A Most Excellent Midlife Crisis: Good To The Last Death Book Three Read online

  “Lies aren’t always kind,” Heather said with a sigh. “But the truth in this case is not possible.”

  “Awesome. So, where did Gideon and I go?”

  “How about a cabin in Maine with bad internet service?” Heather suggested. “It was cold and you didn’t get out much, so you found other things to occupy your time.”

  I laughed then cringed. “Umm, how did Gideon react to… you know…”

  “The undescended testicle discussion?” Heather asked with a grin.

  “Yes,” I replied with a wince.

  “He laughed.”

  “He laughed?”

  “He did indeed, and then offered to prove his nuts were outstanding if anyone was so inclined to look.”

  “Dear God,” I gasped out. “Did he drop trou and reveal his balls?”

  “Nope,” Heather promised. “No one wanted to see his balls.”

  I heaved out a mortified sigh of relief and slapped on a little lip gloss. Maybe shiny lips would detract from my shiny eyes.

  Or maybe not.

  The burning question was on the tip of my tongue. I didn’t want the answer, and I had no clue if Heather would have the answer. However, staying in the dark was unwise.

  “Am I becoming Immortal?” I whispered.

  She shook her head. “That’s not how it works—at least not in my experience, and I’ve been around a very long time,” she said. “One is created Immortal. It’s impossible to become Immortal.”

  “Nothing is impossible,” I said with a shudder. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned recently, it’s that.”

  “Point taken,” Heather said, standing up. “Let’s test a few things.”

  “There’s a test to take to see if I’m Immortal?”

  “No, but there are markers,” she explained. “Put on your tennis shoes and a fleece and let’s go outside.”

  “Is this a bad idea?” I asked, eyeing her warily.

  “Probably,” she admitted, grinning. “But it’s a plan. You in?”

  “Why not?” I answered with a groan. “But just so you know, I’ve never been good at tests.”

  “There’s a first time for everything, Daisy.”

  Crapcrapcrap.

  Chapter Six

  “Why do I have to get run over with the car? Why can’t you get run over?” Candy Vargo griped as Heather got behind the wheel of her sports car and started the engine.

  “Because I’m wearing expensive leather pants and you’re wearing shit,” Heather yelled back.

  “You gonna listen to me now?” Gram demanded as she flew circles around a pissed-off Candy Vargo. “If you’d take a little care with your appearance, you wouldn’t have to be roadkill.”

  “Umm… what are we doing?” I asked, not liking the direction of anything that was transpiring.

  While Candy might not be my favorite person, I liked her enough to not want her to die. Watching Karma get mowed down by a car seemed like a seriously bad idea. I had no clue how maiming Candy would prove I was Immortal.

  “I’m going to run over Candy and you’re going to try to save her,” Heather explained as she revved the engine.

  “Because?” I asked, buying time so I could talk Heather out of her insane plan.

  “She wants to test your speed,” Candy grumbled.

  “We already know I’m fast,” I said. “This is ridiculous. I really think—”

  Before another word left my lips, Heather’s lightning-fast sports car hurtled toward the Keeper of Fate.

  Without a thought for my own safety, or any thought at all, I dove at Candy and threw her about thirty-feet in the air, narrowly missing getting clipped by the car myself.

  Candy’s squeal of delight almost made me laugh, but I swallowed it on a gasp and a bad word that made Gram throw her hands in the air in shock.

  Heather’s scream of terror made my stomach drop to my toes.

  “Accelerator’s stuck,” Heather bellowed as her car careened toward my house. The ghosts sitting on the front porch watched the action with rabid attention. The car couldn’t kill them since they were already dead, but it could harm one of my dearest friends and take out the front of the house.

  Turning on a dime and channeling the Bionic Woman, I heard Candy hit the ground with a thud and a laugh as she fell back to earth. With speed that I didn’t know I had, I sprinted toward the car, grabbed the driver’s side door, ripped it off, shoved Heather over and slammed on the brakes so hard my foot went right through the bottom of the running board.

  Thankfully, it also stopped the car’s forward motion.

  We were about two inches from the bushes that Steve and I had planted ten years ago. Not a leaf was disturbed. However, Heather’s car was not as lucky.

  Letting my head drop to the steering wheel with a bang, I closed my eyes and made a mental list of how to get Heather back. It was a long list.

  “Pretty sure I hate you right now,” I said, not looking at her.

  “Pretty sure you’re not just human,” she said, stating the obvious.

  “Did the accelerator really get stuck?”

  “You want the truth?” she asked.

  “Yep.”

  “No. The accelerator wasn’t stuck.”

  “Would you have plowed into my house?” I questioned, still avoiding eye contact.

  “Absolutely not,” she said.

  “So, the Candy thing was a warm-up? You wouldn’t have mowed her down?”

  “Kind of,” Heather replied with a small chuckle. “I totally would have run her over. She’s Immortal. She would have lived. Plus, I’ve wanted to mow her down for centuries. This gave me a legitimate excuse.”

  “There is so much wrong with that sentence, I don’t know where to start,” I said, trying not to laugh.

  “Well, all I have to say is try living near Candy Vargo for a thousand years and tell me how you feel then,” Heather said in her defense.

  “Am I going to be around for a thousand years?” I asked, so quietly I wasn’t sure she heard me.

  Her lack of response made me repeat the question.

  “Daisy, I don’t know. You passed the markers, but you leave no footprint,” Heather said. “It’s as if you have the power without the life span.”

  “Is it because I’m a Death Counselor?” I asked, reaching for any kind of logical explanation—not that logic could be applied, but I was going to try. I knew now that I possessed a percentage of Angel DNA, but I’d had that my entire life and I’d been completely normal up until recently.

  “No other Death Counselor has possessed this kind of strength, speed or power,” Heather said, placing her hand on my back and rubbing gently.

  “So, I’m just a powerful freak who can knock down trees, mind dive into the dead, juggle people, glue on body parts and pull car doors off their hinges?”

  “Sounds pretty bad when you put it like that,” Heather pointed out diplomatically.

  “Not sure how else to put it,” I said, glancing over at her with a small grin.

  “Don’t forget you’re banging the Grim Reaper.”

  “Haven’t banged him yet,” I reminded her. “Haven’t even seen his balls.”

  Heather laughed. I joined her. The reality that I called my life was so farked up, the only thing to do was laugh.

  “Wait,” I said, grabbing Heather as a thought occurred to me. “It’s the mind diving.”

  “What’s the mind diving?” she asked, confused.

  “Every time I’ve done it, something in me has changed,” I told her as my excitement at having possibly figured something out ramped up. “After I dove into Sam’s mind, my eyesight improved. After I dove into John’s mind, I could run a marathon without breaking a sweat.”

  “And after you dove into Lindsay’s mind, you took out a tree with your bare hands,” Heather said, following my lead.

  “Yep. And this time, after I went into Steve’s mind, I ripped off a car door while the car was hurtling out of control and threw
Karma almost as high as the roof of my house.”

  “I really enjoyed that,” Candy Vargo said, sliding into the backseat with Gram on her tail.

  “Great,” I said with an eye roll. “Won’t be happening again anytime soon.”

  “What if I let Heather try to mow me down again?” Candy suggested.

  “You’re out of luck,” Heather said with a laugh. “My car is out of service for a while.”

  “Fine,” Candy huffed. “You people are jackholes.”

  Ignoring Candy because I didn’t have anything nice to say, I mulled over the discovery I’d just made.

  “The key to not becoming a female version of the Hulk—or possibly Immortal—is to stop mind diving,” I mused aloud.

  “Gonna be hard for you,” Gram pointed out. “You have a real soft spot for dead squatters.”

  I laughed. The words coming out of everyone’s mouths were so absurd it was appalling. The worst part was that all of it was true.

  “You’re correct, Gram,” I agreed, thinking of Birdie in particular. Maybe the Ouija board would suffice. “But it’s screwing with my DNA.”

  “I concur. The mind diving has to stop for the time being,” Heather said. “We need to talk to Charlie.”

  “Why?” I asked. “What can he do?”

  “His human day job is a lab tech over at the hospital,” Heather reminded me. “I want him to take a sample of your blood and run some tests.”

  “What will he be able to learn by doing that?” I asked.

  “Maybe nothing,” Candy said, pulling a toothpick out of her pocket and picking her teeth. “Can’t hurt though.”

  “What in tarnation did I tell you about that,” Gram shouted at a shocked Candy, who quickly removed the toothpick and shoved it back in her pocket.

  “Umm… something about a train and a flood,” Candy mumbled, looking a bit terrified.

  No one said a word. I bit down on my lip and sucked back a laugh with great effort. Gram meant business. I actually felt kind of sorry for Candy Vargo. When Gram got something in her head, there was no removing it.

  For better or worse, Candy Vargo was Gram’s new project.

  Closing my eyes so I didn’t accidentally see Candy’s expression in the rearview mirror, I asked the next logical question. “So, what do we do now?”

  “We wait,” Heather said.

  “For?” I pressed.

  She shrugged. “Right now, your guess is as good as mine.”

  “Awesome,” I muttered, glancing up at all my squatters who were waiting patiently for me to do a little surgery. “I’ve got some dead people to repair.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Candy said, getting out of the car and hightailing it into the house.

  I was sure she was going to hide from Gram.

  “Gram,” I said, turning around to talk to her. “You can’t be too hard on Candy.”

  “Oh, sugar pie,” Gram said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “She loves it. No one has given a rat’s butt about that girl in a very long time. She might bitch and moan, but it makes her feel special.”

  I grinned. “It’s special to have you riding her ass?”

  “Darn tootin’,” Gram said with a laugh as she flew right through the roof of the car and went to find her new project.

  “Good luck to Gram with that one,” Heather said as she clapped her hands and an enormous box appeared on the porch.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Superglue,” she informed me. “You’re gonna need it.”

  Chapter Seven

  The day dawned bright, sunny and chilly. My squatters were all repaired and a relative state of normalcy had settled back in. As of yesterday, Birdie’s head was glued squarely back on her neck. She was thrilled to have her hands free to flip me off.

  I’d slept like the dead after the Mow Down Candy Vargo fiasco and the subsequent Let’s Plow Heather’s Car into Daisy’s House test—not to mention it took me five hours to glue all my dead guests back together. I was no closer to the answer as to whether I was becoming Immortal or not, but I was now sure I could defend myself and save anyone’s life if the occasion arose… or at the very least glue them back together.

  Here’s to seriously hoping an occasion doesn’t arise.

  So, for lack of something better to do, I decided to do something stupid…

  “Do you want me to vacuum the living room?” Heather called out.

  “That would be awesome,” I answered, putting the flower arrangement I’d had delivered on the kitchen table and sucking in a deep breath to calm my nerves.

  I’d invited my friends over for lunch and was adding Tim and Candy to the mix. Socializing Tim had been my plan for a while. Candy was the wild card. Gram had insisted Candy was ready and desperately needed some friends. Gram was very aware that I was a sucker for the underdog—even if the underdog had hideous manners and could kill people with the flick of her finger. She’d sworn she made Candy incinerate all of her toothpicks. The inferno in the backyard firepit was the proof.

  Living on the edge was my new way of life. There was a fine chance it would burn me like Candy had burned her bad habit in my yard.

  “Everyone will be here in a half hour and June’s bringing cookies,” Heather said, wrapping the cord around the vacuum cleaner and putting it back in the hallway closet.

  “This is a very bad idea except for the cookies,” I said, pulling out plates, napkins and silverware. “I’m going to get busted for lying about my fictional getaway with Gideon. I’ll have no friends left by tonight.”

  “I’ll always be your friend, and you’re not going to lie,” Heather replied.

  “No way, you crazy old freak!” Candy Vargo shouted as she sprinted through the house with Gram on her ass.

  Donna and Karen thought it was a fabulous game and chased them while barking with joy.

  “What’s going on there?” Heather asked, raising her brow.

  Putting the plates on the kitchen table, I sat on a chair and let my head drop to the wooden table with a thud. “Gram is making Candy wear a dress to the get together this afternoon. Told her if she didn’t, she’d move herself into Candy’s house and make her life a living Hell.”

  “Harsh yet creative,” Heather said with a laugh. “I can’t believe she convinced her to get a haircut. Candy’s actually attractive minus the unruly mop. First time I’ve seen her eyes in a few centuries.”

  “Gram didn’t convince her to get a haircut, she blackmailed her,” I explained with a grin.

  “Shut the front door. How does a ghost blackmail the Keeper of Fate?”

  “No clue and never want to know,” I replied, tracing the grain of the wood in the table with my finger. “Gideon called.”

  “And?”

  “And they haven’t found Clarissa yet. They think they’ve been close, but she’s two steps ahead of them,” I told her. “They’re going to come back here and make a new plan of action. Besides, explaining Charlie’s absence is getting complicated. June is worried sick.”

  Heather nodded and sat across the table from me. “I spoke with Michael.”

  “I prefer John Travolta or Darth Vader.”

  She chuckled. “Fine. I spoke with John Travolta. He basically said the same thing. However, if they keep coming up empty, the army will be deployed—that’s a very last resort.”

  “The Angels have an army?” I suppose it shouldn’t be shocking. They were certainly a violent group from what I’d seen so far.

  “Nope.”

  “They’re sending a human army out to hunt down an Immortal Angel?” I asked, getting more confused.

  “Nope.”

  “The cryptic shit is going to give me gas,” I said, narrowing my eyes.

  Heather blew out a long slow breath and looked me in the eye. “The army is comprised of Demons. Using them is dangerous.”

  “Dangerous as in apocalyptic?” I questioned.

  “No. Not at all,” Heather assured me. “It can
just be a bit problematic to have a few hundred Demons roaming Earth at the same time.”

  I was living in a bad movie with no ending.

  “Should I ask who leads the Demon army?” I inquired as my stomach roiled.

  “Probably not.”

  “Mmkay. I’ve become a rule breaker in my forties and I like to open and rewrap Christmas gifts early, then feign surprise Christmas morning. So unfortunately—for me, I’m sure—I’m going to ask. Who leads the Demon army?”

  “Gideon,” she replied flatly.

  Finding out new and interesting facts about the man I was in love with wasn’t always fun or good for my digestive system. The magazines had it all wrong. Researching your man was a shitshow—not info for a flirty conversation starter. Of course, I was dating the Grim Reaper and Cosmo didn’t exactly cover that.

  “Awesome.” I pressed the bridge of my nose and promised myself not to ask questions I didn’t want the answers to anymore.

  Good luck to me.

  Driving blind was the old Daisy. My eyes were sparkly and wide open now.

  It sucked.

  “Let’s go back to a subject that isn’t going to make me hurl,” I suggested. “How am I not going to lie to the girls?”

  Heather paled and began examining her cuticles with great interest. “Well… umm…”

  “Out with it,” I demanded, thinking I’d possibly picked the wrong subject.

  “I might have subconsciously planted a few facts in everyone’s minds.” She winced and scrunched her eyes shut.

  “Define that, please.”

  Heather suddenly found something very interesting on the ceiling. “Suffice it to say, you’ve already told them all about the Maine getaway, and you did tell Missy you were taking off before you left.”

  I was stunned to silence, but not for long.

  “That’s awful. I did no such thing,” I shouted as I jumped to my feet and knocked the chair to the ground. “Is bending the truth with magic a common practice with all of you Immortals?”

  Heather blanched and lowered her head. “No. I’ve only done it one other time and that was hundreds of years ago.”

  “Is it easy to do?” I questioned, wondering if it had been done to me by any of the Immortals I’d been in contact with… especially Gideon.