Worth Dying for (A Dying for a Living Novel Book 5) (9 page)

Jesse

W
hen you’re gone…when you’re gone…when…

Every time I replay Nikki’s words in my head, it’s accompanied by a slew of violent urges. I want to slap the spit out of her mouth for starters. Then I want to burn her hair off. Her hair and eyebrows, and then maybe break her fingers one at a time until—I’m
gone
.

The hate abates and what I’m left with is…what? Shock? I can’t wrap my head around the idea of
gone
. Dead. Like
dead
dead. What does that even mean?

Is it because I’ve died and resurrected over a hundred times that I just can’t comprehend what dead means? Brinkley died. And now he’s
gone
. I can’t call him. I can’t talk to him. I can’t see his face. And when I’m
gone,
what? Where will I go? What the hell will I be doing with my sudden abundance of free time?

When I die now, I’m with Gabriel. It’s like dreaming. We talk. He shows me things like ethereal landscapes. Scenarios. Before Gabriel came around I saw nothing. I died. Then I woke up to find myself somewhere else. Like a child who has fallen asleep in the car, ignorant of the ongoing journey, only to wake up in a familiar bed later, cocooned by pillows and sheets and covers with a familiar smell to them.

Or maybe I will cease to exist at all. I’ll be nothing. Nowhere. Or worse, utterly alone.

Never alone. I will never leave you.
Gabriel’s whispered words blow like a breeze through my mind.

I suck in a breath and keep walking.

At the bottom of the steps, Gloria waits for us. I flash her a weak smile, letting her know I’m happy to see her again after so many months apart, but mostly I’m still lost in my own thoughts. She hugs each of us in turn: me, Ally, and the Maisie-Winston combo. It’s nice that she met us at the airport and I’m relieved that she doesn’t look stressed or exhausted. She’s prone to overworking after all. And without Ally around to harass her into taking a break, I’m sure she worked around the clock and lived off of Coca-Cola and fast food.

Gloria leads us off the airfield, away from the plane and toward a beat up station wagon with wooden siding at the edge of the lot.

“Are you okay?” Ally asks, placing a hand on my arm. The urge to jerk away from her is strong but I squash that down.
You’ll just run back to her
that vicious little voice in my head says.
She’s so right about that. You won’t even mourn me at all.

“I’m fine. Just hungry.”

I see the beach house in my mind. The sable sand. The warm breeze. The gentle gray waves lapping at the shore. Ally standing on the back deck, shielding her eyes from the sun.

It was a dream or a vision. Gabriel presented this paradise as one of my choices—
as apex you create the world. What is your heart’s desire?

And while I did see paradise there once—me and Ally together and happy—I also saw an alternative future. Ally and Nikki with kids. Happy. Sure, she’d named her firstborn after me. But it remained that in this version of the future I was dead and Nikki had won. Why show me a world where Nikki and Ally were happy together? Does Gabriel think I’m capable of some magnanimous decision where I do what is best for Ally? If that was his goal, he doesn’t know me at all.

And yet, I can’t help but assume that “taking Ally to the beach house” is code for killing her. Maybe not with my own hands, but there’s only one way that I know of where Ally and I end up in the same place and I happen to be dead. Unless I’m dead and it’s only her memory that I take with me, while Ally really is alive and happy.

A crushing wave of sadness overcomes me. Hell, no I won’t let Ally die. Even if she ends up with the twat with the orange hair and has a thousand babies. I would never—could never.

“Seriously, Jess, are you okay?” Ally stops me in the middle of the parking lot, a few feet from Gloria’s car. She lowers her voice. “You look like you’re about to cry.”

“I’m just so hungry,” I lie and tears start to flow down my cheeks. “I would kill someone for a pizza right now.”

Ally frowns, tilts her head slightly to one side but says nothing to contradict me.

“Come on. All I’ve had today is a cheese and mayonnaise sandwich,” I insist and give Sasquatch the side eye. “Haven’t you been so hungry you could kill someone?”

“Totally,” Maisie says without missing a beat. “I could’ve chased a pig down, tackled it and chewed on its bacon-y butt.”

Despite Maisie’s help, I don’t think Ally believes my pathetic lie for a second, but thank god she doesn’t demand I share my thoughts here in front of Sasquatch and everyone. Especially since now everyone is staring at me—Gloria, Nikki, and the other partis named Monroe included. At least Monroe has the decency to let his gaze slide away, climbing into the passenger seat without so much as a lingering smile.

“Come on then,” Ally says, yanking open the door to the backseat. “Let’s get you something to eat.”

The only consolation is that Sasquatch and her team have to ride separately. Despite the boat size car Gloria is driving, it barely holds the six of us: Gloria, Monroe, Maisie, Ally, Winston, and me. The seats are leather, but battered. My seat in particular has a huge strip of duct tape over a puncture where something sliced through the material. And the car has a faint odor of cigarettes. I realize why when Monroe rolls down the window and pulls a hand-rolled cigarette from his pocket.

He catches me staring and raises the wrapped tobacco in salute. “Them store-bought kind is too damn expensive these days. I’ve got to roll my own.”

“You’re going to get cancer,” Maisie says.

Monroe laughs, a languid sound. “Oh I wish. I wish, Miss Maisie. But I ain’t been able to find the thing that’ll kill me yet.”

Suicidal.
They chose us because we wanted to die.
Caldwell’s words echo through my memory. It might be true that all the partis wanted to die at one time or another, but now I don’t want to die at all. Now I want to save the world and keep the girl.

As Gloria drives us out of airfield and into the Louisiana bayou, the trees thicken and the Spanish moss spreads over everything like cobwebs in an old abandoned house.

“We’ve made a lot of progress,” Gloria says, flicking her eyes up to meet mine in the rearview. “And we will still make it to Arizona in time.”

“In time to murder my father,” Maisie quips, her gaze turning away from us toward the window. I know she’s pretending to search the thick foliage for animals or anything of interest. Winston nudges her hand for an ear scratch and she sluggishly returns his attention. Offended, he gives up on her and hops into my lap. I’m extra generous with the love.

“That’s wonderful that you’ve made progress,” Ally says to Gloria from her place sandwiched between me and Maisie. Her gaze goes from my face to Maisie’s to Monroe’s. “We need some good news around here. Something to raise our spirits.”

Monroe gives another bemused, languid laugh. “Only the Lord can help us now.”

“Everyone needs to calm down,” I say, frowning at one grumpy face after another. “We are way too happy in here.”

The rest of the ride into the city is quiet. The dense bayou gives way to a freeway, which gives way to cramped city streets. The outskirts of town are still derelict from the hurricane, but the closer we move toward the city center, towards tourism, the sights improve. I’m sure that’s no accident. Gloria maneuvers her boat car around a horse and buggy carrying a bride and groom and into a parking garage.

From here, we are out and walking again. On the street, the cobblestones feel uneven underfoot. We march beneath iron banisters and balconies. A woman on a balcony drinks a glass of wine and blows me a kiss.

I blush. “The people here seem very friendly.”

“Welcome to N’awlins,” Monroe says, his slow and steady walk matching his laugh. “The Big Easy. Southern hospitality.”

Whatever he was about to say next is drowned out by a girl with a violin. She sways on the street outside the door of a restaurant, her case open at her feet. She looks like some kind of rag-ma-tag gypsy in layers of cotton, her hair half hidden under a bandana. She’s whiter than me, so I know she’s probably not Romany or anything, but she’s working the look. Maisie throws a crumpled up dollar into her case.

“Our place is just up here,” Monroe says.

“Our place?” I ask Gloria with a smile. Has she been shacking up with this dude? I’m about to verbalize my approval of her living la vida loca when Gloria shoots me the most menacing look. I’m pretty sure that smoke puffs from her nostrils and her eyes burn red.

I snap my mouth.

Ally makes a small sound of surprise.

“What?” I turn away from Gloria and the bustle of the French Quarter, past little cramped shops lining the walkway and partiers stumbling about with drinks in hand. I check the time on my pug wristwatch and see that it’s only about four. So the party starts early in New Orleans.

“Oh,” Ally says, her eyebrows shooting up. She continues to scroll down her screen. “
Oh
.”

“
What
?”

Ally’s lips flatten into a thin line as she slips her hands into her pocket. “I got an interesting email. That’s all.”

I blink at her, waving for her to go on.

“I think I know why we were in New York,” she says, glancing around the street. Her eyes pause on a tarot reader encased in a glass shop window, flipping cards over for two young girls who giggle.

“Which is—”

“Tell her later,” Gloria says and they share a look between them.

“Yes,” Ally nods as if she’s read Gloria’s mind. “It’s probably best to wait.”

Monroe stops in front of the gate. He leans over the top of the wrought iron and undoes the latch from in the inside. The gate creaks open, revealing a thin garden path, overrun by plants on each side. “After you ladies.”

I marvel at Gloria again, so surprised that she’s willing to accept this chivalry from another person, let alone a man! She starts up the garden path without an ounce of complaint. Hell, she wouldn’t even let Brinkley clean her gun for her, let alone treat her like a lady.

Leaves brush my face as we walk single-file down the path. Even in the dead of winter, I catch a sweet scent blooming in the misty air.

“Are we in a jungle or a city?” I ask. “I can’t tell anymore.”

“That’d be the Magnolia and the Camellia japonica, Miss Jesse,” Monroe says as the foliage falls away revealing a miniature courtyard and covered porch. “They sure do smell nice, don’t they?”

Gloria produces a key and opens this door herself, Monroe not catching up until the last minute. He holds the screen door open for her as she struggles with the lock.

Then we are inside. From the porch, I can only see the stairs leading up and a doorway to the left. Dim light and awkward angles makes it harder to see deeper into the house.

“These apartments used to be slave quarters,” Monroe says, in a tone far too chipper for the subject. “These houses were set just behind the main houses back in them days. But now, they is all apartments.”

“Does that bother you?” Ally asks, coming into the house and unbuttoning her coat. It is too warm in here for our winter coats. Too warm in all of New Orleans probably. “To be living in a place with such a history.”

“No, Miss Alice,” Monroe says, lifting his hat to scratch the balding, gray-haired scalp beneath. “This way I know this place was made by good hands. Strong hands. And if I was to be upset by such a thing, I need not live anywhere in the state. There are but a few houses we didn’t build in this city.”

We
, I assume, means black people.

I turn to Gloria, expecting her to continue my education of the city. She says nothing of the sort. “There’s a room upstairs for you.” She nods toward the stairs. “First door on the right. You can nap if you want, clean up, then we’ll have lunch. After that, we need to get to work.”

Gloria disappears around a corner, leaving Ally, Maisie and I standing somewhat dazed in the company of Monroe, who is busy twisting another handmade cigarette between his fingers. Monroe looks at the three of us and then laughs to himself. I wish I knew what’s so funny about our faces.

“Best do what she says,” Monroe advises. “I sure do.”

Laughing, he shuffles out of the room as if in pursuit of Gloria.

Winston squirms in Maisie’s arms. “I think he needs to potty.”

“Yeah, okay.” I point at a patch of grass out the window. “Go right there. Where we can see you. Without Gideon’s device we can’t wander far from each other.”

“Oh, poop bags!” Ally says, fishing two green plastic bags from her pocket. “Pick up after him, okay?”

Maisie’s shoulders slump. “Where am I supposed to put it?”

“Just tie off the bag and leave it by the bottom step. I’ll find the trash.”

I can’t help but laugh as Maisie slips out with the pug, leaving us alone.

Ally frowns at me. “What’s so funny?”

“You, worrying about dog poop when the world is literally coming to an end.”