I'd Rather Not Be Dead (30 page)

My voice is quiet when I speak.
“So, what you're saying is if I don't die where I did before, I'm
going to die somewhere else?”

“Yes.” Fray nods, but he doesn't
move his eyes from Finn's.

“And we don't know what will
kill me if I'm not pushed over the wall. I could be hit by a car or
fall down some stairs or be crushed by a falling chandelier.”

Fray nods again. “Exactly.”

“Then we bet on the overlook,” I
conclude.

To say Finn is unhappy would be
a complete waste of words. My hip is bruising where his fingers
cling to it. The artery in his throat pulses with aggression. His
eyes blaze. And his breathing comes very, very close to growling.
But he nods acceptance.

“Alright,” Fray says. His nod
conveys a world of relief, making me think he wasn't entirely
certain he was going to get his way.

“Now what?” I ask.

Fray lets out a long sigh, his
head tilting forward as he shakes it, allowing his hair to fall
over his eyes. “I don't know.”

“You don't know?” Finn asks,
voice chilly.

“I have no clue,” Fray admits.
For a second, I'm pretty sure Finn's going to hit him. And that I'm
not going to interfere.

“We could call the police,” I
suggest. Normally I'm not a girl to run to the cops but if there's
a time for that this would seem to be it.

Finn twists to look down at me.
“And tell them what?”

“That you saw Ricky force
someone into his car but you were too far away to stop him? You
followed him until he turned onto the Parkway and think they should
check him out?”

“They might believe that,” Fray
says. “But do we really want them there?”

“Why not?” Finn asks. “We're not
doing anything illegal.”

The look Fray gives him is one
part pity and two parts exhaustion. “Why is it none of the living
know you can see into Shadow?”

Finn casts his eyes to the
floor, then pulls me close against him. His hands rub on my back
like he's trying to warm me. “Right. He's about to kill someone and
if they find out how I know, then I'm the bad guy. Touched by
demons and all.”

Over my shoulder, Fray makes a
noise of sympathetic annoyance. “Do you think you can keep them
from catching onto that element?”

His hands go still and his
embrace tightens before Finn replies. “I think I care a damn sight
more about saving Drew than about people's opinions of me.”

“Good,” Fray answers simply.

“That the plan then?” Finn asks.
“I go fetch the truck and pretend I've been driving around?”

“Sounds good to me. Drew?”

Finn's arms slacken to allow me
to turn around. When my back is against Finn's chest, his arms
tighten again, folding along my ribs. “Yeah, I guess.”

The words aren't very confident.
I don't like splitting up. It's irrational, I know that, but I have
this feeling that if Finn stops holding onto me everything's going
to unravel.

Fray's eyes meet mine, their
emerald tones suddenly eerie. “Take him to the truck. I'll go check
on the other you.”

With one long look at Finn, Fray
nods and then sprints into the parking lot without us.

My insides are quivering but I
shove the fear down as far as I can and give the universe the tug
it needs to take me and Finn to his driveway. He starts moving as
soon as we arrive, taking his keys from his pocket and unlocking
the truck before I've really gotten my barrings.

He yanks the door open, puts a
foot on the lip, and then stops. His head turns to me with relative
slowness. “You can't come with me.”

“No,” I whisper. “Duh.”

He lets go of the side of the
truck door and puts his foot back on the ground before walking back
to me. We look at each other, neither wanting to leave the other
but both of us too aware of the seconds ticking past.

It seems like there should be
words, but I can't find any.

Instead of speaking, I step into
him, bring my lips to his, and try to let the kiss say the things I
want said.

When we pull reluctantly apart,
our eyes lock. “I love you, Cooper Finnegan.”

His face twitches with the
barest trace of a smile. “Love you, too, Drew McKinney.”

I nod, start to yank on
existence, meaning to flee before I succumb to tears, but then a
panicked voice cuts through the air. “Wait! Drew! Wait!”

Finn and I both stop, turn, and
stare at the tear streaked face of a disheveled and terrified
blonde. A blonde who I know only from Fray's memories.

“Elza?”

Chapter Twenty-Six

“Elza?” Finn repeats while the
new arrival nods around gasps for breath. “Who's Elza?”

“She's Fray's... widow.” I'm not
sure what the right word is seeing how both of them are deceased.
And I have even less of an idea what the bitch is doing here, both
here as in Shadow and here as in Finn's front yard. The question
shines back at me in a look from Finn. Browns swarm his eyes,
bringing the greens almost to extinction.

I step to Finn's side, but turn
my attention to Elza. Short, blonde with long ringlets in her hair,
and daintily beautiful of feature, the ghost is exactly as Fray
remembers her. A white gown with an empire waist, looking straight
out of an enactment of a Jane Austen novel, ties under a discreet
amount of breast and flows down to tiny feet covered in white
slippers.

Breathing heavily, she clutches
a long fingered hand to her chest, flutters her eyelashes, and
gives a general impression of a girl who's about to swoon. “Drew
McKinney?” she asks me, her voice wispy and frightened.

I fold my arms and frown.
Knowing her from Fray's memories lets me see the tiny details that
say she's not really scared, she's just trying to make sure I am.
“Yeah?”

“Thank God I found you!”

“Yeah,” I mutter, completely
irked by her attempted manipulation. “God be praised. What do you
want?”

Finn rustles beside me, probably
wondering why I'm taking the time to wait on someone I'm treating
with so much antagonism, but he doesn't say anything yet.

“You're in great danger,” Elza
says, the words tripping over themselves in their rush to come
out.

“No shit. Today's the day I
die.”

Her head shakes, making the
curls in her hair hair dance. “No. Today is the day Finn murders
you.”

I snort out a laugh.

“I'm not joking!” Elza wails,
her eyes so wide with honesty that she can only be lying.

“Right,” Finn grumbles. “And why
do I murder her?”

“You?” Elza squints at him. I
take an amount of pleasure from the way the expression makes her
look like a puzzled hamster. Nice to know she's not always pretty.
“Who are you?”

“He'd be Finn,” I fill her in.
Would have thought she'd recognize him.

“No.” She shakes her head. “Not
him. I mean Finn Finnegan. Finn Finnegan is going to kill you.”

“Who's Finn Finnegan?”

The woman stares at me like I'm
nuts. Or stupid. Maybe both. It makes her look less like a hamster
and more like a bulldog. “The lousy bastard who forced me into
marriage against my will.”

“Fray?” Finn guesses.

“Fray,” Elza snarls, the
viciousness behind the name the first genuine emotion she's shown.
“As though changing his name's going to change what we all know he
is.”

“Why would Fray want to kill
me?” I raise my eyebrows and let her have time to answer. This
ought to be good.

“You think him incapable of
murder?” she poses back. “Did he tell you how I died?”

I shrug. “He claims he killed
you.”

“He sliced me with my favorite
kitchen knife.” Lines of red flash across her pearly white skin.
She's over doing it a bit, if you ask me. Though I notice Finn's
breath rushes in, implying he's more impressed with the display
than I am.

“At least he knew which one was
your favorite. A lot of guys wouldn't.”

Elza trembles as she stares at
me. She's going for horrified, I'm sure. But the innocent shock is
drowning beneath a much more believable anger. “Our babe was in the
room with us!”

Our babe. Our. Interesting. That
detail was definitely different in Fray's recollection. As far as
he recalls, the boy was his brother's.

“Yeah,” I say slowly. “He showed
me the memory.”

I can tell Finn's staring at me
but I don't spare the seconds to do anything about it.

“And you still trust him?” Elza
gasps. “He murdered me in cold blood!”

“Maybe.” I take a deep breath.
“And maybe you deserved it. But even if you didn't, that was a very
long time ago.”

“Oh?” Her lower lip quivers as
she straightens her body and looks me in the eye. “And all the
people he's killed since me? Where any of them recent enough? What
about Al Finnegan and his wife?”

To my side, Finn sighs. “Al
Finnegan died of perfectly natural causes.”

“Did he?” Elza sneers. “And his
wife? What did she die of?”

Finn doesn't answer, which is
answer enough. Whatever it was, murder by ghost is a possible
explanation.

“And you, Finn,” Elza goes on.
“What do you gain from Drew's death?” She moves her eyes between
us. “A lover, perhaps?”

Another miscalculation. She
could have seen us before we knew she was there. She looked like
she'd been running instead of teleporting, so maybe she'd been
around for the goodbye kiss. I'd even be willing to accept that our
body language gives our relationship away to anyone who's looking.
But knowing we weren't together before I died betrays more
background knowledge than she'd let on to having. Not to
mention...

“How do you know Fray's going to
hurt me?” I ask.

She blinks as I move her
thoughts from my Finn back to hers. “I foresee it.”

“Foresee? You're prescient?”

She shakes her head. “No, I just
see the future.”

“Right.” I forgo mentioning that
this is the definition of prescient. “You foresee Fray killing me.
How?”

“He's going to keep you from
dying.”

“What?” Finn demands, sounding
confused.

“He'll keep you from dying the
way you're supposed to,” Elza tells me. “But he won't keep you from
dying at all. He'll just replace your intended death with something
that won't leave you in Shadow. You'll pass quietly out of
existence. You're not really dead now, not like you'll be
then.”

Holy shit. I'm shaking my head,
but I'm also shaking in fear. Or maybe anger.

“Why?” I ask again, latching
onto the anger. Anger I can work with. Fear's useless.

Elza gives me a pitying look.
“The same reason he killed me.”

“I didn't reject him and start
screwing his brother.”

Bristling at the wording, she
loses her sympathy and glares harshly. “No. You rejected him to
screw his grandson.”

So. Much. Wrong. With. That.

Grandson?

And I didn't reject Fray. Fray
rejected me. Sort of. And... Grandson?

“So you do know who I am?” Finn
asks.

Yep, she must. There are
probably signs of relation between Finn and Fray that are obvious
to anthropologists, but there aren't any tells a normal person
would see. Finn and I both stare at her until she gives an
aggrieved sigh.

“You're Cooper Finnegan,” she
admits, her voice dull. “You're my several times great grandson. I
didn't want to confuse things getting into all that. You think
you'll be able to keep Drew, but you won't. Because he's conned you
even worse than you've conned her.”

“Nobody deceives Drew,” Finn
states. “She's too smart.”

We can only wish that were true.
But it isn't, not by a long shot. I never caught on to any of
Cris's deceits. I trusted Ricky. Maybe only as far as accepting
coffee from him and going out to his car, but that was clearly too
far. Why on earth should I assume Finn couldn't fool me just as
easily? Surely I'd have to be an idiot to believe Cooper Finnegan
loves me so much he's willing to loose me to keep me alive. Why
wouldn't he take the option that leaves me dead but gains him a
live-in girlfriend until he goes off to college and then a pretty
young thing to come back to whenever he feels like spending a few
hours away from his real life?

Guess I'm an idiot. But we knew
that already.

Elza's eyes widen. “I have to
go.”

I'm about to ask her where but
she vanishes too quickly.

“That was strange,” I
comment.

Finn grunts.

“If she's been here all along,
why don't you know her?”

He shrugs and mumbles, “Don't
know. Some ghosts don't get out much.”

Yeah, I guess... “What now?” I
ask, looking to Finn. Is it my imagination or have I been asking
that question a lot lately?

Finn's gaze rips into me,
tearing me apart as he ransacks my eyes. The internal debate on
whether he wants to say what's on his mind is clear, but what that
is remains a mystery. And I'm not going to find out any time soon
because his front door opens and his mom rushes out.

Barefoot and in pigtails, Ms.
Finnegan sprints over the grass looking like a long lost cousin on
The Beverly Hillbillies in worn jeans and flannel. Her shirt's
checkered with greens that bring out her eyes, which I suddenly
realize are the same shade as Fray's.

“Was that who I thought it was?”
she asks, her voice getting in on the mountain theme with a
panic-thickened accent as she comes to a stop very close to where
Elza was a few moments ago. “Elza McCormick Finnegan?”

Finn's staring at her, his jaw
slightly dropped as his mind tries to catch up with the fact he's
just been outed as a medium, that his mother may have some idea
about what's going on, and that she seems likely to be thrusting
herself into the middle of it all.

“Um... Yeah,” I answer, not
seeing much choice.

“When did she get out? Who
released her?”