A couple of beats of his nonexistent heart later, and his boots settled back down. With a tight breath, he focused on the man behind him, relieved to find an actual person standing there. Until he realized the figure was translucent too. The hazy image of a tree trunk penetrated the guy’s thin chest.
A second later recognition hit . . . a bald head, crowned by a bloody bandage . . . brown eyes . . . a big black knife protruding from a narrow chest . . .
Pachico . . .
Pachico, who’d died in their safe haven less than fifteen minutes earlier. Pachico, whose corpse had been unceremoniously cremated when their hidey-hole had been blown to Venus and back.
Sweet Jesus . . .
Disbelief swarmed, flooding him like helium, and his feet said adios to the ground again. The man—or thing—laughed, and the knife bobbed up and down.
Wake up. Damn it, time to wake up.
Kait, Cosky’s brand-new girlfriend, flew past Rawls, her braid flopping against her back and gleaming like wet gold beneath the opalescent shimmer of the moonlight. She dropped to her knees and spread her hands. “Which is the worst wound?”
“Chest,” Zane said, backing up to give her room.
“What the hell do they think they’re gonna do?” the man Rawls had known as Detective Pachico asked. “Bring you back from the dead?” He snorted out a laugh.
Cosky’s breath whistled out in a rush. “I got a pulse.”
Pachico laughed again. “Wishful thinking on your buddy’s part. If you had a pulse, you wouldn’t be all floaty beside me.”
A thick, static pressure swelled in Rawls’s head. He recognized the symptoms of shock—the mental fog, the dizzy floating sensation, the white haze shrouding his vision.
Except, if Pachico was right . . . if he really had died . . . he didn’t have eyes now, did he? Or a body? Or a life?
Wake up. He pinched his wrist again, grimacing when his fingers sank into his transparent arm. Stepping forward, he grabbed Zane’s shoulder, and his hand vanished. Zane didn’t even flinch. No reaction at all.
“You’re not sleeping, dumbass. You’re dead. As a doornail. Your buddies can’t see you, or hear you, or feel you. I should know. I’ve been trying to catch someone’s attention since you let me die in that damn kitchen.” Pachico paused and then his voice rose. “What the fuck are they doing?” He stepped closer to the drama unfolding before them.
Rawls turned back to the nightmare playing out at his feet. Kait knelt on one side of his prone form, her palms pressed against the center of his chest. Cosky faced her, his hands covering hers. Frozen, they crouched there, staring down . . . waiting.
“Tryin’ to heal me.” Rawls twitched, startled by his hollow, disembodied voice.
“No fuck.” Pachico laughed. “Good luck with that.”
There was precedent for such a healing. Kait had fixed Cosky’s knee after all, but then again—Cosky hadn’t been dead.
How did one go about healing the deceased?
He turned in a slow circle, surveying the silvery trees and shrubs surrounding him. The clearing stood pretty much the same—other than the moonlight, which might be a tad more ethereal since his death.
If he wasn’t dreaming, if he really had kicked the bucket, this didn’t resemble any of the near-death experiences his patients had recounted during his surgical residency. No bright light lurked in the distance. Peace and love were void from the air. Gram and Gramps, Ma and Pops, Uncle Andy and Aunt Ruth . . . Sarah . . . Hell—not one of them had come to fetch him into the afterlife.
Apparently they still hadn’t forgiven him for what had happened . . . which was fair. He hadn’t forgiven himself.
He frowned, his gaze falling on a crumpled figure in the distance. He hadn’t been the only one to die in this meadow. Where were the rest of the corporeally disenfranchised?
“Why didn’t your buddy over there”—he nodded at the motionless form—“go all Casper on us too?”
“How the hell should I know?” Pachico scowled at him before turning back to the drama taking place beneath the mammoth pine tree. “I wasn’t given a manual any more than you were.” He watched for a moment before leaning forward, his eyes widening. “What the fuck! Do you see that? They’re glowing!”
Rawls simply nodded, too startled to speak. Kait and Cosky had lit up like a pair of bright white sparklers. A dense bubble of silver cocooned the pair, flowed out of their hands, and plunged into his chest, where it advanced in a glowing puddle until it infused every inch of his inert form. With each second, the light intensified, blurring the outline of his frame into a pulsing rectangle of platinum.
Within the radiance something took shape—a thick, wavering snakelike tentacle. It unfurled from the luminous pool like a cobra poised to strike, and hung in the air, shedding silver sparks.