Waking Up Dead Read online

  My grim thoughts caused a stream of water to divert from its downward path. It squirted Suriyel right in the butt as he passed.

  We stopped mid-stride. He slowly turned around, eyes wide in surprise. I covered my horrified face with my hands.

  “Did you do that on purpose?”

  “No. I mean, yes.” I tried to remain contrite, but a big fat guffaw bubbled up and out of me.

  “I thought as much.” Suriyel directed a precise beam of water at my face.

  The cold of the natural spring fed water made me sputter. I pointed a larger blast at his face.

  He ducked. It splashed off the tree next to him, then onto me.

  A second blast happened before I recovered. The larger stream soaked my halter top and capri’s down to my lacy white underwear. Super. I careened past sexy wet T-shirt contestant to drowned rat look-alike. I channeled half the waterfall his way.

  He levitated to the top of the embankment with a cocky smile, and shot it down my way. I zapped myself over to the top of the opposite side before it got me.

  Suriyel enjoyed himself at my expense. I gloated for a second before he pelted me with mud.

  “Aw! That’s not nice! I am wearing white! I can wear white! It’s before Labor Day, you know!” I stomped my foot and wished for clean, dry clothes.

  I got the clean clothes, but my little display of irritation dislodged some of the embankment. I plummeted for what seemed like forever until I regained my senses and threw my hands out to stop myself. I opened my eyes to find Suriyel hovering above the rocks at the bottom of the waterfall. He made no move to help me.

  My hands and legs splayed in all directions. I righted myself and floated down to face the callous angel. “You were going to catch me, weren’t you?”

  “It is a good thing you did not need to find out.”

  A big spray of water caught him off guard. It soaked him from head to toe. I belted out a big, triumphant laugh at the sight of him sopping wet and mad, definitely mad. No sooner did I think about getting the hell out of his way, than he tackled me. I was forced down into the water. Pressure from fifty-thousand gallons of water over my head kept me down a little longer than I liked.

  I bobbed up, gasping for air. “Look, this has been fun, or at least it’s been wet. I think we had better stop while we’re ahead.”

  Suriyel stood there, waist deep in water, and stared at me. A myriad of emotions played in his unusual eyes. I saw a spark of desire there. My desire went from spark to forest fire in zero to sixty.

  His hands lifted me up. We stared intently at each other. My breath stirred his hair as he lowered me down the length of his body, slowly savoring the contact. Prickles of heat radiated from the feminine parts of me that were so close to him. The big gulp of air he swallowed told me he was affected, too. He lowered me to the bank of the pool.

  My body spontaneously combusted as he pushed me down on the grass and climbed on top of me. His lips claimed mine over and over. Our tongues parried and thrust in a continuation of the battle we’d engaged in all afternoon. Every place his body touched wanted more. His length rubbed my thigh. My center became wet in anticipation of feeling his thickness inside me. I wedged my hand between us and fumbled with his zipper. He broke our kiss and rolled off me. The entire front of my body frosted over like frog sitting on a frozen lily pad.

  “Yes. This was a nice diversion. Apparently, it is the best way to teach you how to hone your skills,” he said in a superior tone. The strained look on his face and the bulge barely contained by his zipper betrayed him.

  I worked my mouth a couple of times, but nothing came out. The bastard did it again! He got me all worked up then slammed the door! My hands wanted to throttle him while the rest of me wanted to undress him.

  “Diversion? Skills? Oh, I got skills, skills you only dreamed of, buddy-boy, and you ain’t gonna see hide nor hair of ‘em ever again,” I seethed and flashed myself to the car, annoyed even more by my lapse into improper grammar.

  “It’s getting dark. I must go.” He opened his black wings, nodded to me, then disappeared.

  My cry of frustration was drowned out by the vroom of the engine as I started the car.

  Chapter Five

  “You did say to take these trays to the fridge, right?” Mason’s blue eyes gleamed mischievously as he stared at me, tray in hand, waiting for an answer.

  I don’t know what Stacy ever saw in him. The boy’s stuck on stupid. “For the third time, please take the canapé tray to the refrigerator.”

  “I keep forgetting. It is an Alzheimer’s event, you know.” Mason chuckled at his own joke. He pinched my rear on his way to put the trays in the walk-in refrigerator.

  Mel laughed and caught my eye as she arranged some appetizers I spent all night making. “He’s only trying to make you laugh. You’re in such a bad mood. It’s making us nervous.”

  Nervous? Take a number, missy. It’s not every day you try to draw your killer out of hiding. “I-I’m sorry, y’all. I guess I don’t want to let Aunt Ava down.”

  Mason walked by to get another tray and pinched my butt again.

  “Mason Dooley! If you don’t stop pinching me every time you see my backside, I’m going to whack you with a tray!”

  “Come on Stacy-wacy, I’m just warming you up for the after party.” His lop-sided grin was almost contagious.

  Stacy-wacy? Yuck. “After party? I already told you, there isn’t gonna be any after party. Just think of me like you would Aunt Ava. You know—your employer. Get over yourself!”

  “Gross. Didn’t need that visual.” His lanky body jerked in an involuntary shiver.

  “Now, what was wrong with my aunt?” The urge to sock him coiled inside me.

  “Face it, Stac, she had cankles.” Mel made a disgusted face as she pulled a huge silver serving dish out. She filled it with a generous portion of the hundreds of shrimp we prepared earlier that afternoon.

  I glanced down at my ankles. Thanks to a little trip outside my body, I knew about the cellulite and spider veins. My ankles weren’t that huge. Mental head slap. I forgot whose body I filched.

  Mason chimed in. “She was old, too!”

  The trays on a cart behind his head started to rattle. Fortunately, I reigned in all thoughts of bodily harm before the trays flew at him. I worked hard, even got a blister when I diced all those portabella mushrooms instead of shitake to go on Fillo pastry.

  Mel and Mason gazed uneasily at the cart.

  “That was weird,” Mason proclaimed and gulped hard enough to make his prominent Adam’s apple bobble.

  “Do you think this place is haunted or something?” Mel’s voice trembled.

  Mason grabbed a tray from the cart with more than a little trepidation. He loped to the other side of the kitchen to plate the contents on Big Mama’s silver serving pieces.

  “Only by the ghost of caterer’s assistants past who didn’t hurry the hell up.” I broke out more serving dishes in an effort to distract them. “We’ve only got two hours until this thing starts, and there’s a lot to do!”

  “Yeah, if all the people remember how to get here,” Mason laughed.

  * * * *

  Penny Beecher flitted about the meeting hall like a little gnat. She moved the serving dishes and trays of food to different spots almost as soon as I put them out. They were in the same places they were last year, the same places we agreed on when we met at the hall weeks ago when my body had cankles. I followed the aroma of spicy seafood to the platter of Shrimp Rangoon she placed in the ladies bathroom.

  “If the woman’s raising money for Alzheimer’s research to avoid it in her future, she’s too late,” I muttered and stopped dead in my tracks.

  Samael helped himself to a Crab Canapé and wiped his fingers off on a cocktail napkin.

  “I didn’t think angels needed to eat anything.”

  “Whatever gave your that idea? It’s positively sinful how we can eat and not gain an ounce.”

  I swatted
him out of the way. “I should think we’d want to avoid sin since we’re in between Heaven and Hell anyway.” I stomped into the kitchen to get a replacement canapé.

  He popped into the kitchen just as Mason walked by with a bowl of shrimp and reached for my butt again.

  Samael nudged him with power. He lost his balance. The bowl soared through the air.

  All I saw was time and money lost if the shrimp hit the floor. I stretched my hands out in front of me and willed everything to freeze. Nice to know the practice with Suriyel paid off, sort of. Mason froze into a contorted football player-like dive. He reached for the tilted bowl as its shrimp spilled over the edges. Mel stood stock-still and watched the scene with her hands over her mouth.

  Samael cleared his throat. “I was only trying to teach him a lesson for being grabby.”

  “Who are you? My daddy?” I grabbed the bowl. “This would have been a waste of perfectly good shrimp.”

  “Certainly not,” he said abruptly with a dismissive wave of his hand.”I can’t have any fun can I?”

  “Sam, we can have fun some other time. I’ve got to get this party started so we can get on with finding my killer.”

  “You’re acting like the little old lady you used to be. I don’t know why you’re in such a hurry to find Ava’s killer. It only means you have to give up your new body and new life.”

  “She made a deal with me, Samael.” Suriyel’s scowling face appeared before the rest of his delicious body did.

  My face and traitorous naughty parts warmed as he strutted over to stand by me. How dare they revolt.

  “She has more integrity than you do. She,” Suriyel cast a pointed look at Samael, “will not go back on her word.”

  The fallen angel dropped the chafing dish he preened in. His eyes narrowed. “I refuse to be blamed for the fall of the Nephilim for the rest of eternity.”

  “Whether you refuse or not is of no concern to me,” Suriyel threw back.

  “What on Earth are you talking about?” Panic leaked through my fake nonchalance.

  “This is neither the place nor the time.” Suriyel crossed his arms over his chest.

  My heart palpitated at the blatant show of pec muscles.

  Veins in Samael’s temples jumped out. “No! I risked yet another eternal damnation for her. She should know what I am accused of.” He whipped around to address me. “I stand accused of telling the archangels that the ones sent to instruct humans on heavenly teachings were actually fornicating with them and creating a master race.”

  “What? There’s such a thing as too much information, you know.” I stuck my hand up in the air and wished for the ability to speed time up so we could get through tonight’s catering gig.

  “It was my wife. Not me,” he added in a tiny voice.

  “Yes. Well, it backfired because she lost her life and your son’s just like the rest of us.” The rawness of his words was lost on Samael who was still busy defending himself.

  “She only told because Michael came to her with his suspicions. She hoped her honesty would earn her favor.”

  “Favor? She sentenced my Iscah and our unborn child to death.” Pain strangled his facial features.

  “Your wife didn’t have to die. She had a way out. It was you who sent her into the afterlife.”

  Rewind. I really wanted the back story on this one. If he truly loved his wife, why’d he send her to her death?

  Suriyel seemed to stretch taller. His presence filled the bright, utilitarian room with shadows. I shuddered at the power in the air.

  “I dare you to repeat that.”

  “You mean you spent decades on Earth before God found out?” My question echoed through the kitchen unanswered.

  “Hello?” I waved my hand through the evil-eye beams the angels tried to melt each other . “What happened when the big guy found out?”

  Suriyel’s head snapped my way. “The angels corralled us and threw us into the center of the Earth while a flood destroyed our descendants.”

  Whoa. What happened to the Noah and the ark version they taught us in Sunday School?

  “My wife did what she thought was right.”

  The temperature dropped twenty degrees. In a flash, each angel unfurled his wings to prepare for battle.

  “My woman didn’t renounce God in the end,” Suriyel accused. His hand went to the sword belt. The temperature shot up one-hundred degrees.

  “And, you think mine did because Michael didn’t spare our family,” Samael snarled and moved closer to Suriyel.

  The voice of “Mayberry’s” Barney Fife in my head urged me to “nip it” before they hurt each other but, fire started on a dish towel by the sink beside me. I beat it with a metal spatula. The Masonic Temple, with its herd of moose, elk, and deer heads, not to mention a few Imperial Wizard hats, was an arsonist’s jackpot.

  The fallen angels were momentarily distracted. Suriyel pegged me with a sour look, and doused the fire with a flick of his wrist.

  “Fine! So I accidentally set fire to a hiker’s back pack in the state park. I put it out before he even knew he was on fire, and I didn’t set this one,” I defended.

  Suriyel and I locked eyes on Samael.

  “I have thousands of years of experience. I don’t unintentionally start fires, and I don’t make accusations I can’t back up!”

  “Hey y’all, can’t we just get this shin-dig started? Besides, you’re grown men—whatever. There’s no need for this little ‘Heat-Miser/Snow-Miser’ thingy here.”

  An eyebrow crash-up derby ensued. The fallen angels stared at me liked I’d sprouted Chia Pet hair.

  “I have no idea what this heat,” Samael made a dismissive gesture as he turned to Suriyel, “Snow Miser thing is, do you?”

  Suriyel shook his head. I suspected he wanted to roll his eyes.

  “First it was hot, then it was cold. Anyway, you’d have to see ‘The Year Without A Santa Claus’ to understand.”

  My concentration on the motion-freeze waned. A shrimp fell out of its spot in mid-air and splatted onto the floor.

  “Listen boys, I don’t know how long I can keep these people frozen, and besides, ya’ll really don’t want to attract any attention from,” I gulped and pointed up to the ceiling, “Him do you?”

  I waved my hands. Mason, Mel and everyone else formerly frozen in time were instantly released.

  Mason fell through Suriyel to the floor and onto his shoulder. Mel rushed through Samael to help Mason. The angels remained impassive until Suriyel sent Samael a menacing look and vanished.

  “Why did you push me?” Mason sat on the floor, rubbing his elbow. His gazed at me as if mortally wounded.

  “You sure you didn’t trip over your own big ass shoes,” I chided and put the bowl on the counter. I bent down to assist Mel, who struggled to help him up.

  “Are you okay, Mason?” The tenderness in her voice paired with the frown lines on her forehead revealed a little more than friendly concern.

  We ushered Mason to the nearest chair.

  “Gee, Stac, if you aren’t interested anymore, you don’t have to be so mean about letting me know.” His pain was like a giant boot as it pulverized me into a million pieces.

  Why do all the men in my life have to act like children on the same night? “Mason, you have to believe me. I didn’t push you. We can talk about…things, later.”

  Mel returned with a bag of ice for his shoulder. She mouthed the words, “be nice,” over his head.

  I wrinkled my nose at her and escaped the kitchen with the bowl of shrimp in hand. Vultures lined-up at the buffet table. The event didn’t start for another thirty minutes. I wormed my way between two men hogging the half-full serving dish and dumped my bowl into it. Too late, I noticed my-Ava’s ex husband. How did I fail to recognize all his fake Conway Twitty hair and turkey waddle in the first place?

  “Well, if it isn’t little Stacy!” Pieces of shrimp flew from his mouth as he reached to hug me. “How’s my little girl?”
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  The smell of booze and Old Spice bowled me over. “I’m not your little anything anymore,” sprang to the tip of my tongue. I thought better of it and resorted to a trick known by southern belles everywhere—the old smile through gritted teeth, and utter syrupy words ruse. “Why, I’m just fine, Uncle Craig.”

  “You and your aunt was always like peas in a pod!” He didn’t release me from his hug. “Mitzi and I were in Florida. We didn’t hear about her dyin’ until we came home after the funeral. So sad.”

  I twisted to get away from the grip he had on my shoulder. He left a cocktail sauce imprint on my uniform. “Yeah, it is sad. I gotta get some more food out here.” I traced my steps, backwards, toward the kitchen.

  “Oh, that’s right. You inherited her business,” his face darkened, “and our house.”

  Our house? He walked out and left me—Ava to pay the note on it. Why didn’t I sell the damn thing?

  I pushed the kitchen door open with my rear-end to find Mel had Mason’s shirt off. “If ya’ll need a little privacy, I can come back.”

  “Stacy, I was just looking at his shoulder. It’s turning black and blue. He needs to go to the ER.”

  “I ain’t goin’ nowhere.” Mason jerked his shirt closed.

  Mel huffed in exasperation. “You need a doctor.”

  Great. Stacy’s first catering gig, and I end up with no help. Selfish, selfish Ava, I mean, Stacy. “Mel, if you want to take him to the ER, go on. It’s not like this is the cotillion or anything.” I’ll just freeze the crowd to keep up with their grazing pattern. Nobody will ever know.

  Mason jumped up so fast, the chair fell to the floor. “I told you. You ain’t taking me to see no doctor. Stacy needs us here tonight, and I plan to stick around.”

  “Suit yourself.” Mel’s lips drew as thin as a possum’s. She set the dishes in the sink so hard they clanked. I knew they were broken.