"Casey Daniels - Pepper Martin 02 - The Chick and the Dead" - читать интересную книгу автора (Daniels Casey)

Or at least I should have been.

Struggling to make some sense of it all, I ran a hand through my carrot-colored hair. "No way this is
happening," I told the woman. "I hit my head on Gus's mausoleum. Not on yours. I don't even know who
you are. I shouldn't be able to see you."

"But you can, right?" Her smile was perky. Have I mentioned that I hate perky? She hopped off my
desk. "Thanks to that accident of yours, you have what's officially known as the Gift."

"Oh no!" I sidled along the wall until I was standing on the opposite side of the desk from where the
woman stood. "Whatever this Gift thing is, I don't want it. Take it back. No Gift. Not for me. I just want
my life back. My regular, old life."

"Really?" She fluffed her skirt and adjusted the knot on the gauzy scarf around her neck. "That's not
what Gus says."

"In case you haven't noticed, Gus is a mobster. One of the bad guys. That means he's not exactly the
most honest person in the world. Whatever world he happens to be in. And besides, when did you have
time to talk to him?" I thought back to what had just happened out near Gus's mausoleum. One second
he was there, the nextтАж poof! "He just went to the big spaghetti dinner in the sky."

She shrugged like it was no big deal. "Time doesn't work the same here as it does there. Gus, he told me
all about you. He said he was pretty sure you'd moan and groan about how much you hated working for
him but that deep down, you're really grateful that he showed up. After all, before he did, I hear your life
was dullsville."

"He told you that?" So, Gus was over on the Other Side talking behind my back. You think he'd give me
a little more credit. After all, I was the only one capable of seeing him. I was the only one able to hear
him and talk to him, too. Without me, Gus Scarpetti would still be hanging out over in his mausoleum
watching the guys in his old crew bring him fresh roses every Thursday, the day he was gunned down
outside his favorite restaurant.

Of course, before Gus showed up, I was pretty much sitting on the sidelines watching life pass me by,
too.

A dead-end job here in dead city.

A fiance who dumped me rather than risk hurting his social status when my dad traded his medical
license and our more-than-comfortable upper-middle-class lifestyle for prison pinstripes.

A mountain of unpaid bills and a social life that gave dullsville a whole new meaning.

None of which made me feel any better about being bad-mouthed by the bigmouthed dead.

"What else did Gus tell you?" I asked the woman.

She grinned. Like she'd known all along that my curiosity would get the best of me. "He said that before
you met him, you never had to prove yourself. And that now, you finally realize how smart you really are.
He said before you met him, you thought your life was good for nothing but sitting by a swimming pool