First Grave on the Right

CHAPTER 5

As I trudged the fifty or so feet across the alley and into the rear entrance of my dad’s bar, I contemplated possibilities for why all three lawyers might have stayed behind instead of crossing over. My calculations — allowing for a 12 percent margin of error, based on the radius of the corresponding confidence interval and the surgeon general’s warning — concluded that they probably didn’t stay behind for the tacos.

I took a sec to put my sunglasses in my leather bag and allow my eyes to adjust to the dim lights inside the bar. To put it mildly, my dad’s bar was gorgeous. The main room had a cathedral ceiling with dark woods covering every available surface, and framed pictures, medals, and banners from various law enforcement events covering most of that. From the back entrance, the bar stood on my right, round tables and chairs perched in the middle, and tall bistro tables lined the outer edges. But the reigning glory of the speakeasy was the elaborate, hundred-year-old ironwork that circled the main room like ancient crown molding. It spiraled around and lured the eye to the west wall, where a glorious wrought-iron elevator loomed tall and proud. The kind you see only in movies and very old hotels. The kind with all its mechanisms and pulleys open for its audience to enjoy. The kind that took forever and a day to get to the second floor.

My PI business took up most of the top floor, and had its own entrance on the side of the building, a picturesque New England — style staircase. But I doubted my ability to manage the stairs without undue pain. Since I categorized all pain as undue, I decided to take the elevator inside the bar instead, despite its limitations.

My dad’s voice wafted to me, and I smiled. Dad was like rain on a scorched desert. During my childhood, he kept me from drying up and crumbling into myself. Which would just be gross.

I strolled inside and spotted his tall, slim form sitting at a table with my wicked stepmother and older, non-stepsister. While Dad was the rain, they were the scorpions, and I’d learned long ago to steer clear of them. My real mom died when I was born — hemorrhaged to death while giving birth to me, which has never been one of my favorite memories — and Dad married Denise before I’d turned a year. Without even asking my opinion on the matter. Denise and I never really clicked.

“Hey, hon,” Dad said as I put my sunglasses back on and tried to ease past without being noticed, not really sure why I thought the sunglasses would help.

I was almost annoyed at being spotted before realizing I’d never have gotten away with it anyway. The danged elevator was louder than a Chevy big block and crept up like an injured snail. I was certain Denise would have noticed when a dark-haired girl in sunglasses started elevating beside her.

I strolled toward their table.

“Come have some breakfast,” Dad said. “I’ll share.”

Denise and Gemma had brought Dad sustenance to break the fast. Apparently, I was not invited — big surprise — despite the fact that I live about two inches south of the back door.

Gemma didn’t bother glancing up from her breakfast burrito. The movement might have displaced a hair. Denise only sighed at Dad’s offer and started cutting into his burrito to give me some.

“That’s okay,” I said. “I already ate.”

She glanced up at me then, overtly annoyed. I tended to do that to her. “What did you have?” she asked, a razor’s edge to her voice.

I hesitated. This was a trick; I could feel it. She was feigning concern over the nutritional content of my breakfast to make me think she cared. I stood with my lips sealed shut, refusing to be taken in by such an obvious setup.

But she turned her powerful, laserlike glare on me, and I caved. “A blueberry bagel.”

Her eyes rolled in irritation before refocusing on her burrito.

Phew. That was close. Who knew the mention of a blueberry bagel could irritate my stepmother so? Maybe I should have thrown in the strawberry cream cheese for backup. It was hard being such an utter disappointment to the woman who’d raised me, but gosh darn it, I gave it my all. I could have invented the wheel and she would have been disappointed. Or Post-it notes. Or bone marrow.

My dad unfolded from his chair for a kiss and gasped softly when he noticed my jaw. I was fairly certain Denise had noticed, too — I saw her lids widen a fraction of an inch before she caught herself — but since she chose to ignore it, I chose to ignore it as well.

I lowered my glasses quickly and shook my head at Dad. He paused, drew his brows together in displeasure that I didn’t want to explain anything in front of my wicked stepmother, then kissed my forehead.

“I’ll be upstairs in a bit.” He was letting me know he expected an explanation nonetheless.

“That’s where I’ll be,” I said, opening the cage to the elevator, “if you’re lucky.”

He chuckled.

Denise sighed.

My stepmother was never big on the whole nurturing thing. I think she used up all the good stuff on my older sister, and by the time she got to me, she was fresh out of nurture. She did, however, give me one pertinent bit of 411. She was the one who informed me that I had the attention span of a gnat; only, she said I had the attention span of a gnat with selective listening. At least I think that’s what she said. I wasn’t listening. Oh, and she told me that men want only one thing.

And on that note, I must give praise and thanks to the powers that be. I don’t want much else from them either.

But truly, in my stepmom’s defense, who could blame her? I mean, she had Gemma. Gemma Vi Davidson. The Gemma Vi Davidson.

It was hard to compete. Especially since Gemma and I were total opposites. Gemma had blond hair and blue eyes. I did not.

Gemma was always an A student. I was more of a B-all-you-can-be kind of gal.

When Gemma was into science, I was into skipping.

When Gemma was into foreign languages, I was into the hot Italian guy down the street.

And when Gemma went to college and graduated magna cum laude in three and a half years with a bachelor’s in psychology, I went to college and graduated in three and a half years with a bachelor’s in sociology, only I did it summa cum laude.

Gemma’s never forgiven me for showing her up. But it did push her to continue her education as part of our never-ending struggle of one-upmanship, which is kind of like the struggle for survival, only not so noble. And she didn’t stop at her master’s either. She went all the way with a Ph.D. A married professor named Dr. Roland. Then she got her own Ph.D. and did it by the time she was thirty.

Clearly she needed to hit it with the professor more.

Denise has never forgiven me either. When Gemma graduated, Denise’s eyes shimmered with tears of joy. When I graduated, Denise’s eyes rolled more often than a heroin addict with a trust fund. I think she was annoyed that she had to miss her Saturday garden club to attend the ceremony. Or it could have been the T-shirt I was wearing underneath my shiny graduation gown that said JENIUS.

Dad was proud of me, though. For a long time, I pretended that was enough. I kept thinking that someday Denise would realize she had the superhuman ability to be proud of more than one person at the same time.

That day never came. So, in an act of utter defiance, I did exactly what Denise would expect me to do: I disappointed her. Again. Because Denise felt like a woman’s place was in front of a classroom, I trotted down to a recruiting event on the university’s campus and joined the Peace Corps. Disappointing her was so much easier than working my ass off trying not to. And those little sideways glances and sighs of dismay didn’t hurt so much when they were clearly deserved. Not to mention the fact that I got to work with the military on several projects, and surprisingly, the military is chock-full of men in uniform. Truly, its cup runneth over. Hoo-yah!

The elevator finally reached the second floor, and I waved down to Dad before stepping into the hall that led to the back entrance of my office. The front outside entrance, the one I usually took, led directly to my reception area, with my office past that.

Then there was a third entrance that was a little trickier to maneuver and involved the fire escape out back. So when I saw Garrett in the hall, leaning against my office door, waiting for me, I realized he must have jumped to the fire escape and climbed in through the window.

Show-off.

“Do you remember the part about my dad being an ex-cop? What are you doing here?” I asked, annoyance hardening my voice. He was wearing a white T-shirt, dark jacket, and a nice-fitting pair of jeans.

He straightened and raised a questioning brow. “Any reason you took an elevator that travels at the speed of molasses in January instead of the stairs?”

Garrett was a looker, damn him, with his dark skin and smoldering gray eyes, but that was as far as it went for me. Any minute amount of attraction I may previously have harbored was now buried beneath a thick layer of resentment and animosity. And as far as I was concerned, that was exactly where it would stay.

I let my irritated facial expression answer for me, unlocked the heavy wooden door to my office, then looked past Garrett to the three departed visitors who’d also been waiting for me.

“Glad you could join us,” I said to Barber. “You’re much taller vertically.”

Sussman elbowed him in a teasing gesture while Garrett strode into my office, apparently refusing to watch me talk to wallpaper.

“Sorry about my earlier behavior,” Barber said. “I guess I kind of lost it.”

His apology left me feeling guilty for not being more … I don’t know, supportive. Maybe I needed sensitivity training. I once signed up for an anger management class, but the instructor pissed me off.

“I have no room to judge you,” I said, patting Barber on the shoulder. “I’ve never died. Not officially.”

“Officially?” Sussman asked.

“Long story.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Elizabeth said. “Can we get inside? I figure I don’t have much time left, and I want to get in all the ogling at tall, dark, and skeptic that I can. Why couldn’t I have met him yesterday? I could’ve died happy.”

I knew how she felt. I had similar feelings about Reyes.

We stepped inside my office, which doubled as an art gallery for a friend of mine named Pari. Dark abstract paintings of life on Central lined my walls. One was a disturbing rendition of a Goth girl doing laundry, washing blood off her sleeves. The girl looked like me, a little joke, since I loathed laundry day. Thankfully, my image was difficult to make out in the frenzy of grays swirling around the scene.

Pari was also a tattoo artist and had a shop nearby. She designed the tattoo I had on my left shoulder blade. The one of a little grim reaper enshrouded in a flowing cloak with large, innocent eyes peeping out of it. Pari was chock-full of inside jokes.

Garrett turned toward me. I refused to acknowledge him with eye contact. Instead, I hung up my bag and started a pot of coffee just as Cookie came in the front door.

“You in here, sweetheart?”

“Back here,” I called to her. “I’ve started the coffee.” I kept the coffeepot in my office on the pretense of monitoring Cookie’s caffeine intake. Actually, it was my answer to potpourri.

“Coffee. Thank the gods,” Cookie said as she opened the door between her office and mine. “Oh.” She saw Garrett. “Mr. Swopes, I didn’t realize—”

“He was just leaving,” I told her.

Garrett smiled at me, then placed the full power of his lopsided grin on Cookie.

The bastard.

“My, my, my,” Elizabeth said a tad too breathlessly. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

Suppressing a helpless sigh, I watched as Cookie started to speak, stuttered something about paperwork, then waved and closed the door to give us our privacy.

“I know exactly how she feels,” Elizabeth purred.

I plopped into the chair behind my desk as Garrett folded himself into the seat across from me.

“Well?” I asked.

“Well?” he mimicked.

“You’re not here for a social call, Swopes. What do you want? I have three murders to solve.”

My confidence seemed to amuse him. “I was just thinking we might go out for coffee sometime.”

“Damn,” Elizabeth said. “You guys are going out for coffee? Can I watch?”

I frowned at her. “We are not going out for coffee.”

Garrett lowered his head, seeming to force himself to be patient.

“Look,” I said, getting fed up with his ’tude. “I’ve already told you. You can either deal with my ability or not. Preferably not. There’s the door. Have a nice day and kiss my ass.”

He raised his head, his expression serious but not angry like I felt it should have been, considering the “ass” comment. “First of all,” he said, his voice infused with exasperation, “I’m still getting used to all this, Miss Piss and Vinegar. Give me a little time.”

“No.”

“Second,” he continued without missing a beat, “I just want to talk to you about it.”

“No.”

“I mean, how does it work?”

“Well.”

“Do you see dead people all the time?”

“Every other weekend and holidays.”

“Are they, you know, everywhere?”

“Is a frog’s ass watertight?” I asked, leaning back in my chair and lifting my feet to rest them, dusty hiking boots and all, on the desk.

I crossed my ankles and steepled my fingers and glared to emphasize my impatience while I waited, impatiently, for Garrett to make a decision. To believe or not to believe.

I called this part “the dawning”—the part where people begin to wonder if I really can see the departed. Oh, they still have doubts. Most people rack their brains, trying to come up with an explanation, any explanation, of how I do what I do.

And as I lived and breathed, Garrett Swopes was struggling to come up with that very thing. After all, dead people don’t walk around trying to solve their own murders. Ghosts don’t exist. None of what I claimed was possible.

The dawning was like a relish fork in the road, and the proverbial traveler had to take one prong or the other. Unfortunately, the prong that led to Charley-sees-dead-people was much sharper than the safer, more travel-worn Charley-is-psychotic prong. Nobody wants to look like a fool. Nine times out of ten, that reason alone keeps people from allowing themselves to believe.

Garrett stared back at me a few seconds, then refocused on my fingers. I could almost see the wheels spinning in his head. After several moments more, I began to think those wheels needed a good oiling.

“But how did you know where to find Ms. Ellery’s body?” he asked at last.

“I’m not explaining it again, Swopes.”

“Seriously—”

“No.”

After another long pause, he asked, “You’ve been doing this since you were five?”

I snorted. “I’ve been able to see the departed since I was born. It just took my dad five years to really believe me. But when I told him where to find a missing girl’s body, he realized what an asset I’d be.”

“The Johnson girl,” he said.

I tried not to wince. The memory was not one of my favorites. In fact, if someone were to ask, I’d have a hard time choosing a lesser favorite. On the day of the Johnson Girl Fiasco, as I called it, Denise veered right onto the travel-worn prong, choosing not to believe me and vowing never to talk about it again. It was also the day that I recognized the abnormality of what I do. And that some people — people very close to me — would despise me for it. Of course, my stepmother slapping me senseless in front of dozens of onlookers didn’t ingratiate me to the incident either.

“Are you okay?” Sussman asked.

I’d almost forgotten they were there. I nodded discreetly.

“You know,” Elizabeth said, “I think he’s really trying to be open-minded.”

My expression turned into a dubious scowl. It was mean. She was only trying to help.

“Are they here now?” Garrett asked.

I sighed, not particularly craving his antagonism. But he’d asked. “Yes.”

He took out his notebook. “Can you ask Ms. Ellery when her birthday is?”

“No.”

Elizabeth walked forward. “It’s June twentieth.”

I looked at her. “He knows when your birthday is. He just wants to see if I do.”

“No?” he asked. He seemed disappointed, like he wanted me to tell him, wanted to believe. For about five minutes, anyway. It was the fair-weather believers I had to watch out for. They had a nasty habit of sucker-punching me in the gut when I least expected it.

“Just tell him,” Elizabeth said.

“You don’t understand,” I told her. “People like him never believe, not fully. He’ll always have doubts. He’ll always quiz me, drill me for information he already has just to see if I fuck up.” I looked back at Garrett. “So fuck him.”

“Elizabeth,” Sussman said, “maybe we should just—”

“No!” she yelled, and I jumped, catching Garrett’s full attention. “Just tell him.” She rushed toward my desk, leaned over it. “He needs to get over himself and just believe you. He doesn’t know what he’ll be missing. He’ll go through life with this one-dimensional view of the world he lives in. He’ll have no sense of direction, no hope that the people he’s loved and lost will go to a better place. That they’ll be okay.”

I realized Elizabeth was no longer talking about Garrett. She was talking about herself.

I stood and walked around to her. “Elizabeth, what’s wrong?”

She almost cried. I could see tears shimmering in her pale eyes. “There’s so much I want to tell my sister, but she’s just like him … just like me. I would never have believed you either.” Her shoulders deflated, and she leveled a guilty gaze on me. “I’m sorry, Charlotte, I wouldn’t have. Not in a million years. And neither will she.”

A relieved smile spread across my face. Was that all? I’d come across this problem countless times. “Elizabeth,” I said, “of all the problems we have right now, that is the only one with a simple fix.”

Garrett watched our exchange — or rather my exchange — but to his credit, his expression remained passive. I’d often considered how ridiculous I must look to the living, talking to myself, gesturing wildly, hugging air. But I didn’t always have a choice. If Garrett refused to leave, he’d just have to deal with my world. I would not modify my behavior to appease his delicate sense of propriety in my own office.

Elizabeth sniffed. “What do you mean? What fix?”

“You leave a note.”

“A note?”

“Sure. I do it all the time. It saves me so much explaining,” I said with an encompassing wave of my hand. “You dictate a note to me, I type it — and predate it to before your death, naturally — and then it’s miraculously found among your possessions. Kind of like an if-anything-should-happen-to-me note. You tell her everything you want her to know, and we just pretend you’d typed it before you died. I even have a guy who can forge your signature to seal the deal, if you’d like.”

“Who?” Garrett asked.

I glowered at him in warning. What I did with the departed was none of his business.

A pretty look of astonishment came over Elizabeth’s face. “That’s brilliant. I’m a lawyer. I’m more organized than the Dewey decimal system. She’d totally fall for it.”

“Of course she’ll fall for it,” I said, patting her back.

“Can I write one to my wife?” Sussman asked.

“Sure.”

Then we all looked at Barber, expecting him to have someone to write to as well. “I only have my mom. She knows how I feel about her,” he said, and I wondered if I should be happy about that or sad because his mother was all he had.

“I’m glad,” I told him. “I wish more people took the time to make their feelings known.”

“Yeah. I’ve hated her guts since I was ten. There’s really not much else to put in a letter.”

I tried to hide the shock I felt.

He noticed anyway. “Oh, trust me, the feeling’s mutual.”

“Okay, two notes, then.”

“Hey,” Elizabeth said, suddenly thoughtful, “what day is the first day of summer?”

“Planning on sticking around that long?” I asked.

She lifted her shoulders, referenced Garrett with a nod of her head, then wriggled her perfectly arched brows.

“Ah.” I tried not to laugh. “It’s June twentieth, or sometimes—”

Garrett gasped, and Elizabeth crossed her arms and smiled, smugness radiating off her in waves.

“You’re right,” Garrett said. “Elizabeth Ellery’s birthday is June twentieth.”

I leveled a mortified glare on her. “You tricked me.”

“Lawyer,” she volleyed, as if that explained it all.

Yeah, I liked her a lot. I strolled back to my chair and plopped down with my usual fanfare.

“She tricked me,” I said to Garrett.

He grinned. But his grin was different. It had changed, and I realized why.

“Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no,” I said, wagging a finger at him. “Don’t even start with that crap.”

“What crap?” he asked, all innocence and awe.

“The crap where you look at me like I have all the answers to every question in the known universe. I don’t. I can’t see into the future. I can’t read your past. I damn sure can’t read your palm, whatever the hell that’s about. I can’t—”

“But you’re psychic, right?”

“Dude,” I said, leaning over the desk, “I’m about as psychic as a carrot.”

“But—”

“No buts!” I had serious issues with the p-s word. We’d never really bonded. I threw my hands over my ears and started humming to myself.

“That’s mature.”

He was right. I stuck out my tongue anyway, then put my hands down. “Listen, even I have more questions than answers. I’m fairly certain my abilities are more closely related to schizophrenia than to anything supernatural. Ask anyone. If I were edible, I’d be a fruitcake.”

“Schizophrenia,” he said doubtfully.

“I hear voices in my head. How much more schizophrenic does it get?”

“But you just said—”

I held up an index finger to stop him. Though a middle one would have been more to the point, I had to explain before I lost the ground I’d just gained. “Look, when people are in the position you’re in now, when they’re almost to the point of believing in what I can do, they pull out all the stops. They quiz me, ask me stupid questions, want to know where the next earthquake will hit or what the winning lottery numbers will be. Seriously, have you ever read the headline ‘Psychic Wins Lottery’? I’m not psychic. I don’t even know if such a thing exists.”

“Tell him what you are,” Elizabeth chimed in excitedly while Garrett flipped through his notepad.

I flashed her a desperate shut-up-or-die look. It didn’t work. Probably because she was already dead.

“Seriously,” she said, “just tell him. He’s starting to believe you now. He’ll think it’s cool.”

“No, he won’t,” I whispered through my teeth, forgetting that I was the only living person in the room who could hear her.

“A person sensitive to things beyond the natural range of perception.” Garrett looked up at me. “The definition of psychic.”

“Oh, well, okay. Maybe,” I said. “But I still hate the word. And its implications.”

“Fair enough,” he said with a shrug. “And I won’t what?”

“Think it’s cool.”

“What? Your abilities?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then what?”

Then what? I guess if he really wanted to know, I’d hit him with the whole enchilada dinner. I was on a roll, after all. Why stop now? Not even my dad or Uncle Bob really knew the extent of what I was. I’d never needed to tell them. They believed me, and that was good enough. But since I really didn’t care what Garrett thought of me …

“Fine,” I said with a challenging edge to my voice. “I’ll tell you everything. If I do, will you leave?”

After a pause, he agreed with an almost imperceptible nod.

“I’m a … I’m kind of a … I’m sort of like a … well, damn.” I gritted my teeth and just blurted it out: “I’m a grim reaper. Well, the grim reaper, actually.”

There. I’d said it. I laid it all out on the table, cleared the air, bared my soul, all the while vowing that no cliché be left unturned. But he didn’t flinch. He didn’t laugh. He didn’t shoot out of his chair or stalk out the door. In fact, he didn’t move at all. Not an inch. I wondered if he was still breathing; then it dawned on me. This was his poker face. His gray eyes stayed locked on mine as I waited for his reaction, but he wasn’t going to give me one. I had to admit, his poker face was pretty good. I had no idea what he was thinking.

“I think he believes you,” Elizabeth said as she bent over and looked at him before glancing back at me.

So she would have no choice but to see the doubt in every line of my face, I formed my expression carefully.

“How does that work?” Garrett asked at last.

I refocused my attention on him. “You said you would leave.”

“If,” he countered, “you told me everything.”

Dammit. “Okay, how does it work? Hell, I don’t know. It just does.”

“I mean, what do you do?”

“Oh. I help people cross.”

“Cross?”

“Um, to the other side?” I said, wondering just how clueless he was.

“How?”

Geez, he was persistent. “Excuse me.” I jumped up, scooted the office-furniture version of a love seat forward, then sat back down. The lawyers had eased closer, wanting to hear every word of the story as well. “Can you guys sit down? You’re making me nervous hovering like that.”

“Oh, sure,” they said, and all three squeezed into the seat. I fought back a chuckle.

“How?” Garrett repeated.

Back to the third degree. A long breath slipped through my lips as I considered everything I’d been telling him. This stuff could be used as ammunition against me. It had happened before, by people I’d trusted much more than Garrett. Still, we’d come this far.

“Basically,” I said, exaggerating my reluctance in the tone of my voice, “I try to help them figure out why they didn’t cross. Then I lead them to the light.”

“What light?”

“The light. The only light I know of,” I replied, using the escape and evasion tactics I’d learned from a first lieutenant I dated in college.

“Uh-huh,” he said, not falling for it. “What light?”

I hesitated. Some bits of information were just more sacred than others. Some were reserved for the departed only. It wasn’t like the truth of what I do would help him believe me. More likely, it would send him running for the door. Come to think of it …

“Me,” I said with a hint of self-righteous arrogance lifting my chin. I felt like I was back in middle school, begging the bully to challenge me.

After a thoughtful moment, he asked, “You?”

“Me,” I repeated, with just as much arrogance. Go ahead, Mr. Skeptic, make my day. Challenge me. Prove me wrong. As if. “Apparently, I’m very bright.”

I suddenly realized what I’d done. I’d said too much. I’d let my pride go to the party, and it ended up auditioning for Girls Gone Wild. It was so grounded.

Garrett sat back in his chair and let his gaze travel over every inch of me that he could see before relocking with mine. “So you help them figure out why they didn’t cross.”

No way to weasel out of the damned conversation now. No wonder pride was one of the seven deadlies. “Yes,” I answered.

“And then you lead them to the light.”

“Yes.”

“Which is you.”

“Yes.”

“So when we cross,” Sussman said, “it’ll be through you?”

I glanced at him. I figured he was creeped out by the concept — one that could be considered sacrilegious on a thousand different planets — but he seemed fascinated. “Yes, you’ll cross through me. Grim reaper,” I said by way of explanation.

“Wow,” Barber said. “That’s about the coolest thing I’ve heard all day.”

“You’re a portal,” Garrett said.

I shrugged. “I guess that’s one way of looking at it.”

An intrigued smile spread across his face as he studied me, making my nerve endings prickly with suspicion.

“He is so into you,” Elizabeth said.

I ignored her and glanced at my watch. “Gosh, look at the time.” Where the heck was Uncle Bob?

“So the spirits that don’t cross are just hanging out on earth, walking through us without a care in the world?” Garrett asked, not ready to give up his quest.

I sighed. This could go on for days.

“No. They exist in the same time and space but on a different plane. Like a double-exposed picture. I’m just able to be on both planes simultaneously.”

“Then that makes you pretty amazing,” he said, appreciation shimmering in his eyes.

This was too much. I was still prying my jaw off the floor, metaphorically, that he believed anything I said.

“So, how about it? Let’s go get some coffee,” he suggested again.

“But I just explained everything.”

“Sweetheart, I doubt you’ve even scratched the surface.” When I hesitated, he said, “We can go as friends.”

I scowled, just a little, then reminded him, “We’re not friends, remember? You’ve made that painfully clear over the last month. We’re not pals or buds or anything else even remotely resembling friends.”

“Weekend lovers?” he offered.

That was it. I didn’t know what game he was playing — though I was fairly certain it wasn’t Monopoly … or checkers — but I refused to play along. I stood and walked around the desk so I could stand over him. Menacingly. Like Darth Vader, only with better lung capacity. After a meaningful stare-down, I pointed to the exit. “I have work to do.”

He glanced at the door I was pointing at, the one through which I was suggesting he leave. “You have work to do? On that door?” he asked, all teasing and smart-assy.

“What?”

“Are you going to paint it?”

“No.”

“I suggest a deep, rich brown to go with your hair.” He stood, reversing the situation to tower over me. After another stare-down, one with a different meaning entirely, he leaned in and said softly, “Or gold … to go with your eyes.”

“I think I just came,” Elizabeth said.

The other two lawyers, after clearing their throats, had the decency to step out of the room. Elizabeth reluctantly followed them into the reception area, otherwise known as Cookie’s-god-danged-space-and-don’t-you-forget-it.

As Garrett waited for me to agree to have coffee with him, I saw it from the corner of my eye. The blurry Superman thing. It moved so fast that by the time I turned my head, it was gone. It had moved to my other side, brushed my arm, feathered across my mouth, then dived inside me, pooling in my abdomen, oozing warmth throughout my entire body.

My insides quaked, and I threw back my head with a startled gasp. Garrett stepped forward and grabbed hold of my arms to keep me from falling. Only then did I see the bewildered expression on his face. He pulled me closer. Then the feeling left me and Garrett shot backwards, as if a violent force had shoved him.

He stumbled, caught himself, then looked at me. We both stood stunned and wide-eyed. I toppled toward my desk, leaned against it to keep my knees from buckling.

“Was that … one of them?” he asked, absently rubbing his chest where he’d apparently been shoved. He glanced around wildly before placing a disconcerted scowl on me.

“No,” I said, trying to slow my breathing, “that was something very different.”

What, I didn’t know. But I could guess, and I didn’t like the direction my guesses were heading. Could it be the Big Bad? If so, why here? Why now? My life didn’t seem to be in any immediate danger.

Fear was difficult for me to hide. I rarely felt it. But surely Garrett sensed it in me now. The thought of him seeing me afraid grated more than a little.

Then another scenario came to mind. Of all the times I’d seen Bad, he’d never brushed against me. He’d never even touched me, and he certainly hadn’t dived in for a swim in my nether regions. Maybe it wasn’t Bad at all.

I scanned the room, probably looking a little desperate. Was it Reyes? Could it have been him? Could he have been … jealous? Of Swopes? Was he serious?

I rushed to the door and asked everyone, “Did you see anything? Did he come this way?”

Elizabeth, who had been sitting on our sage green reception sofa, jumped up and said, “You lost him? How could you lose him?”

“Not Garrett,” I said, possibly a little too impatiently. “The dark, blurry guy.”

Cookie was slowly beginning to realize we had company. She eased up out of her seat as if a cobra were perched on her desk. “Charley, sweetheart, do we have clients?”

“Oh, yeah. I forgot to mention that. Everyone, this is Cookie. Cookie, we have the three lawyers who left us last night. The ones I told you about. We’re working on their case with Uncle Bob. Okay, now, did anyone see him?”

The lawyers questioned each other with sideways glances and shrugs. I let a hapless sigh slip through my lips and slumped against the doorjamb.

You’d think, me being a grim reaper and all, I’d have connections, ways of obtaining Blurry Guy’s identity. But since the only connection from the other side I’d ever made was that of Bad, aka death incarnate, inquiries proved difficult.

Then I noticed an odd shadow in the corner, one that undulated and shifted under the morning light. It was him. It had to be. I straightened, pried my fingers off the doorjamb, and eased into the room, trying not to scare him away.

“May I see you?” I asked, my voice too shaky.

Everyone looked toward the corner, but only the lawyers saw him, too. All three took a wary step back, so in synch, the movement looked choreographed, while I stepped forward pleadingly.

“Please, let me see you.”

The shadow moved, disintegrated, disappeared, and reappeared before me in the same instant. Then it was my turn to retreat. I stumbled back as a long tendril of smoke raised, and suddenly an arm was braced against the wall beside my head. A long arm that angled up to a tall shoulder.

The lawyers gasped as the entity materialized before them, as smoke became flesh, as molecules meshed and fused to form one solid muscle after another. My gaze had yet to linger past his arm, sliding from the hand steadied against the wall — a hand that, even with the wear of hard labor, was beautiful — to the long, sinewy curve of a steel-like forearm. A rolled cuff, an oddly bright color, encircled the arm below the elbow, but above that, a biceps strained against the thick material, attesting to the strength it encapsulated. Then my gaze slipped farther up to a shoulder, wide and powerful and unyielding.

The entity leaned in before I could see its face, pressed the warmth of its body into mine, and bent forward to whisper in my ear. It was so close, I could only make out its jaw, strong and shadowed with at least two days’ growth, and dark hair in need of a trim.

His mouth brushed my ear, sending shivers down my spine. “Dutch,” he whispered, and I melted into him.

This was my chance, my opportunity to ask if he was who I thought he was — who I hoped he was. But I’d spiraled back into my dream world, where nothing worked right. My hands had a will of their own as they lifted to his chest. The bones in my legs dissolved. My mouth wanted only one thing. Him. His taste. His texture. He smelled like rain during a lightning storm, earthy and electric.

I curled his shirt into my fists — whether to push him away or pull him closer, I wasn’t sure. Why couldn’t I see him? Why couldn’t I just convince myself to step to the side and look at him?

Then his mouth covered mine and I lost all sense of reality. My world took his form, became his body, his mouth, his hands, skimming over me, surveying the hills and valleys of all that was me, his moon. His very own satellite seduced into his orbit by the sheer will of his gravity.

The kiss deepened, grew more urgent, and my body responded with a quiver of desire. He groaned and pushed farther into me, his tongue delving between my lips, not just tasting, but drinking every part of me, melding my soul with his.

He pried one of my hands off his shirt and led it down his pants to cover his erection. I sucked in a sharp breath, inhaling the heat that drifted off him. I felt a hand squeeze between my legs, and liquid fire pooled in my abdomen. I wanted him on me, around me, and in me. I could think of nothing else but the utter sensuality of this perfect being.

My hunger seemed impenetrable until I heard my name from a distance and the fog began to evaporate.

“Charley?”

I tumbled out of the dream and snapped to attention. Everyone in the room stared at me openmouthed. Uncle Bob stood halfway in the door with a quizzical expression drawing his brows together. Garrett looked on as well. Agitation flashed in his eyes. He turned and strode out the door, nodding brusquely to Uncle Bob as he walked past.

And then I realized it was gone. He was gone. No longer able to bear my own weight, I sank to the floor and stewed in my own astonishment.

“Were you just possessed?” Cookie asked after a long moment, awe softening her voice. “ ’Cause let me tell you, sweetheart, if that was possession, I’m selling my soul.”