On A White Horse

On a White Horse

By

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2014 by Katharine Sadler

All Rights Reserved.

Title

Copyright

On A White
Horse

I stride down the brick sidewalk toward the
hundred-year-old mansion as if I’m floating on pink, fluffy clouds.
The birds sing, the sun sparkles on the river behind the mansion,
and my smile can’t possibly get any bigger. I am the proverbial
white knight, the female version, riding in to save the damsel in
distress. “Yes, Mrs. Hunt,” I will tell her. “Yes, I will get rid
of the ghost who is haunting you.” And she will be grateful to me
and pay me more than any knight has ever been paid. For the next
few days, I will be the person I most want to be. I tell myself it
doesn’t matter that the whole thing is a con. I almost believe
it.

Mrs. Hunt, a seventy-year-old woman who could
easily pass for fifty, opens the door and smiles at me.

“I’m Holly Daye from Harvest One. You called
me about a haunting.”

“Oh, yes, Ms. Daye. Thank you for coming all
this way to help me. Please come in.”

I follow her inside and scan the foyer for my
partner, Tyler, but don’t see him. He was supposed to open all of
the cupboard doors and drawers in the kitchen, so maybe he’s still
busy with that. Tyler’s been dead for a year and my partner for ten
months. He’s usually calling me out for being late or not following
the plan, and I’m looking forward to calling the kettle black.

“Why don’t we have a seat in the living room,
dear, and we can discuss my little problem.”

“I’d prefer to walk around the house and try
to sense the ghostly presence,” I say.

“I’d prefer you have a seat in the living
room.”

I nod and try not to show my annoyance as I
follow her into a formal living room. Every available surface is
covered with porcelain knickknacks, from cactuses to kittens to
airplanes. I sit on an antique love seat and look around. Still no
sign of Tyler.

“Holly.” Mrs. Hunt sits on the couch across
from me. “It’s me, Tyler.”

I gape at Mrs. Hunt for a long moment.
Is
she on to my con and confronting me, or has Tyler actually taken
over her body?
I know Tyler pretty well and he has never done
anything even remotely out of line. “I’m sorry,” I say. “What?”

Mrs. Hunt smirks, an expression I’ve seen on
Tyler thousands of times before. “It’s me, your partner. We conned
that millionaire in Mississippi last month. The one with the
stuffed cats, we convinced him he was being haunted by one of
them.”

My heart drops. “What the hell are you doing,
Tyler? This isn’t funny. If anyone finds out—”

“They won’t find out if you don’t tell them.
You’ll get paid and Mrs. Hunt doesn’t have any family or friends I
won’t be able to fool. No one will suspect anything.”

I shiver as I realize his possession of Mrs.
Hunt isn’t temporary. “You killed her?”

I was born into Harvest One, a corporation
that employs the dead for various operations, and I’ve been taught
to see the people we con as marks. I pretend they really need my
help and I help them. I look at Mrs. Hunt and forget for a moment
that she’s a mark. I see someone’s grandma, a grandma who bakes
cookies and gives warm hugs. In another life, she could have been
my grandma. A tear pushes its way out and down my cheek, and I
swallow hard. Now isn’t the time to mourn a woman I never knew.

Tyler looks at the floor. “I didn’t mean to.
I just wanted to take her over long enough to get some money to my
girls. Her soul’s connection to her body was weaker than I
thought.” Tyler meets my eyes and his darken in pain. “I’m sorry,
Holly, but I need you to cover for me.”

“And exactly where am I supposed to tell them
you went?”

He raises his eyebrows in the expression he
reserves for me when he feels I’m being particularly dense. “Tell
them I crossed over. It happened to Delaney’s partner, what’s her
name, last year.”

Shit, he’s really serious
. He has no
idea what he’s done and it’s my fault. When a job comes up, I find
him and tell him where to go and what to do, and that’s the extent
of his contact with Harvest One. All he has is gossip, and the
gossip about Delaney’s partner gave him hope of an early out.
“Delaney wasn’t a surprise to anyone, because there were signs. She
was losing interest in the job and she was fading out when she
shouldn’t have been. No one’s going to buy you crossing over out of
the blue.” I wish I’d talked to him more about the corporation we
work for.

Tyler stands and paces. I might laugh as I
watch his mannerisms in a woman twice his age, but I’m too
miserable. “They’ll buy it if you’re selling it, Holly. Tell them
there were signs but you covered for me. You didn’t want to lose me
as a partner. Tell them something happened on this case and it
affected me so much I had to go. Tell them anything and they’ll
believe you. You’re the best liar I know.”

I can’t help but flush with pride. Tyler
doesn’t give compliments easily and in my business, persuasive
lying is considered more of an art than a sin. I enjoy his praise
for only a moment before the sick dread returns. “Why?”

Tyler sits down and pulls at Mrs. Hunt’s
shirt as though it doesn’t fit him properly. “I miss them, Holly. I
miss my girls and they need me. My sister is taking care of them,
but she works all the time and she doesn’t really want to be
raising two little girls. She’s trying, but…Child Services has
already been by and I’m afraid she’s going to lose them. With Mrs.
Hunt’s money, she won’t have to work so much and can spend more
time with my girls.”

I feel as if I’ve been punched in the
stomach. “You didn’t tell me.”

He sits next to me on the couch. “Yeah, I’m
sorry. I didn’t want to get you in trouble. If you knew I was
checking in on them and didn’t tell…”

“I could have been suspended for months.” The
look in his eyes tells me he understands what a suspension would do
to me. He knows what I do in my downtime. I watch a lot of bad TV
and get sullen and depressed. I don’t have friends or a social
life, and I’m not good at anything but the job. “And what will they
do to me if they find out I helped you reap a client?”

“They won’t fire you. You’re too good for
them to let you go.”

“Maybe not, but they can make my life
miserable. I get that your girls trump my job security, Tyler, but
you should have told me. We could have figured something out.
Something that didn’t get anyone killed.”

“Maybe, but I didn’t.” He looks at his hands
for a long moment. “So I’m offering you a choice. You can keep my
secret and let me live out Mrs. Hunt’s life. She’s already gone.”
He rubs his chin. “Or you can kill me, report me, and let them
destroy me. I’ve already changed Mrs. Hunt’s will and my girls will
get everything she has.”

When a ghost, or a reaper as we call them,
reaps a living body without permission from the corporation, the
reaper is always destroyed if he or she is caught. The corporation
acts in this way to discourage other reapers from taking over
living bodies and to prevent desperate reapers, like Tyler, from
jumping into the next available body they find. It’s harsh, but
effective.

“What kind of fucked-up choice is that?” I
walk to the window. Outside, the sun shines off the river with a
glare that hurts my eyes, but I continue to stare at it. All I want
is to have my perfect, heroic day back, but Tyler took that from
me. “I risk my job or I send you to your complete and total
destruction?”

Tyler steps up behind me and places a hand on
my shoulder. “I’m at peace with my decision, Holly. You do what’s
right for you.”

I swing around and punch him hard in the gut
with a right uppercut. He doubles over and gasps for breath. “Fuck
you, Tyler.” I shake my hand out and dance back, prepared for
retaliation. “Do you understand the situation you’ve put me in?
You’re an arrogant, insensitive asshole, but I thought you were my
friend.” He stands up slowly and faces me without a word. I dance
up and punch him in the jaw hard enough to whip his head around. He
doesn’t fall down, but he does hobble back over to the couch and
sit down. Mrs. Hunt was a tough lady.

I want to hit him again, but I pick up one of
Mrs. Hunt’s little knickknacks and smash it on the floor instead.
It’s almost as satisfying as hitting Tyler and I don’t risk killing
the body he inhabits.

Tyler leaps up and stops me before I pick up
another one. He places a gentle hand on my arm. “Shit, Holly, those
are real Limoges boxes. They’re worth like three hundred bucks
each. I’d rather you took it out on me.”

His gentle touch and voice sap my anger, and
I let my shoulders slump. “Why didn’t you just ask me? I’ve got a
lot of money saved. You know that. You’re always getting on my case
about how I live in a shitty apartment and never buy anything nice
for myself.”

“Someday, you’re going to have a family of
your own and you’re going to need that money.”

Tears well in my eyes. “Like hell I am.” I
sniffle.

“Mrs. Hunt had more money than she could ever
use. I knew taking her money wouldn’t hurt her.”

I let him pull me into a hug. “You killed
her,” I say into his shoulder.

“It’s nice to be able to hold you. I’ve
wanted to for so long.” His breath tickles my ear and my heart
races. I imagine that it’s Tyler’s body I’m hugging. It’s been a
long time since someone touched me.
Too long if I’m enjoying a
hug from an elderly woman as much as I am
.

“I never imagined you’d have breasts when you
did.” I step away from him.

He laughs, but it sounds hollow.

“You haven’t even mentioned the third
option,” I say. I don’t know why I’m not already on the phone to my
boss and reporting him. I should be.

He shakes his head, but he doesn’t move away
from the window. “No. If we kill the body, and I come back to work
like I never reaped her, they’ll investigate and they’ll change her
will. They’ll figure out what I’ve done.”

I’m a little irritated that he’s not
concerned about the whole world of shit I’d be in if Harvest One
found out about this, not to mention the police. Most of all, I’m
angry that he killed someone rather than just talking to me and
letting me help him.

I’ve never met his daughters, but I know what
it is to want to help family and not be able to do anything. My
sister didn’t share my gifts, but she could have worked for the
corporation as an ordinary. When she left, I was forbidden to have
any contact with her. I missed her, but I chose my job over her,
and I never spoke to her again. I found her obituary in a Google
search last year. She died of a drug overdose. If I’d known the
trouble she was in, I would have risked anything to help her.

I steel myself. “I can’t help you, Tyler. I’m
sorry.”

He pales. “Holly, please.”

“Let’s think this through. You know the
corporation monitors us, right?”

“If they think there’s a problem.” He crosses
his arms over his chest.

“No. They spot-check us all to make sure
we’re following their rules. If they knew that you’d been visiting
your daughters, they’d start paying closer attention.”

“They would have said something to me,” he
says, but Mrs. Hunt’s pale blue eyes lose some of their
sparkle.

“No, Tyler. Even Harvest One understands the
need to check in on a loved one every once in a while. They would
only take action if it became a habit or if you started interfering
in some tangible way.” I sigh and my head pounds. “But let’s
pretend they don’t know you’ve been visiting family. We go on a job
and I come back and tell them you crossed over in the middle of it.
Even if I lie convincingly, they are going to check up on my story.
They are going to make sure Mrs. Hunt hasn’t acquired any new
friends or habits.”