Free Ghosts and Other Lovers by Lisa Tuttle

meant to be a new savior, meant to suffer and die a thousand times to redeem the lives of others? Was she to give up any life of her own and travel around the country foiling Death on highways and in hospitals? Yet even if she had wanted that, Alida knew she could not conquer Death. She could only save a few out of the millions he marked each year for his own, and that was as it should be. She would gladly suffer again if need be to save her mother, or a friend, or some innocent child, but why should she help the very old, or the wicked, to evade their rightful deaths?
    Alida decided to trust to chance and her own instincts. She would not go in search of Death, but she would use her ability when she felt she must.
    In the days and the weeks that followed this decision, Alida continued to catch glimpses of the man in black, but never more than that: a sighting across a crowded street or in a passing car, or a premonitory shudder as a stranger brushed past. She thought she should have been happy in her freedom: she wasn't being forced to make a decision; she didn't have to die again. But she was restless and on edge, sleeping badly, skipping meals, always waiting for and wondering about the next death.
    She began dreaming of death again, but this time it was not the loss or recovery of loved ones that she lived through in her sleep; now she dreamed of the man in black. Now when she slept she found herself pushing impatiently through the darkness, pulling at his arm, pressing herself against him, struggling to see his face. In her dreams pain was transformed to pleasure, and instead of fearing the agony, she longed for his embrace. Gradually this longing crept into her waking hours and she had to recognize that the lives she might save did not matter to her. All she wanted was Death.
    But Death, it seemed, did not want her. Although she had felt earlier that it was her obsession with death which had drawn the man in black to her, and made it possible for her to see him when others did not, her desire no longer worked such magic. She thought perhaps it was having the opposite effect, that her very eagerness might be foiling her: death might see her not as a lover but as a threat, a dangerous rival who stole his chosen victims.
    She began to haunt the casualty wards of hospitals, but although she often sensed the presence of Death, she was never able to draw close enough to touch. She stopped going to work, preferring to roam the streets at all hours of the day and night, yet no matter how often she saw that familiar black suit, it would vanish as soon as she attempted to follow. She read about deaths in the papers and heard of them on the news: starvation in Africa, a car bomb in Ireland, a machine-gun maniac in Los Angeles, and all the obituaries, all the private little deaths which took place out of her presence, beyond her reach. So many died, so many who did not have to. Why wasn't she allowed to intervene? Why couldn't she find someone who was about to die? Only her dreams gave her any relief, and they were few and far between as she found it harder and harder to sleep.
    Alida did not realize quite how desperate her mood had become until one morning in the bathroom she found herself staring at the blood welling from a cut on her finger -- a cut she'd made in a futile, half-conscious attempt to extract the blade from a disposable plastic razor.
    The pain scarcely registered, but the sight of the bright red blood recalled her to herself, and she stared at the mirror, seeing for the first time how pale and haggard and thin she had become. How near death she looked.
    And her eyes shifted from her own face to look beyond. She couldn't even hold her own gaze; she was always looking for the man in black, always trying to see that still unseen, unknown face. Everything she did was an attempt to call him back to here but she knew she must not take her own life unless she really was giving up. Because she didn't want to die -- she