Page 13 of Kiss of Death

“On both pictures?” Bunny asked, her tone dripping with skepticism. “And with enough force that they both fell yards away from where they were hanging?”

Dana shrugged awkwardly.

Stuart snapped his clipboard closed, tucking it under his arm. “I don’t know what else to say, lady.”

Bunny took a breath, using the focused action to tamp down her agitation. “Me either.”

“We’re gonna have a patrol outside the building for the rest of the night,” he told both nurses, “just to be on the safe side. But we ain’t no ghostbusters.”

“Thanks,” Bunny told him as he turned to leave. She glanced at Dana, briefly considered asking her whether this sort of thing happened often at Arcadian Waters, and then thought better of it. “I need a damn coffee,” she groaned instead, lifting a hand to rub at her tired eyes. Her bubblegum pink manicure was in direct opposition to her surly attitude.

“Look,” Dana said gently. “I don’t know what it’s like in hospitals, but…” She hesitated for a second, which made Bunny realize Dana had caught the beginning look of the almost-comment she had been about to offer. “We do have weird things happen here, Bunny.”

Bunny’s brows lifted, the corner of her mouth twitching.

“I’m not saying the place is haunted,” Dana rushed on to say. “But I’ve seen things with my own eyes that I couldn’t explain, too. So have others. It’s just a fact of life, I guess, when you’re working in a place where people cross over.”

“A fact of life, or a fact of death?” Bunny quipped. “People die in the ER too.” She shrugged. “But I’ve never seen any ghosts hanging around there.”

Dana studied Bunny’s face for a moment. “I’m sorry you’ve had a rough night,” she said, slipping her hands into the pockets of her scrubs and rolling forward onto the balls of her feet as though to get her circulation moving. “But I have to get back to my section. Call me up if you need me, okay? It only takes me a few minutes to get down here.”

“I will.” Bunny mentally smoothed down her hedgehog spines, reminding herself that Dana was only trying to help. She offered the other woman a rare smile. It was lopsided and not really heartfelt, but it was there all the same. Had she even properly smiled at all since her mom had died? “Thanks.”

A couple hours later, Bunny was buried under paperwork. She yawned as she finished documenting an increase in insulin for one patient, her cheek resting against her hand as she held up her head. Night shift always sucked, but she shouldn’t be this tired. It felt weird to be ready to doze off, especially after the night she’d had so far. She reached for her mug and took a gulp of cold coffee, too lazy to be bothered going to make a fresh one.

“Hey! You gotta help me!”

She managed to swallow the coffee before she sprayed it out all over the patient report she was working on.

An agitated elderly man was leaning over the high counter that fronted the nurses’ station. His wispy white hair was sticking out at all angles, and the hospital gown he was wearing seemed to look even more shabby than hospital gowns usually did. His watery blue eyes darted around the room, only landing on Bunny every other second as though he were a wild rabbit in a den of foxes.

Bunny rose slowly to her feet so she didn’t startle him. “Are you okay, sir?”

“No, I’m not okay!” he snapped. “I have to get outta here!”

Ah. So he was confused. An Alzheimer’s patient?

“Okay,” she said, nodding. She walked slowly out of the station and over to stand by his side, noting the strange blood lividity present on his legs. That didn’t look good. She was going to have to examine him properly. Dipping her head, Bunny squinted at the medical wristband on the man’s arm. “We can get you back to bed, and I’ll get you something to help you sleep, Mister… Lucas.”

Lucas, comma, Walter.

Bunny felt the skin on the back of her neck prickle. She had made arrangements with the coroner for this guy’s corpse.

This was the man that Cerise had labeled violent—the guy who had been in and out of jail his whole life.

And then she noticed that instead of slippers, the man had no feet at all. They simply faded away mid-calf, giving him the appearance that he was floating.

“You’re not listening! I don’t wanna go to sleep!” the very alive-looking man insisted, stomping his nonexistent foot and commanding her attention. “I’m telling you, I need to get outta here before he gets me!” He lifted an arm and used it to bulldoze the files, tissues, and hand sanitizer off the high counter, sending it all to the floor with a crash.

Bunny blinked. “Before who gets you?”

The question slipped out of her dry mouth before she’d had time to fully register the fact that she was talking to a dead guy. She couldn’t have predicted the answer more perfectly with a crystal ball in one hand and a deck of tarot cards in the other.

“Him!” Walter made an erratic gesture with his hand, as though that explained everything. “Tall, black coat, hair ‘round his collar like one-a them damn hippies! He’s been chasin’ me ’round this hellhole all night, and I need to—” He stopped talking abruptly, looking fearfully over his shoulder toward the hallway that led down to the room he had occupied when he’d been alive. “Shit on a cracker!”

He appeared to gulp in a breath before pushing past Bunny, his shoulder bumping hers and knocking her off-kilter.

“Mr. Lucas—”

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