Memories were sacred to Ginny. Memories were her stock and trade. Every day of her life she’d witnessed the value and importance of them. They were all people had during the toughest times of their lives. Stealing memories struck her as the worst kind of violation. And not only that, a sin. She would protect them at all costs.
But how?
How?
The answer came to her in an almost meandering, obvious way. Tell the truth.
“You would put me in danger, Jonas?” She shook her head. “I’m already in danger.”
Her words visibly wounded him. “I said I’m not going to harm you.”
“You misunderstand. I’m not in danger from you. It’s someone else.” She wet her lips. “I’m in serious danger from someone else.”
The rotating green in his eyes pulsed and fizzled out, her muscles loosening at the quick loss of invisible support. His hands, however, caught her by the upper arms, holding her steady. “Who? Tell me immediately.”
“No.”
“No?” His confusion was as obvious as his frustration. “Why not?”
Ginny shrugged. “Come back tomorrow night and maybe I’ll tell you.” She snapped her fingers between them. “Although if you erase my memory, I won’t know you from Adam. So I definitely won’t trust you enough to tell you my life has been threatened. But maybe…over time you’ll earn my trust? I’d need my memory for that, though, wouldn’t I?”
When had she become the kind of woman who played head games with a vampire?
Tonight, apparently.
But were they really head games if she was merely stating the facts?
Jonas was not happy. “You will tell me right this moment who threatens you and I’ll deal with them before sunrise.”
“So it’s true, you can’t go out in the sun?”
“Not without turning to dust.”
“I didn’t invite you in. I guess that’s a myth?”
“Yes. And please stop changing the subject. Who seeks to harm you?”
“Sorry. My lips are zipped.”
“One last chance, before I make you tell me.”
Alarm pinched her spine. “How will you do that?”
This time, when his eyes started to glow, he seemed reluctant about it. “Do you remember earlier tonight when I made you hang up the phone instead of calling an ambulance? I can give you a very strong…suggestion. And you’ll be compelled to follow.”
“Please don’t do that,” she said on an exhale. “You’d be taking away my will.”
His fingers tightened on her arms. “You’re not giving me a choice.”
“Yes,” she stressed. “I am.”
“I can’t walk away and leave you in danger. And I can’t come back.” His gaze fell to her neck and he blinked several times. “You don’t know how or what you tempt. I’ve already stayed around you far too long.”
She shook free of his hold, backing toward the hallway that led to the residential section of the funeral home. “I’d rather face the threat alone than have my memories tampered with. Memories are all a person has some days.”
He tilted his head curiously at her words, but matched her retreat, step for step. “Tell me now, Ginny,” he murmured, smoothly, so smoothly, and her footsteps halted, her thought process trailing off and spinning into a spool of silk. “Tell me who threatens your life.”
Instinct ruled her and instinct dictated she make Jonas happy. It was suddenly what mattered most. Give him what he wants. She wanted to get on her knees and bow to him, on the off chance he might stroke her hair and grant her some praise—and wait, what? What is happening to me?
He’s doing this.
Him and his hypnotic green eyes.
The words were right on the tip of her tongue. Words that would reveal the information she’d told exactly nobody. But if she told Jonas about her recent night of peril, this would be the last time she saw him—and not only was that possibility abhorrent…it also struck her as wrong.
I’m not supposed to let him go.
“Stop,” she wheezed, covering her eyes with a hand. “Please stop.”
When long minutes passed without him saying anything, she peeked out from between to fingers to find him dumbfounded. “How did you do that? How did you fight me off?” He studied her face. “No one’s ever tried, let alone succeeded.”
Ginny had worshipped Lauren Bacall her entire life, but she’d never felt more like her than when she laid a hand on the hallway doorknob, flipped her hair and looked back at Jonas. “Better luck next time, Dreamboat,” she breezed. “See you tomorrow. You know where to find me.”
CHAPTER THREE
The following afternoon, things got weird.
Weirder, more like, although the insanity took a while to gain momentum.
Ginny woke up at approximately two o’clock, when the sun was highest in the sky, par for the course for someone who worked night shifts. Whenever her late starts felt unnatural or she woke feeling as if she’d missed the important half the day, she reminded herself of all the bartenders, subway technicians and bodega staff waking up across Brooklyn at the same time—and went about her usual routine.
She watered the herb garden on her fire escape, waving her green, metal can at Mr. Jung as he watered the sidewalk outside his fish market across the street. She pinched some basil off between her thumb and pointer finger, carrying it to the kitchen to sprinkle over her eggs. If there was a knife missing from the chopping block, she didn’t consider it odd. Her stepmother liked a midnight grilled cheese on occasion and routinely left cutlery in odd places.
Like the freezer. Or outside beneath the welcome mat.
Her stepmother Larissa hadn’t been an excessive drinker when Ginny’s father was alive, but she’d really put the pedal to the metal of late. Ginny didn’t blame her. The former pageant queen had fallen in love with a mortician, but she’d never expected to become one. P. Lynn Funeral Home had fallen into quite a bit of debt under her father’s supervision, however, and after marrying a woman with supremely expensive taste in jewelry and leisurewear, he’d promptly bitten the dust, leaving them with two choices.
Attempt to sell an outdated funeral home (spoiler: no one wanted it) that was rather unfortunately located beneath the Q train, which on more than one occasion had caused a casket to tip over. And some very unhappy online reviews.
Or, option two. Continue on, business as usual, and attempt to dig out from under mounds of small business loans and credit card debt.
Really, they’d only ever had one option. Knuckle down and keep going, a decision that had relieved Ginny greatly. The home might be a heap, but it was her home. One her father had built into a neighborhood landmark and managed to make a happy place, despite the dead bodies downstairs. She didn’t want to watch everything he’d worked for crumble when she was more than capable of keeping the doors open. There had to be a reason he’d spent countless hours patiently teaching her the family trade, right?
A loud crash above Ginny’s head made her drop the fork she was using to scramble her eggs. She tapped her fingers on the counter for several beats while deciding what to do. Larissa had a no wake ups, no matter the hour rule and expected Ginny to adhere to it. Okay, expected was a kind way of saying Larissa tended to throw hairbrushes or half-full glasses of water at Ginny if she even crept past her bedroom door to reach the bathroom. Many a full-to-bursting bladder had been endured since she’d been sharing a living space with her stepmother.
However. The silence that followed the loud crash convinced Ginny to leave her uncooked eggs on the counter and tiptoe slowly up the stairs.
P. Lynn Funeral Home consisted of three floors. The underground morgue, the first floor above it, which held the office, lobby and viewing areas. On the same middle floor, inaccessible to the public, was their small kitchen and dining room that could be reached through a locked corridor. Upstairs, on the top floor, lay the bedrooms. Three of them. One for Larissa, one for Ginny and an empty one Larissa used as a secondary closet.
On her way up the stairs, Ginny flexed her fingers at her sides, although no amount of warming up her digits would help catch any flying objects. Ginny was hopelessly unathletic. In middle school gym class, she’d earned the moniker No Win Gin on account of her being the kiss of death to whichever team had the misfortune of picking her last. It was just another way she’d become synonymous with bad luck around the neighborhood.
There was no sense in being tragic over it.
She had a legion of old movies to keep her company—To Catch a Thief was on the agenda for tonight—a place to live and herbs for her eggs. She could sew a mean dress. And while her profession might make people uncomfortable with their own mortality, she felt the opposite about it. People came to her on their worst day and she guided them through a process they often knew nothing about. In a way, she felt a little like a soft landing safety net for mourners who walked through the front door of P. Lynn Funeral Home. In that spirit, she often opened her meetings with a bright and cheerful, “How would you like to celebrate their life?”
An image of Jonas projected itself onto the back of her eyelids and she gave a prolonged blink to absorb it greedily. Had Jonas been given a funeral? Technically, he was dead, even if she’d never met anyone who’d crackled with more…existence.
Vitality.
Sexy sexiness.
Would he come back today? She couldn’t imagine a world where he didn’t. Where their one magical encounter was their first and last one. She’d dreamed of his eyes and the touch of his fingers in her hair. Replayed their conversations over and over in her mind so she’d never forget them. His voice was stuck in her head like a favorite song.
Was it pathetic that she’d deemed their encounter monumental? That’s how it felt. She was like one of those people who claimed they’d seen God while in a coma. No one would believe her, but she’d been forever changed nonetheless.