Chapter 2

"Did you see this? It says that your sister is a hero. It says her name is Sheppard now. When did she marry, and why wasn't it in the paper or something? I'm assuming that this is bullshit. She's about the stupidest person that I've ever met." Doug took the newspaper from Shelly and read the headline. "What did I tell you about jerking shit from me, Douglas? I will hand you things, but you're not to take them because you want them. It's considered rude and uncouth." Doug ignored Shelly for the moment.

He was sick to death of her whining about her own set of rules about shit. Trying to read the paper while ignoring her, she snatched the paper from him, ripping the paper in half and destroying his barely-held temper. Not that he had a good hold on it most of the time, but she was on his last nerve today. A quick, hard slap to her face had her falling backward and ripping the paper in half. Christ, his temper exploded, and he felt it right behind his eyes all the way to his feet. It just took him over the edge.

Picking her up by her hair, he slapped her several times until he had to rein in his anger or kill her. As much as he wanted her dead, he needed her, too. Dropping her to the floor, he picked up the other half of the paper and noticed that the article that he had been reading wasn't affected by her stupidity. Sitting at the little table that came with the hotel that they'd been renting, he spread out the paper and decided that he was going to have to do something to make it up to Shelly, or she'd not leave him alone. He could almost feel her pestering her hourly until he did lose it again. Christ, didn't she ever learn?

The paper read like a blow-by-blow accounting of what had happened when the men that he'd hired had gone to collect the money that she'd had. While he knew that she didn't make all that much, he also knew that the restaurant was insured and that all that they took to pay off his debt would be covered. Why more people didn't take advantage of this way to make ends meet was beyond him. It wasn't all that hard. Well, not normally. He had no idea why his sister had stepped in this time. The stupid bitch.

Actually, Douglas knew that his sister was far from stupid. The bitch part was true, but not her being stupid. When they'd been kids together, she would always make great grades when he nearly failed each and every test he took. Mostly, it was because he didn't try all that hard. And she worked herself to death just to keep herself from getting anything lower than an A. Then, when she'd gotten accepted into college at the age of sixteen, he'd made fun of her relentlessly until she moved away.

Their parents never had much to do with them as children, either. No matter how hard Carrie tried to show them her grade cards or a test she would have aced, they simply ignored her. Him, too, for the most part. The only time they noticed him was when he'd been arrested for something or when he fucked up bad enough that it required them to pay for an attorney. The older he got, the more frequent that happened. Until they passed away.

To this day, he still had no idea what they died of. First, his mom got really sick, ending up in the hospital, and then his dad. A week after Mom passed away, Dad died in his sleep. He'd been so angry with them that he'd not ever been able to forgive them. To leave him all alone after Carrie had left him as well. People were just asses, and he couldn't stand to be around them much anymore, either.

"You fucking hit me." Douglas looked at Shelly and noticed something that he'd not before. She had aged a great deal since he'd first met her. Christ he realized, that had been nearly fifteen years ago now. Reaching out to touch the streak of gray that was getting fairly wide on her head, she smacked his hand away. Smacking her back, he yanked on a handful of her hair until he held onto the hank of hair that had been on her head. "What the fuck did you do? Christ, Douglas, that fucking hurt. I think you snatched me about bawld."

"I was taking out the gray. I don't like it." He turned his back to her but listened carefully for her to move. She didn't care for anyone to turn their back on her any more than he did when someone did it to him. "From now on, you'll color your hair or find another partner. I won't be seen with an old hag anymore."

She jerked him around, and before he could slug her again, she yanked on his own hair. Christ, he saw stars. It hurt that bad. Before he could get back at her, she slapped a handful of his own hair into his face. He looked at it and was shocked to see that it, too, was all silverish gray.

"You might want to take your own advice, dumbass. You have more gray than I do. Not to mention, your beard is mostly white too. How old are you now? Forty? Forty-five? You could almost pass for Santa Claus. You're even built like the jolly old fuck is." When she walked away from him, limping and holding her head, he decided to see what the fuck she was talking about. And got up to look in the bathroom mirror.

Douglas wasn't just surprised but shocked by how much gray was on his face. Even his hair, usually so dark that it looked like it was blue, was mostly gray and silver, too. Deciding, for the first time in about…well, he didn't know how long it had been, but he decided to shave off his facial hair. It was a good deal harder than he thought it would be.

It was too long for the razor that he had. He didn't trust Shelly enough to hand her the scissors to have her trim him up so he was sawing at his face with whatever he could find. Which just happened to be a pair of the smallest damned scissors that he'd ever seen. What a woman would use them for was beyond him, but he worked at it for over two hours, thinking about halfway through his chopping job that it might have been better off being all over gray.

Exhausted and his face bleeding from the hair mostly being pulled out rather than cut, he sat down on the commode and laid his head on the sink. He was also out of shape, he realized. Douglas couldn't remember the last time that he'd been on a walk that didn't have him resting after a few minutes. He'd been a runner when he'd been younger, loving the way his body responded when he had to make a quick getaway. But no more. He was fat. And gray. Looking in the mirror again, he also realized, too, that he was old. Shelly had been wrong about his age, too. He was nearly thirty-nine years old. He couldn't remember when that happened to him either.

"That would make Carrie…let me remember." He usually hated to talk to himself, but today, there wasn't anyone around that would help him so he tried to work things out. "She'd been fourteen years younger than me, so that would make her twenty-five. That doesn't seem right."

But no matter how many times he worked it out in his head, she was twenty-five, and he was almost forty. Christ, where had all the years gone. Not to mention, he thought he was much too young to be having so much in the way of a gray head. Then he remembered his father.

Dad had been nearly all white when he'd celebrated his fiftieth birthday. Also, he'd gotten quite bawld by then, too. Mother had had a lot of streaks in her hair that were colorless but he didn't know if that was because she'd had it made that way or what. Another thing that he remembered was finding the bald spot as big as his fist on the back of his mother's head when he'd walked behind her while she sat at the dining room table.

He'd been so shocked by that. Douglas hadn't said a word about it. Just the thought of her being naked in the back of her head had him picking up the mirror that was there and looking at the back of his own head.

And there it was. His mother's bad hair. Not only did he have a place back there that had not a root of hair, but it was nearly as big as his entire head, with just a few sprinkles of his hair that seemed to know to float over it. Hiding—not so well how he was aging much worse than his parents had.

He needed to do something. Anything to make it so that he didn't look older than he was. Coming out of the bathroom, he had a towel wrapped around his head like he'd only just popped out of the shower and went into the bedroom to their suite. Pulling on the first thing that he touched, a dark suit that usually reminded him of a funeral cloak, he was headed out the door when he remembered that he was dead. Or thought to be dead.

"Mother fuck." Standing there, with his fist wrapped around the handle of the door, he cursed a string of curse words, mostly things that he'd made up, for ten minutes. Then he turned, needing to find something to destroy. All he found was an empty room of even a television. The hotel hadn't replaced it since he'd knocked it off the wall when he'd first started living there. He'd not been able to leave then, either.

There was no sign of Shelly either, thinking that she might be willing to allow him to—well, willing wouldn't be what she'd call it, but he would knock her around a bit more. He loved to hurt the bitch because she'd give as good as she got until he used his anger to knock her out. Smiling, he leaned his head against the still-closed door.

There had to be something that he could do. Other than, of course, go out and tell the world that he was indeed alive and that he should be in trouble for all the shit that he'd been up to before and after his supposed death. It was completely unfair that people didn't have a sense of humor about things. He could have made his comeback, and no one would have batted an eye if they were to have a little fun about it.

~*~

Carrie was home, not her home but that of Archie. It was a fucking huge house with plenty of room for her to choose any room that she wanted. However, it was Archie who told her that the master suite had been redone and that it was ready for her to use.

"I've been working on the rooms one at a time. But since you've come along, Sunny has sent over some magical beings. I don't want to freak you out and tell you what they are, and they're finishing up the other rooms. I'm having all the rooms updated, mostly the kitchen, because it's really outdated." She asked him where he was sleeping. "I've been staying at Wrangler's house with him while his home and the others are being built. Again, with magic."

"What are they? No, don't tell me. They're unicorns. No, that wouldn't be safe for them. Faeries? Yes, it has to be one of those." He told her that it was faeries, but there were a lot of them. "Of course. I don't know that I believe you or not but I'm guessing that I'll have to get used to a lot of things before this is done."

"Yes. I have, as well. I did want to talk to you about being the leap leader with me. It's a good job to have. I can take care of the others in the leap that have been neglected for a long time." She asked him what she'd be doing if he took the job. "Mostly, finding ways to help the people that depend on us. If you see something that needs to be taken care of, you can have it taken care of. Right now I'm thinking that we need to upgrade some of the houses for the elderly. Most of the leap is older. The young people have been leaving because nothing was done to keep them around. I want to take care of that too."

"That's a great idea. I like that." The two of them talked about what needed to be done to bring in more people. After he left, telling her that he had to go and see Johisa about the accounts, she decided to take a nap. She'd been resting as much as she could. It felt nice to just be able to lie on the couch and close her eyes.

Waking up, not knowing what had startled her to wake, Carrie sat up and looked around the room. Sitting across from her, a woman was staring at her. When asking her who she was got an answer that she'd not expected. Nor believed, for that matter.

"My name is Shelly Gibson. I'm dead. Or at least I think that's what happened to me. I'm not entirely sure. Anyway, I'm…I was your brother's girlfriend up until—To be honest, I'm not doing well with times. I can hang out a little, but then I get sort of weak and sleep, I guess. Only to wake up someplace else. Like here. I've been trying to find you since I passed away." Carrie asked her how she had died. "Douglas beat me all the time. I think that it was our thing. Anyway, I read in the paper about you being a hero and we got into a fight. That doesn't matter, not really, but he beat me up again. Snatched some of my hair out of my head too. I ended up in the emergency room because I started throwing up. The doctors there told me that I had a concussion, a bad one, and that they needed to take some x-rays. I had a brain bleed, they told me when the doctor came to see me. After giving me something to calm me down…I think I died before they could operate on me. At least, that's what I'm thinking. I don't know how I died other than I just showed up at the hotel where I'd been staying, and Douglas didn't acknowledge me in any way."

"So you're telling me that you're dead and that my brother had something to do with it. I don't know what your game is, but Douglas is dead." Shelly told her that he faked his death so that he didn't get killed when some of the people that he borrowed money from would leave him alone. "I'm sorry. This is a lot to take in. He's alive. And has been all this time. While I don't want to believe you, this does sound like something that he'd do."

As she was sitting there, talking to Shelly about some of the things that had happened since her brother faked his death, Nash joined her on the couch. He asked her who she was talking to.

"Shelly Gibson. Do you know her?" He shook his head telling her that he did not. "She claims, and I have to admit that I'm believing what she says about him, but she told me that he killed her. Indirectly, I guess, but he slapped her around, and that was how she ended up in the ED. She died before they could take care of something—"

"You don't believe me?" Carrie turned to Shelly and told her that it was a lot to take in. "I guess I can understand that. It's not every day that a dead person would visit you. How long have the dead been coming to you?"

"You're my first." She looked at Nash when he cleared his throat. "She's talking to me about how I don't believe her. I feel like Alice and that I've tumbled down a rabbit hole."

Nash threw back his head and laughed. "You're such a delight. However, if she's speaking to you from the beyond, I'd believe her. I just checked with the hospital, and a woman died two days ago from blunt force. Her body hasn't been identified, but I was able to have the faerie that I sent there to verify that it's the woman you're talking to."

"Now, what do I do?" Nash told her that Archie was on his way home, and he wanted to see if he could see her as well. "So we just hang out? I don't know about you, but I'm feeling decidedly overwhelmed right now."

"I don't blame you, love. This is something new to all of us." Carrie didn't comment on the fact that there were three more men in the room with them. All of them looked as if they'd had their throat cut out. She asked Nash to describe what the men looked like that he'd killed. "One of them is taller than the other two. He has blond hair and a tattoo on his face of a teardrop. The second man was shorter and very heavy. He had as many as three chins. His hair was dark, almost black. The third man. Let me think. By the time I got to him, he'd shot at me three times. I don't know if you can see it or not but he didn't have his right hand after I was finished with him. Is that them?"

"Yes. All three of them are here and they're demanding that I bring them back to life. I'm not going to do that. I don't know that I can but I wouldn't anyway." Nash told her that he was glad for that. Just then, Archie came into the room and sat down on her other side. "Can you see them too?"

He looked around the room until she pointed out that Shelly was sitting on the couch and that the three men were in the doorway to go outside. Shaking his head, he said that he couldn't but that he'd be there for her if they came at her.

"You think they can harm me?" He said he didn't know anyone else who could see them, so he hadn't any idea if they could or not. "Good point. Nash can't see them either. I'm assuming that this is some of the magic that I got from you. If so, why can't you see them too?" Archie took her hand into his and kissed the back of it.

"I don't have any idea. But I would say that's about right." He looked in the direction of where Shelly was sitting again. "I don't know how to help you on this other than to be with you when you're working. Do you know what it is that you're supposed to do for the dead? Have you any clue that would help them or something?"

"I suddenly have a bunch of information in my head. When you touched me, it was just there. I can help them, but not illegal. Also, I can do things for those who have been murdered. However, if anything happens, like they try to make me kill someone for them, I can send them away." She looked back at the three men that had murdered before. "I can tell what their deeds are, too. Those three men that you killed, Nash? They have a long list of people that they've murdered. I even know where the bodies are."

She thought of their mother, a woman who deserved to be sent away more than anything. Carrie had heard about how she'd treated her sons and wanted them to be safe. It occurred to her that she knew that she'd been causing trouble to the other dead people in the holding area. What she hadn't been aware that it was called.

"What the fuck are you doing?" The moment that the elderly woman spoke, she knew who it was. LouCinda Sheppard had made her way to her. It was Shelly who confirmed it for her by telling her that she'd been harming the dead since her death. "I asked you a question. What do you think you're doing with my ungrateful curs of my children?"

"Guys? Your mother is here. At least, that's who I think it is. There is an elderly man with her, but he committed suicide. I have to figure out how to speak to him." Both of them stood up, but they sat down again when she asked them to. "She's complaining about how you all are responsible for her death. I don't believe that any more than I believe that the world is going to be all up in smoke in ten minutes."

"What is she saying about us? I'm curious to know." Carrie told the two brothers how she was bitching about dying before they did. "She wanted us to be dead. Tell her who you are to me, love. I'm betting that gets her really pissed off."

"You're not supposed to be here without an appointment." LouCinda told her that it was her house and she'd do as she pleased. "But it's not your house. It's mine and Archies. We're going to be getting married soon too. Might even have a bunch of little cubs and tell the world how we made you a grannie. Won't that be awesome?"

"It will not. You get that notion out of your head right now. I'll not have you…who are you anyway? Some tart that thinks to get my son to marry you? He won't. I don't know why he's thinking that he can do a damned thing without my approval, but none of them are going to be married. Over my dead body."

"Well, that's easy enough. You are dead, dumbass. And you'll keep control of yourself, or I'll send you away. Now, as I was saying, we're going to be living here and making this house a great deal more fun than you ever allowed. And when the holidays come around, we'll put up the biggest tree we can find. In every room of the house, too." She glanced at Shelly, who told her that she was there to help her if she needed it. "Now I have a helper. Your mother is still bitching, but I'm ignoring her for now. What do you want done with her? I can send her away; that's what I'd do, or we can send her back to where she came from."

"Away." She asked Archie if he wanted to ask his brothers. Perhaps they'd want some questions answered. "I'll ask them. That's a good point. Though I will have to admit, whatever spews from her mouth would be a lie."

After Archie spoke to his brothers by the way of the link that they all shared, they all agreed to send her away. Her father, as well. Asking Shelly what the repercussions would be if she did that, Shelly said that nothing would come back on her as that's what she's around for. Seeding LouCinda away was fine by her so she simply told her she was no longer welcome in this plane or the other. That she was forbidden to come back again.

When she disappeared, the elderly man stepped forward. There was so much anger and evilness coming from him that the air surrounding the man was bright red with it. While she thought of that, she looked at Shelly. Her air was blue. And according to the information that was in her mind, she wasn't perfect but she wasn't evil either.

"She's gone. Now, your grandfather? What do you want to do with him?" Archie said that he had a question for him. After he asked the old man, she waited for his answer like everyone else did.

"Why did I treat you so badly? Christ, you weren't wanted in the first place. And if I'd of had my way, I would have killed your father the first time he had sex with my baby girl. But she didn't mind it as much until she got knocked up. I hated the six of you more than…well, my own mate. And I hated her with every breath that I took for trying to make my little girl into her image. She was easy to kill, unlike the lot of you. You've no idea how many times I would try to smother you. Drowning you in the tub, too. It was like you had nine lives or something. Always hanging on out of spite to me. Then that fucking bitch, Lily, came along and made it so I couldn't touch you, and that pissed me off enough that I killed my son-in-law when I couldn't kill you kids. You hung on like your…that's funny, you hung on like your life depended on it. So I guess that's right. What do you plan on doing with me? Huh? Do you think you can just toss me away like she did your mother? It's not going to happen. I'm here for good. I have friends in places like the one where I'm staying that will kill you off so that I can have my life back. Yeah, you heard me, I'm going to be alive soon and you'll see just how bad I can treat you six. Good Christ, I can't believe I was stupid enough to kill myself off when I should have turned the gun on the lot of you." Carrie understood that there were people in the world of the dead who bragged about returning the dead to the living. But it wasn't possible.

With a snap of her fingers, something that she'd never been able to accomplish before, the man disappeared in a puff of dark red smoke. Almost like he'd exploded where he stood, and the evilness of his life was all that was left of him. Turning to Archie, she waited for a few seconds before speaking to him.

"We need to bond. I want to be assured of being able to protect your family if someone like that comes around again. It won't be your family, I don't believe so, but there might be some people that don't care for what I'm doing with their kind." Archie asked her if she was sure. "I am. I don't think I've ever been so sure of something than I am bonding with you. I'm not sure if I love you. I'm sorry about that. I don't believe that I've ever loved anyone before. I did love my parents. But I've also come to the conclusion that they weren't all that good to me anyway. It was always about themselves. And Douglas when he needed their help financially. As in him needing bail and a good attorney. "

"How often was that? I'm assuming quite frequently, knowing what little I know about him now." Carrie said it wasn't too bad when he'd been a teenager but it got so much worse when he got older. "I'm assuming that you've never been in trouble. That's why they never noticed you. Is that about right?"

"Yes. They loved each other without thought to their children. I tried acting out, getting them to at least notice me but that wasn't happening. Then Douglas started his life of crime, and that was all they could see with him. All they wanted to see, I guess. When they died, my mother passed on first, then my dad. They said that he died of a broken heart. Mom died of lung cancer because she smoked two packs of cigarettes a day up until she got lung cancer. After that, I think it was a race for her to smoke as much as she could. Stupid of her, but then I don't know that she was ever very smart. Mom seemed to be the breadwinner most of the time." Archie asked her if her mother had the money. "Yes. Dad didn't have anything before they married. Mom had married him after her parents had died, and they had left her a great deal of money. They didn't spend it on much, not even to upgrade the house, so when they died, they left it all to me. I guess when I think about it, they had noticed me and rewarded me for not causing any trouble. Douglas wasn't mentioned in the will, and as far as I can remember, he's never asked about it. Is he really still alive?"

"Yes." Archie took her hand into his before continuing. "When Shelly's body is sorted out, he'll have to leave the hotel. I'm going to go to the police station now to identify her body as well as tell them that Douglas has been there all along. I can't believe that he's not been caught. But he will be now. If you don't mind."

"No. That'll be great. One less thing that I have to concern myself with." Carrie looked around the room at the others there and back to Archie. "I've set up some rules that they have to follow. As soon as I can find a place where they can come to me, I'll make sure that no one comes to our home again."

After a quick kiss on her mouth, he left her there with his brother. Nash was going to take her around to find a suitable building—it really didn't have to be much—that she could use to make her job work better. She also had to get with the bank and make sure that her brother couldn't get into her or Archies accounts.