Page 36 of You'll Be the Death of Me

Cole had let go of her hands. She turned to see him doubled over beside her, hands on his knees.

“Oh God, we’re going to get in so much trouble,” he said to the sidewalk.

“You all right?” Dell asked, and gently placed a hand on his back.

He held up one finger and continued taking deep breaths while staring at the ground.

“Can ghosts puke?” Dell asked.

“I didn’t think so until right now,” he said. He took one last deep breath and stood up straight.

Dell grimaced at the queasy look on his face. “Sorry about that. But look! We did it!” she sang, and held out her arms to the building in front of them.

“Yeah. We did,” Cole said, sounding shocked. And still queasy. He tilted his head up toward the silver-and-glass tower in front of them.

The gold revolving doors Dell had walked through with Tommy hardly twenty-four hours ago spun with fewer visitors, given it was Saturday, but the building was still in action.

“Where to?” he asked.

“Twentieth floor.”

“After you,” Cole said with a bow, and gestured toward the doors.

Self-consciousness still thrummed in Dell’s dead body as she moved toward the building. She’d only ever been here in heels and a skirt, never in a slip of satin with her hair still mussed from bed and whatever teleporting might have done to it. She ran a hand over her mane to smooth it, right as a woman fitting the building’s dress code pushed through the revolving door. Her sharp heels snapped off the interior marble and then the sidewalk’s concrete. She carried a designer bag over her arm and chattered into her phone.

Dell slipped into the door as an opening spun in front of them, and Cole followed right on her heels. She could sense him there, a warm presence near enough to her back, she could have rested against him with a slight lean.

They stepped into the lobby, a rectangular atrium with banks of elevators on each side and a reception desk in the middle.Two security guards milled about, and a woman sat at reception looking thankful for a slow Saturday afternoon.

But it wasn’t entirely slow. People still came and went from the elevators and crossed the lobby. With twentysomething floors and a dozen or so businesses housed in its walls, the building never truly slept.

Dell and Cole approached an elevator at the same time as a man dressed down in sweatpants and a tee damp with sweat did. He too chattered into his phone, much more aggressively than the woman they’d passed outside. Dell and Cole entered with him, and by a stroke of luck, he pressed the button for the twentieth floor.

“Yeah, well, when the mayor calls, you drop whatever you’re doing, even on a Saturday,” the man said into his phone. He impatiently jabbed his thumb into the twentieth-floor button again.

Dell sucked in a gasp and gripped Cole’s forearm. “Oh my God,” she whispered as if the man might hear them. “Did you hear that?” She glanced at the curious look on Cole’s face and then stepped forward to get a better look at the man.

He was middle-aged, with dark hair and sharp eyes. His round face was ruddy and his temple sweaty. She blinked several times and realized she knew who she was looking at.

She shook Cole’s arm and turned to him. “Cole, this is Mr. Sterling, Tommy’s lawyer. I just didn’t recognize him without a suit and tie.” She clapped a hand over her mouth as Mr. Sterling kept talking into his phone.

“I don’t know; she didn’t say. Some kind of emergency. She just said to come down to the office and get her son’s prenup. They were supposed to sign it yesterday, but the wife never showed.” He chuckled the sound Dell had heard before in his office. Somethingartificially sweetened and not entirely sincere, like a diet soda. “Cold feet? Maybe, the wedding’s in a week.”

Dell scrambled to put pieces together in her mind, all the while squeezing Cole’s arm harder and harder. “Okay, so we were right about the prenup. There must be something important in there. SomethingEvelyncares about if she’s calling her lawyer on a Saturday, right after I died. But I guess the good news is, he doesn’t seem to know I’m dead. If he still thinks the wedding is in a week, she must not have told him.” She looked to Cole with hope in her eyes.

Cole returned her gaze with a furrowed brow. He nodded like he was following along and then gently gripped her hand with his. “You are...verystrong,” he said, and pried it off his arm.

“Sorry,” Dell said, and saw the red indent where she’d been squeezing him.

“But I think you’re right,” Cole said. “We need to see that prenup before he does anything with it.”

“I’m heading to the office right now. In the elevator,” Mr. Sterling said to his phone. “I need to shower, then I’ll be busy.” He listened for a moment. “Yes, well, we’ll have to reschedule pickleball this afternoon, darling. I’m sure the Millers will understand.”

Dell frowned at him, offended he was worried about his pickleball game when the fate of her mortal existence rested in his hands. Maybe. They really needed to see that prenup.

The elevator dinged and emptied them out onto the floor Dell was familiar with.

“It’s this way,” she said to Cole, and turned for the office at the end of the hall at the same time Mr. Sterling turned the other way.