Drowning in Amber (A Marie Jenner Mystery Book 2) (27 page)

“It is, Eddie. No doubt about it.” She leaned her head back and closed her eyes, smiling as the warm sun touched her pocked face. “I hope I remember to do this a lot more, the next time around.”

“What do you mean?”

She sighed deeply and turned toward me. “You really don’t understand any of this, do you? At all.”

“Any of what?” I was starting to feel supremely stupid. I should be the one showing her the ropes. After all, I’d been dead a long time, and she—well, her body—hadn’t even been picked up off the street yet.

“This is the time to make some decisions, so we move on.”

“To what?”

“To whatever.” She shook her head, as though disturbed that she couldn’t make the retard—that would be me—understand something that was crystal clear to her. “That’s what you’re supposed to do, now. Look at the way you lived your life, figure out what you’d like to do better, and then move on. To the next place. Or stage, or something.”

I was beginning to feel like I was being stubborn in my stupidity, but I really couldn’t wrap my head around what she was saying. Marie had talked about me moving on, but I thought I had to understand how or why I had died. Who had killed me. Yet, here was Noreen, talking about how I lived my life being the key.

“So you’re leaving?”

“Absolutely!” She said it so cheerfully, I felt like crying.

“But I can show you how to get high—”

She hushed me with a flick of her hand. “I don’t want to hear about it. For God’s sake, that shit finally killed me.” She motioned to the crowd still hanging around the mouth of the alley. “Why would I want to go back to it, now that I’m free?”

“You’re free?” I couldn’t believe I was hearing her say that, and I started to feel, around the sadness at her passing, anger at her. “How the hell—”

“Once the body’s gone, the only thing holding you to that shit is your mind. If you decide you need it, then you need it. Me? I’m not going that way.”

She stood up and stretched, a lazy half-smile on her foaming mouth. “I wasted my life. Let stuff that happened to me when I was growing up rule the way I lived the rest of it. I am not doing that again.”

“Again?” I stumbled after her, trying to keep up, but she walked more sure-footedly than I’d ever seen her. “But you’re dead.”

“You really don’t get this, do you?” she said, stopping so suddenly I almost ran into her. I jerked to a stop, suddenly afraid of what I’d find if I walked into her misty form.

“No,” I said. “I don’t get any of this. It wasn’t our fault we ended up here. We
talked
about this!”

I felt frantic. She was my sister, for God’s sake. We’d grown up on these streets together. She had to remember. She had to stay.

“Eddie, my dear, we both wasted a lot of time—our lives, to be exact—blaming others for what happened to us. We could have done something good with our lives. Maybe even something noble, but we didn’t. We hung out here and got high. Every day. And blamed our fathers. Every fucking day. We never moved on from that moment in time. It’s like we were trapped in amber.”

She was right about that. We had done that. Blamed our fathers. Even after I’d figured out that mine wasn’t that bad—not as bad as hers, anyhow—I’d still played the blame game. Because after the blame game, we got high.

“But this is the next part,” she said. “We aren’t bound by the rules we made for ourselves anymore. Well, I’m not, anyhow. I promised myself if I ever got out of this mess, I’d do something that meant something. No more blame game, no more waste. No more hurting myself to shut out what happened to me when I was little. I want to live, Eddie. Really live.”

“But you’re dead, Noreen.” I wished I could hold her hand. Wished I could hold her to me, because I could feel her slipping away, even though she was standing right beside me. I even reached out my hand, but pulled back when I saw bright little lights forming around her.

“I know, Eddie. But I’ve decided to give life another go.” She smiled at me, and even with the foam, it was a sweet smile. Finally, there was no anger on her face. She looked ten years younger than she had alive.

Twinkly lights began to buzz around her like fireflies. Most were white, but some were red, and blue, and there were even a couple of black ones. They flitted around her, covering her in sparkle. It was pretty and frightening, all at that same time.

“What’s going on?”

“It’s time for me to leave.”

“But I want you to stay!” I wailed those words, sounding like a fucking kid. And then I did start to cry. I couldn’t help myself. “Please stay with me.”

“I don’t want to,” she replied, the number of flitting lights growing and growing, until it was hard to see her in the middle of it all. “And you shouldn’t want to stay, either. This part is done. For both of us, Eddie. Just make a decision, and then let the rest of it go.”

Her voice was getting as misty as her body, if that makes any sense. It was like she was talking to me from a long way away, even though she was standing right in front of me.

“What do you mean, make a decision!” I cried. “Please! Stay!”

She didn’t answer me. As the snowstorm of flickering lights flew around her, she reached her hands up over her head and laughed, delightedly. It was the happiest sound I’d ever heard come out of her mouth the whole time I’d known her. It didn’t even sound like her, to be honest.

And then I could no longer see her in the light.

“Noreen!” I screamed.

I ran toward the spot where she’d been, and the bright lights stung me. I waved my arms to drive them away. As I waved, they disbursed, flying up into the still autumn sunlight. Then everything about Noreen was gone, and I was truly, truly alone.

I dropped to my knees, and then onto my face on the dusty grass. A siren announced the arrival of the ambulance finally coming to take away Noreen’s body, but I didn’t give a shit. I just lay facedown on the grass, and I cried.

AFTER I PULLED
myself together, I went back to Marie’s office. I had some serious questions for her.

The big problem was, she was gone for the day. And from the way that James guy was banging around, I took it that there’d been a fight. Another one. I didn’t quite figure why these two even hung out together.

“Either lay her or move on,” I muttered when I heard him hammer on the computer keyboard and curse. “You are letting her wind you up way too much, man.”

Of course, he didn’t answer me. He couldn’t hear me. All he could do was squint at the computer screen, tap away at the keys, and curse a steady stream.

I went to the window and watched the living out doing their thing as the sun slowly set and the black took over.

Noreen had been right. Needing the drugs was definitely all in my head. I had been without a hit for almost a day, but I felt nothing past sadness. I was pretty sure this had a lot more to do with Noreen dying than with me not being high.

So why hadn’t Marie told me about this? If she had, I wouldn’t have bothered getting high. Maybe. At least I would have known I had a choice about it. Back when I was alive, I never felt like I had a choice. It was either get high or get sick. And nobody wants to get sick.

“You should have told me,” I muttered, staring out at the black and listening to James hammer away at the keys, then finally lie down to sleep on that cot in his office. “You should have explained all of this to me.”

I had a feeling I was playing that blame game again. All right, so Marie hadn’t told me, but someone had, and now I knew. So why didn’t I just make a decision about what to do with a brand new life or brand new next stage, or whatever the hell it was that I had, and disappear in a cloud of white lights, just like Noreen had?

Short answer? Because I wanted to give Marie hell. She should have told me what my options were. Told me I even had options. Given me a hint about any of it. I shouldn’t have had to wait for my street sister to die to understand what was going on in my own death.

“Bitch,” I muttered under my breath as I watched the streets slowly come alive with those of us who inhabited them after the sun went down. “You shoulda warned me about all of this.”

I WOKE UP
when the alarm went off, reached over to shut it down, and fell off the couch. I hit the rug with a thunk that rattled my skull and reminded me just how much scotch Jasmine and I had consumed the night before.

“Unhh.” My head swam, and I stayed on the floor for a minute, trying to get my bearings. Luckily the alarm—which was actually in Jasmine’s bedroom and nowhere near me—was now off. All I heard was softly playing cartoon music, with the occasional “Boinng!” thrown in for good measure.

I opened one eye, and saw Billie, Jasmine’s youngest, parked in front of the TV with a big bowl of some sort of cereal, eating enthusiastically.

He glanced over at me, saw my open eye, and smiled. “Can I turn it up now?”

“Sure.” I put one hand under me, and then another, and slowly pulled myself more or less upright. “What are you watching?”

He named some cartoon I’d never heard of, and I watched with him for a minute, until I was certain that I could actually navigate to the kitchen without falling down again. Then I got up and shakily walked through the big doorway, holding onto the wall as if it were my best friend on earth. Which, at that moment, it was.

Jasmine was up, drinking coffee and reading the newspaper. She grinned at me wickedly.

“How you feeling?”

“Horrible.” I shuffled my way to the cupboard and pulled out a cup. “The coffee smells good, though.”

“My special blend.” She glanced at the paper, then back at me. “Want something to eat?”

“Nope.” I poured a cup and shuffled over to the table. “Quite possibly, never again.”

“It was good scotch though, wasn’t it?”

I groaned. “Don’t remind me.”

She laughed as she pushed the cream and sugar in my direction, then went back to her newspaper.

“What are you reading?” I asked.

“There was another death at that park downtown,” she replied. “Looks like this one was an overdose, though.” She sighed sharply and turned the page. “I don’t understand why they don’t just close that thing. A waste of prime real estate, if you ask me.”

I stirred my coffee, wincing. Even the tinkle of the spoon on ceramic hurt my head. “I may not survive,” I muttered.

“You will, girl. You know you will.”

“I don’t know if I want to,” I said. My voice sounded sullen and whiny. “Do you have orange juice? Maybe that will help.”

“In the fridge.”

The orange juice tasted fabulous, and my headache abated. Not gone completely, but certainly no longer taking off the top of my head. Then I remembered why I’d decided to drink so very much the night before and groaned again.

“James is so mad at me,” I said. “What am I going to do?”

“We talked about this last night,” Jasmine said, pushing aside the newspaper. “Or don’t you remember?”

I thought for a second, and things started oozing their way into my memory. With it came some—actually, a lot—of embarrassment. “Oh, yeah. We
did
talk about him, didn’t we?”

“You actually didn’t talk about much else,” Jasmine said. “Are you ever going to tell him how you really feel about him?”

“Maybe. Someday. When I pull my life together.” I sipped the coffee. “Tastes great.”

“Yes, I know, and I’m not letting you change the topic, girl. You have to talk to him about how you feel.”

“But—”

“I don’t want to hear another ‘but’ out of your mouth. You know that’s just you trying to figure out a way to get around talking to him.”

“But—” I snapped my mouth shut and tried to figure out how to say the next sentence without starting with a
but
. Couldn’t come up with any way to do it, so sipped more coffee.

“Better,” Jasmine said.

“Whatever.”

Jasmine laughed. “You know you have to do it eventually.”

“No I don’t,” I replied stubbornly. “If we don’t get any more work there, I won’t even be working with him anymore. I’ll move on, he’ll move on, and that will be the end of it.”

That last comment made me cringe. Even though I knew it would be better for both of us if we didn’t pursue anything romantic, the thought of never seeing him again felt really wrong. I buried my face in my cup morosely.

“Well, from what it sounded like, you have at least one more case,” Jasmine replied. “And according to you, that could be the beginning of great things.”

I frowned, feeling my headache sneaking back. “What other case?”

“Veronica Stafford. You’re going to find her dog, Gypsy.”

“Who?” Headache screamed back, and I grabbed my head. “I’m going to find her what?”

“That girl who phoned your office and left you a number. You called her last night.”