Cheat the Grave

1

Dying isn’t as painful as you might think. I’ve done it twice now, and each time the woman I thought I was fell away with relative ease, almost as if she was late for an appointment and glad to be gone. As hard as it was at the time, the only real casualty in my first death was my identity. Good-bye, Joanna Archer. Good-bye, strong and able and tough; hello to an exterior so sweet I might as well be clothed in a fucking candy wrapper.

But it was the second death, the one that’d cost me every foothold gained after taking over my sister’s life and identity that really stripped me to the bone. In the ten weeks since, I’d been forced to rehab my blond, glossed, enhanced body as vigorously as a recently awakened coma victim, while hoping the work I’d already done on my mind would hold fast. It had, but there was no mistaking my losses. This time, good-bye twenty-first century superhero. So long to strength beyond a mortal’s. Farewell even to what I’d fleetingly mistaken for true love. The kicker? After all those losses, dying had turned out to be just another life experience.

Which wasn’t to say it got any easier.

“But third time’s a charm,” I muttered, gazing balefully down at the newly delivered letter as my driver rocketed past the multi-casino district, City Center. The doorman hadn’t known who it was from, just said some courier-probably a kid off the street who was slipped a twenty and an envelope with my name on it-had given it to him an hour before. I’d have to talk to the buildings staff about allowing strange missives and packages up to my high-rise apartment. After all, Olivia Archer wasn’t a mere celebutante anymore, or just a former Playmate and potential heiress. She was a mogul who effectively owned more of Las Vegas than any other living being.

“But I don’t think that’s why someone’s threatening to squeeze my beating heart in their palm,” I muttered as we flipped onto Vegas’s most famous road, heading midtown. Pulling the note from my pocket, I read it again.

Stay home tonight, and you will be safe. Leave, and your organs will be sliced from your body one by one.

Not even a clue as to the sender, though that was no surprise. Nobody from the paranormal underworld had contacted me since I’d been cast from the troop. Despite losing every power that had once made me one of them, the leader for the agents of Light, my former leader, had ordered my once-allies to neither contact nor extend me any greater protection than they did the rest of the general population. This, despite the fact that if the Shadows learned of my now-human status, Las Vegas’s mortality rate would see a precipitous spike.

You’ll be safe. I had to laugh. God, had I even been safe the day I was born?

Of course, anyone who knew me-the real me, Joanna-wouldn’t be surprised to find I went out anyway. My cat, Luna, had tried to persuade me otherwise, winding through my feet as I dressed, tripping me up like she thought the whole thing was a bad idea. But what could I do? Olivia’s best friend, Cher-now my best friend- was throwing a bachelorette party for her stepmother, Suzanne, a woman who must have been born under the Universe’s luckiest star. The loving relationship with her stepdaughter underscored that, but she’d recently trumped even herself by becoming engaged to a man who was both a billionaire and a prince. They were set to wed a week from now, on Valentine’s Day.

Besides, I thought now, pulling to a stop in front of the world’s tackiest party bus, I’d once battled in this city’s paranormal underworld for the mortal right to freedom of choice. Now that I was once again merely mortal- after those who’d once called themselves my allies had tossed me in a desert wash with other broken, discarded, used-up objects-I chose normal. I chose those friends who chose me.

I chose to keep living beyond death.

Yet I still hesitated when confronted by the shining silver bus door. Sure, this was a part of Suzanne’s monthlong wedding festivities, a series of events that had set tongues wagging worldwide. Her fiancé had long been considered one of the globe’s most eligible bachelors, an international textiles magnate who hailed from an Indian dynasty, and had homes on every continent.

But, man, a double-decker could hold a lot of trouble.

It’s not too late to turn around, I thought, my too-smooth fingertips clinking unnaturally against the plastic. Their marblelike uniformity and pearlescent polish was one of the “tells” of my former involvement in a paranormal life, and should a Shadow see it, they’d know exactly who I was. Was an evening spent in a party bus worth risking that? I mean, there’d been a lot of recent nights when I’d kill for a glass of Belvedere…but to die for one?

“C’mon, Jo,” I muttered to myself, straightening. “Can’t turn down the promise of body glitter and temp tattoos, can you? Besides, how many people could say they’ve been on a bus with a disco ball before?”

But humor aside, a part of me was honestly worried. If the Shadows had discovered my identity, the bachelorette bus might turn into the lead car of a funeral procession. Yet some couriered letter telling me to bolt my door wouldn’t help then. If anything, the missive merely underscored my continued need to convince the world I was my flighty, over-exposed sister.

But I took a moment before boarding the bus to look out over the city I’d once fought to protect, alongside a troop of supernatural beings I thought were my friends.

Fuck you-whoever you are-for being an armchair superhero, and standing on the sidelines while I shoulder this mortality. Fuck you for accepting the sacrifices I made for your world and then throwing me away like trash. Fuck you for bottling your power like it’s your personal supernatural bong while I emptied mine out over this city and its people.

I didn’t care if those in the Zodiac underworld believed fate was preordained. So what if my return to mortality had been written in the stars, in the dark matter between them, in advance, or in permanent ink? I gave up my life twice to save the collective asses of those who called themselves superheroes, so a letter intended to keep me safe after the fact meant nothing.

Besides, I thought, turning from the city. Here’s what I knew of fate: it cared nothing about good intentions.

Becoming my younger, flashier, murdered sister had forced me to reconsider the way I moved through the world. After all, why use a deadly weapon when the crook of a manicured finger would just as well do? Yet I’d found a surprising strength in defying the world’s relatively low expectations of Olivia…or at the very least in using them to my advantage.

I’d also found an unexpected strength in Cher and Suzanne. True, they’d actually once been my antifriends- women who didn’t understand a woman who didn’t understand women-but during my recent recovery from a sacrificial near-drowning, when all my superhero allies remained tucked safely in an underground sanctuary pretending I no longer existed, these two flighty, bright socialites had unerringly stuck by me. Yes, they believed I was Olivia, but their show of relentless friendship meant there was nothing I wouldn’t do for them now. Even in my jaded postheroic state-even when I couldn’t save loose change, much less a life-I’d willingly lay down my own for theirs.

“C’mon, Jo.” I set my bare shoulders and knocked on the neon-trimmed door. After all, I was already here, defying a homicidal warning, and strapped into my big-girl halter top. If I could get through the first Jell-O shot, I’d probably be fine.

Then the door swung open. “Oh fu-”

A hip-hop/choir remix drowned out the rest of my curse, and my gaze caught on the turntable rising from the driver’s seat. Cher stood behind it, decked out in curvy silver satin, blond hair set in seductress waves, her right hand pressed against headphones while the other scratched a beat. She was shaking her hips in time to the needle’s drop, but she straightened and squealed when she spotted me waffling in the doorway. “Livvy-girl!”

She motioned me up the rubber steps, and I eased forward like a paranoid marine. No, I didn’t expect to find otherworldly terrorists swilling Cristal, but the two lucite stripper poles arrowing out of the vehicle’s middle were nearly as terrifying.

The bus’s other dozen occupants caught my ascension through the mirrored walls, and greetings and liquorinfused smiles burst forth in raucous stop-motion beneath the fractured light of, yes, a disco ball. I waved back, hid my wince, and they resumed imbibing, applauding, and pole dancing. The bus wasn’t even moving yet.

“Check out the old-school mixer!” Cher yelled, as I reached her side. “We’re going to sing Bollywood songs on this here bachelorette bus. I swear, Las Vegas won’t have ever seen a bash like this before!”

And the burnt-out party girl that was my beloved home-town had certainly run through a number of bashes. I glanced around warily. The lights, people, alcohol, music-a heap of sensory blocks atop already dulled senses. I began to reconsider the wisdom of coming at all. “I might have to leave early,” I told Cher.

She finally fell still. “Why, are you sick? Is it fatal?”

Potentially. “Um…tomorrow’s the big board meeting, remember? I’ve been preparing.”

And I had. Binders scattered every flat surface of my living room like giant autumn leaves. Yet despite spending weeks studying the Company Bylaws, the Shareholder Agreements, and something called a Private Placement Memorandum, I still didn’t understand half of them.

“Don’t you have people for that?” she asked, scratching another beat with long, silver nails-acrylic across vinyl.

“I’m the one taking over Archer Enterprises.” At her blank stare, I added, “And I want to, you know, make dear old Daddy proud.”

May the cruel, greedy bastard rest in peace.

“Then it’s all the more vital to your burgeoning business sense that you’re out tonight.” She tossed her hair authoritatively.

“How?”

“Because come tomorrow you’ll be sucked into the corporate machine, never to don lucite heels at nine a.m. again. No more liquid lunches. No more ‘Mimosa Mondays.’ If you think about it, this is your last night of normalcy. Ever.”

I snorted. Cher’s idea of “normalcy” had never included disemboweling a homicidal supervillain as a prelude to Mimosa Monday.

A male voice sounded in my ear. “Finally.”

Whirling to determine if this statement called for an air kiss or a death blow, I found myself within swatting distance of a pretty man wearing black wrist cuffs, eyeliner, and a fitted net for a shirt. Not kill, I thought with relief…though he probably wasn’t angling for my kiss either.

“I’m Terry,” he said, drawing close, then as if I didn’t know, “You’re Olivia Archer. I follow you in the papers. I’ve been wanting to shoot you for ages.”

I reconsidered killing him until he held up a camera and looked at me expectantly.

I unclenched my fist. “Sure.”

Terry shot off a quick series of photos as I struck poses meant to highlight certain body parts, unable to hear more than snatches of his chatter about celebrities he’d shot in L.A. before moving to Vegas. Unfortunately what I did hear included boastful accounts of erstwhile pop divas climbing from limos sans undergarments.

“The society women followed suit for a while, but then they clued in to the upkeep.”

Again that expectant look.

Not this society woman, I thought, gifting him with a closed-mouth smile. “I’ll be by the pole.”

And so I mingled, tossing air kisses, accepting a champagne flute, but painstakingly avoided the poles of iniquity. By the time the bus finally revved its engine, a professional had taken over DJ duties, Cher was at the side bar, surrounded by bottles like some glossy, gilded mad scientist, and her stepmother, the woman of the hour-or the past month, as it were-finally arrived.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the DJ said in a streetwise baritone, “please welcome to the par-tay, the future princess of the finest fibers, the westerner who won the heart of the East, our Texan treasure, and soon to be Mrs. Arun Brahma…Su-zanne!”

The packed bus rocked on its wheels as everyone rose to their feet, cheering as Suzanne ascended to a hip-hop version of the wedding march. Terry’s camera literally went into spasms, though I couldn’t fault his excitement. Suzanne, poured into hot pink leather cut both too low and too high, was the money shot. She milked the moment, flashed a diamond to rival the Hope, and draped herself against the first pole. Her eyes caught mine and she straightened before winking and taking a quick swing.

“Oops.”

More cameras flashed.

“It’s okay, Suzie,” someone encouraged. “If you don’t fall off the pole at least once, you’re not really trying.”

Suzanne pushed herself from the lap of a thrilled “husband of” and patted her hair back into place.

It was embarrassing to fall off a stripper pole when you were twenty, but when you were forty-something? You prayed for early dementia. I grabbed a shot glass from Cher and went to assist with the murder of a few hundred brain cells. “You okay?” I asked Suzanne.

She shrugged off the shame like it belonged to another. “Yeah, I’m just not warmed up yet. It happens to me in class all the time too.”

“They have classes in pole dancing?” I asked, before giving myself a mental head slap. It was Vegas. They probably had classes in threesomes.

“It’s good exercise.”

I raised a brow. “You could go to the gym.”

“Oh, no honey,” she said in her trademark southern drawl. “Those weights are heavy. Here, help me out.”

Reaching under the giant DJ turntable, Suzanne opened a mirrored trunk. A moment later bright fuchsia feathers flew my way. “Boas?”

She tossed me a half dozen more strands, and motioned for me to pass them out. “Arun, my one true love and future king, has arranged a scavenger hunt for us. He’s giving away a world cruise on his private yacht as a prize.” The women nearest us gasped, and the news spread like a brush fire. “We have to leave the bus to collect the clues, and this is how we’re going to differentiate ourselves from the teeming masses.”

I sighed, fingering my boa. Or I could just put a bull’s-eye on my chest.

Suzanne swung a deep olive strand over her shoulders and smiled through the feathers as she led me into the throng, tossing boas left and right, and fighting for balance as the vehicle headed downtown. I watched her for a moment, wishing I could still scent emotion, though even in the dim light she glowed. She really was in love. Catching my look, she continued chatting about the scavenger’s hunt. “These will help the guides we planted in the city know who to give the clues out to as well. They’re customized for each person…though we’re going in teams.”

And just like that my paranormal bull’s-eye expanded to include Cher.

“I really need more wine,” I muttered, squinting up at the disco ball.

Magically, it appeared. Hanging out with a future princess had its benefits.

“Look, Livvy.” Cher waved from the front of the bus, where I headed, barely managing not to spill into the same man’s lap. His wife glared like I’d gotten up his hopes on purpose. Meanwhile, Cher was holding up a tiny gold ring. “Arun bought body jewelry for the party. It’s all from his village in India. These are clip-ons, so you can try them on before committing. But the real deal is in the back with the piercer.”

Which explained the lascivious looks I’d been getting from the guy eyeing my virgin nose. As well as that corner’s intermittent screeches. “One badly timed speed bump and things could get very interesting at the back of the bus.”

Nodding absently, Cher said, “Here, this loops around your eyebrow-sexy little center diamond, huh?-and this has a fancy magnet which attaches through your nose.”

Cher kept the nose ring, so I gamely reached for the brow hoop. I squinted at the tiny designs flaring from the diamond like rays from the sun but couldn’t make them all out in the dim, flashing light. I’d been having trouble with my eyesight ever since it’d reverted to 20/20. Meanwhile, Cher lifted my shirt without asking, a faux belly ring dangling from her fingertips, but she drew back in surprise. “Oh, you already have one. That’s hot.”

I glanced down ruefully. Maybe, but it hadn’t been by choice. I thought about telling Cher where I’d gotten it, the story of a parallel realm called Midheaven, ruled by women who considered themselves goddesses, and fueled by the souls of those who entered there. But I didn’t want to give her nightmares…or ideas. That underground world was a pocket of distended reality, like a bubble of poisonous, trapped gas. It offered a place for rogue agents to hide from whatever trouble they’d left behind in this world, but it did so at a price. It was a twisted place that twisted people in return, stripping them down, literally changing them at a cellular level.

Besides, tonight was supposed to be about safe and normal. So I wasn’t going to allow in memories of my lost powers, my myriad mistakes, or other dangerous worlds.

Or of the man who’d betrayed me for one of those goddesses.

“Hunter,” I whispered into my wineglass, the name lost in the bowl and the bus’s growling technothrob. Then I banished his memory like a ghost and lifted my chin, determined to do the same with my thoughts. And be normal.

So as the rolling disco/revival got under way, I gave the pole nearest me a considering look. One foot in front of the other. That was how I’d re-embrace my humanity, my sister’s life, and the sole responsibility for protecting my own. I’d forget about the Shadow and the Light soon enough…and that I’d once been both. Surely then, even the images dogging my recent dreams-of Hunter suspended amidst a star-studded sky, and wrapped in the slim, soft arms of another woman-would fade away as well.