The Taken. Vicki Pettersson

      “You know, you got the dust-off. Killed. Murdered. Clipped. It’s a rough deal, but you’ve had some good times, right? Some wild rides?” He gave a little hip thrust to illuminate the point.

      “I’m not a hooker,” she said evenly.

      He let his eyes roam around the sex flop. “’Course you’re not.”

      Blowing out a stream of smoke, Nicole returned his flat stare. “So where exactly is this … Everlast?”

      “Now you’re choosy?” Grif muttered, glancing at his watch. He would’ve turned away, but the walls were mirrored and their reflections overlapped, her horrified heat wrapped over his impassive ice. Sighing heavily, he motioned her to the door.

      Nicole didn’t move. “What if I wanna do it all over?”

      “What over?” he mumbled, lighting his own stick.

      “You know. Life. Earth. Humanity. Come back until I get it right.”

      “Relax, sweetheart. Mattress time don’t count against you.”

      That got her back on her feet. “I told you! I’m not a hooker! I’m a photographer—”

      “Where’s your camera?”

      “Well, it’s not here, but I have this notebook—” She pointed at the dresser bearing a crappy twenty-inch television and a Moleskine identical to his. Except for the blood splatter.

      “Sure,” he said. “A photographer’s best friend.”

      The fight drained from Rockwell then, and she slumped where she stood, falling so still the only sound in the room was the soft drip, drip of her arterial blood as it fell from the bed to the floor. “But I’m not done here.”

      “Just take my hand, kid. It’ll be all right.”

      She looked at him dubiously. Grif frowned. Sure, his suit was rumpled, but it was clean enough, and his pomade had held at his time of death, though it was hidden beneath the brim of his fedora. A little ginger stubble had sprouted—he’d been offed after five—but if his eyes were hard, they were also clear. All in all, not too bad for fifty years dead.

      Yet Rockwell remained unconvinced. “How do I know you’re not tricking me? You could latch on and suck my soul down to hell, like in that movie.”

      “You mean Ghost, right?” A couple of the younger Centurions had explained about that. Some sleeper flick that hit it big a couple decades ago. Now he had to explain himself to every corpse that walked his way. “Look, I’m not a demon, and I’m no ghost. I’m a … gentleman.”

      Nicole blinked.

      “Lots of firsts for you today, eh, Ms. Rockwell?”

      Eyes narrowed, she crossed her arms. “Piss off, Shaw. I’m not going anywhere with you.”

      Grif fought not to grind his teeth. He’d get hell from Sarge if she took it in her mind to hang out here and haunt the place. And he’d be damned—figuratively speaking, of course—if he was going to let her sully his perfect Take record. Besides, she’d been dead all of five minutes. She didn’t yet know what was good for her.

      Grinding his cigarette beneath his heel, Grif said, “What are you going to do, honey? Throw down the ménage in this joint for the rest of eternity? Though … I guess it does beat sizzling.”

      “Sizzling?”

      “One wrong turn outta here, and …” He made a sound, trout frying in a pan. It was a rotten trick but it worked.

      Nicole shuddered in her demi-cups, then stood and slowly glanced around. “So, that’s it, huh? Twenty-six years of—”

      “Twenty-nine,” Grif corrected.

      “—of mortal struggle, and this is how it ends.”

      Grif made another show of looking at his watch, while peering at Nicole from the corner of his eye. She didn’t look like she was going to leak, he decided gratefully. Instead, she looked like she was going to kick something.

      She did … then dropped back to the bed, and put her head in her hands while Grif began hopping around.

      “Damn it, lady!” He glared, cradling his throbbing shin. “I’ve had enough of this postmortem crap! Get your lifeless, flabby backside off that bed and follow me!”

      Now she began to cry.

      The recently murdered were so sensitive.

      Sighing, Grif lifted his hat and ran a hand over the top of his head. He could practically hear Sarge’s barked reprimand. Patch it up, Shaw.

      “Sorry,” he muttered, stealing another glance at his watch.

      “Fuck you, Mr. Sensitivity!” she yelled. “I’m not following your washed-out, B-movie, pseudo-Five-O ass anywhere!”

      “Careful, peach. Look how you get to spend eternity.” Grif showed his teeth, and though there wasn’t any blood in her ethereal body, Nicole blanched. Then her outline began to shimmer. Not much time left. “That’s right. We’re all stuck in the clothing worn when we die. Kinda makes you wish you’d overcome that latex fetish, huh?”

      “Oh, God.” Nicole looked up at the mirrored ceiling and fussed with her hair, but it sprang back into the deflowered do she’d been sporting at the time of her death. “Oh, God!”

      “She’s on her lunch break,” Grif muttered, but his heart softened anyway. He couldn’t help it. He was lucky to have been offed in 1960. He’d watched too many Centurions shy away from mirrors in the Everlast in the decades since.

      “All right, I have an idea.” It was technically against the rules, but the girl was looking at him with those tearful eyes, and he was looking back, really seeing her for once. Helpless females always got to him. And though Rockwell was a lady of the night here on the Surface, there could be someone waiting for her on the other side. They might not recognize her like this … or want to.

      Besides, he’d been blood and bone once, just like her. In the end, and that’s what this was, they were exactly the same. “All right, listen up. There are some clothes in that dresser over there—”

      “How do you know—?”

      “I just do,” he interrupted, “and you’ll move fast if you know what’s good for you. You’re starting the Fade. I can send you back into your body long enough to change your clothes and do something with that mop on your head. But you gotta keep quiet. Your E.T.D. is twelve fifty. If someone hears you rummaging around at one, my superiors will know I interfered.”

      Nicole nodded vigorously.

      “All right. Get back in.”

      “In?”

      “Your body. You gotta line up those pulse points over your earthly remains. Then I can fuel them.”

      It wasn’t technically necessary, but using her remains was a way to ground her both mentally and physically, giving her the impression of purchase on the Surface even though her spirit was already free. It was like tying a boat to a dock, securing it there even as waves crested around it.

      Rockwell did as told, carefully settling her ethereal energy atop her body so that it looked like a shimmering chalk outline. Grif listened for a faint click in the etheric, her final pulse point snapping into place, before echoing the action, positioning his translucent body above hers so their chakras aligned. It required submission on her part, and a smothering of her energy with his own. It was a sensation most loose souls found claustrophobic, but Rockwell didn’t even flinch.

      Probably used to it, Grif thought, letting himself sink.

      Vacuumed silence overran the room, blunting even Grif’s celestial senses. Shape and form and sensation blurred as their energies melded as