Chapter Three

Chapter Three

It’s never as funny to the police as it is to us.

—Meme

Dominic Toretto had nothing on Halle Nordstrom. She weaved in and out of traffic like a street racer on speed. Unfortunately, we’d hit rush hour, so there was a lot of weaving.

The first few minutes of the drive were utterly silent. I didn’t want to distract her, which was a great excuse to keep my mouth shut. I had no idea what to say anyway. But once she made it to the main highway, she relaxed and instigated the conversation herself.

“So, this kid. He’s going to die soon?”

I checked my watch yet again and tried to keep my adrenaline from spiraling out of control. “Yes. Very.”

She nodded in thought, then asked, “Do you know how?”

“Yes, and no. I don’t know if he’s going to jump or fall. It could be an accident. He had a lot to drink.”

The quick look she cast my way was full of fear. “Should we call the cops?”

I winced. The police and I didn’t always see eye to eye. They tended to complicate things. Asked questions like, “Where did you get this information?” and “How did you know she was going to be murdered with a hacksaw before it happened?” I learned early on not to rely on them.

“They could beat us there,” she argued. “They could stop him if we don’t make it.”

She was right, of course. I nodded. “We should try to get ahold of his dad, too.” I took out my phone to text Jason for the contact info while Halle talked to the cops.

“I don’t know,” she said to dispatch, feigning hysterics. At least, I hoped she was feigning. “I just saw a kid on the roof like he was going to jump! Please hurry!” She hung up before they could ask her anything else.

“You’ve had acting experience?”

She smirked. “Haven’t we all?”

Right again. “Think they’ll send someone?”

“I hope so.”

I studied her profile for a minute, like the alabaster statue of a wood sprite. My phone dinged, and I tore my gaze off her. “Jason’s been trying to get ahold of the dad. He’s not picking up.” I checked my watch. “How much longer?”

“Ten minutes,” she said, swerving onto the shoulder to maneuver around a truck.

My stomach clenched tighter with every second that passed.

Once we were back on the actual highway, she tossed me an apologetic grin. “Make that nine.”

“And you were a stunt driver in a past life?”

“Sorry. I won’t do that unless I absolutely have to. It’s too risky. If we get pulled over now… Let me know if you see a cop.”

“Will do,” I said, my voice suddenly hoarse. “I thought you didn’t believe me.”

“I don’t, but I also don’t want to be responsible for someone’s death if I could’ve done something about it and didn’t.”

“Welcome to my world,” I said with a breathy scoff. I’d never asked for any of this shit. Fucking demon.

We exited the freeway and hit downtown Spokane at the height of rush hour. Bumper-to-bumper traffic brought us to a standstill, and my lungs fought for air.

“I forgot about the hour.” She glanced around, looking for a quicker route before pulling half onto a sidewalk, throwing her truck into park, and pointing out the windshield. “That’s the building. It’s only a couple more blocks.” She turned the full force of an imploring gaze on me. “We have to run for it.”

The fact that she wore a sundress and sandals did not escape me.

Apparently, it didn’t escape her either. She opened her truck door, then looked back. “Don’t wait for me.”

“You sure?” I asked over the hood once I got out.

She nodded and gathered the folds of her skirt. “Go.”

I took off and didn’t look back, wending through pedestrians and vehicles alike until I came to the exact spot I’d seen in Zachary’s last moment. I peered up. Seven stories never looked so high.

“Here!” Halle said, rushing past me and into the building as the first drops of rain began to fall.

“How the hell—?”

“There’s an elevator!” She pointed and ran toward it.

As though a gift from the gods, the doors were already open. We tumbled inside, both of us struggling to fill our lungs, and then I remembered. “That’s right. It was raining in his final moment.”

She cast me a startled expression and pushed the button for the top floor. Our breaths synced, creating a rhythm in the quiet elevator.

“You’re fast,” I said between gasps.

She put a hand to her racing heart. “You’re faster. I could hardly keep up.”

“But you did. I’m impressed.”

“Those four years of track must’ve paid off.”

Apparently.

We bolted out of the elevator the second the doors opened and rushed up a set of stairs to the roof access. The steel door wasn’t locked, and I thanked the powers that be for small favors. When we burst through the door with guns blazing—metaphorically—we almost took out a uniformed cop.

“Officer,” Halle said, stopping short in surprise.

I checked my watch and ran past him. Three minutes.

“Did you make the call?” he asked Halle.

I didn’t hear her reply. I sprinted to the middle of the rooftop and did a three-sixty, but the only other person on the roof was a burly maintenance man, his gray shirt spotted with fresh raindrops.

“Are you Eric?” he asked as he walked toward me. Clearly, Jason had gotten ahold of Zachary’s dad.

“I am.”

“I’m Bobby.” He took my hand. “I don’t know what’s going on, but Zachary isn’t here.”

Fuck. Did he jump already? No way. He couldn’t have. The time thing was never wrong unless… Unless he jumped but didn’t die when he landed. If it took him a few minutes to pass, for his heart to stop beating, I wouldn’t see the actual jump. I would only see when his soul left his body.

I turned back to Bobby. “Which side is the front of the building?”

He pointed to my right. I rushed to the edge and looked over. A ledge capped the sixth level of the historic brick building with just enough depth for a person to walk on. No Zachary. And no body on the ground. I spun around, confused, then looked at my watch. Two minutes. What the hell?

The cop’s voice broke through my panicked thoughts. “I don’t know what you saw, ma’am, but I have another call. Someone parked a pickup on the sidewalk a couple of blocks away, and apparently, the world’s gonna end.”

Halle’s eyes rounded. She brushed a lock of damp blond hair off her face and stuck a chewed fingernail between her teeth again. “That’s so weird. Why would someone do that?”

The cop handed her his card with a tip of his hat and a friendly smile. “If you need anything else, ma’am.” Too friendly.

Was he flirting? At a time like this?

Bobby looked over the edge, too, trying to figure out what was going on. “Did Zach say something to you? Jason didn’t really tell me much.”

“Did you find him?” Halle asked. The cop left, and she walked over to us.

I shook my head.

She frowned and glanced around. “You saw him jump from here?”

“Jump?” Bobby asked.

“No.” I ground my teeth and did another three-sixty. “I see the last moment from the person’s perspective. It’s about a three-second window before and after the soul leaves the body. He was definitely falling. I saw windows above him, and the balcony and pillars right before everything went black.”

Halle nodded. “Then that’s the only explanation, right?”

“It has to be.” We sprinted to the other side, frantically searching for the kid.

“I want to know what’s going on,” Bobby said, fear giving his baritone voice an unnatural quaver. “Who’s jumping?”

“Bobby, does Zach ever come up here? You know, just to chill?”

The man was out of breath and went into a slight state of shock when our words started to sink in. “He…he does, but he likes to climb over the ladder and sit on the ledge.”

Halle looked at him in horror. “Who does that?”

“He loves heights,” Bobby said as though that explained everything.

One minute.

The skies opened up, and raindrops began falling freely, the rooftop suddenly slick as I hurried to the other side and looked over. When I still didn’t see him, I closed my eyes and fought to remember Zach’s last moment once more. What was I missing?

The windows.

The balcony.

The columns.

And I got the feeling of movement like he was falling, but backward. For him to be able to see what he saw, he would’ve fallen backward. Who jumped off a roof backward?

I felt a hand on my arm and lifted my lids to see Halle beside me, her face full of hope. “You can do this,” she said, and I realized she was shivering, her lips turning blue in the rain. She squinted against the icy drops as they pelted her face.

The rain. The limited vision. I looked over the edge once more. The rush-hour traffic.

The truth hit me like a midsection punch from Iron Mike. I was in the wrong place. I lifted my wrist and wiped rain off my watch. And I was out of time.

Without another thought, I ran to the access door. I heard Halle behind me. I yelled, “Take the elevator!” as I bounded down the stairs in a single leap. Then I did the same to both sets of stairs per level until I hit the bottom floor.

Praying no one was on the other side, I burst through the door, splintering the wood and breaking the handle. It slammed against the wall so hard the building vibrated as I ran through the business space on the bottom floor and shoved my way through glass doors onto the street.

Knowing which direction Zachary would be coming from—the only direction he could, considering his last moment—I spotted him crossing the street instantly. I also saw the delivery truck, seconds away from running him down.

I reacted without thinking. Later, I would come to regret that, but for now, my legs carried me with only one thought in mind: Get that kid out of harm’s way . I tackled him and turned just as the truck slammed into us. Me. While I’d pushed Zachary out of the truck’s path, I’d put myself in it, but I was apparently prepared for just such a scenario. I raised a hand and shoved off the fender, managing to avoid a head-on and getting a gentle, bone-rattling sideswipe instead.

I didn’t feel a thing as the truck tossed me like a ragdoll in the opposite direction Zachary would have flown. Unfortunately, that was straight into more traffic. I barely registered screeching tires, horns, and a scream before the world went black.

Half an hour later, I sat in the back of an ambulance, trying to convince the first responder I was okay.

She was cute. And she really wanted my pants off.

“They’re half-ripped off anyway,” she said, defending her position.

They weren’t just half off. They were shredded, my Breaking Bad tee a sad homage to Walter’s last days, but my injuries weren’t that bad. Scrapes and bruises and possibly a mild concussion. Either that or Halle was really gazing at me with doe-like eyes full of both concern and gratitude. She sat beside the EMT, wringing her hands. And still shivering.

“I really think you should go to the hospital,” the med-tech said.

“Can I get a blanket?” I asked her.

“Of course.” She rose to her feet and brought down a blue blanket wrapped in plastic. She unwrapped it and started to lay it over me, but I sat up, took it from her, and draped it over Halle’s shoulders.

Halle fought me. Naturally. “I’m fine. You need this more than I do.”

I tugged it tightly around her and held the ends in a clenched fist, daring her to get it off. She was soaked to the bone and had just saved a life. I wouldn’t have made it in time without her help. And her erratic driving. She deserved a warm blanket.

“Is he okay?” the truck driver asked for the fiftieth time. “My damn defroster doesn’t work. I’ve told my company a dozen times.” He scraped a hand down his face and walked off when he got a call.

“How did you get down there so fast?” Bobby asked. He was standing in the rain, holding onto his son with an arm over his shoulders. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Adrenaline?” I guessed. Though the long legs didn’t hurt.

“You saved my life,” Zachary said, and I couldn’t be certain he wasn’t still drunk. His words were slightly slurred, either from the alcohol earlier or the cold. As warm as the day had been, the rain felt like an ice storm in January.

I grinned at him. “Can I ask you something, kid?”

He winced at my use of the word kid , but I had a decade on him, and I was going to use it.

“Why were you drinking so much?”

His eyes widened, and he cast a sideways glance at his dad before asking, “You mean at the bar?”

I nodded as the EMT irrigated one of my deeper scrapes before placing a piece of gauze on top and wrapping it.

“What are you talking about?” Bobby asked him. “How much did you drink?”

Zachary cleared his throat. “A lot. I had something to tell you, and I didn’t know how.”

Bobby eased his hold to face him. “What’s going on?”

“First,” Zachary said, taking a cautionary step backward. This would be good. “Just know I’m going to finish college, okay? If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll get my degree.”

“Okay,” his dad said, his voice and expression wary. “And second?”

Zachary kicked a rock. “Second, Teresa’s pregnant.”

Bobby’s jaw fell open as Zachary kicked another pebble and looked away. After taking a moment to absorb that bombshell, Bobby pressed his lips together and patted his son’s shoulder. “It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. Mom is gonna freak.”

“True, but we’ll talk to her together.”

Seeing their close bond warmed my heart. Not like…a lot, though. Maybe a twelfth of a degree.

“Wait,” Bobby said, scratching his neck in thought. “I thought your girlfriend’s name was Lauren.”

Zachary stuffed his hands into his pockets and said, “It is.”

“Then who’s Teresa?”

Zachary cleared his throat, then said softly, “Lauren’s sister.”

Halle gasped then turned to me and patted my arm, pretending not to hear. “Maybe we should head back now.”

“I think that’s a good idea.” I hustled off the gurney despite the EMT’s protests.

“I don’t know how to thank you,” Zachary said.

Finishing college would not be the last thing he did. I saw his new-and-improved last moment, and it would not happen for a very long time—though still too young in my book.

“You could lay off the carbs,” I suggested.

I waited a few seconds then looked again. Damn it. No one ever took dieting advice to heart. He would die in his late sixties of cardiac arrest. In his defense, most of the last moments I saw were practically cemented in stone, which was why I rarely tried to change history. Today’s outcome was unusual.

“I still think you should go to the hospital,” the EMT said, adopting a childlike posture complete with crossed arms and a protruding lower lip.

“It’s okay. I think we have a pickup to get out of impound.” I eased out of the ambulance and turned to help Halle down.

“Oh, your blanket,” she said to the EMT, handing it back to her. “Thank you.”

The woman accepted it with a deeper pout.

Fortunately, we found Halle’s pickup before the tow truck arrived. While she distracted the cop, I hopped into the cab and took off. The officer gave a half-hearted pursuit before giving up and going back for more one-on-one time with Halle. Sadly, in a stranger-than-fiction turn of events, she vanished when he got a call over his radio, never to be seen or heard from again. At least by the cop. He could run her tags and make the connection, but she hadn’t really broken any laws. She was simply reclaiming the pickup she’d parked badly. And she hadn’t actually done the take back. It had been practically stolen out from under her by a maniac in a shredded shirt and ripped jeans.

After years of practice, I could run defensive scenarios all day.

I tightened my grip on the steering wheel and looked over at Halle. She was still shivering, and I didn’t know if it was due to her dress and hair still being damp or the accident she’d witnessed. The Arkwright Building must have the fastest elevator in all of Washington. She and Bobby had made it down just in time to watch me play tag with a delivery truck.

I blasted the heater as we drove, the setting sun creating bright splashes of pink and orange in the rearview. “Can I ask you a question?”

She was chewing on her lower lip as she stared at my leg. Or, more precisely, the super cool wound there.

I slid a hand over it, suddenly self-conscious.

She snapped to attention with my question. “Sure.”

“What did you mean, some people deserve to be haunted?”

“Oh,” she said, surprised. She hugged herself and looked out the window. “Nothing. You may not believe this, but I haven’t always been a good person.”

“You’re right. I don’t believe it.”

She turned to me suddenly, huffing out an exasperated puff of air. “Can we just address the elephant in the room?”

“I didn’t realize there was one.”

She shifted in her seat to face me head-on. “How?”

“Well, first, we aren’t even in a room, so I don’t think my not noticing the elephant in it is the most pertinent element of this conversation.”

“No, I mean…you really knew.”

Ah. That.

“You knew the exact date, time, and place Zachary was going to die.”

I held up a finger to put her on pause. “Not the place, just the date and time.”

“But you saw it. You were able to figure out where he was from what you saw. How?” She dropped her gaze, racking her brain. “How is that even possible?”

“Well, I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you, dismember your lifeless body, and bury you in Jason’s backyard.”

“Can you…can you really talk to dead people?”

“Tell her!” Aunt Lil said. She was sitting between us in the cramped cab, making the situation fairly awkward as I tried to look at Halle from around her blue hair. “We need to help her. If she’s being terrorized, we’re all she’s got, Constantine.”

“Yes, I can. Aunt Lil is here now.”

Halle reared back, though just barely before catching herself. She squinted and looked around, trying to peer into the veil as I fought a grin. “Can she hear me?”

“Yes.”

“Tell her she has a lovely voice.”

I gave up and let the grin get a solid foothold. “Aunt Lil likes your voice,” I relayed.

“Oh.” Halle sat up straighter. “Thank you.”

“Okay,” Aunt Lil said, clapping soundlessly, “my job here is done. I’m going to go check out that hottie at the bar some more. He may like Betty, but she ain’t got a ring on her finger yet. Am I right?”

She disappeared before I could answer.

Halle folded her hands in her lap. “It’s very nice to meet you, Lillian.”

Should I tell her?

“I hope we can become friends.”

This was getting awkward. “She’s gone.”

“Really?” Her shoulders dropped. “I had so many questions.”

“She does that. Pops in and out like a loose lightbulb. It’s okay until she decides to ride sidesaddle in my lap on the bike. I almost died making this trip. Twice.”

She laughed softly, the sound like a summer breeze. “Where did she go?”

“To stalk Jason.”

She laughed again. I was on a roll. “He probably deserves it.”

“Agreed.”

She smoothed the skirt of her dress and asked, “Have you always been able to do what you do? Like, since you were a kid?”

I thought for a moment before answering, wondering how much to tell her. They say honesty is the best policy, but I’ve found people don’t really want to hear how bad they look in a swimsuit. “Since I was a kid? Yes, to a degree. But things became…amplified a handful of years ago.”

“Amplified how?”

I took the exit that would lead us back to Cruisers and my bike. “Do you remember the weird outbreak that shut Albuquerque down about five years ago?”

She shot up again with the memory. “I do. That was bizarre. A virus caused people to go crazy and become violent overnight.”

I clicked my tongue. “That’s the one.”

“They had to quarantine the whole city and then it just stopped.”

“Thanks to a few of my closest friends.”

“They stopped the virus?” she asked in awe.

“It was never a virus. It was supernatural in nature.”

Her mouth rounded prettily. “I don’t understand.”

“Well, they kind of started it so it was pretty much up to them to stop it. The important thing is, they succeeded.” When she simply watched me, waiting for more, I obliged. “These friends are supernatural entities themselves and kind of accidentally opened a hell dimension on Earth. The demons from that dimension possessed…certain people and turned them violent.” She didn’t need to know they only possessed people with mental illnesses. People like me. “I was one of them.”

She sucked in a soft breath and then covered her mouth with both hands.

“One of my friends, one of the supernatural entities, was able to extricate the demon inside me, with the help of a departed Rottweiler named Artemis.”

“Dogs can become ghosts, too?”

I laughed. She would focus on that part. “They can, though like humans, they usually cross.”

She sank back in a stupor. “Dogs really do go to heaven?”

“I like to think there’s a special one just for them.”

“Why did it possess you? Was it a wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time kind of scenario?”

Back to the honesty thing. I’d come this far. May as well lay it all out on the table. I mustered all the courage my depleted stores had to offer and charged forward. “It took a while, but my friends figured out the demons from that particular dimension only possessed people… with a mental disorder.” I circled an index finger around my ear to make light of that fact. “You know, the crazies.”

I expected her complete and total withdrawal from the conversation. Instead, she tilted her head and studied me. “What kind of mental disorder?”

I checked the GPS. “Is it this turn or the next one?”

“Oh,” she said as though suddenly realizing how close we were. She pointed. “This one.”

With a nod of understanding, I turned left and then pulled into Cruisers about half a block later. I threw her truck into park and then turned to face her. “Thank you, Halle. Zachary wouldn’t be alive right now if not for you.”

“Yeah, well, you’re the one who went head-to-head with a delivery truck.”

She pressed her hands together in her lap as we sat, neither of us sure what to say. I was so bad with small talk. And since we were just sitting there with nothing to do, I took another look. Just a quick one. Just to make sure I didn’t miss anything.

Since her impending death wasn’t detrimentally close at hand, I had to actually concentrate to see her last moment. The closer the death was, the less I had to focus until it became overpowering. Like today with Zachary. The moment had shone brightly in my mind the second my gaze drifted anywhere near him. Times like those, I couldn’t stop the visions if I wanted to, thus my obsession with the kid’s inevitable demise.

But this time, I didn’t stop the vision of Halle’s last moment. Even though watching it was like a knife twisting painfully in my heart. I took my time and studied her surroundings. The red bathwater. The limp hands. The slit wrists. The image paralyzed my lungs, and I wanted to leave, but something from my first glimpse had been nagging me, niggling at the back of my mind. I needed to know what.

Then I saw it. A reflection in a mirror…

“Halle,” I said, my voice barely more than a whisper. But before I could say anything else, a raucous cheer hit us, and patrons started streaming out of the bar, clapping, hooting, and hollering. They surrounded the truck and started banging on the hood in enthusiasm.

I rolled my eyes. I was going to kill him.

“Do you think they know?” Halle asked with a giggle.

I spotted Jason, his shit-eating grin full of pride. Did he tell the whole fucking town? “He is so dead.”

Halle giggled again and got out of the truck as those around her offered to buy her a drink. An older gentleman pulled her into his arms and hugged her tightly. Had to be her father, Jason’s partner.

Jason opened the driver’s side door and hauled me out, but celebrating was about the last thing on my mind. All I could think about was Halle’s last moment and the reflection in the mirror of a man’s hand holding a straight razor.