Free Walking Shadows by Phaedra Weldon

Mine and Daniel's little trip got postponed.  
    Why?  
    Rhonda.  
    Bitch.  
    I could think of a million different names I wanted to call her. I'd also daydreamed over the million different ways I could rend her flesh from her bones. She'd kept the hell away from me—and with good reason. I damn near killed her the last time I saw her. I wanted to choke her—I wanted—
    I wanted…
    I wanted her to give him back to me. But that wasn't going to happen. I knew it'd be a cold day in hell before she did it voluntarily. That…and Mom and everybody else was making sure I stayed the fuck away from her.  
    They just didn't want me to go all Evil Willow on her ass and get "bored."  
    Daniel was trying his best to get my mind off of my heartbreak. And he was succeeding, until Rhonda convinced the Society's board she needed him on her next mission. Why Daniel? WTF? There was any number of police academy trained…firearm experienced…detective…Revenants….
    Well maybe not. He was the best-trained Revenant around. But she had to have him now ? Right before he was going to take me away from all this shit?  
    Bitch did that on purpose.  
    I thought it was nice they let Mom give me the bad news. Figured I wouldn't kill her .  
    And they were right.  
    What I did do was lock myself in my apartment and shut off the phone.  
    It'd been two weeks since my return to physical life. Yeah, I'd been brought back two months before that, then spent a month recuperating from being food and oxygen deprived in the Abysmal Plane. Don't try this at home kids. It only worked for me because I'm speschull . That and apparently time moves much slower in the outer planes. What passed as four months on this side of the mirror was four weeks on that one.  
    No one was going to make me believe that, though. Because from my perspective if felt like four years.  
    Asshats.  
    During those months I was missing, Mom cut the hours at the shop. Jemmy ran it most of the time. And Joe came in and helped on those weekends he wasn't busy. He and I were on awkward territory. Mom told me he felt guilty for what Rhonda had done.  
    For stealing all of Dags' romantic memories of me. And taking him for herself.  
    Hard to believe, huh. My best friend chose the love of my life over friendship…and fairness.  
    She had what she wanted. And what did I have?  
    A tattoo…a streak of white hair…and evil bunny slippers.  
    It was Tuesday afternoon, December something. Ah hell. Christmas was in a few days and I never did go and help Jemmy   put up the Yule decorations in the shop. Though I did stop by and helped myself to several pieces of her chocolate bark. Peppermint and spearmint candy, held together by white chocolate.  
    I didn't care if I gained weight or not. Fuck them all.  
    It'd been raining. No surprise there. We mostly got rain in the South in winter. I was on my balcony, sitting in one of the rockers I'd borrowed from mom's front porch, a cup of coffee in my hands, and a Snuggie draped over my front. I couldn't see the lights of downtown through the haze of rain and low hanging clouds but I could see lightening now and then. Pretty wicked. And a good setting for a pity party.
    "Lover, you look like hammered shit."  
    Damn it. I wasn't in the mood. I closed my eyes and gave a long exaggerated sigh. "Can't you leave me in peace?"  
    "No. And you really don't want me too. Besides…I have a problem, and you're the only one I know who can investigate it for me."  
    He was beside me, sitting in the other chair Joe had given me. I could sense him without even looking at him—just like I could sense my arms and legs. He was a part of me, as he always had been. Just…he was different now.  
    I leaned my head back and turned to face him. "TC—you're the Phantasm. What the hell can I do that you can't?"  
    He looked the same as he always had when he was just a First Born. Vin Diesel. But dressed in a suit now. And no shades. His eyes were no