Dying by the Hour (A Jesse Sullivan Novel Book 2) (2 page)

“Sure. That’s a great sign,” I say. But I don’t believe what I’m saying and she knows I don’t believe it. But sometimes you say things to be kind to the people you love. It wouldn’t comfort her to hear
We’re all going to die, Ally. They came for us once and they’ll come again. Harder and harder until they win, and God help us, I can’t imagine anything worse than what we’ve already been through
—No.

Some things you don’t say to people you love.

Besides the word
war
suggests a fighting chance. War means a prolonged battle where either side could come out on top. This isn’t war. This is a death sentence.

Ally gives my hand a quick squeeze, bringing me back to the present moment, to a moment when I am just a clown at a little girl’s birthday party.

“Go on,” she says. “Get what you came for.”

I cast a last look at Regina, Julia, and the others, then hand Ally the balloon bag.

“If they ask, I went to pee.”

She gives a cute salute and I slip away. I take my huge floppy shoes off by the back door and creep inside, careful to slide the door closed behind me.

The kitchen welcomes me, a large island off the right, granite counter tops and behind that, mahogany cabinets and a stainless steel fridge. The place looks like an ad in
Better Homes
, with only a few stray coats from guests and the occasional toy forgotten in a corner. Otherwise—pristine.

I turn on the bathroom light and shut the door, hoping to give the
occupado
impression should someone wonder where I am. Cover story secure, I creep down the hallway. My ears strain for any people noises—voices, footsteps, maniacal whistling, for anyone who might wonder why a girl wearing a rainbow wig is creeping around up here.

But I hear nothing. See no one.

I place my hand on the door handle of Mr. Lovett’s office and find it locked. Then I do what I’ve been taught to do. I pull two pins from my thick rainbow wig and slip them into the lock. I push against the bearing—turn, and
pop
.

It sounds easy, sure, but I’ve practiced a
million
times on a variety of locks purchased from hardware stores. A box of locks in the corner of a living room is a great conversation starter, by the way, and a lovely way to spend a Friday night alone.

Gerard Lovett’s office is large. The desk lay in the middle of the room, directly opposite the door. The desk itself is immaculate,
nothing
like mine, which has piles of paperwork, junk mail, and bills needing attention. Behind his neat desk is a regal black chair, with a high back and wheels. The desk and chair itself are perched on top of a red and gold rug matching the red and gold drapes on either side of the fireplace behind the desk. One side of the room has a massive book case. The spines look unbroken, unread, and I’m not surprised to think of Mr. Lovett as a man who likes the appearance of being erudite rather than the actual reading. The remaining side of the room has a wooden chess set on a table between two more regal chairs, this time made of red leather.

Before entering the room I look around. I’m glad I do. Because up above me, sitting on a ledge above the chess set, is a camera.
It isn’t trained on the whole room, just the desk and the wall behind it, so if I’m lucky, I’m still invisible.

I admit I’m pretty freaked about the camera. I’m staring at its little black eye, trying to determine my next move, how to keep it from seeing me when—

POP
.

I jump. My heart explodes in my chest, taking off like a rabbit fleeing a fox and I am about to run like hellfire back down the stairs and out the door. Then I hear a child crying. I swear, steady myself against the door frame, breath caught in my throat like a cotton ball and cross to the window to see what made the sound.

A balloon had popped. And a child, devastated, is

crying against Ally’s leg while she searches the bag for one in a similar shape and color. She finds one and the girl brings her weeping to a raggedy, shuddering stop. Her face brightens. The smile still tight, turns into a half-hearted, lopsided grin and the sobs become a kind of gleeful hiccup.

“Je
sus
,” I mutter. I swear I can feel my ovaries die.

When I turn back to the room I realize something is wrong. Not just that I’d run into the room without thinking and was surely caught on camera. But the room is suspiciously quiet. The hum and click of electronics I’d noted upon first entering the room is gone. The clocks have stopped ticking. Latent electricity in lamp wires, phone outlets, an answering machine and internet modem have all stopped. The camera too, of course. Everything still, everything quiet—the way a house is quiet after a power outage.

“Shit.”

This time last year, when my life started to get out of control, and homicidal maniacs tried to kill me and whatnot, I started to develop this new—I can’t believe I’m going to say this—power. Unfortunately, there just isn’t another word for it. It’s not part of my weird death-replacement thing, but something that can’t be explained scientifically by my NRD—my Necronitic Regenerative Disorder, a neurological disorder that allows me to die but not stay dead.

No, this is something else entirely.

And it would seem I have some strange connection to electricity. It’s not like I can control it. When it started last year, it was just a shocky thing—a static sort of electricity managing to blow light bulbs at the flip of a switch, or shock people quite a bit stronger than the usual I-shuffled-my-feet-and-now-
zap
.

It’s evolved.

Lately, I can do this surge thing. When I’m startled, or scared, I send a shock out and
BAM
, electronics fail. So far I’ve only managed to blow up my own shit—bye, bye the possibility of morning toast or midnight margaritas, which is fine except now I’m blowing up other people’s shit.

This is a serious problem.

But I can’t fall apart over fried electronics. I have to do what I came up here to do. I relax against the side of Mr. Lovett’s desk and steady my breath. Once I feel somewhat together, I pull out a small Phillips-head screwdriver from my rainbow wig. I hold my hand above Mr. Lovett’s computer listening for any kind of electric static crackling around my skin. When I feel none, I start to disable his computer.

Three of the six tiny screws are out of the computer, the ones that would release the hard drive from its little plastic nest, when all hell breaks loose.

A wave hits me. I rock back on my heels, topple, and hit the wall. My shoulder brushes something and I hear a crash. I quit moving, knowing because I can’t see, I’ll only knock more shit over if I continue flailing blindly.

“No, no,
no
,” I whine as if that will make Julia’s death turn on its heels and leave. Because that is what I feel—Death come calling.

I work faster.

First I reach out for the desk, find its edge and pull myself back to the computer. In my hurried panic, I start dropping the little screws on the office rug.

I have the last screw loose, but not completely out, when my vision changes.

The world dissolves from its usual solid self into a shifting world of color. The only equivalent I can think of is heat sensory, like the way they show it on TV or in the movies where someone puts on special goggles and then the world turns into an orange-yellow-red blob. This isn’t exactly right, what I see in the moments before a death. I see more color and nuances, but it’s close enough that you get the idea.

The problem with it happening
now
is two-fold. Problem one—I can’t see the last freaking screw anymore. I can’t clearly define
anything
, now that the world has reduced itself to something less substantial than an acid trip.

Problem two, Julia Lovett is about to die and I’m not close enough to save her.

I can feel her out there, moving around in the yard, feel the pull surrounding her, centering and drawing close. If she dies and I am not near her, she can’t be saved. Proximity is required for a death replacement.

The only thing I can do now is force myself to focus.

And even after my best effort, the colors are still there. I have to rely on my fingers, the feel of grooves against the tips just to figure out what I’m doing, really hoping that it
is
the hard drive I’m removing.

I’m not a computer expert. I only know how to do this because Brinkley, my ex-handler, showed me on an old garage sale computer making me practice until I practically wept for a break.

Finally, it falls free of its case. Clutching the stolen hard drive in one hand, I rush back toward the stairs. I can’t afford to be casual. I can’t afford to take my time or even stop to turn off the bathroom light or open the door. In fact, I’m forced to crawl down the stairs the way a baby would, butt first so I don’t fall. I make slow progress, but I can’t save Julia’s life if I break my own neck before even getting to her.

Somehow I manage to make it back to the sliding kitchen door and see Ally on the other side. Sure she is a blur of color like everything else, but I know Ally. I know what she looks like even in this form. Maybe it’s because I’d saved her life once, or because she’s been on a
bagillion
replacements with me, or even because she’s my best friend. I don’t know or care as I pry open the glass and croak her name.

Nothing.

Louder: “
Ally
.”

She turns around and it must be the way I look because she comes running.

“Are you—”

“Here,” I say. I shove what I hope is the hard drive at her and step fully into the back yard.

“Jesse, your shoes,” she says.

“No time.” I’m already walking to the edge of the brick patio stretching like a giant doormat away from the kitchen entrance. I’m searching the yard for Julia.

I find her colorful blur twirling again and I know it is her, because something isn’t quite right with her “thermal” reading. A menacing black blur mars her color. She’s out by the fence and I can’t see anything around her that’s of danger. But I know better than to let that assumption stop me. Something can fall from the sky at any second. Some insane driver could crash through that white fence. Hell, little Julia could be having a heart attack from all that twirling.

I run through the soggy grass, my socks soaking up the cold rainwater curling my toes. I run and Ally follows, but not too close, yelling, “Everyone back up, please!” She knows to do crowd control and create as much distance between me and the others as possible. I have no idea if it works. I can’t afford to focus on anything but Julia.

At this point I am running across the yard, arms out to grab her. Julia must see me coming and stops twirling for long enough to scream and run in the other direction. It isn’t until I hear her screaming “Mommy the clown! Mommy!” that I realize
I
am the one terrifying her, a clown with a manically determined expression, rushing her at full speed.

“Come here!” I yell, unable to pretend like this was anything but urgent. “We don’t have time for this.”

And of course I’m right.

I hear Ally yelling. Something unclear, directed at Regina. People always want to rush in and save their loved ones from dying, but it only gets in the way and causes more causalities. After all, I can only replace one person at a time.

Death is different for everyone. And I see it differently for everyone.

Sometimes I see death as a tiny black hole created inside a person, an empty swirling vortex sucking all the warm, living colors out of a person, leaving nothing behind that can survive.

Sometimes a hot-cold chill settles into the muscles in my back and coils around my navel before yanking me down into oblivion.

Then there are deaths like Julia Lovett’s.

A death where I just have to throw myself out there and hope it works out. No vision guidance. No conscious effort on my part. Just faith that being who I am,
what
I am, the exchange will happen.

Julia has almost reached the fence when I grab ahold of her. I hold her against my scratchy polka-dotted jumper while she screams and flails. I try to say soothing things: “I’m not going to hurt you. Gee-
zus
. Calm down!” My best efforts fall short as I look up and see my worst nightmare.

A tall, stupidly beautiful man dressed in a three piece suit, strides across Julia’s yard toward us. With determined, dedicated steps, he unfurls his black wings on either side of him as he closes the distance between us. I haven’t seen that shaggy dark hair or those animalistic green eyes in a year. And now here he is, walking straight toward me
again
.

“Awww,
shit
,” I say.

Julia quits squirming in my arms and turns her wide eyes up to mine. Her mouth is open in horror as if my profanity is the worst thing that’s ever happened to her.

But before I can apologize or even comprehend what’s happening, something hard and heavy slams us from behind. And Gabriel, Ally, and the whole world is gone.