The End of the World As I Know It (The Ghosts & Demons Series Book 2) (4 page)

“Trick.”

“Pardon me?”

“His name is Trick.”

At that moment, I spotted him emerge from a tent we’d erected under the East Tower. A water station and a medic sat in the shade.

One of the older instructors, Savanna, had tried to show off for the noobs. In an attempt to break Anguloora’s record on the archers’ obstacle course, he’d twisted his ankle. Savanna looked pretty sheepish as he limped to the med tent for an ice pack and an ankle wrap.

My gaze fixed on the blonde Irish dude. There was something about him impossible to ignore. He looked about my age or a little older. A red-haired girl was chatting him up, smiling so hard I thought her teeth might crack. He listened and nodded as he lifted his shirt to wipe the sweat from his forehead. I got a glimpse of angular abs. He couldn’t swing a sword, but he had to have a lot of cardio, weight training and salads to make that happen.

“
Mm
,” Manhattan said. “I saw that, too.”

“He’s not your type.”

“No,” she said. “I mean I saw that you saw that.”

“No one’s name is Trick. That’s stupid.”

“Short for Patrick. Patrick Aonghus.”

“A blonde Irish guy named Patrick? Where’d we find him? Did they send him over from Central Casting? Or is he off a romance novel cover? It’s ridiculous.”

Manhattan laughed. “Irish guys named Patrick? They do exist. And he does look like an actor. Pretty dreamy. What position do you want to put him in?”

I ignored her obvious double entendre. Manhattan was determined to get me dating again.

“He can’t handle a sword. The way he moves, I don’t think he ever will. Not everyone has the knack.”

“He looks athletic enough. Pretty jacked, actually, for a lean guy.”

“Anybody can do a lot of sit ups and crunches and cut out all sugars and grains. Those abs are probably a metabolic thing, anyway. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone so inept on the pads before.”

“You really don’t think he has potential?” Manny asked.

“I’m talking warrior potential and you’re asking whether he’s boyfriend material.”

“Fine. You’re all business. Did you get him to try a morning star yet?”

“
That
guy? Spaz? Swinging a spiked ball around on a chain? Are you
kidding
? Your OCD soccer mom’s first duty will be to cover up his death. He’d spike himself in the head in a heartbeat.”

When I glanced at Manny, I realized by her smile she was making fun of me. “Fine. You’re funny. He’ll be placed with the Silent Singers, for sure.”

“Maybe you just have to spend some more time with Trick,” she said. “Find his hidden talents.”

“Okay, okay. We’ll try him on spears and javelins and tridents. See if you can get him to poke a pike on target.” That was Manhattan’s department, but she didn’t take the hint.

“A pike isn’t what needs poking,” Manhattan said. “And his charms are wasted on me. You, though? You need a Trick in your life.
Trick!
Love it!”

“What will his Choir name be?” I asked.
 

“If I were him, I’d keep the name he came with. That’s just too cool. However, I scoped him out for you. He’s from Dungarvan, Ireland. We already have an Ireland and she won’t want to give that up. He’ll be stuck with Dungarvan, I guess.

“Tragic.”

Trick tipped his head back to drink from his canteen. As he finished, he looked directly at me. Across the courtyard, it felt like our eyes met. Despite the heat, I shivered and a feeling I hadn’t felt for a long time stirred in my belly. Well…south of my belly. I felt pulled to him.
 

Naturally, I ran in the other direction. For a while.

Lesson 103: Few things are inevitable, but almost everything feels that way.

Chapter 6

That evening at Castille Funeral Homes, one of the Lindas buzzed me in through the back door. There were three women named Linda who worked in the back offices of Castille (though one spelled her name with a
y
.)

My boss, Samantha Biggs, steamed toward me, her heels clicking fast on the marble floor. Sam gave me a bright smile as she caught me by the coffee machine. I considered her a friend, especially since she’d saved my life on my first day on the job. By her speed, I suspected she had lots of work for me to do.

“Isn’t it time you got a new suit?” Sam asked. “I only ever see you in the one.”

“When the pay goes up, I’ll consider it.”

Her blue striped suit didn’t look much different from mine but she didn’t find hers at a secondhand store. Instead of the ugly striped tie required of all Castille employees, the only marked difference in our attire was the string of pearls at her neck. Like all funeral directors, Sam dressed conservatively. However, with her blonde hair and custom fitted suit, she probably inspired at least a few widowers to ease their grief with lusty fantasies.

Since the attack on the Keep, I’d been training hard. I’d lost weight and my suit felt a little baggy. Until Sam looked a little too long at my suit, I hadn’t felt self-conscious about it. With the end of the world coming (and who knew when) I thought maybe I should cave to Manhattan’s pleas and Sam’s hint. A shopping spree is always a therapeutic mood booster, at least until the credit card bill arrives.

I sipped the free coffee and quirked an eyebrow at Sam. “You’re smiling too wide. You’ve got work for me to do, don’t you?”

“Always. I need the Rose Room vacuumed and the toilets need a good scrub. After that, grab a hot suit from the back — ”

“Oh, no,” I said. The hot suits were what we called the plastic coveralls we kept at the ready for really gross pickups. The suits were hot — as in temperature, not
hawt.

Not hawt like Trick,
my rebel brain added. I pushed that thought away. It’s easy not to think about men when your job is to pick up and deliver bodies.
 

Working the funerals was my favorite job at Castille. It was an opportunity to do some good for the living. Whenever D-Day arrived, I’d be all about killing demons. Until that day, I wanted to make this life a little easier for somebody in need.

However, I absolutely hated the runs that required hot suits. Let’s take a moment to examine why consoling sweet, old people at memorial services is superior to picking up and delivering for funeral homes.

With the shotgun suicides, the rule was to pick up the big, solid chunks and leave the rest of the goo for the crime scene cleanup team. We weren’t paid enough to deal with biohazards. That job was for the people who come after we’re done.

Crime scene cleanup crews pay well. It’s a sad job. What they never tell the clients is, after a messy suicide, it doesn’t matter how many coats of paint you use, you’ll never really cover up that blood spray.

As for our job, there might not be enough leftovers to piece together a whole skull. However, that jigsaw was a bony puzzle for Castille’s funeral directors.

If that sounds bad to you, the hoarders were worse. When human bodies aren’t found for a while, things get gushy and squishy. Sometimes the hoarders aren’t found immediately because they’re buried in trash.

For me, the worst job I had to do for Castille was the old man in the bathtub in Hell’s Kitchen. That one required a hot suit.

The poor guy killed himself in his bathtub. He slit his forearm deep and bled out. After the initial pain, it’s a sleepy way to go, assuming he didn’t slip down and slowly drown before he exsanguinated.

That wasn’t the horror, though.

He’d filled a deep clawfoot bathtub with hot water before he climbed in there with a steak knife and a plan. He’d used an electric reheater to keep the water hot. Heat makes the blood flow, but the device didn’t shut down after he’d shuffled off this mortal coil. The body was baked slowly and all the water evaporated before he was found.

I went out on that run with Clyde, a full-time driver for Castille. As soon as we walked into the bathroom, I wanted to vomit. A bunch of cops and firefighters were standing around so I kept my gorge under control.

Clyde grabbed the corpse’s legs at the ankles. The suicide’s insides slid out of his skin, boiled stew out of a loose bag. Everything, even the bones, were cooked soft and tender. Talk about shuffling off a mortal coil. The experience put me off stew for weeks.

And…we’re back. Cut to Sam and me in Castille Funeral Homes by the coffee machine.

“Hot suit? Again, already? Are there more toilets I could clean, instead? I went out on the last three murders in the Bronx. Isn’t Clyde working delivery tonight?”

“Relax,” Sam said. “It’s going to be an easy night. The hot suit’s for the car wash. I don’t want you getting your one nice suit wet. I need the coach washed for a funeral tomorrow. Just work the car wash for now. I have one easy pickup for you later.”

My shoulders relaxed and I let out a laugh. “You let me dangle there.”

Sam gave me a long look. “If you don’t want to go on the slushy deliveries, I can send someone else. This work isn’t for everyone and I know you prefer the front room stuff to the prep room.”

“No,” I said. “I’ll do my fair share. I just don’t want to do more than my fair share. The last one gave me nightmares.”

“Give the job some more time and you’ll be eating a ham sandwich in the prep room.”
 

I shuddered. The prep room was lined with small plastic bottles full of preservatives and fixatives. The funeral directors used so many of the little orange and yellow bottles of embalming chemicals, I wondered why they didn’t buy them by the drum. The stainless steel tables in the prep room had drains. Despite the fact that the prep rooms were generally very clean and the floors were spotless, the pipes beneath those tables always had a little tangled clump of hair hanging from them.

“I don’t mind washing cars. I’ll do that all shift if you want.”

Sam shook her head. “There’s a pickup at the Mercy hospice. When you’re done with that, come see me in my office. I want to get a head start on the Christmas Survivors Club Meeting mailing list and I need your help sticking address labels on envelopes.”

“Goody!”

“Better than sending you off to murder scenes.” Sam leaned in closer to whisper, “Don’t you get enough of violence all day?”

I shrugged.

“Oh!” she brightened. “And I’ll make popcorn. Office work is better than blood and guts, right?”

Sam strode off before I could tell her I preferred squishy death scenes to dry microwave popcorn.

Halfway down the hall, Samantha turned to look back at me. “You okay, little sister?”

“Yeah.”

“Really?”

“Sure.”

“I don’t believe you. Remember what your Mama says about funerals?”

“They’re for the living.” I mimicked Mama’s accent, laying the Amarillo on a little too thick because I knew Sam loved that.

Sam didn’t smile though. She aimed her serious, empathetic look at me and said, “That’s true of everything, you know. Life is for the living. I worry about what you do with your days. You’re still young, Tammy. Don’t forget to live.”

Before I could reply, she disappeared around a corner, off on another mission to help a family grieve and bury their dead. Samantha knew all about the Choir Invisible from Victor Fuentes. Early on, Victor tried to recruit her to the cause of combating D-Day. Being a singer wasn’t for her. Too bad. She certainly had the discipline for it.

The night Sam saved my life, she drove me to the Keep to deliver me to Victor. Since then, she had never once asked me anything about the secret war.

After the attack on the Keep, I’d tried to talk to her about how Vlad died. She’d known Vladimir Estasia, but she cut me off with a sharp shake of her head.

“I’m a civilian,” she’d said. “I don’t know and I don’t want to know. You do you, Boo. I’ll do me.”

“But Vlad — ”

“Vlad was a truth teller. The way the world is, I’m surprised he lived as long as he did. We kill our truth tellers. If it’s all the same to you, Tammy — and even if it isn’t — you sing your song and I’ll keep my needle in my groove.”

I didn’t envy her job as a funeral director. However, Sam didn’t see the misty wistfuls wandering around. She didn’t have to worry about hitting targets with arrows. She was surrounded by death in the prep room every day, but she thought of herself first as a party planner. Even when she had to take a baby to the crematorium, she didn’t succumb to the easy, morbid, cynical humor common among law enforcement, paramedics and the funeral industry.

With her husband and kids, her fancy clothes and fabulous vacations, Sam’s life looked peaceful to me. She’d never sweated through a day of hauling sandbags back and forth through an obstacle course. For her, all the dead stayed dead.

Okay, so maybe I envied her a little bit. No. Jealousy is the right word, isn’t it?
 

Though she wanted no part in the Choir, Sam fought for peace in her own way. She dedicated her life to helping clients deal with the darkest moments of their lives. Whether the dead were very old or very young, she took care of the dearly departed and made sure every body and everybody was treated with dignity. The families she helped always thanked her for making the funeral arrangements as painless as possible.

Sam took care of prep room procedures so the grieving families she served didn’t have to think about washing bodies, injecting preservatives or getting false teeth back in dead heads.

Lesson 104: That’s okay. People should have peace. That kind of benign obliviousness is exactly what we’re all fighting to preserve. Warriors should be happy that the Normies are ignorant of what we have to do for them.

Lesson 105: We don’t think about death until the day we are forced to do so. For a sunny outlook and a happy life that’s all waggy tail puppies and wiggly nose bunnies and bright, lemony lollypops, I recommend putting off that day as long as possible. Ignorance is bliss, and required, to be happy.

Chapter 7

After I finished scrubbing toilets and washing the coach, I went to Lynda for the paperwork I needed to deal with the pickup. The two Lindas were dealing with a visitation in the Tulip Room. I found Lynda in the back office.