Page 3 of Deader than Dead

“That’s a lot of questions,” Asher said after a pause. “How about you pick one?”

“And you’ll answer it?”

Asher’s shoulders moved slightly beneath the jacket of his charcoal gray suit, his shrug like everything else about him coolly understated. “Perhaps. I guess it will depend which one you pick.”

Interesting. This needed careful consideration if I didn’t want to waste my question. Not the android one, obviously. That had been more of a joke. Did I really need to know if he was gay? What good would that do when I wasn’t interested in him? “Why does no one ever see you leaving the building? Or arriving, for that matter. You’re just here.”

Asher’s phone vibrated, his gaze dropping to it. “Cade will see you now.”

I stayed in my chair, shaking my head. “Oh no you don’t. You said you’d answer the question.”

“I said it depended on which question it was.”

“Dick!” I muttered as I rose to my feet. “You had no intention of answering it.”

“Your mouth will get you in trouble one day, John. You might want to bear that in mind.”

I pursed my lips as I passed Asher’s desk and made an exaggerated kissing sound. “No one’s ever complained about my mouth so far.”

No response, but then I hadn’t expected one. Asher didn’t lower himself to common insults. Still smarting from Asher’s brush off, I was a little too boisterous with the door, Cade spinning around from his position by the window. He didn’t waste any time on niceties and didn’t offer me a seat either. “You didn’t file your written report last week.”

For fuck’s sake, was that what this was about? I was good at my job, but that wasn’t enough. I had to dot the I’s and cross all the T’s as well. “Didn’t I?” I knew full well I hadn’t. The entire process always seemed so pointless. “Monday. Three jobs, which you know because you were the one who sent me on them. They all went smoothly. Tuesday. Two jobs. First one was a no-go because he’d been dead too long. Second was uneventful to the point of—“

“That’s oral, John, not written.” If it had been Asher, I would have made some sort of comment about giving good oral, but it wasn’t Asher, it was Cade, and it would be even more wasted on him than on the ice prince. If it wasn’t for Calisto and all the goodness that shone from him, I would have seriously questioned whether I was the only human who worked here. I couldn’t speak for the other departments because we didn’t really mix. Who wanted to hang out with a bunch of psychics who could probe your brain? Not me. Cade held my gaze. “Don’t leave here today without getting it to me.”

Narrowly resisting the urge to salute, I nodded instead. “Understood. I’ll email it to you.”

“Good.” Cade turned back to the window.

“Anything else?” He surely couldn’t have called me up here and made me wait just for that. That was a conversation we could have had over the phone. He would have just needed to call me instead of Calisto.

Cade let out a sigh. Only a small one, but it was definitely a sigh. “We probably need a conversation about timekeeping at some point.”

“Now?” I prayed for the answer to be no.

The pause that followed was excruciating. Perhaps Cade was as unenthusiastic about having the conversation as I was.

“No, not now, but soon.”

“Great!” I managed a smile. “I’ll look forward to it.”

I backed toward the door and made a hasty retreat before Cade could think of anything else. Asher didn’t lift his gaze as I swept past him. Sometimes I marveled at what a strange place this was to work in, but then could I really expect anything else when my job was bringing people back from the dead?

Chapter Two

Bellamy

Sweat was dripping off me by the time I rounded the last bend and my front door came into sight. I gave it one last burst of speed, my arms and legs pumping to get me there faster. It was a wasted effort when the black door was only about sixty meters away, but I did it anyway, coming to a grinding halt in front of it. At that point, I gave in to bending forward and bracing my hands on my thighs, my vision blurred. At least a couple of minutes passed before my breathing slowed and my heart rate calmed enough to set about locating my keys. “Getting old, Bellamy,” I muttered to myself.

“Half marathon?”

I looked up to find my next-door-neighbor leaving her house, her hair and make-up as perfect as ever, and her chihuahua, Henry, snuggled in her arms. I’d never seen that dog walk. I wasn’t entirely sure it was capable. “Something like that.” It was nothing like that, barely 5k if I was honest, but I wasn’t about to admit that, not even to a woman who I doubted even owned a pair of trainers.

“You want to be careful,” she said as I fitted my key into the lock.

“Yeah?”

She nodded. “You hear about those people, don’t you? The ones who run the London Marathon, and then drop dead a few hours later.” She hitched Henry higher in her arms, the dog staring at me impassively. “If you ask me, running is bad for you.”

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