“Good for you.” She opened up her notebook again and jotted down a few more ideas.
“I told Jehovah, through his archangel Michael, of course, that I was going to do it, too.”
“Take over the world?”
It sounded silly when she said it out loud, but I could hardly turn back now. “Yes.”
“And how did He take that?”
“Not well, but you don’t know what He did. He created an entire hell dimension just to lock my husband inside and throw away the key. Though we weren’t married at the time. This was a few thousand years ago.”
Ever since informing Michael of my plans, God had sent a legion of His minions to follow my every move. They were like the heavenly version of the Secret Service. I’d threatened, and, for some reason only they knew of, they’d taken it seriously. But why? I was angry when I said it—and I certainly meant it—but that doesn’t explain why they would take me seriously. Unless I was a real threat.
Hell.
Yes.
“So, God talks to you?”
I snapped back to reality. “Oh, no. Not directly.”
“Right. He talks to you through His archangel, Michael.” She wrote down every word as she said it.
“Yeah. Kind of old-school, if you ask me, what with today’s technology. You know, I thought psychiatrists just sort of listened while the patient talked. You’re gonna run out of ink there, missy.” I laughed nervously.
She gave me a patient smile. “I have more pens in my desk.”
“Gotcha.”
“So, God is upset because you threatened to take over His world?”
“That’s the word on the street.”
“Are you worried?”
“Not especially.”
“Fair enough. Let’s get back to these powers. What do you plan to do with them?”
“Excuse me?”
“Your powers. I mean, surely you’re going to use them for good?”
I got the sneaking suspicion she was humoring me. I was good with that. I threw an arm over my face. “There’s so much, you know? So much I could do. I could cure cancer. I could end famine. I could stop all wars and bring absolute peace to the world.”
“And why don’t you?”
I lowered my arm slowly. “I’m still kind of figuring the whole thing out. I’m saying I could do all those things. Not that I know how.”
“That would be difficult.”
“That and I think that’s why the angels are here. Not, like, in this room, but all around me. Following me. Watching me. I don’t think He wants me to do any of those things.”
“And why wouldn’t He?”
“Autonomy.” When she raised her brows in question, I explained. “That was the deal. After that whole Adam and Eve fiasco—Eve got screwed, by the way—that was the deal. He gave humans complete autonomy. Earth is ours, and it’s up to us to help our fellow man or harm him. To heal ourselves. To do good things. No matter your religion, no matter your beliefs, the lesson is the same: be kind.”
I fought the urge to add another word to the end of that statement.
I lost. “Rewind.”
Damn it. I sucked at fighting. Urges or otherwise.
“It’s a good message,” she said when she came back to me, a microsecond before she started writing again.
“It is. And I have to tell you something else.”
“I’m all ears.”
I released a lengthy sigh and fessed up. “The whole regressive therapy thing? That’s actually secondary to the real reason I’m here.”
“Which is?”
I dropped my feet over Mr. Skarsg?rd and sat up to look her in the eye. Or the part in her hair. Either way, I wanted to study her reaction since I couldn’t feel her emotions. “Dr. Mayfield?”
“Hmm?” she said without looking up.
I cleared my throat and steeled myself. It had to be done. She needed to know the truth. To accept the things she could not change, so the prayer went, and there was definitely no changing this. Without further ado, I said softly, “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but you died two years ago.”
She kept writing. “Mm-hmm. And you can see me because…?”
“I’m the—”
“—grim reaper. Right. Oh, and a god, no less.”
Wow. I sat back. She took that really well. Either that or she didn’t believe me.
Nah.
I bit my lip while she continued to take notes, but my attention span was only so long. “So, yeah, I’ve been hired, in a manner of speaking, by the new leaser of this office. He’s been experiencing strange events. Just the usual stuff. Cold spots. Magazines moving from one corner on a table to another. Pictures falling off the walls.”
“I see. And he hired you because he thinks the place is haunted.”
“Actually, no. He thinks the landlord wants him to break the lease to use the office for his new juicing business, which is dumb because this would be a horrible location for a juice bar. But he thinks the landlord is trying to scare him off. To frighten him away. To send him fleeing in terror. In a word, he thinks he’s being punked.”
“But you disagree?”
“I do.”
“You think it’s really haunted?”
“Yes, I do. And I have to admit, at first, I thought it was you.”