Now that she and the disembodied voice were alone, Delaney communicated as though he were standing right in front of her—even though he still hadn’t made a physical appearance. For some stuck souls, it took time and even some wooing before they’d make themselves visible to her.
Delaney clasped her hands together and cracked her knuckles. “Yep, and thanks to you yakking me up in my head, the dogs heard the commotion from my irate customer, then I went long with the Dabrowskis and pissed off that Irv. He wasn’t exactly a believer to begin with, and you showing up didn’t help one iota.” She made a circle around her face with a finger in the direction the voice had come from. “See this? This is my really tweaked face. I just lost eight hundred bucks because you wouldn’t get off my cloud. Now go away and come back tomorrow. I’m too hacked off to ship you off to the other side right now.”
“Eight hundred dollars? You charge poor, grieving families eight hundred bucks to contact their dead loved ones?” His voice, silky smooth as it was, held a hint of indignation.
Delaney planted her hands on her hips, the jingle of her bangle bracelets ringing in the small space of her living room/dining room. “Please. Save the righteous indignation. It’s not like I can have a real nine-to-five when you bunch keep popping up in my head unannounced. Imagine what it would look like to Wal-Mart shoppers if I greeted not just the living, but the dearly departed, too. Some of you wankers can be really, really pushy when you want something from me. That includes you, pal. I do what I have to do to survive, and as you yourself can see, I’m for real. I really can talk to the dead. It’s not something I do often, take money, I mean. But every once in a while, when business is slow in the winter, like now, I do what’s necessary to make the rent and pay for my ramen noodles, okay? So don’t be a hater.”
“Sorry.” His contrite mumble echoed in her head.
Delaney groaned, flipping on her lamp with the beaded burgundy shade. It cast a pleasant glow over her very gloomy situation. “Apology accepted. Now go back to wherever you came from until I’m feeling more like making nice. Right now, I just want to relax and watch some TV while I cook up another way to make some cash.”
“Can I ask you something?”
Delaney ran a tired hand over her forehead, then yanked out the clip that held her hair up and threw it on the end table. “Like me saying the word no has stopped you thus far?”
His chuckle, warm and killa manly, left a slither of a chill riding her spine. “What’s ‘shipping me off to the other side’ mean?”
She ran a hand over each of her dogs’ heads lovingly, reaching into the pocket of her floor-length floral skirt and feeding them each a treat. “Uh, you know, up there.” She pointed a finger to her water-stained ceiling.
“That’s not why I’m here.”
Delaney plopped down on her small couch, sending her pack of dogs scattering to either side of her. Her half Chihuahua, half Poodle—her Poo-Chi, as she’d dubbed him when she’d found him in an alleyway by her favorite Indian restaurant—instantly hopped into her lap, making her grunt while he settled in. She chucked him under the chin.
From the size of him now, no one would ever know he’d once been skeletal and starving, scrounging for food in bags of trash. His stout, barrel-chested body had just recently tipped the scales at almost eighteen pounds. Waaayyy overweight for what was a mix of two toy breeds. Way. “Dude, that’s my ovary you’re standing on,” she reprimanded with a grunt, but her face settled into a warm smile.
Each dog dutifully took its place beside her while she kicked off her satin slippers, crossing her legs at her ankles. “Again, let me reiterate. I kinda don’t care why you’re here right now. It’s been a long day, I’m wiped, and I just lost eight hundred much-needed bucks. I have six mouths to feed and you blew their kibble for the week because you couldn’t wait your turn. That means you’ve stolen from the poor and now potentially homeless. Nice, very nice. Proud?”
His voice came from behind her now. Right over her shoulder. “You talk about these mutts as if they’re your children.”
Delaney tilted her head backward, directing her gaze in the direction of his voice somewhere near her window, letting out a gasp-snort. “First of all, watch your tone when it comes to the dogs.” Delaney ruffled her one-eyed Shih Tzu-Pomeranian’s head when he stuck his face pointedly in hers, scratching him just below his fuzzy, multicolored ear. His one eye bobbled at her with that vacant, indirect stare Shih Tzus were famous for. Poor baby had been destined for the Needle of Nevermore, and all because he had only one eye. The shelter’d said he was unadoptable—Delaney’d swept in and called that notion ridiculous, then adopted him and toyed with the idea of secretly calling him Cyclops, or Cy for short.