A Ghost of a Chance (25 page)

Keenan lifted his eyes to Constance, where he always went in a crisis. “What do I do?”

That profound dark face thawed into an expression that touched his heart. There was a moment when he saw not a ghost, but a human smiling back at him. “You trust in yourself and have faith in the future.” The words were so quiet, he was sure only he had heard them. She put a hand next to his head and smiled. “I’ve always been with you. I’m not going anywhere now.”

“Good boy.” The satisfaction in Reggie’s voice scraped against Keenan’s anger, but he clamped his teeth down instead of speaking. “Now, drop the gun, turn around, and spread your arms and legs. We’ll do the rest. You’re sure you won’t join me?” The words were now inside Keenan’s head.

“Fuck off, Reggie.”

“Too bad. It would have been fun.”

Keenan spun around and threw the gun as hard as he could across the room where it hit one of the doors and clattered to the ground. He was half hoping the damned thing would go off and put a bullet into his brainpan. No such luck.

A voice filled the air at the back of Keenan’s head and the next words took the breath out of his lungs.

“Before he dies, Reggie, you have to tell him the truth,” Constance said.

“What?” Keenan asked.

Reggie folded his arms. “If he hasn’t figured it out already, what’s the point?”

“He has the right to know why you’re doing this.”

For some reason goose bumps rose on Keenan’s arms. “Why
are
you doing this?” he asked Reggie.

The expression that came back to Keenan chilled him to the bone. “
She
knows.”

When he nodded behind Keenan, he was almost too terrified to look, but he twisted his neck anyway.

Isabella stood in the middle of the chapel, her hair flying loosely around her, her arms outstretched. When she lifted her eyes to Keenan, her face was wet with tears.

A mirage of light danced around her, until he had to squint in the brilliance.

When the light faded, the succubus stood before him, her face now fully exposed. Keenan’s heart caught in his chest.

“Isabella?”

He took a step away from her. Shock sent waves of numb up his legs, into his ass, and along his spine. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

Those eyes. The opalescent eyes he had glimpsed in the darkness two nights before. Why hadn’t he recognized them then? Now it seemed as clear as ice.

“He is doing this to punish me for disobeying him, but I don’t mind now,” she whispered, lowering her arms and floating toward him. “Azazel knew I would try to save you, just as I did centuries ago.” She threw a loving look in the demon’s direction and Keenan’s insides turn to goo. “I can’t remember now why I hid from him. It was foolish of me.”

Keenan tried to get the words to make sense, but failed miserably. “I don’t understand. You were human.” He looked at his hands and brushed his lips with his fingers. “I touched you… I kissed you… You were real.”

“She was human once,” Reggie said leering at Dabria. “It is one of the perks of divine forgiveness, don’t you see? Humanity is one of the fringe benefits. Unfortunately,” he added pursing his lips, “something I have never experienced.” A laugh echoed around Keenan.

Keenan bunched his fingers into fists and confronted Dabria. “Why?”

“Don’t you see, old bean?” Reggie’s voice filled Keenan’s brain and he couldn’t shut it out. “She has been protecting you from me since the day you died in Italy.”

Keenan hardened his heart against the lust in Dabria’s face as the monster spoke.

“When I found you here, I lured Amos from heaven and used him to capture my sweet Muse.” Reggie cast a lascivious eye in Dabria’s direction. She pulled her arms across her chest and lowered her chin.
Was she actually blushing?

Reggie whispered close to Keenan’s ear, “Helping me to get your seed was a test of her loyalty, and she pounced on the opportunity like the wanton whore she is. You must understand, old corker; who do you think gave me the idea of taking your body? A kind of delicious irony, don’t you think? It is in her black nature to betray those whom she seduces; or did you think she loved you?” The throaty chuckle buzzed against Keenan’s eardrum. “She could no more love you than she could love a slab of beef.”

Keenan could no longer keep his heart in check; it broke against his ribs and sent rushes of pain into every part of his soul. It was like someone had kicked him hard in the nuts. He went to his knees, held his stomach to keep it from escaping, and put one hand on the dusty carpet to stay erect. His world shook when an involuntary shuttering breath finally allowed oxygen into his lungs. A plaintive
No
escaped his throat, but it did not stop the words.

Dabria lifted dark eyes to him and a slow smile crept upward. Keenan lost the last glimmer of hope. “You poured into me without a fight, my sweet.” Her words tightened Keenan’s chest forcing hot tears from his eyes. “Men are so pliable.”

“I don’t believe it,” Keenan whispered. “How could you have set this all up? The office, the police station…?”

Dabria languidly crossed to Reggie and allowed him to run his fingers down her neck. Keenan watched her shiver under the caress.

“Your boss owed me a favor,” Reggie said. “It was easy to disguise Dabria and put her in your path. I was going to let nature take its course, but you are the damndest idiot. Every time she tried to lure you, you turned the other way. Bad luck, really. I finally had to have her seduce you the old fashioned way.”

Keenan balled his fists and struggled to his feet.

“You tricked me! You bitch!”

He reached out to grab her, but she vanished and his hands fell through a strange blue smoke. An invisible rope yanked him back and Reggie’s voice insinuated itself into Keenan’s neck.

“Can’t have you damaging my property, chum. I’ve worked very hard to get us all to this point. All you have to do right now is stand perfectly still. Nothing easier.”

Numb with betrayal, aching with agony, confusion turning his mind to slush, Keenan spread his arms, threw his head back, and screamed at the heavens. He stared at the skeletal chandelier and waited for it to be over.

Chapter Twenty
Past Tense

Keenan’s mother was never one for nurturing when he was growing up. He spent most of his time with one neighbor or the other while she worked a job or two and put in her allotted three to four hours at the bar each night. There was an array of part-time father figures in his life, even one or two who actually threw a ball to him from time to time. But, for the most part, Keenan spent his hours alone.

He had never acquired much of a taste for television; not that he didn’t spend hours in front of it, mind you, but there was always a scrap of paper on his lap and a rusty can of crayons, pencil stubs, and discarded pens next to his knee. Keenan’s escape had always been his art. Dragons drawn on old mimeographed school assignments, coloring book backs covered in sketched soldiers with red crayon blasts coming out of gray guns, and gnarled pirates with black conical hats, marching across old newsprint, filled hundreds of tattered Pee Chees when he was growing up.

When he turned eight, the Carlsons (an engineer, his wife, and their four sprouting daughters) moved in next door and Keenan’s life took its first major U-turn.

Having used up all her favors with the rest of the neighbors, Keenan’s mom approached the new ones and asked if they’d be willing to watch her “little angel” (which was funny, because that’s
not
what she usually called him when they were alone). Mrs. Carlson took one look at Keenan’s face, smiled, and said she’d be glad to. Keenan’s mom handed him off like a loaf of bread and ran for the bus.

Keenan was introduced to two things that day: girls (who he thought were gross at the time and then changed his mind a few years later) and Mr. Carlson’s art studio.

Matt Carlson was an amateur sculptor and a damned good one at that. His specialty was wildlife: dolphins, eagles, lions, whales, and just about anything else you could think of. Every evening after supper, Mr. Carlson would rescue Keenan from the clutches of his adoring daughters. The girls, if not thwarted, loved to give Keenan a nightly “makeover” or some other diabolical plan to keep them entertained through the evening. Telling the females in no uncertain terms that this was ‘man’s stuff,’ he’d take Keenan down to his sanctuary (which was actually a ratty unfinished basement) where he’d throw him a piece of clay and tell him to get to work. Just like that. It was the inspiration of those two years with Carlson that sent Keenan to the art museum, made him study hard for four years to get his degree (on his own), and took him eventually to Florence where he studied for another two years, until his money dried up.

Mr. Carlson used to say to him, “Keenan, if you want something bad enough, you’ve got to work hard, get it built in your head to the last whisper, and then promise yourself you won’t forget it. Otherwise, your dreams won’t survive beyond your everyday.”

Keenan had contemplated that statement all his years through school, living abroad, and even the first two years of struggling to be a paid fine artist when he returned to the states. But hunger changed his priorities, a need to sleep out of the rain became an ambition, and life brushed that sentiment, along with many other ideals, under the ragged rug of necessity. The memory slipped away.

For the first time in many years, Carlson’s deep voice echoed just inside Keenan’s ears as he closed his eyes to wait for whatever it was Reggie was going to do to him.

…get it built in your head to the last whisper…promise yourself you won’t forget it…

Keenan wasn’t sure why the memory decided to slam into his skull just at that moment. Here he was about to take a one-way trip to the ethereal amusement park and his head was pondering broken ambitions.
Way to go, brain!

Whatever Reggie had fed him was beginning to expand at Keenan’s center like an inflating black balloon. Keenan knew he should be scared shitless, but he wasn’t. There was a kind of fidgety calm growing from that same place and he didn’t feel nervous at all. More like curious.

“Put your arms out, baby.” Constance’s voice meandered from one ear to the other, making it sound like she was on both sides of him. “No matter what happens, just do what I tell ya, ok?”

Keenan lifted his arms out to the side and attempted a feeble shrug. “Sure thing, Cee. What are you going to do?”

There was a long silence. A cold draft brushed the hairs on his neck, making them stand at attention.

“I’m sorry, sweetie.” A deep sigh rolled over him like mist. “Brace yourself; this is goin’ to hurt like hell.”

Cold settled into his back, his outstretched arms, and into the base of his skull. It was like pressing his back into an iceberg. With a jolt that rocked Keenan from top to bottom, needles of pain stabbed into every pore.

Entangled in the arctic freeze, Keenan’s screams grew louder and louder as winter moved through him. The intense pain caused endorphins to fire one after the other, but it was no good; they sputtered out as soon as they ignited, too weak to battle the overextended neurons in his brain. The only thing keeping him conscious was the black goo now growing exponentially through his body.

“Trust me.” He heard the soothing words through his screams.

Scenes from Keenan’s life flicked through his mind like an old nickelodeon. A fight with a boy named James when he was seven, cleaning up vomit after one of his mom’s binges, holding a breast in his hand for the first time and the girl’s sweet smile, tourists buying his first painting on the streets of Florence, breakfast with Isabella. The images picked up speed, churning out emotions like toothpaste from a tube; Keenan didn’t have time to experience any of them.

Suddenly, just before the cold reached his heart, his endorphins threw in the towel. In one final thrust of agony, everything stopped and Keenan shut down for good.

Chapter Twenty-One
Living in a Non-Material World

Keenan couldn’t open his eyes. There were no eyes to open. But he could see… sort of. It wasn’t black, exactly, just a misty dark gray that swarmed around him. He could make out shapes, but they were fuzzy too. Behind him a presence nestled against the back of his awareness, warm, comforting, like the cocoon of the succubus. The silence was absolute; no background noise, no hiss of the world inside his head. No head. No heartbeat. No blood rushing through his veins. Nothing.

He was dead.

That realization was the first concrete actuality that penetrated the smoke of his existence. He was dead. He no longer existed. He was a…

Ghost.

If he had had a body, he would have screamed his lungs out. Keenan settled for the next best thing.

The single elongated word was as clear as a diamond in his psyche.

Fuuuuuuuuuck!

It’s okay, baby.

The thought fell through his understanding like icy water on hot feet.