Dead to Me

“Urban fantasy with a wink and a nod.Dead to Me is a genuinely fun book with a fresh take on the idea of paranormal police. I’m looking forward to seeing what Strout does next.”

—Kelly McCullough, author ofWebMage andCybermancy

Drop-Dead Gorgeous

Although Connor didn’t show any signs of psychometric power himself, he was the perfect instructor for someone like me who already possessed it.

“You never get even the tiniest of visions like these?” I asked. “No flashes, glimpses, maybe something you might have labeled as déjà vu?”

Connor shook his head. “Nothing. I guess it’s not in my area of expertise.”

“So you’ve only got the one, then?”

“One what?” Connor said, confused.

“Area of expertise,” I said.

Connor nodded. “That I’m aware of. In fact, you’re sitting across from it.”

“Huh?”

Connor leaned in and whispered, “Across from you. The brunette.” He gestured toward the woman sitting on the couch next to his chair.

I tried to appear casual as I glanced her way and found myself staring at the fetching woman I had made eye contact with earlier.

Outside of her natural beauty, I saw nothing particularly out of the ordinary. Great skin, smartly dressed. I judged her to be in her late twenties. I leaned across the table toward Connor.

“Women are your expertise?” I whispered. “What about her?”

“Oh,” Connor said matter-of-factly, picking up his iced coffee and taking a lengthy sip, “she’s dead.”

DEAD TO ME

Anton Strout

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THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

DEAD TO ME

An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author

Copyright © 2008 by Anton Strout.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

ISBN: 1-4295-9779-8

ACE

Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

ACE and the “A” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

To the mystical and elusive Orlycorn,

a rare creature that possesses the power

to make all things possible

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Nature abhors a vacuum, and apparently so does an acknowledgments page.

First and foremost, I must thank the other Dorks of the Round Table, authors Jeanine Cummins and Carolyn Turgeon, without whom I never would have written much of anything; my editor, Jessica Wade—your red pen is swift but just; copyeditor Joan Matthews, for making my words seem all the more polished; Montana Wojczuk, Daniel Schermele, and my agent, Kristine Dahl, over at ICM; author Jennifer Belle, queen bee of the “world’s worst” workshop, and the rest of my fellow workshoppers.

I may write the words, but that is only one of many integral steps. To every department at Penguin Group (USA) Inc., for every last thing you do to make a book like this happen, but especially Norman Lidofsky and the paperback sales force.

To all my friends, family, and colleagues for their support: Susan Allison, Bonnie, Dustin, and Elyse Clark, Ginjer Buchanan, Hank Cochrane, Christine Cody, Laura Corless, Sharon Gamboa, Leslie Gelbman, Michelle Kasper, Patrick Nolan, Don Redpath, Don Rieck, Lisa Pannek, Gary and Jean Strout, Jeremy Tescher, Clan Trieber, Edna and Raymond Van Valkenburg, Trish Weyenberg, Michael Yarmark, and finally Annette Fiore, Judith Murello, and artist Don Sipley, for an amazing cover that I couldn’t be happier with. If I’ve forgotten any of you, don’t worry…I need to save some thanks for the sequel anyway.

And last but not least, to you, the reader. Without your bloodshot eyes poring over these words, this book would only exist in my mind. Writing it was only half the journey; sharing it is the other.

There is no question

that there is an unseen world.

The problem is how far is it from midtown

and how late is it open?

—Woody Allen

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

EPILOGUE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

1

I managed to get out a quick “Tamara, wait…” before I felt the interior doorknob of my SoHo apartment jab into the small of my back. Tamara ground against me like she was trying to make her body occupy the same space as mine—and I certainly wasn’t complaining. Our mouths locked, the sweet taste of whatever umbrellaed concoction she’d been drinking mixing with the Corona flavor of mine. It was a surprisingly good combination.

“Simon, shhh…” she whispered, pushing me even farther into the apartment. She fell toward me with a sudden “Ow!” It was dark, but I could still see her hopping about on one leg. She had been trying to strip off my brown suede coat and theGABBA GABBA HEY Ramones T-shirt I was wearing, but now she clutched her knee.

“You okay?” I asked, finding the switch from horn-dog to concerned a difficult one to make.

“Yeah,” she said, and hissed out a long, slow sigh of pain. “What did I hit?”

“Just a packing crate,” I said, reaching out and steadying her. I contemplated turning on the lights to check on her, but hesitated, debating whether or not the other two dozen packing crates around my living room might scare her off. It wasn’t that I was a slob, but given my workload at the Department of Extraordinary Affairs, my personal antiques acquisitions had become backlogged. They were spread out across my dangerously darkened living room like little landmines from the Ghost of Bruises Yet to Come.

Luckily, a little knee pain wasn’t enough to stop Tamara. We resumed our lip lock while I weaved us safely past the labyrinth of crates and down the hall to my bedroom. If she was still hurt, she hid it well. I guessed that the promise of sexual healing was helping her tough through any damage to her knee.

Thankfully the last part of the journey toward my bedroom went without incident. The edge of the bed hit the backs of my calves, bending me at the knees, and I fell back onto it as Tamara threw herself on top of me.

Ever since I’d accidentally knocked over her drink at Eccentric Circles three weeks ago, our encounters had consisted of one sexually charged (but unfulfilled) moment after another. But not tonight. Tamara straddled me, her hotness lit only by the moonlight coming in through the window. The smell of cinnamon rose off her, swirling around in my head, and under her jacket her tight little black dress—the one that every other woman in New York City seemed to own—clung to her like a second skin. I was in heaven.

Not that things stayed heavenly for long. Around me, things rarely did. As Tamara finished struggling out of her coat, she threw it to the side. Her cell phone slipped free from it, hit the mattress, and rolled to rest against my arm. No big deal for most people, but with my preternatural powers, that was all it took to ruin things.

It’s called psychometry—the ability to divine information about people or events solely by touching personal objects. As Wonder-Twin-powers cool as that might sound, it wasn’t. I tended to end up knowing more than I should about a person…or wanted to.

I started thrashing around underneath Tamara, desperate to avoid what I knew was coming. She seemed oblivious to my escape attempts, and when I tried to sit up, she pushed me playfully back down. With an evil grin, she pinned my shoulders to the bed before attacking me with a barrage of kisses. My last thought as the electric pulse of my power kicked in wasOh shit .

Once under the influence of a rush of psychometric power, I had very little control, especially when it took me by surprise. Without my emotions in check, the power latched on to the sexual energy between the two of us and buffeted me with a flood of details from Tamara’s past.

It was full Technicolor glory in my mind as I was struck by the psychic vision of Tamara’s firm, naked form. It stung all the more since I’d been mere seconds away from experiencing the real thing for myself. Instead I was forced to watch her getting it on with another guy—a goatee-sporting, muscle-bound blond who was, of course, infinitely more attractive than me. Tamara wore nothing but enough red, gold, and green beads around her neck to make Mr. T jealous.

Mardi Gras. Ithad to be.

The beads swayed hypnotically, rhythmically—shink shink shink—as the two of them pawed at each other like cats in heat. I wanted to turn away, but in the vision I was incapable of doing so. One moment I was watching the guy’s well-muscled chest as he thrust his body against hers. The next brought Tamara’s face into focus, her eyes shut tight and her curly brown hair loose around her shoulders as this stranger enjoyed things I had hoped to be doing myself this very evening. And the beadsshinked on…

What the vision showed me was something deeply private from Tamara’s life. I was someplace I shouldn’t be, feeling every touch, hearing every sound of her and some guy from her past bumping uglies…it was enough to drive me mad. With every Mardi Gras–fueled gyration, gouging my eyes out started to seem like a better idea. Not that it would have blocked the visions.

Flashes of reality slowly began to slip back to me. Tamara was still oblivious to the private mental hell I was experiencing while pinned underneath her. Her lips were now clamped down on my neck like a vacuum hose and her hands were busy tugging up my shirt. All of these were things I would ordinarily have been thrilled to experience—but I couldn’t enjoy them. The images of Tamara’s own privateGirls Gone Wild moment had become a permanent scar in my brain. Parts of me withered in response. The troops retreated, as it were.

When the psychometric flash finally faded, the usual hypoglycemic side effects kicked in and my entire body felt drained of energy. Using the last of my will, I somehow found the strength to push Tamara off me. She fell back onto the mattress, and I rolled weakly off the bed and onto the floor.

“What the hell wasthat all about?” she asked as she righted herself on the bed. I could hear the surprise in her voice, but I ignored the question and started crawling for the door. Between my psychic disorientation, physical weakness, and the occasional Mardi Gras flashes echoing in my head, I felt like I might pass out. The images had almost faded for good, but then one last vivid burst of wild thrusting brutalized my poor brain. Tamara’s voice moaning his name echoed wildly in my head:Fergus! Fergus! Fergus! With that, my body gave out and I fell over, unable to move. The refreshingly cool wood of the floor pressed against my face.

“Fergus…?” I muttered weakly before I could stop myself. I still felt half in the vision, unable to control myself. I stared up at Tamara, her eyes now wide.