Page 21 of Drop Dead Gorgeous

Ingrid sighs and turns her attention back to me. Her face softens and she finally answers, “No. You are not fallen.”

That’s good to know.

“You’re special. Do you know how special you are?”

“No.”

“You’re one in twenty-eight billion, give or take.”

I would have said one in a million, but the way she’s looking at me makes me believe I am one-in-twenty-eight-billion special. “Do you know why you’re here, Miss Brittany?”

I like the way she says my name, like butterfly wings brushing across my skin. “I imagine it’s on account of Detroit climbin’ me like a wild monkey and jumpin’ through the ceiling to steal my customized path to heaven.”

“I’m sorry for that. Portal jumping is nearly impossible.”

“Nearly?”

“It can only occur if extraordinarily improbable events converge.”

“Like what?”

“A jumper is looking for a portal and puts herself in the right place at the right time, and only then if the paths to heaven get congested with hundreds of thousands of people passing in one single tragedy, such as the Vesuvius eruption, AD 79, the Shaanxi earthquake of 1556, and the 1881 Haiphong typhoon.” Ingrid shakes her head. “Even though the situation is usually quickly resolved, it is conceivable for a jumper to get lost in the crowd.”

The golfer continues to swing at tulips. “Dammit. Sure wish I had my driver.”

Ingrid scowls over her shoulder as she says, “Edith Randolph Chatsworth-Jones should have been returned by now.”

“Who?”

She looks at me and

tries to smile away her scowl. “Detroit.”

Edith? Edith is just about as bad as Marfa, but at least Marfa isn’t my real name. If I’d known, I would have laughed my ass off. “When’s she comin’ back?”

“Fore!”

“Raymundo, please! You try the patience of a saint. You’re here to help explain what happens next. Not destroy my flowers.”

“Nothin’ much to explain. Marfa has two choices: live or die.”

“It isn’t quite that easy,” Ingrid explains, taking my hands in hers. “You are being given the chance to live a full life on earth. Isn’t that wonderful?”

Suddenly I don’t feel so special. “What’s the catch?”

“You must assume the life of Edith Randolph Chatsworth-Jones.”

The fire that turned her into a kerosene torch must have burned out a porch light or two. “We don’t look anything alike,” I point out.

“Once you agree to the transmigration covenant, your spirit will assume her body.”

Transmigration sounds terrifying. “Do you mean a switcheroo like in The Change-Up or Freaky Friday?” Only with someone who stomped on my face and left me to live in a vegetative state.

“Yes, that’s one way of putting it.”

That woman is the devil’s handmaiden, and I want no part of her. “What’s my other choice?”

“You wait for Edith’s portal to open and pass through.”