The Resurrectionist. Sierra Woods
I was too tired, and tried not to sense the way his body felt, the firmness of his chest and abs as I slithered past him. “You coulda moved.” I threw a glare over my shoulder. With the sunglasses on, it was less effective. Sam wasn’t very susceptible to my glares anyway, which pissed me off. I wasn’t in the mood, so he was on his own for chow.
“Coulda.” He fell into step beside me. “Garduno’s?”
It was the one word I couldn’t resist. My mouth began to water in anticipation. Guacamole, margaritas and meat. “You’re such a bastard,” I said and hung my head. I was defeated already. My stomach ruled my life, and he knew it.
“I am, but that’s why you like me.” With his hand on the middle of my back, he gave me a playful shove toward the main doors. “Let’s eat. I’m starved.”
In less than thirty minutes I was surrounded by the things I loved and needed to get through the day: an excellent margarita, a flat-iron steak, rare, and a hot-blooded man across the table. It was a feast for the taste buds and the eyes. Okay, so I didn’t really need the margarita to get through the day, but it was a nice touch at the end of a sucky one. And I really, really didn’t need the hot-blooded man across the table from me, but boy, the eye-candy factor was too hard to resist sometimes. He was buying me dinner, after all. Who could argue with that?
I know Sam was interested in me in a way I couldn’t return. My life was so complicated, it was all I could do to get through it. I didn’t need any more complications. So for the moment, I just sat there and let him ogle my body, enjoying the rush of it. I knew he wanted to, and if this was the only control I had over a man, I had to take it. Gave me a shiver just thinking about what it would be like to have Sam naked and pressed against me. I gulped my frozen-no-salt-on-the-rim drink, trying to cool off my brain and the burn in my crotch. Didn’t work though. Next time I was having salt. I didn’t care what my blood pressure did.
Fortunately, our orders arrived quickly and I grabbed my knife, ready to stab it into anything that didn’t move.
“You’re the only woman I know who likes her steak bloodier than mine.” Sam cut into his meal.
“I feel so feminine and dainty when you say things like that.” Me? Ha. Not even on a good day. After I was resurrected, I burned every feminine thing I owned. Except for that one pair of pretty pink thongs with a matching bra. Someday...
“We never finished our conversation the other day,” Sam said.
Uh, what conversation? We had so many that got interrupted with phone calls and firearms that I couldn’t keep track. Always on the move, always busy doing something for the station or my office, we never seemed to have a moment to allow our brains to catch up. “Which conversation was that?”
“About my grandmother and her job in the underground.”
I had to laugh. That’s certainly one way of putting it. “Yeah.” I looked at Sam. I liked the way his smile sort of slid over his face slowly just then. The man has a face that isn’t pretty or handsome, but it is compelling. His hair is that dark, dark black that Latin men have, and his is cut very short. Not quite a buzz, but a little longer. He is clean shaven, but I’ve seen pictures of him with a ’stache, and it’s nice, too. The most compelling part of his face is his eyes, which sort of pull everything together and make it come alive. His eyes were the shade of espresso, dark and fathomless, eyes you could get lost in. Kinda like now.
“Dani?” He waved his hand in front of my face, bringing me back to the present. Doh!
How embarrassing. “Sorry.” I cleared my throat and speared a piece of grilled jalapeño. Maybe setting my mouth on fire would keep me focused. “Didn’t mean to stare.”
“No problem. You just seemed lost for a second.” The espresso in his eyes percolated a little warmer.
Yeah, I was lost. In his eyes. It’s that damned cologne he wears. I swear there’s some sort of chemical in it that puts me in a trance. Kinda like catnip for women. Ugh. Back to the convo at hand.
“We were talking about your grandmother and Roberto’s case the other day, weren’t we?” Back on track. That’s where I feel best, with a job in front of me, a purpose and a mission to accomplish, not just drifting around like those in the nebula.
“Is there another resurrectionist who can help you?”
Sadly, no. “Not right now. I know a few, but not well enough to step into this kind of job.” Something occurred to me, though. Something I’ve been doing just to get the events of the day out of my brain is something Sam’s grandmother may have done. I have a computer and the internet, but she had access only to books and papers. I frowned and leaned closer to him across the table. Intent. Assistance might come from the other side in a different form. “Did your grandmother keep any records, any sort of journals, papers, anything about her work? I write some things, keep a journal of sorts, so it clears my brain and records some of what I do in the rituals. She might have done the same thing.” That would be a huge bonus, to have information from such a source. I never know if the internet information is legit.
Sam thought a minute, then frowned. “If she did, I don’t know of any, but my sisters might.”
“She could have had a journal she kept hidden, if, as you say, she was at risk of being accused of witchcraft.” If nothing else, I had to have a little hope.
“That’s true. She had so much stuff though, something like that might have been overlooked. She was a Depression-era survivor, so she never threw anything away.” My grandmother had also survived the Great Depression, and she has a garage full of toilet paper and plastic water jugs. The two things she can’t live without. Oh, and soap, too.
“Would you ask your sisters if they found anything like that?” Desperation led me to ask Sam for such a favor. The weight of it got to me sometimes, even with my jovial outlook on life. Even if his abuela was dead, at least I might connect to her through her writings. Burton might be helpful, but he’s unreliable and difficult to contact. Sam, I know I can count on, no matter what it is. He is a man who keeps his word, keeps promises he makes. I just didn’t know why.
“Sure.” He searched my eyes, and I wondered if they had returned to their normal color. After eating, my need for protein and blood is satisfied, and externally, I look normal again. Hesitating, he reached out and placed his hand over mine. He knows that touching is difficult for me. It isn’t something I can easily control, and I can get sucked into the feelings of the person I’m touching. Occupational hazard. But right then, it was simply nice. “I’ll help you any way I can. Sometimes you seem so lonely in what you do, that it takes so much out of you.”
There was no other way to acknowledge that very astute observation. “I am, and it does.”
Two days passed and the resurrection order finally came in. We were given the go-ahead to perform the life-swap between Roberto and Filberto. I was a nervous wreck. I wasn’t certain I had what it was going to take to make the swap successful. I had no one except myself and Sam to rely on. I kept dreaming of the movie The Fly, where the scientist tried transporting an animal and it came through inside out. Even for me that’s got a high ick-factor.
Burton was no help. The bastard. Sometimes he just annoyed the hell out of me and took the teenager persona entirely too far. He’s involved in a skateboard competition today and can’t be bothered. Dude. I hope he leaves some skin on the sidewalk.
I was on my own. Again. I should be used to it by now, but sometimes, the times I felt most vulnerable, were the times I needed someone, and there simply was no one except Sam, and he could do only so much.
Details, details, details. Sometimes I thought I was going to get sucked into my phone, ear first, as I made arrangements to have Roberto’s remains thawed and prepared to travel to the hospital. Then all the hoops I had to jump through at the hospital, I felt like a tiger leaping through flaming hoops and getting