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.
Come back, Jonas, she said in a mental whisper, somehow positive he’d hear.
Would he listen?
Ginny deftly avoided the creaky hallway floorboard and approached Larissa’s room. The hair on the back of her neck rose the closer she got. Her stepmother never failed to sleep with the television on at medium volume, usually tuned to the shopping network, but silence reigned from the other side of the door. There wasn’t so much as a snore or a rustle of sheets.
“Curious,” Ginny whispered, her big toes climbing over one another on the carpet. “Mmmm.” She crept closer. “Larissa?”
She ducked on instinct, in preparation for a shrill screech or perhaps her father’s brass urn crashing through the closed door and rendering her unconscious. Throwing an urn would definitely be a first for Larissa, but totally in keeping with her escalating behavior. Best to be on guard.
After several more moments of quiet ticked past, Ginny straightened and closed the remaining distance to the door, curling her palm around the knob and turning. At this stage, she was definitely starting to worry.
Dead silence in a funeral home was only a good sign if it was coming from one of their downstairs guests.
“Larissa?” Ginny called, pushing open the door.
She stopped short as soon as her eyes adjusted to the dimness.
There was her stepmother, her prize-winning figure outlined beneath the sheets. One arm dangled off the bed, an empty bottle of Stolichniya within reaching distance. Ginny squinted into the darkness, trying to discern Larissa’s back moving up and down in a typical breathing pattern, but couldn’t tell for sure. Abandoning the hallway, she moved into the room slowly, her fingers laced together beneath her chin. “Larissa?”
“She’ll be fine.”
Ginny spun around with a bloodcurdling scream trapped in her throat. She’d never be able to say for sure why she didn’t release it, but suspected it had something to do with the smirking moon-haired young woman looking back at her. Quite possibly, she was too fascinated to scream. Who was this person and what was she doing in Coney Island, let alone Larissa’s room? In her leather pants, blood red boots and studded bustier, she appeared to have stepped out of a futuristic eighties movie. And she was holding the missing kitchen knife in her hand.
Am I still sleeping?
Perhaps Ginny was having one continuously long dream about vampires and…whatever this woman was. It had been an extremely bizarre twelve hours.
Maybe none of it was real.
Maybe the person who’d tried to kill her had partially succeeded and this was one big insane dream brought on by a terrible fever. She might be surrounded by nurses in the Intensive Care Unit right this very second.
“You are saying all of this out loud,” said the woman, her voice faintly accented with Russian. “I swear you are awake. But I could pinch you, if you’d like to confirm this?”
“No, thanks.” Oh God, was this the person who’d been causing her to look over her shoulder? Had this intruder killed Larissa first so there would be no witnesses? Was Ginny going to die without even finding out why someone wanted her six feet under in the first place? “Is my stepmother dead?”
Two bright blonde eyebrows pulled together. “Were you listening? I just said she would be fine.”
“Then…why are you holding a knife?”
“I’m sharpening it for you. Mine is made of the finest silver.” She lifted the knife, regarding the blade with disgust. “You think I could even break the skin with a blade this dull?” With that, Moonhair slipped another, larger knife from the small of her back and began striking and dragging the two blades together, setting off sparks in the dark room. “You’re welcome.”
Ginny gaped. “You’re making the knife sharper so my death will be swifter? And you want me to thank you for it?”