Kill Me Again: Psychics (Paranormal Problems #4)

Chapter One

Baxter

There are things no one tells you when you’ve been dead for nineteen years and are suddenly thrust back into the world of the living.

No one tells you about reliving your murder every single night in your dreams. That every stage will play out in perfect, crystalline focus, like it’s happening all over again.

It starts with the feeling of pressure on your back. The slow realization that it’s more than someone having bumped into you. It moves on to the attempt to keep walking. Only a few steps. A baby new to walking could manage more.

When your body screams that it’s no longer possible, the slow crumple to the floor is inevitable. Your coffee slips from your fingers, the impact with the ground hard enough to dislodge the lid, the smell overpowering as it spreads outward in a lake.

Sound snaps into sharp focus. Not from you—you can’t manage anything more than a croak—but the sound of footsteps running away might as well be in stereo.

No thoughts from them. That’s weird. You try to turn your head to see who did this to you, but the simple action is a mountain to climb. Your own personal Mount Everest.

Then the agonizing pain hits.

Pain, and a feeling of wetness.

You tell yourself it can’t be blood. How can it be when a minute ago you were fine?

Fine and walking. Looking forward to the night to come.

It’s the coffee. It has to be the coffee.

Things can’t change that quickly, can they?

It would be like someone clicking their fingers and plunging you into a nightmare—one you can’t wake up from.

Next comes the attempt to crawl, without any awareness of where you’re trying to go. Muscles strain. Teeth grit. The brain struggles to override all the pain receptors screaming their resistance to what must be done. Eventually, you give in and you lie there, because it’s all you can do.

You feel helpless. Scared. Angry. You tell yourself to stay conscious, that surviving depends on it.

But telling yourself and doing it are two very different things.

No matter how hard you fight, blackness steals over you like sticky tar, impossible to escape.

You wonder if that’s it. Game over. The curtain call. The final whistle.

But no. Voices. Urgent, but professional.

Telling you that you’re going to be alright.

You know they’re lying. But you’re grateful all the same.

They give instructions you can’t follow.

“Tell us what happened. Open your eyes.” Sorry, I’m not driving this bus anymore.

That thought makes you want to laugh, but you can’t do that either. “Hang on.”

You’re being lifted. Pain. So much pain.

A stretcher. The back of an ambulance. Blue flashing lights visible through closed eyelids.

The wail of the siren. The prick of a needle followed by a delicious numbness.

It’s a relief, but terrifying at the same time.

Because at least the pain meant you were still alive.

More voices. People have a lot to say. Mostly about vitals dropping and how far it is to the hospital.

Too far. I already know that. No point in pretending any more that this is happening to someone else.

Yet, somehow I get to the hospital. Stubborn son of a bitch, aren’t I?

Refuses to die on a parking garage floor.

Refuses to die in an ambulance.

The wheels squeak as they run with the stretcher. Someone should oil them. I’ll tell them that when I can speak. More than one pair of hands on me. Doctors. Nurses. Everyone roped in to deal with the emergency. I never wanted to be an emergency. I had plans tonight with my boyfriend.

I think about him, because it makes me smile.

James Osborne. Twenty-two. Two years younger than me.

Sweet. Sexy. Thoughtful. Probably still sitting in the restaurant where we arranged to meet, wondering where I am.

Sorry, Jamie. I can’t be there due to unforeseen circumstances.

Enjoy yourself. Have dessert. Don’t flirt with the waiter.

The beeping of a machine. Beeping is good. Beeping means a heartbeat. Shouldn’t it be faster? I will it to be faster, terrified by the spaces in between, afraid they’re getting longer. I’m not ready to go. I’m twenty-four, for God’s sake. I’ve barely lived.

“The anesthetist is ready,” someone says. More running. More squeaking wheels. More people touching me. A mask fitted over my face. I instinctively try to fight it, but they hold me down, murmuring soothing words my drugged brain can no longer parse.

And then nothing.

Arms braced against the bathroom sink, I stared at myself in the mirror.

I looked fine. I turned my head slowly to the left and then to the right, half-expecting my reflection to stay where it was.

Of course it didn’t. It turned with me. Because it was me.

And I was alive. My lips moved with the words I’d repeated four or five times a day for the last six months.

Always alone. Never when anyone else was nearby.

A man appeared behind me in the mirror, framed in the doorway. He leaned against the doorjamb, arms crossed over his bare chest, watching me with lazy amusement. He’d looked younger last night. Fresher. Hotter. Exciting. In the cold light of day, he was just a man I picked up.

“Hi,” he said with a smile.

“Hi,” I replied politely, not meeting his gaze in the mirror.

When his gaze trailed down my body, I remembered I was naked. It didn’t matter. He’d already seen it all. Seen it. Tongued it. Fucked it. I wasn’t a mystery to him.

“I thought we could go out and get breakfast.”

“I have work,” I answered honestly.

“You don’t eat before work?”

“Sometimes.” I returned to studying my reflection.

His thoughts spilled freely. ”Why do I always go for the weird ones?

He’s hot, and we had a good time, but I could have done without him tossing and turning all night after we fucked.

What was that about? And what’s he doing now?

Why is he just staring at himself in the mirror?

Bit too much Patrick Bateman from American Psycho for my liking.

Does he really have work? Or is this his way of brushing me off?

I guess if he’s a psycho, I should be relieved.

Lucky they caught Satanic Romeo, or I might think I just spent the night with him. ”

I kept my expression neutral. At least he had some good things to say. There was nothing worse than someone mentally grading you as unsatisfactory the morning after. Well… there were worse things. Like dying. But I’d already been there and done that. Got the T-shirt. All that jazz.

“Where do you work?”

I could have told him, but mentioning the Paranormal Problems Bureau would invite questions I didn’t want to answer. People got touchy when I said I could read minds. “I don’t want breakfast.”

“Wanker!” His jaw tightened. “You want me to leave? Is that it?”

I twisted so my back was to the mirror, but I could still see my reflection, my hand sliding down my unscarred flank. My body insisted my murder had never happened. My mind disagreed. “Leave… stay… whatever.”

“Fuck’s sake!” He waited a few seconds before storming back into the bedroom.

Angry sounds of dressing followed. There were thoughts too, but I deliberately tuned them out as I stepped into the shower and cranked the heat as high as I could stand.

I stayed there a long time, head tipped back, trying not to think while the water poured over me.

I’d missed showers when I was dead. Showers.

Eating. Sex. Being cold. Being hot. Breathing.

The bedroom was empty when I returned. My phone and wallet still sat on the chest of drawers, so at least he hadn’t robbed me in a fit of pique. I was halfway dressed when my phone rang. I stared at the name on the screen.

Calisto. The man whose life I’d been dropped into while I was dead, for reasons neither of us could explain. The closest thing I had to a brother. The man who had inadvertently brought me back to life.

He should have been the one person I could talk to.

He knew me. My strengths. My flaws. I’d watched him grow from a gangly teenager into a strapping man.

I’d even lived with him and Asher for a while, until they’d grown sick of the revolving door in my borrowed bedroom and sat me down and told me, ever so politely, that perhaps I’d be better with my own place.

“More space,” they’d said, which was a lie because Asher lived in a mansion.

“More freedom.” That part might have been true.

But I couldn’t talk to Calisto. I didn’t know why. So I ignored him instead, which was impressive given we worked in the same building and he called and messaged constantly.

Sure enough, a text came through less than a minute later. I read it while waiting at the bus stop.

Morning, Baxter. Just wanted to say… well, good morning, I guess, which I’ve done already.

How are you doing? Come for dinner soon.

Friday? Nothing fancy. Just a takeaway and vegging out on the sofa.

Asher can be there or not. Your choice. You can choose what we eat and what we watch as well. I promise not to argue (much).

I slid my phone back into my pocket without replying.

The last six messages were all from Calisto.

I should have answered. I just didn’t know what to say.

I chewed on that for the rest of the bus ride—ten minutes on a good day, twenty in traffic.

That morning fell somewhere in between. At least thinking about Calisto provided a distraction from the humdrum thoughts of my fellow passengers.

“I must remember to get milk on the way home.” Blonde woman. Big gold hoop earrings.

“I’m going to be late for work. Can’t he drive faster?” Scowling man with big, bushy eyebrows.

“I should probably wait before I text him back. I don’t want to come across as desperate.

But I don’t want it to be so long he thinks I’m not interested.

Why are new relationships so complicated?

Why can’t I just meet someone and it be easy?

Maybe I should become a nun? No. Black and white doesn’t suit me.

I look like a penguin.” Middle-aged woman in a red jumper, clutching her handbag like she thought someone might steal it.

“I swear to God that if Derek tries to talk to me at work today, I’ll punch him in the face after the stunt he pulled. He better keep a wide berth if he knows what’s good for him.” Man with spiky red hair standing at the front of the bus.

“This song’s great. I should buy the album.” Teenage girl sitting so low in her seat she looked in danger of sliding off.

I still hadn’t figured out what to say to Calisto by the time I got off the bus, no excuse sounding convincing enough to avoid his proposed get together. I could go, but then there’d be questions like how are you? And is there anything you need to talk about?

The five-minute walk to the Paranormal Problems Bureau passed without incident until I reached into my pocket and realized my ID was missing.

I scrolled through my contacts, bypassing Asher and Cade before settling on the better—not perfect, but better—option.

While the phone rang, I did a mental reset, shaking off the lingering effects of the nightmare.

Was it a nightmare if it had actually happened?

I didn’t have an answer by the time the call connected.

“Kendrick,” I said brightly. “How are you this fine morning?”

A pause. “Let me guess… you’ve forgotten your ID again.”

I winced. “Possibly.”

“Yes or no, Baxter?”

“Yes.”

“I should leave you standing out there.”

I watched a tall redhead wobble past in impossibly high heels while the silence stretched. Eventually, Kendrick sighed. “Why do you always call me? I get not calling Cade. But why not Asher? He’s your friend.”

“Asher’s busy.”

“And I’m not?”

“You answered your phone, didn’t you?”

“I nearly didn’t.”

“Nice. I love you too.” I made an exaggerated kissing noise, loud enough that a builder across the road looked over. “Not you,” I called, pointing at the phone. “My boss.”

Kendrick wasn’t technically my boss, but as the longest serving and most intense member of the psychic department, the rest of us treated him with a certain reverence. Apart from when I used him as a glorified doorman.

I spent the time while I waited for him getting into the right state of mind for work. One happy, carefree Baxter coming up. Glad to be alive and full of the joys of spring.