“For real?”
“Something wrong with my name?”
“Nope. I just think it’s kinda ironic your name is Storm and you look like a rain cloud.”
“Yeah, well, I guess I was born to be a Ghost Escort.” It sounded like he was grinning.
“Seriously, though, why would you agree tonothave a body?”
“The alternative is worse,” he said.
I shrugged. I don’t really know why, but the idea of being sent to hell didn’t scare me. Maybe because I always knew that’s where I would go. Or maybe because I pretty much lived in my own personal hell all my life so it was nothing new.
“So you’re going to keep watching her, huh?”
“That’s my job,” Storm said. “And if I don’t do it, I don’t get paid.”
“Gotta get those Benjamins.”
“Hey, it ain’t all about the money,” he said. “Ghost Escorts get paid in other ways too.”
“What do you mean?”What other ways are there?
“Time off,” he said meaningfully.
It took me a minute to realize what would be so great about getting time off from following people around.
Then it dawned on me.
“He lets you have a body?”
“Right outta that freaky closet of his.”
I grinned. “It is pretty creepy.”
“Well, I guess when you’re the ultimate death dealer, having bodies in the closet it just like having cereal in the pantry.”
The ultimate death dealer?
The darkness around me shifted and I felt him move. “I better get back. I’m on the clock.”
I guess being reminded he could spend some time in an actual body made him anxious to finish his job. “So you aren’t supposed to kill her? Just watch her, right?”
“Killing would be hard to do without any hands.”
“I don’t know. I almost killed her tonight without lifting a finger.”
“That was a pretty good move, by the way.”
“You saw?”
“Everything.”
I wondered what he thought about my sudden panic. I wondered if he thought that made me less of a man… less of an Escort.
“Anyway, better luck next time.”
“We cool?” I asked. An echo from my past. I used to say those words after every meeting or talk I had with someone on the streets. I guess standing out here in the dark between two buildings had a way of bringing things back.
