Read Online Tombs of Endearments by Casey Daniels - Free Book Online

the glow of the candle flame flickered in his eyes and made them spark. He looked very much alive. He wasn’t, and when he rounded the headstone and came to sit at my side, I reminded myself not to forget it.

    “My life was one constant happening,” Damon said. “I got a buzz from performing. And expanding my mind. I loved the women!” He tipped his head back. Whatever he was remembering, it made him grin. “Man, life was a trip! Now…” His smile faded. “I’m bored, Pepper. I’ve been bored for more than thirty long years.”

    I could have come back with a smart-aleck comment about sex and drugs and rock and roll, but the look of quiet desperation in Damon’s dark eyes stopped me.

    It also helped me make up my mind about taking on his case.

    “Then we’d better do something about it,” I said. I thought back to everything he’d told me that afternoon. “It sounds like we need to start with Vinnie.”

    “Vinnie Pal, right. If we can stop him from holding my spirit on this plane, I can pass to the Other Side.”

    Let’s face it, in theory, this sounded reasonable enough. But on closer examination, there were gaps in Damon’s logic.

    “Don’t get me wrong,” I said, “it’s not like I don’t believe you or anything. But I can’t believe Vinnie can just call you and you go whooshingover to wherever he is. If it was that easy, everyone would do it. You know, people would keep loved ones with them. Or somebody would figure out how to make famous scientists and doctors stick around so they could keep doing all the good things they were doing while they were alive. Shit, my mom would have hung on to Louise, her cleaning lady, long after the poor woman was dead. Mom always said no one could clean a bathroom like Louise.”

    “But if you told people it was possible, that they could call up the power and do exactly what Vinnie’s doing, do you think they’d believe you?”

    Damon’s voice was thoughtful, and it made me think, too. “They’d say it was bull. They’d say it was nutso. Like believing there’s such a thing as—”

    “Ghosts?”

    I had come to accept my Gift, even if I wasn’t one hundred percent comfortable with it. “I used to think I was crazy,” I told him.

    “You mean the first time you ran into one of us.”

    I nodded. “I thought it was because I hit my head on Gus’s mausoleum. After that, that’s when he started showing up.”

    “Then you realized that it was true. That it truly is a Gift.”

    My laugh was skeptical. “Not a Gift I want.”

    “You’re kidding me, right?” Damon twisted so that he was facing me. “But you should be totally stoked! It’s wild, what you do, talking to the dead. And a girl as smart as you—”

    “Smart? Yeah, right.”

    As if it would help him see me better, he narrowed his eyes. “You don’t think you’re smart?”

    “I think most people see my body. Not my brain.”

    “Your body…” We were sitting close, so when Damon skimmed a look from my face, down my neck and lower still, I swore I could feel the heat. “You’re awesome,” he said, and he made it sound like it wasn’t any big deal, just the honest truth. “But come on, every guy you meet must realize that there’s more to you than just a dynamite body. You’re smart and you’re funny and from what I’ve heard, you’re not afraid of anything. You took on the mob for Gus.”

    Before Damon could see that my cheeks were on fire, I turned to look the other way.

    “Come on, little girl, crave the possibilities.” They were the lyrics to the most famous of all the Mind at Large songs, and Damon didn’t say them, he sang them. His voice was a rumble that tickled my skin with a feather’s touch. “Laugh and run, naked in verdant meadows, drunk with your power.”

    When I turned back to him, I had every intention of making a smart-ass comment about not being a fan of oldies. A better plan than begging him to find a way for flesh-and-blood me