Bummer.
Her eyes scanned the room for her friend. Oh, God, where was Marcella? Had she disappeared? She could only pray she’d escaped Lucifer . . .
Okay, okay, so she was dead. Delaney fought to compartmentalize. Pros and cons, pros and cons . . .
There were pros and cons to this whole dead thing.
Con—who’d take care of her babies? Kellen. He’d do it. He’d better.
Pro—up in here, no one would call her crazy for talking to ghosts. Nice.
Con—she’d never see Kellen again. Major suckage.
Pro—no more bills to pay. Her deflated bank account cheered.
Con—no more Friday nights and Ghost Whisperer. Boo, hiss.
Pro—dead meant Clyde was somewhere ’round here. So who’d powned who?
That brought a smile to her face and the desire to find the man she planned to make hers.
Delaney looked down at the bed where Clyde lay. Her warm fuzzies were quick to turn to dismay. Christ on a cracker, didn’t he have his listening ears on when she’d told him to cross? Hadn’t she said go—into—the—light? Clear as day. Not even a hint of an accent when she’d told him either.
But did he listen?
No. Because God forbid she should be right.
Frustration made her jump up and down.
For the love of valiant nobility, what the hell did Clyde think he was doing? Didn’t he get dead?
After all that, he had the audacity to live?
Irony—she was all about making it.
How could he be anything but dead after she’d torn his breathing tube out? He was brain-dead, for Christ’s sake. No one who was brain-dead got up out of bed.
No one but Clyde.
In the midst of the scattered equipment, torn curtains, locust carcasses, and machine parts scattered to infinity and beyond, a tortured grunt came from the bed.
Where Clyde better keep his ass if he knew what was good for him.
Leave it to a man to ruin a perfectly good plan.
Clyde’s once battered form stirred, his chest blowing life in rapid, choppy breaths. With agonizing determination she could almost feel, he gripped the rails on either side of the bed in his hands, dragging his upper body to a sitting position. Each movement he made, each small victory his body was granted made Delaney scream, “No!” A no clearly only she could hear.
Raw grit was what led Clyde to the end of the bed, his determined eyes never leaving Satan’s reed-thin back. Soundlessly, he slid to the floor, wobbling, then righting himself. The bandages on his right arm and foot were soaked and trailing in shredded chunks from his body. Every vein in his strained body stood out against skin that was pale and breaking out into a sweat.
The big picture she was getting blew chunks.
Clyde launched himself at her body. Kneeling beside Delaney, he pinched her nose shut, prying her mouth open with two fingers.
Wow. He was just determined to ruin everything, now wasn’t he?
The Neanderthal knew CPR. That meant he was going to revive her and make a fantastic mess of a perfectly good budding afterlife romance for them.
Jesus!
“Clyde!” she yelled to deaf ears. “Nooo! What is it with you and the Superman deal? I’m dead, dipshit! You’re supposed to be, too. Stop screwing everything up already, or I swear, the next time we meet, I’m going to force tofu down your throat and make you listen to Michael Bublé for an eternity!”
He slapped his stiff hands on her chest with clumsiness and began compressions. His eyes were filled with a look that could only be labeled hell-bent.
Lucifer squealed his fury, bellowing his outrage that Clyde lived. He threw himself at Clyde, landing on his back with the slap of Clyde’s flesh against the tile leaving an echo in the room.
Clyde reared up, trying to shrug him off, but he was weak, his body slow and clunky from being sedentary for three months. The muscles in Clyde’s chest strained when he lunged for her body again. He howled a cry of pure determination, dragging her to him and pinching her nose to begin the process once more.
Her eyes widened in horror, her throat became raw from screaming at Clyde to stop. Invisible hands dragged her, lurching her forward in unsteady, stilted tugs. Crap! Clyde’s effort to save her must be working. In increments, her limbs melted, dragging, yanking, pulling her back away from the light.
Yet she could still see Satan and Clyde’s struggle. They’d become one blurred ball, a slow-motion horror flick come to life.
When Clyde reared up for the last time, he managed to thrust Lucifer from his back.
But the devil didn’t crash to the ground. Instead, he hovered helplessly in midair, his thin legs dangling, his white-blond ponytail streaming down his back.