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  Daniel simply stood there, arms at his sides with that disconcerting grin on his face. “Suicide, my friend. It’s a sin against her soul. That’s the rule. And you? Should you belong to my side? We both know why I’m here. We know how all this will end.”

  “No. You don’t know,” Banning said.

  Daniel looked around, pretending to search for someone. “Gee. I don’t see anyone from the opposing team.”

  Whatever they were arguing about, I took the opportunity to run. I raced down the stairs, expecting one of them to be right behind me. Daniel did follow, but in no real hurry. Outside, car doors slammed. I screamed and tugged at the doorknob, knowing my parents were only feet away from me, but the knob wouldn’t turn.

  Daniel laughed, and walked toward me. “You’re an earthbound, Sunshine. Here’s a tip. Earthbounds can’t move objects when the living are too close to them. They drain your energy.”

  He pulled me from the door and whirled me around.

  “I forgot my purse,” I heard my mother say.

  “No! Mom! Help!” I screamed, then I kicked Daniel in the shin. “Get off me!”

  He let out a string of curses. “Bad idea,” he finally hissed. Before I could lash out again, he wrenched my arm—thankfully the good arm, behind my back and shoved me up the stairs toward my parents’ bathroom. “Take another look. Take a good, long look.”

  Banning followed us. “Let her go, Daniel. She’s been through quite enough.”

  “What? And let her have another swing at me? I don’t think so, Sparky,” Daniel growled. Banning’s steely blue eyes didn’t need words. Smart mouth or not, Daniel wasn’t the one in charge here. “Fine,” Daniel said, exasperated. “Fine.”

  He released his grip and walked away, hands up and palms facing outward. “Have it your way.”

  Downstairs, the door closed.

  “You’re nuts,” I said, a surge of panic rising inside me. “Both of you.”

  “Do as Daniel asks,” Banning said. “Please.”

  If they wanted me to look at the tub, then sure. Whatever. They were crazy, anyway.

  “I’ll never understand why anyone who commits suicide acts so surprised. Why some earthbounds can’t accept that they’re dead,” Daniel commented.

  My parents’ soft chatter drifted upstairs along with the sound of their footsteps—my mother’s heels tapping against the hardwood in the foyer.

  “Keely!” Mom called out. “We’re home.”

  “Help! I’m up here!” I shouted.

  “Keely?” she called again.

  “Up here. Call the police! I’m in your room,” I repeated, louder. I heard the coat closet opening, heard them talking.

  “Headphones, I bet,” my father said.

  “She probably went to bed. Dinner took longer than we expected,” Mom suggested. Their voices were louder now, the sound of their footfalls closer as they walked up the stairs.

  Daniel and Banning exchanged another glance. Daniel shrugged and turned away.

  Banning’s eyes met mine. “Keely, please trust me. You don’t want to see this.”

  I strode past him, half expecting one of them to stop me, but they didn’t. I almost totally bypassed my mother who entered the bedroom. Without a word, she took off her earrings and set them on the dresser. Obviously, she was angry, thinking I hadn’t answered when she’d called. She walked right past me, straight to the bathroom. How she missed seeing Banning and Daniel was beyond me.

  That’s when the screaming started. Clearly, I hadn’t cleaned up well enough and left Dad’s tequila and the Dremel out. Or I’d forgotten the note on the counter.

  My father charged past me, a blur in a navy blue suit. He shouted in horror and I rushed in to assure them I hadn’t gone through with it, although I probably should have. They’d ground me for life. Probably even send me off to some rehab or psycho center for troubled teens. Mom sat on the floor, wailing and clawing at her face. Dad bent over the tub and tugged at something in the water.

  The water.

  The tub was full of red water. And me.

  I stumbled backward, reeling. Cold fear clutched at my insides. “No, no, no! That’s not me. I’m here, I’m right here.” But the features, although colorless, were mine. My green eyes stared blankly, my jaw had relaxed, exposing my perfect teeth—the ones that had cost my parents a fortune in dental bills.

  I pulled at my father, my attempts futile. He cradled the pale, dead me against his chest. He rocked back and forth and cried, eyes tightly shut, his face contorted in a way I hadn’t thought possible.

  Banning tried to take me into his arms. I pounded my fists against him, demanding to be let go. “What did you do?” I shrieked.

  “In his defense, nothing. At least not what you think,” Daniel replied. He was leaning against the doorway, legs crossed at the ankles, arms folded, and watching my parents like they were a TV drama rerun.

  “Murderer!” I screamed. “Both of you!”

  “No,” Daniel added. “That was all you.”

  “I don’t commit murder,” Banning said softly. He gave Daniel a hard sidelong glare. “But I can’t stop it, either. I can’t stop death.”

  “Only take the soul when it’s time,” Daniel chided.

  My father pulled my limp body from the tub and rested against the bathroom floor. With a shaky hand, he removed a cell phone from his pocket. He wiped at his tears and slowly tapped out three numbers.

  Mom had taken a clean towel and placed it across my naked torso. She patted my face with it, wiped at my cheeks. My unblinking eyes stared upward at her. Between sobs, she took my right arm and dried it slowly, gently, like she used to do when Jordan and I were five and all clean and pink from our baths. Her expression had glazed over and she’d stopped screaming. She hummed a familiar tune, a lullaby interrupted only by an occasional hiccup and sob. Tears flooded silently down her cheeks.

  The horror of what I’d done froze me in place. If I was dead, then why hadn’t the despair ended with my life? Those were my parents, grieving over my body.

  Me.

  Not me.

  I checked my wrist. The wound had healed over, leaving a four-inch long scar. The body on the floor had a huge vertical gash on the left wrist. I couldn’t be dead. Couldn’t. My heart hammered in my chest. I was breathing. But I couldn’t deny that the body on the floor was mine.

  “Mom,” I cried, as I hugged her. “I didn’t mean it! I’m sorry. I love you Mom, and I’m…” I struggled to stop my own tears and steady my breath. “S-s-so sorry.” I could feel my mother’s soft skin, smell her favorite perfume. But she seemed oblivious to my touch.

  “Why can’t she feel me?” I sobbed.

  “You don’t exist in the living world any longer,” Banning said softly.

  No wonder a demon was in the room. I didn’t need an escort. I’d already been sent to hell.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Banning pried me from my mother. “We should go now.”

  My brain refused to accept the facts in front of me. I couldn’t be dead. If I was dead, I wouldn’t be rationalizing my death. My brain insisted I was tripping. Yes, that was it. A wild trip like in the old days. Or, a lack of oxygen. I’d heard people thought some pretty weird things when they didn’t have enough oxygen. What if I was in a coma, or having an out of body experience?

  I shook my head. “Not real,” I heard myself whisper.

  “Real,” Daniel said, nonchalantly from his post against the wall. “Stage one, full denial with psychotic tendencies and delusions of astral projection.”

  I hated him, hated the way his words sounded in my ears. He didn’t care that my parents were completely torn apart. He didn’t care how sorry I was. My life was...gone. Over.

  What had I done?

  “Enough,” Banning warned him. “Ever hear of tact?”

  “Oh, I’m supposed to have sympathy for her on top of everything else?” Daniel scoffed. “I know better, Banning. I freaking know better. Am I sup
posed to candy-coat it? Tell her it’s okay and then show her around hell like it’s Ft. Lauderdale on spring break?”

  “She’s not going with you,” Banning repeated.

  I wasn’t going with anyone. I wanted them to leave me alone. Or fix everything. For the first time in months, I wanted something more than my sister’s life back. I wanted my life back. “Undo this. Fix it!” I shouted.

  “If only I could,” Banning said. “That’s not within my power—”

  “Then take me to someone who can. God. Lucifer. Anyone.”

  “That’s a no-go on my end. What do you have, Banning?” Daniel had his head down, rubbing his temples in slow circular motions. I guess my parents grieving over my dead body was too much for him. I hoped there wasn’t anything like aspirin in hell.

  Banning shook his head. “I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way, Keely.”

  “Screw that! People come back from the dead all the time. I’m just having a near death experience. Put me back.” A glance in the mirror told me that my eyes had already started to get puffy. But even red and tear-stained, my face was still considerably better than the me lying dead on the bathroom floor.

  The clock was ticking. I had to get back to my body before it was too late.

  “If I can see them, then why can’t they see me?” I asked.

  “Because... Let me think,” Daniel replied. “Because you’re dead?”

  Banning faced me, his eyes full of sorrow.

  I shook my head. “No, I won’t believe it.” I turned to my mother and cried as I helplessly tried to get her attention. I couldn’t move her arms, a lock of her hair, nothing. No amount of hugging or touching made her aware of my presence.

  Banning left the bathroom, his black duster billowing around his feet. “Might as well let her cry it out,” he said.

  Daniel shrugged. “I don’t think she liked the physics lesson,” he said as he followed Banning out of the room.

  Cry it out? I could shed an ocean of tears, enough to sail a fleet of ships without ever crying it out. I tried to shake my body lying on the floor, but it wouldn’t budge. Yes, this was just an out of body experience.

  But my skin felt like winter, and deep down I feared Banning had told me the truth. I didn’t fully understand the mechanics, but it didn’t stop me from burying my face against my mother’s shoulder. “I’m here,” I implored. “Please, I’m right here with you. I’m not dead, Mom. I’m not. Just wake me up.”

  I began to realize this was going to be a very long night. Time seemed to move slower, like minutes caught between dimensions. My mother continued to sit vigil with my body. When Monday came, her psychiatrist would increase her meds.

  The afterlife wasn’t what I’d imagined. For starters, I believed God would accept my remorse, acknowledge my suffering, and guide me through the gates of heaven. I hoped that God would offer comfort to my grieving parents. And, if God didn’t exist, there should be nothing—no heaven or hell or existence of any kind.

  Banning and Daniel returned. Banning gave me another pitying look. Daniel simply looked at me as though I were completely crazy. And, maybe I was. Did the afterlife have an insane asylum for the dearly departed? If this was some sort of afterlife, how come Banning and Daniel were the only ones to greet me? Where was Jordan? Couldn’t she see our family needed her?

  “Where is everyone?” I whispered hoarsely. “Where’s Jordan?”

  Daniel resumed his post at the bathroom doorway. “You were expecting a welcoming committee?”

  I almost gave him the finger, but my mother was in the room. How odd that I found it impossible to manage such a gesture even though she couldn’t see me. Instead, I took the higher road. If I couldn’t be tough, I’d act tough. Been there, done that. Got the sarcasm to prove it. I’d found it effective at school and, sometimes, with my parents.

  “That’s almost funny, Hellboy. Is there a special award for being Lucifer’s court jester?”

  “Sunshine’s got ’tude!” Daniel crowed. He sniffed and cocked a presumptuous smile at Banning. “You know, you’re right. If she weren’t such a prima donna I could almost like her.”

  Yeah, that was me, all right. Happy to be here! Jerk. I’d made a horrible mistake. I even tried to undo it—tried to take back my actions.

  “Isn’t someone I know supposed to greet me?” I asked. “Please, I just want my sister.”

  “I am sorry, Keely,” Banning said. “Truly. Your sister isn’t here right now.”

  Of course not. Angels probably had her off someplace where she was helping kittens down from trees. Because if she knew what had happened, she’d have been here.

  Daniel clapped a hand onto Banning’s shoulder. “You want a welcoming committee? That’s what we have reapers for. Until he turns you over to me, he’s the only committee you’ll get. How’s that for tact?”

  I looked at Banning.

  “Don’t worry. I won’t let you go to hell,” he said.

  Part of me wanted to make better sense of it all. Instead, all I could manage was to try to reassure my Mom that the flat, staring eyes she continued to look into weren’t mine any longer. I wanted her to know that the body she lovingly caressed was only a shell.

  “Hey, look. Keely, is it? Even if your mom could hear you, she’d feel the same,” Daniel said. “She’d still be heartbroken.”

  I shot him a dirty look. “Thanks for sharing.” My voice faltered and I turned my face from his. A flood of hot tears moistened my cheeks.

  Banning knelt next to me. “Take your time. We’re here if you need us. I know you’ll have more questions.”

  “Loads of them,” Daniel said.

  My mother clung to my corpse and I clung desperately to her. Dad made a call to my aunt—it’d been one of the first phone calls he made after reporting Jordan missing, and again after the police found her body. Aunt Jen was my mom’s older sister by a couple years. They were close, almost as close as Jordan and I had been. I wondered who’d get there first: Aunt Jen, the police, or the paramedics.

  The police arrived first. Dad let them in. My body had now taken on a waxy, fake bluish-white hue. Mom continued to dry off my legs as the officers walked into the bathroom. A female officer attempted to coax my mother from my corpse. At first, Mom ignored her. Then after a few minutes she allowed the policewoman to help her to her feet and out of the room, although she began humming the lullaby again. Dad talked to another officer, a balding, round cop built more for desk duty than patrol. Dad handed him the note I’d written.

  Downstairs, the paramedics had arrived and were talking with the female officer. I went to the landing to watch them. The paramedics attended to my mother, taking her pulse and checking that she was okay. Couldn’t they see? She was not okay. She would never be okay again. Ever.

  Banning and Daniel sat quietly on the sofa across from her. As I came downstairs, they merely watched me like some minor curiosity. Like none of this was any big deal. Well, at least Daniel acted like it wasn’t any big deal.

  Someone knocked gently on the door and one of the paramedics answered. A man with a bristly silver beard entered, the word Medical Examiner stitched in white on his blue jacket. The men talked briefly, their voices low so my mother wouldn’t hear. With a respectful nod, they passed my mother as the paramedic led the medical examiner upstairs to my parents’ bathroom. After a few minutes, they returned. Then, the paramedics helped him wheel a stretcher into the house and carry it up the stairs.

  After questioning my parents, taking photos, and officially announcing me deceased, the paramedics wheeled my body out the front door. A thin white sheet had been placed over the black body bag. I don’t know how my father managed to watch them stuff me into it. I know I couldn’t. I stayed downstairs. Maybe Dad waited in the bedroom or in the hall. But there I was, strapped to the stretcher and zipped from head to toe.

  Some of the neighbors had collected on their lawns, hands cupped over their mouths. Others stood huddled in groups. Mrs. A
nderson from next door tried to come inside. One of the cops blocked her path, telling her it might be best to leave the family alone and that my aunt was already on her way.

  The hardest part came when they loaded my body into the medical examiner’s vehicle, which had once been an ambulance but had since been painted navy blue instead of white. The emblem on the side read: Fulton County Medical Examiner. They slammed the rear doors shut.

  I was torn. What to do? Go with my body or stay with my parents? When I was alive, I wondered why ghosts might choose to stay with their decaying corpses. It seemed like a stupid thing to do. Now, I felt that if I let my body out of my sight, I’d never get back inside. That somehow, if I stayed close, I had a chance of being alive again. Holding on to my body seemed logical, a way to never let go of life.

  In the end, I stayed with my parents. I watched through the windows as the medical examiner and the paramedics drove away, slow and with their emergency lights off. I stared after them until they turned the corner. As the medical examiner’s van faded from sight, so did my life. I stared into the darkness, desperately listening for the last sounds of the engine.

  Sometime after midnight, Aunt Jen excused herself, going into my parents’ bathroom and closing the door. I heard her sobs from the other side as she cleaned the tub and the floor. The medical examiner had suggested that my parents hire a professional cleaning crew specializing in biohazard clean up. Instead, Aunt Jen offered to do the work. Suddenly, I was thankful I hadn’t blown out my brains, and that it wasn’t anything a mop, a bucket, a sponge, and some bleach couldn’t take care of. I slumped against the other side of the door and listened to her sobs.

  Banning and Daniel moved from room to room, one or the other always keeping a close watch on me. Daniel stayed quiet, clearly unhappy about the babysitting gig. From what Banning told me, I’d have to stay here on earth, in purgatory, with both of them until my funeral. I rubbed my eyes, too tired to ask why I had to stay in purgatory so long or why they couldn’t just leave me alone. Maybe this was my punishment—like Intro to Hell 101.