Free Cheat the Grave by Vicki Pettersson

I’d ceased having them. My neediness was likely too weighty for the dream state. So, surprise kept me flat-footed in this dream, even as I edged away from Mackie.
    Yet he remained slumped inertly over his ivory keys, bowler hat and piano top all covered in a thin layer of dust. Had I actually entered Midheaven, he’d have straightened like a marionette’s toy to compose a jaunty tune…flattering, true, cryptic…and one that would mark the last third of my soul’s siphoning into Midheaven.
    Since Mackie didn’t seem inclined to engage in any macabre jam sessions during my dreamscape, I ignored him, and turned back to the women I saw every day in the mirror, yet missed so much. “You shouldn’t be here.”
    Olivia lifted a perfectly waxed brow and motioned withone hand, pointing out two things: there was no one else in the room, and it lacked its usual furnacelike heat. So like me, she was in no real danger. Besides, even Sleepy Mac would struggle to murder someone who was already dead.
    And, in spite of that , Olivia looked great. A dress I recognized as Chanel cupped her catwalk body, and the understated gold on her neck and ears was fine, though it dimmed in contrast to her bright blue eyes, fixed on me with unconcealed amusement. She swung her legs like a child, showing off her Blahniks.
    â€œI like your hair that way,” I told her, and she preened, straightening her back so all the bits boys liked protruded in perky agreement.
    Then she frowned. “But you haven’t done a thing with yours since I…left, have you?”
    I glanced at my image in the bar’s smoky mirror. A person’s true physical form was always revealed in Midheaven, and so there I was again, the Joanna Archer of old, the appearance I’d been born with, though disconcertingly less familiar than it had once been. I was dark-eyed and-haired, where Olivia had been light. I was longer and lanky, as obsessively muscular as I could make myself in a slim, feminine frame. Olivia’s curves, by contrast, were a battleship boom that hit you dead center, a bull’s-eye in the gut.
    Yet I was no longer comfortable weighing our differences, no longer felt wholly like either of us. These days, I was a mash-up of the women we used to be. So I turned from the mirror. “Where’s everybody else?”
    Because the green felt tables were empty of players, the chips representing personal powers and soul slivers all neatly racked before the empty dealers’ chairs. Even the bar was barren, which was good. No bartender meant no drink, and imbibing was what drained one of the willpower and ability to leave this place. Again, the absenceshelped confirm this as a dream. The real Midheaven would never pull its guards.
    â€œThe only people you need to worry about are in this room. They are the ones who will affect you most in these next months.”
    My turn to raise a brow. My dead sister and a comatose psychotic with a soul blade tucked beneath a bowler hat? Yeah. They were going to be real effective.
    Hopping from the poker table, Olivia tossed me a knowing look as she sauntered to the bar. Once there, she lifted to her tiptoes, floated to a seated position atop the length of polished mahogany, and recrossed her tanned legs. “They’re coming now. They had to wait until you got here first.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause it’s your dream, silly.” Smiling, she gestured to the wall behind me, and I turned in time to see the paneled oak begin to smoke, then backed away until I was pressed against the bar. I felt better with Olivia at my side, and as if intuiting that—and who said she couldn’t in the dream state?—she rested her hand atop my shoulder. “There they are.”
    And I was suddenly standing across from three of my former troop members: Warren, Tekla…and Hunter. Their gazes were cautious, and they shifted away from Mackie as a group, but