“Umm, through my probation officer,” I said after a second of mental scrambling for an answer. I wasn’t totally sure why, but I didn’t want to tell him the truth about the whole thing. Maybe ’cause he’d want me to explain, and I didn’t know how to? “It’s a weird gig, but kinda cool, too. And it even has benefits.”

“Oh yeah?”

I nodded. “After three months I get health insurance, and if I stay ten years I get vested in their pension plan.”

He laughed out loud. “The day you keep a job for ten years is the day I grow a twelve-inch dick.”

“Fuck you,” I shot back. “That doesn’t even make sense. Besides, you’re one to talk.”

He grinned and gave me a light punch on the arm. “I know, that’s why I said it. You and me, we’re too alike. Hell, I’ll be shocked if you can keep this job long enough to get the health insurance.”

I scowled. “Gee, thanks for having so much faith in me.”

“Aw, c’mon, Angel, lighten up. It’s not that. You like to do your own thing too much to stick with the same job for so long.”

And what the hell was my own thing? Whatever it was, so far it sucked.

“This is shit pot,” I announced after a moment, stubbing out the half inch of joint that was left. Normally I’d smoke it down as far as possible, but I still wasn’t feeling any buzz. Didn’t seem to be any point to smoking the rest of it.

He shrugged without looking at me as he picked up a remote and turned on the TV. “So get your own.”

“Seriously,” I said. “I don’t think that’s pot. I’m not feeling a damn thing from it.”

He flicked a glance my way. “It’s the same goddamn bag we started the other night. You liked it enough back then.”

I grimaced, then stood.

“Where y’going?” he asked.

“Dunno.” I rubbed my arms. Everything felt weird and faded, like the world was turning into a black and white movie. And the dialogue and music on the TV seemed flat and tuneless. But I wasn’t feeling the beer or pot at all. I was still cold sober and I didn’t want to be. “Home, I guess.”

“Nice.” His mouth curled into a mild scowl. “You come over and drink my beer and smoke my shit and then leave? What’s up with that?” He grabbed my hand and gave it a small tug, then offered a sly smile. “C’mon . . . stay.”

I hesitated. I liked sex with Randy, even though we were so on-again off-again that I’d pretty much lost track of whether we were dating or not. After almost four years, we were so damned used to each other that whenever we were together we ended up in the same comfortable patterns.

And I knew what part of that pattern would be. I’d stay, we’d screw, then we’d get high on whatever he had around, and I’d probably oversleep.

“I can’t.” I tugged free of his grasp. “Sorry. I gotta go. I have work tomorrow. Y’know? That job I won’t last at?”

“Are you actually pissed at me about that?” he asked, a frown forming between his eyes.

“No! I’m not,” I insisted. “I just need to get home. I can’t screw this up.”

“Sure. Whatever,” he muttered. He didn’t reach for my hand again and shifted his attention to the TV. For a brief instant I wanted to go ahead and pick a fight, simply to see if that would snap everything back into focus. Get him and me all riled up and see if that could somehow get him to act like he gave a shit if I was around. We’d yell and scream, then we’d make up and get high and fuck.

And I’d oversleep and lose my job, I thought. I knew myself too well. But it’s only a job, right? Whoever wrote that letter can’t have been serious about the whole go-to-jail thing. . . .

I shook my head, scowling. God, I was weak. How could I even be considering risking it?

The same way I’ve risked everything else in my life. By not giving a shit. Or getting so fucked up I couldn’t give a shit, even if I wanted to.

Yeah, well, I needed to give a shit about going back to j ail.

“I’ll, um, see you later, babe. Okay?” I said.

He grunted something that might have been a yes. I left to the sound of him changing channels.

Chapter 6

The ringing of my phone jerked me out of a nightmare—rotting flesh and crawling maggots, reaching hands and flesh dripping off bones. I struggled to shake off the lingering horror as I groped for my cell phone, almost grateful to be woken up even though it had to be obscenely early, since I could see through my crooked blinds that it was still dark outside.

I finally found the answer button. “Yeah?” I croaked.

“Good morning!” my partner, Derrel, said in an insanely cheerful voice. “I need my Angel to come out and play.”

The display on my nightstand clock showed 5:10. Ugh. Being on call sucked the big one. My usual shift didn’t start until eight A.M., but twice a week I was on call, which meant that if anyone died in the middle of the night, my ass got to go pick them up and bring them back to the morgue. On the other hand, it also meant that I took the van home after my regular shift was over on those nights, which saved me a few bucks in gas money.

Still, waking up this early was just wrong. “Why can’t people be reasonable and only die after eleven A.M.?” I whined.

“You’re cute when you’re cranky. I’m texting you the address. See you there!”

I’d been on the job two weeks, and I still hadn’t thrown up. I had no idea where my iron stomach had suddenly come from—because I sure as hell never had one before—but considering some of the gross stuff I’d seen and smelled, I wasn’t about to complain. One of the bodies we’d brought in the day before had been a decomp—the decomposing body of an old man who’d died in his trailer about a week and a half earlier. I seriously thought I was going to pass out from the smell, and I damn near ran screaming when I saw there were maggots crawling in his mouth and nose. The only reason I didn’t was because Nick the Prick was also there, and I knew he’d tell everyone I’d wimped out. And, once again, I wasn’t going to go to jail because of his smarmy little ass.

I’d been partnered with an investigator named Derrel Cusimano—a big, bald, black dude who’d been a linebacker at LSU a decade ago and looked like he was still perfectly capable of stopping the rush. He’d been a death investigator with the Coroner’s Office for about five years and was as friendly and nice as Nick wasn’t. He didn’t seem to give a rat fuck that I hadn’t finished high school or that I was on probation or that I was twenty-one years old and didn’t have a clue what to do with my life. He simply did his job and cracked inappropriate jokes when the general public wasn’t around and teased me about my bleached-blonde hair. Somehow when he gave me crap about being redneck trailer trash it was funny instead of mean, perhaps because he gave everyone equal amounts of crap. Plus, he consistently referred to Nick as an “over-privileged cocky asstard” which pretty much made him my hero, despite the fact that he was disgustingly cheerful at five in the morning.

I put my phone back on the nightstand, then ran my fingers through the tangled mess of my hair. The desire to lie back down was damn near overpowering, but I knew if I did I’d be asleep within seconds. And fired within hours. I’d been warned several times that “failure to respond in a timely manner to a call-out” was grounds for immediate termination.

“Only two more weeks to go,” I muttered with a scowl as I forced myself to get up from the bed. Then again, so far this job sure beat the hell out of working as a clerk at a convenience store. Though the convenience stores had fewer maggots. Usually.

The faint stench of rot wafted by me as I shambled down the hall to the bathroom. Great. Another rat died in the wall. The house I shared with my dad was . . . well, “piece of shit” was a pretty accurate description. Single-story with a tin roof and rotting front steps. Half the windows were cracked and had been repaired with duct tape, and the other half were so dirty you could barely see anything through them. I kept telling myself that one of these days I’d bust my butt and at least get the kitchen and bathrooms properly cleaned but somehow never quite found the motivation to do so. I kept things wiped down enough so that it wasn’t completely toxic, but there was no way I’d ever be comfortable having anyone over.

I did my business in the bathroom, squinting in the mirror after I washed my hands and face. The light above the sink was on but my reflection looked washed out and grey. Not too surprising considering the obscenely early hour, but the flowered wallpaper looked faded as well. To add to the joy, my toothpaste’s usual minty freshness wasn’t terribly minty, and I even double-checked to make sure I wasn’t trying to brush my teeth with something nasty like anti-itch cream.

Maybe I was coming down with something. I’d felt like this after leaving Randy’s last week—so faded and low-energy that after I made it home I’d cheated and downed one of the energy drinks, even though I was only supposed to drink them every other day. But I hadn’t overdosed, and in fact had felt fine the next morning. Or maybe I’m simply allergic to being awake at five A.M. That was more likely.

I swiped some deodorant into my pits, then wrinkled my nose. The stench was in here as well. I couldn’t seem to smell anything else, but I could sure as hell smell whatever it was that had died. I sniffed around in an attempt to trace the source of it, then on an absurd whim took a deep whiff of the back of my hand.

Oh, gross. It was me! I’d showered before going to bed, but apparently the funk from yesterday’s decomp had clung to me more than I’d realized. Derrel wouldn’t be pleased if I took too long to get out to the scene, but I figured he also wouldn’t be thrilled if I smelled like roadkill.

I took a quick shower and toweled off, then sniffed my arm again. It wasn’t nearly as bad, yet there was still a lingering aroma of something dead that clung to me. No time for another shower, though. I spritzed on a flowery body mist, but I might as well have been spraying water on my bod for all that I could smell it. I scowled and resisted the urge to give myself a second spritzing. If my sense of smell was off, I’d be running the risk of knocking Derrel over with the lovely combo of something dead plus way too many flowers.