Free The Spirit is Willing (An Ophelia Wylde Paranormal Mystery) by Max McCoy Page B

wouldn’t sleep, just close my eyes and rest. It was too late in the day to sleep now. In a moment, of course, I was asleep.

10
    “When am I going to die?” I ask.
    Death smiles.
    “We really must bring our visit to a close,” he says.
    “While I have enjoyed our conversation, it has gone on much too long. And I am not going to tell you when your passage is scheduled, not without a directive from the home office.”
    He looks over at the gold-plated telegraph, which is silent.
    “So there you have it.”
    Death rises from the chair and returns to his paperwork on the other side of the desk. “Go forward and produce your triple naught for the conductor,” he says. “You will be promptly disembarked at the next station.”
    “Triple naught?”
    “The temporary pass.”
    But I don’t have the ticket. It’s not in either hand and there are no pockets in my dress. I look around the floor at my feet, but there’s only the deep purple carpet.
    “Did you look in your sleeves?” he says, making a motion of shoving things into the sleeves of his robe. “Women often store things there.”
    I make a snorting noise.
    “I’ll take your word for it,” I say, searching the wedding dress, which has no pockets and nothing in its sleeves. “Did you pick this getup out?”
    “No, that’s always up to the passenger.”
    “Yeah, right. Not me.”
    “An unacknowledged desire, perhaps,” Death suggests. “But that’s not important now. Think of where you might have dropped the triple naught.”
    “I must have lost it between cars when we were on the bridge.”
    “Did you pause?”
    “At first I was terrified,” I say. “Then, I wanted to jump.”
    “L’appel du vide,” Death says. “Call of the void. The inexplicable urge to jump. Good that you didn’t, because you know what happens when you fall and hit bottom in dreams. Why didn’t you?”
    “Why didn’t I what?”
    “Jump, of course.”
    “Because Calder pulled me across.”
    “Calder?”
    “My partner, Jack Calder.”
    “I didn’t authorize passage for anyone else,” he fumes. “Where is he now?”
    “Don’t know,” I say. “He hauled me to safety and then disappeared.”
    “Highly irregular,” Death says. “We must find that ticket.”
    “Can you just let me off at the next stop?”
    Death shuffles papers on his desk.
    “Right?” I ask. “Next stop?”
    “You don’t understand,” Death says.
    “You mean if we don’t find the ticket, I’m dead?”
    “No,” Death says. “But you’ll be on this train every time you go to sleep from now until the day you die.”

11
    The knocking on the door came gently, at about 11 o’clock.
    “Miss Wylde?” a voice asked.
    The knocking had roused me from my dream conversation with Death, and it took me a few moments to realize I was safe in my room at the Dodge House. The knocking continued, which made Eddie bristle his feathers and make a rasping sound deep in his throat.
    “Miss Wylde?” the voice came again. “Are you in?”
    “Yes,” I said. “Yes, I’m here. Who’s there?”
    “It’s Jimmy, the desk clerk.”
    The damn hotel bill, I thought.
    “I know I’m running behind a week,” I said. “But I have a new client and I’ll bring my account up to date by Friday. Or Monday, at the latest.”
    “You’re a month behind,” Jimmy said. “But that’s not why I’m here, Miss Wylde. There are some people downstairs asking for you. They said they went to your office and found it closed, so they came here.”
    I got out of bed and starting dressing.
    “Who are they, Jimmy?”
    “Doc McCarty and Assistant Marshal Earp.”
    “Wyatt Earp?” I asked, pulling on my trousers.
    “Yes,” Jimmy said. “He’s back on the police force.”
    “What do they want, Jimmy?”
    “I think you’d better hear it straight from them.”
    I buckled my belt, then paused. An old fear shot through me.
    “Am I in trouble, Jimmy?”
    “No, miss,” Jimmy said. “It’s Charlie Howart.