came from signing contracts in Hell.
Been there, done that, got the Band-Aid.
Chapter 4
Infest Wisely
THE MEETING ENDED and an unfamiliar woman hustled in bearing a sandwich in spite of Shannon’s protests that food delivery wasn’t part of the new person’s job description.
“Glad to do it. Somebody’s gotta look after you,” the woman said, placing the paper-plated meal on Shannon’s desk. “Had to get my own anyway. Done with these files?” she asked, pointing to a six-inch stack teetering in Shannon’s out-box.
Shannon nodded. “Thanks, Willa. You’re going to do very well here.”
Willa beamed at her apparently new boss and scooped up the files with both arms. She left the office door ajar on her way out.
I wished I could talk with Shannon but I hadn’t yet learned the trick of making myself visible or audible to the living. And the way Dante was behaving, it wasn’t likely he’d show me anytime soon.
Shannon had been the best friend I’d ever had. In fact, as I’d learned over the past year, she’d been my only living friend.
Back home—and yes, I called Hell home now—I had Char, Sybil, Claire, Seiko, Kali and most of my other former classmates, not to mention Dante. (And let’s not mention Dante, ’kay?) With the exception of Shannon, they were much better friends than I’d ever had on the Coil.
It’s a wonderful afterlife.
Shannon took a bite of her sandwich, then shuffled through the piles of papers on her desk, finally ferreting out the contract she’d been reading as I’d followed her down the hall earlier. Grabbing a designer pen, she let the nib hover over the signature line for several minutes while she chewed the lip gloss off her bottom lip and stared at the page. Finally, she dipped the pen to the paper, the words flowing scratchily as she signed and dated it.
It seemed weird to see blue ink instead of red.