Page 3 of Dead to Rites

“I will,” I promised him.

Just as he was pulling a prescription pad out of his pocket, the door to my room swung open, and my friend Celeste Dupree stood there, chest heaving as if she’d run all the way from the elevator, which she probably had.

In contrast to Dr. Emerson’s crisp white lab coat, Celeste had on a rumpled black sheath dress that exposed both sleeves of tattoos and the breastplate she’d gotten last summer, the one with a skull in the center and twining leaves and roses spreading out on either side. Her fishnets were torn in several places, but that was kind of standard for Celeste; she’d wear them until they were so shredded they wouldn’t even stay up anymore, and then she’d get a new pair and start the process all over again.

Runny mascara had pooled under her eyes, giving her a raccoon look that was a distinct contrast to the immaculate cat-eye liner she wore every day, even when doing mundane stuff like going to the store or getting the oil in her car changed. I appreciated that aesthetic because I was pretty much the same way, and as far as I was concerned, the worst thing about my near-death experience was my complete lack of makeup after I woke up.

“Oh, my God!” she cried and ran toward the bed, teetering a little on her four-inch ankle-strap stilettos. Trust Celeste not to change her footwear before getting in her car and charging up to Prescott. “I drove up here thinking I was going to have to identify a body or something! What happened?”

I looked over at Dr. Emerson, and his left eyebrow lifted ever so slightly, as if asking for my permission to reply.

So I nodded. I was sure Celeste would want all the juicy details later, but it seemed better to have him supply the bare facts.

“Your friend suffered a severe reaction to a bee sting,” he said calmly.

She looked away from me and over at him, and even though her taste ran to tattooed bassists, I could tell from the slight widening of her eyes that she was impressed.

However, that didn’t stop her from asking, “How severe?”

“I guess I had a near-death experience or something,” I said cheerfully. Something about having my best friend there made me feel so much better, as if skirting the edges of the afterlife was just another adventure I could use to get us a free round of drinks. “But I’m okay now.” I paused and then tilted my head at her. I must have been getting better, because the slight movement didn’t hurt as much as I’d thought it would. “How did you even find me?”

“How did I — ”

She broke off there and shook her head. In the ten years we’d known each other, her hair had been almost every color in the rainbow, but right now it was a Cruella de Vil–inspired kind of style, platinum blonde on one side and coal black on the other. It had probably started out as her version of 1940s victory rolls earlier in the day, but now they were sagging, and a few tendrils had fallen loose around her face.

“You were supposed to call me, remember? Girls’ day out in Prescott?”

Oh, right. When I’d told Celeste that I needed to go up to Prescott to handle some family business and said I would be there for a couple of days, she’d asked if I wanted some company. Since I knew exploring the town would be much more fun with my bestie at my side, I’d told her yes and that I’d call her on Saturday to firm up the details. She’d had a gig Friday night — she was the lead singer in a gothabilly band called the Voodoo Dollies — but had said she could be up sometime Saturday afternoon and would just wait to hear from me.

Except she hadn’t heard from me, because I’d been unconscious in the hospital, recovering from a bee sting that had almost zapped me out of this existence.

“Ye-es,” I said slowly.

She crossed her arms. As she did so, all her tats seemed to glow in the white glare from the fluorescent lights overhead. Dr. Emerson was staring at them, transfixed.

“But you didn’t call, and you didn’t answer any of my texts, and by three o’clock, I knew something was wrong,” she told me. “That’s not like you. You always follow up, no matter what else is going on.”

True enough. Beneath the eyeliner and the red lipstick and the black vintage dresses, I was someone who was reliable, someone you could count on to be there to pick up the phone. A product of being my parents’ daughter, I suppose; I might have disappointed them in a lot of other ways, but at least I wasn’t a flake.

“So that’s when I started calling hospitals,” Celeste went on. “Everything I could find between here and Scottsdale, because I didn’t know if you’d been in a car accident or been attacked at a gas station or what. And then I finally called Yavapai Regional — this place — and they told me a Lorelei Cosgrove had been admitted yesterday afternoon. I got in my car and drove straight up here.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, even though none of this was really my fault. Sometimes the universe could throw a person some serious curveballs.

Her eyes were wet with tears. “Don’t you dare apologize,” she said fiercely. “You always do that, even when it isn’t your fault. You think that stupid bee that stung you would apologize?”

“No,” I replied, and an odd little chuckle rose in my throat. “Mostly because it’s probably dead.”

She stared at me for a few seconds, and then she started laughing, and then I was laughing, even though it kind of hurt. Standing a few feet away, Dr. Emerson was looking at us with a sort of bemused expression of his own, as if he couldn’t quite believe we were both laughing about something so silly.

However, he sounded smooth enough as he said, “I’ll just leave this prescription with you, and I’ll let the nurse know you’re ready to be discharged. Hang on a bit — we’ll have you out of here in the next half hour or so.”

“Thanks,” I managed, and he just nodded and headed out of the room and over to the nurses’ station.

“Hot,” Celeste observed briefly, and then returned her full attention to me. “Okay, here’s what’s going to happen. I don’t have anything on my schedule for the next couple of days, so I’m going to take you home and stay with you to make sure you really are all right.”

“I’m fine,” I protested, but she only shook her head.

“Girl, you almost had a bee send you off to the afterlife. You need some serious watching.”