Death and Relaxation (Ordinary Magic #1)(75)

“Maybe,” I said. “Okay. Yes. I approve of you running a kite shop. Have you chosen the location?” I grabbed my coat off the chair where it had landed last night, then stepped outside, shrugging into it.

He moved primly to one side so that I could walk past him onto the porch. It didn’t matter that he was in a casual tropical shirt. He still moved like he was in a top hat and tails.

“I had expected to revive the current shop.”

“The Tailwind?” It was a broken-down A-frame shack on the southern end of town that had once been a thriving kite business before the casinos, internet, and whale-watching trips became the normal for Ordinary. “Have you spoken to Bill Downing?”

“The owner from California? Yes.”

“He agreed to sell it to you?”

“He agreed I could have the building and the name if I drew up a fair contract and paid him a portion of my profits for the next five years.”

“Think you can follow through on that?”

“I assure you I am more than capable of sealing a contract for a dilapidated shack.”

I had to grin a little. He sounded put out that I had doubted Death could close a deal. I started down the stairs and he followed behind me, his footsteps silent on the steep concrete steps.

“Good.” A car was coming, tires grinding gravel at the lower end of the dead end road. Jean was here quicker than I’d expected. “I’d like to see more kites out in the sky.”

I had reached the bottom of the staircase and turned to face him. That put the opening of the dead-end driveway and the sound of approaching tires at my back.

But it was the motion at the head of the driveway, a man stepping out from the bushes, that caught my eye.

“You were wrong,” Dan Perkin said. He was in a dark gray coat, a silhouette in the deep of the early morning fog and darkness.

“Dan? What are you doing here?”

He raised his gun. “My root beer is a winner! I’m a winner!”

I raised my hands, palm forward. “It’s okay, Dan. I agree. You’re a winner.”

“You should have given me ten out of ten!” His voice was high and ragged.

Sweat broke out on my lip, the cold of fog whisking it away. Dan was trembling with rage.

“We can fix this, Dan,” I said. “I can fix this and you can win.”

“Yeah, Delaney?” he scoffed. “Well, I can fix it too!”

The pain and force of the bullet ripping into my chest knocked me off my feet. I heard the gunshot a second after I fell, which seemed wrong to me. I landed on my ass in the sharp gravel, catching myself with one hand and trying to draw my gun with the other. I hoped to hell the car coming up the road wasn’t Jean, and if it was, that she wouldn’t put herself in the line of fire.

I was having a hard time getting a breath. My lungs burned as if someone had stuck a torch into them. Everything around me had gone freezing cold, my movements slow and stiff, the darkness shifting to an almost purple haze that was fuzzing up my eyesight.

I had to get on my feet. I had to get to my gun. I had to stop Dan before he shot anyone else—or before he shot me again. But I couldn’t seem to get a grip on the world that was slipping, slipping. Someone had taken all the air along with the light.

Distantly, I heard Dan’s yell of fury and anguish. “No! No! There are no bullets. There are no bullets!”

Then the screech of brakes and slide of blue and red lights bruised up the darkness.

I thought I heard Myra’s voice, blinked hard to warn her, to tell her that Dan had a gun. But the only thing I could see was Death’s face, hovering above me so close that I could see the shattering of silver lightning in his endless black eyes, the collar of his tacky Hawaiian shirt burning like a fire in the night.

“Reed Daughter,” he said softly, an intimate voice that swept my fears away, even though I still couldn’t breathe and I was thinking that was something I might want to be afraid of. “You cannot try to die. I am on vacation, after all.”

That ridiculous statement and the amount of sincerity he delivered it with made me want to laugh, but I didn’t have any air for that either.

Death put his cold hand on my chest, applying firm pressure to my wound as he shook his head disapprovingly. Then the world funneled down to a single speck of light that winked out.





Chapter 23


THE OCEAN was too loud. Waves rising and falling in a steady drone that filled my head.

I wished someone would just turn the darn thing off.

Rise, fall. Roar, roar, roar.

I didn’t know how long it took, but I finally realized the ocean sound was my own breathing thrumming in my ears. I was lying down somewhere warm, maybe under a blanket? I couldn’t feel most of my body, which seemed like a really good thing.

I wanted to slip back into sleep, or coma, or whatever soft oblivion I’d just accidentally slipped out of, but my breathing was way too loud.

“Time to wake up, Delaney,” Myra said from next to me. “We’re here. Come back to us.”

Fingers brushed my cheek gently, then stroked back over my hair. Myra, I thought. Maybe Jean too—petting the top of my head like I was a nervous cat she was trying to comfort.

“Hey, Delaney.” Jean sounded like she was trying to talk a cat out from under the car or refrigerator. “Wake up, sister.”