Free Kissed by Fire by Shéa MacLeod

lovely to work
with, stuff like that. There were several hankies out. Alison
Reynolds may not have been close to a lot of people, but she
obviously mattered to those who counted her a friend.
    At the end of the service, her mother stepped
forward and laid a pink rose on the coffin. She stood there quietly
for a moment, as though she could communicate with her daughter.
Maybe she could. I’d seen weirder things.
    One by one all the other attendees took a
pink rose from a nearby vase and laid it on the coffin. Except for
the tall man who’d been Alison’s co-worker. He waited until
everyone was done, then instead of a rose he laid a single black
eyed Susan on top the roses.
    When he looked up, I caught his eye. There
was such loss there that for a moment, it took my breath away. Then
he moved on, shoulders slumped. I realized then that he wasn’t
ashamed of his height. He was simply weighed down by sadness. “He
loved her,” I whispered to Kabita. “He really loved her.”
    Kabita looked down at the solitary orange
flower amongst the sea of pink. The colors clashed, but strangely
it worked.
    “Susans were her favorite, you know. She told
me once they made her think of sunshine and summer. You’re right,
he must have loved her. I wonder if he ever told her?”
    The thought that he might not have made me
feel incredibly sad. I’d be the first to admit that life was short,
at least for most people. And while my love life was certainly no
shining example, at least I had no regrets.
    Well, maybe one. But Inigo was a matter for
another time.
    As we turned to follow the others back to the
car park, something flickered at the corner of my vision. I turned
my head. Nothing. I frowned. I was sure I’d seen something.
    I grabbed Kabita’s arm and pulled her back
into the shadow of a large tree. “I think someone’s watching
us.”
    Both of us scanned the grounds. “There,” she
whispered, “over by that vault with the giant cross on top.”
    Sure enough, someone was hiding behind the
vault. I could just see part of the person’s head and a flutter of
cloth from a jacket or something. “I think it’s the woman from the
airport. You know, the one who looked at you funny?”
    “How on earth can you tell that from this
distance?” She squinted a little as if to see better, but the woman
had dodged back behind the vault.
    “Spiky platinum blonde hair. Right height.
Right shape. Definitely a woman and definitely an unusual hair
color.” I slid around to the other side of the tree so I’d be out
of the woman’s direct line of vision. “I’m going after her. I want
to find out what she wants.”
    “OK. I’ll keep her attention on me.” Kabita
peered around the tree making herself just obvious enough to be
seen by the other woman, but hopefully not so obvious our little
spy would catch on.
    I nodded and moved out quietly from the tree.
From this angle the woman couldn’t see me as the large stone vault
with its oversized cross blocked her view. Unfortunately that meant
I couldn’t see her either.
    I made my way as quickly and quietly as I
could toward the vault, but I must not have been quiet enough. As I
rounded the vault, the woman started. I got a good look at her face
before she took off running. It was definitely the woman from the
airport. What on earth was she doing here at the cemetery?
    “Hey, stop!” I took off after her. She darted
down one of the pathways which led deeper into the grounds. This
part of the grounds was particularly overgrown and the woman kept
disappearing from view only to reappear farther down the path.
    Silently urging my feet to go faster, I
followed her down a particularly overrun path. No such luck.
Instead of going faster, I tripped on an exposed root and nearly
went sprawling face first into the dirt path. I managed to catch
myself, but the woman had vanished.
    Leaning up against a nearby tree, I paused to
catch my breath, see if I could spot her. There was a flash of
silvery