First Grave on the Right

CHAPTER 9

I first saw him the day I was born. His hooded cloak undulated in majestic waves like the shadows cast by leaves in a soft breeze. He’d looked down at me while the doctor cut the cord. I knew he was looking down at me, even though I couldn’t see his face. He’d touched me as the nurses cleaned my skin, though I couldn’t feel his fingertips. And he’d whispered my name, husky and deep and soft, though I couldn’t hear his voice. Probably because I was screaming at the top of my lungs, having recently been evicted.

Since that day, I’d seen him only on the rarest of occasions, all dire. So it made sense that I would see him now. The occasion being dire and all.

As I fell through the skylight, the cement floor rushing toward me at the speed of light, he was there, looking up at me from below — though I couldn’t see his face. I tried to stop in midair, tried to pause my descent, to hover for a better look. But gravity insisted that I continue my downward journey. Then somewhere in the dark and scary — and some would say psychotic — recesses of my mind, I remembered. I remembered what he’d whispered to me the day I was born. My mind instantly rejected the idea, because the name he’d whispered wasn’t mine. He’d called me Dutch. On the very day I was born. How did he know?

While I was busy reminiscing about my first day on earth, I’d forgotten that I was falling to my death. Damned ADD. I was reminded quite effectively, however, when I stopped. I hit hard, and the air rushed out of my lungs. Yet he was still looking up at me. That meant I hadn’t made it to the ground. I hit something else, something metal, before flipping back and crashing onto steel grating.

An excruciating pain exploded in my midsection and ripped through me like a nuclear blast, so severe, so startlingly intense, it stole my breath and darkened my vision until I felt myself liquefy and slip through the grates. And as darkness crept around the edges of my consciousness, I saw him again, leaning over me, studying me.

I tried so hard to focus, to block out the pain watering my eyes and blurring my vision. But I ran out of time before I could manage it, and everything went black. An inhuman growl — angry and full of pain — echoed off the walls of the empty warehouse, shook the metal of the building until it hummed like a tuning fork in my ears.

Though I couldn’t hear his voice.

It seemed like the moment I lost consciousness, I found it again. It certainly wasn’t where I’d left it. Still, I was breathing and coherent. Amazingly, the old saying was right: It isn’t the fall that will kill you, but the sudden stop.

I tried to pry open my lids. I failed. Either I wasn’t really conscious or Garrett had found a tube of Super Glue and was getting even for the salsa incident. While I waited for my eyelids to realize they were supposed to be in the upright position, I listened to him babble into the radio, something about my having a pulse. Always a welcome observation. His fingertips rested on my neck.

“I’m here,” Uncle Bob blurted breathlessly through the radio. Then I heard footsteps on metal steps and sirens in the background.

Garrett must have sensed I was awake. “Hey, Detective,” he said to Uncle Bob, who was now trudging across the grating toward us. “I think we’re losing her. I have no choice but to perform mouth-to-mouth.”

“Don’t you dare,” I said, my lids still in lockdown.

He laughed under his breath.

“Bloody hell, Charley,” Uncle Bob said in a wheezy voice that sounded more concerned than angry. Maybe the rubber band at his wrist was working after all. “What happened?”

“I fell.”

“No shit.”

“Someone hit me.”

“Again? I didn’t realize it was National Kill Charley Davidson Week.”

“Do we get a vacation day with that?” Garrett asked. Uncle Bob must have flashed him his famous glower because Garrett jumped up and said, “Right. I’m on it.” He took off, supposedly in search of the assailant.

The sirens were getting closer, and I heard men shuffling about below me.

“Is anything broken?” Uncle Bob’s voice had softened.

“My eyelids, I think. I can’t open them.”

I heard a soft chuckle. “If it were anyone else, I’d say eyelids can’t be broken. But considering the source…”

A weak grin spread across my face. “So I’m, like, special?”

He snorted as he pressed gingerly here and there, testing for broken bones and the like. “Special wouldn’t even begin to cover it, my dear.”

Miracles happen. I figured I was living proof. To walk away — well, to limp away with lots of help — from a fall like that without a single broken bone was nothing short of miraculous. With a capital M.

“We really should get some X-rays,” the EMT said to Uncle Bob as I lounged on the stretcher.

Ambulances were cool. “You just want to fondle my extraneous body parts,” I said to the EMT as I picked up a silver gadget that looked disturbingly like an alien orifice probe, broke it, then promptly put it back, hoping it wouldn’t leave someone’s life hanging in the balance because the EMT couldn’t alien-probe his orifices.

EMT Guy chuckled and checked my blood pressure for the gazillionth time.

“Really, Uncle Bob, I’m fine. Who owns this warehouse?”

Uncle Bob closed his phone and looked at me through the open doors of the ambulance. “Well, if you’re hoping for a neon sign above his head that flashes Bad Guy, you’re going to be very disappointed.”

“Don’t tell me. The guy’s a canonized saint?”

“Close. His name is Father Federico Díaz.”

Wow. Why would a Catholic priest own a warehouse in the middle of nowhere? Why would a Catholic priest own a warehouse, period? This case was getting more bizarre by the minute.

“No one,” Garrett said, jogging up to us. “I don’t understand it. If there were two guys inside and one on the roof, where’d they go?”

“The van was the only vehicle on the premises. They had to leave on foot,” Uncle Bob said, scanning the area with a quizzical look on his face.

“Or not leave at all,” I added. “Where are the boxes?”

They both turned around and surveyed the empty warehouse.

“What boxes?” Uncle Bob asked.

“Exactly.” I eased off the stretcher, picked up and handed the broken probe to the EMT, who reattached the alien part and put it back with a grin, then stepped to the ground with far more wincing than was socially acceptable.

“I have three words for you,” EMT Guy said. “Possible internal bleeding.”

I turned back to him. “Don’t you think if I was bleeding internally, I’d know somewhere deep inside? Like, internally?”

“One X-ray,” he bargained. When I winced again, he added, “Maybe two.”

Uncle Bob wrapped a beefy arm around me. I was a nanosecond away from arguing with EMT Guy when he said, “Charley, we have men all over the place. I promise we’ll look for your missing boxes.”

“But—”

“You’re going to the hospital if I have to handcuff you to that stretcher,” Garrett said, stepping in front of me as if to block my only escape route.

With an annoyed sigh, I folded my arms and glared at him. “Stop trying to get me into your handcuffs. I want to be there when you talk to Father Federico,” I said to Uncle Bob, ignoring Garrett’s surprised expression. Would he never learn?

“Deal,” Uncle Bob agreed before I could change my mind. “I’ll call you tomorrow with a time.”

“You’ll need a ride home from the hospital,” Garrett reminded me.

“You just want to try out those handcuffs. I’ll call Cookie. Go figure out where those boxes went.”

“Do you want to look at mug shots tomorrow, as well?” Uncle Bob asked. “Can you ID the guy who hit you?”

“Well…” My nose scrunched as I considered the possibility of positively identifying my assailant based on the knuckle sandwich he gave me. “I got an almost clear peripheral look at the guy’s left fist. I might could recognize his pinkie.”

For some bizarre reason that baffled the heck out of me, Cookie seemed none too happy about being called out at one in the morning to extract me from the hospital.

“What did you do now?” she asked, walking into the examining room. Still in her pajama bottoms with a massive robelike sweater thrown over a tee, she looked a tad postapocalyptic. And she had a wicked case of bedhead. It was funny.

I eased off the examining table, moving as if there were a bomb in the room set to go off with a motion-detecting sensor. She rushed to my side to help. Had there actually been a bomb set to go off with a motion-detecting sensor, we’d have been blown to bits.

“Why are you assuming it was my fault?” I asked when my feet were firmly planted.

Her lips thinned into a grim reprimand. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to get a call from the hospital in the middle of the night? I jump into panic mode. I can barely put two words together.”

“I’m sorry.” After limping to my jacket, I shrugged into it, amazed at how much effort it took not to pass out. “You probably thought something happened to Amber.”

“Are you kidding? Amber’s an angel compared to you. Having you around makes me appreciate her pubescent, hormone-induced ways. Honestly, I don’t know how your stepmother did it.”

A lightbulb went off in my head when she said that. Not a particularly bright one — maybe a 12-watter — but it did make me reassess my stepmother’s lack of interest in my well-being. Perhaps our rocky relationship was partially my fault.

Not.

Cookie lectured me all the way home. Thankfully, I’d had the ambulance take me to Pres, so it was a short drive. Her concern was sweet and, at the same time, oddly annoying. My concern, however, was leaning toward homicidal. Hard as I tried, I couldn’t help but get a little hot under my seven-dollar thrift-store Gucci collar. Someone hit me. Someone tried to kill me. Had he succeeded, I could have died.

Then, as if my perpetual state of sunshine couldn’t allow such a negative thought to infect my mind — I’m pretty sure I was a flower child in a past life — I just had to see the cup half full. Hopefully of Jack Daniel’s. I’d learned something tonight, besides the legitimacy of the sudden-stop thing. I’d learned that somehow, in some bizarre coincidence of fate, Reyes and the Big Bad were connected. But how? Reyes couldn’t have been more than three when I was born. How did Bad know he would call me Dutch fifteen years later?

I couldn’t have been imagining it. I remembered it so clearly. Dutch. Whispery and soft, deep and mesmerizing. Rather like Reyes himself. And the similarities didn’t stop there. My mind started registering all kinds of likenesses between the two. The heat and energy that radiated off them both. The way they moved — a blur — very unlike the departed. The paralyzing power of their touches, their stares. The way my knees almost gave beneath my weight with the appearance of either one.

Maybe I was losing it. Either that or Reyes and Bad were the same kind of being. But how was that even possible? I needed a second opinion. As Cookie pulled her Taurus into the parking lot, I said, “I saw him again.”

She braked short and looked at me.

“When I fell through the skylight,” I added.

“Reyes?” she asked in disbelief.

“No. I don’t know.” Fatigue seeped into my voice. “I’m beginning to wonder. I’m beginning to wonder about a lot of things.”

She nodded her head in understanding, eased up to the curb, and turned off the engine. “I’ve been doing some research. It’s late, but I have a feeling you won’t be able to sleep until some of your questions are answered.”

After Cookie more or less carried me into my apartment, she went to check on Amber. I shouted out a hey to Mr. Wong then put on a pot of coffee in my brand-new coffeepot that, according to the card and bow attached, had been provided by the good people at AAA Electric for the investigation I did on the missing switchgears — whatever the heck a switchgear was and why ever the heck anyone would steal one. It was red. The coffeepot, not the switchgear. I had no idea what color switchgears were, as I’d discovered the thief long before it came to that. Still, I doubted they were red.

I poured a small glass of milk and downed it so I could take four ibuprofen at once without tearing up the lining of my stomach. I’d refused the prescription painkillers the doctor in the ER had offered. Scripts and I didn’t generally get along. But the soreness was already infiltrating my muscles, stiffening them until I thought they would break with each move I made. That fall may not have done any permanent damage, but the temporary crap was going to suck. I could barely breathe.

Still, even a slight ability to breathe was better than a nonexistent one.

Between visiting Mark Weir in jail, chasing Rocket around the asylum, breaking into the law offices, and falling through the skylight at the warehouse, I had yet to get my hands on a computer long enough to search the prison database for more information on Reyes. As I eased into the chair at my computer, Cookie strode in with an armful of notes and printouts. Knowing her, she’d already researched Reyes’s life down to his shoe size and blood type. I logged on to the New Mexico Department of Corrections Web site while she poured us some coffee. Ten seconds later, thanks to fiber optics, Reyes’s mug shot shone brightly on the screen.

“My god,” Cookie said from behind me, apparently experiencing the same visceral reaction to Reyes that I did every time I looked at him.

She set a cup beside me.

“Thank you,” I said, “and I’m sorry I had to call you out in the middle of the night.”

She pulled up a chair, sat down, and put a hand over mine. “Charley, do you honestly think it bothers me one iota that you called me?”

Was that a trick question? “Well, yes, with a sprinkle of duh on top. Who wouldn’t be upset?”

“I wouldn’t,” she said, taken aback, as if I’d hurt her feelings for even suggesting such a thing. “I would have been furious had you not called me. I know you’re special and you have an extraordinary gift that I’ll never fully understand, but you’re still human, and you’re still my best friend.” Her face transformed into a map of worry lines. “I wasn’t upset that you called me. I was upset because you think you’re indestructible. You’re not.” She paused to let her gaze bore into mine, to drive her point home. It was sweet. “And because of this false sense of security, you get yourself into the most … bizarre situations.”

“Bizarre?” I asked, pretending to be offended.

“Three words. Sewage plant disaster.”

“That totally wasn’t my fault,” I argued, balking at the very idea of it. As if.

She pursed her lips and waited for me to come to my senses.

“Okay, it was my fault.” She knew me too well. “But only a little. And those rats had it coming. So, what did you find out?” I asked, looking back at Reyes’s picture.

Cookie thumbed through the printouts and slid one out. “Are you ready for this?”

“As long it doesn’t contain nude pictures of elderly women, I’m good.” I kept my eyes locked on to Reyes’s, fierce and intense as they were.

She handed me the printout. “Murder.”

“No,” I whispered, as if the wind had been forced out of my lungs. It was a news article dated ten years earlier. No, no, no, no, no. Anything but murder. Or rape. Or kidnapping. Or armed robbery. Or indecent exposure, ’cause that’s just creepy. I scanned the article with a reluctant eye, like when you pass by an accident and can’t help but look.

ALBUQUERQUE MAN FOUND GUILTY.

Short. To the point.

A man with a past more mysterious than the circumstances surrounding his father’s death was found guilty Monday after three days of jury deliberation. The prosecution faced several unusual problems during the trial, such as the fact that Reyes Alexander Farrow, 20, doesn’t exist.

Reyes Alexander Farrow. I stopped a moment, tried to catch my breath, to slow my pulse. Even Reyes’s name gave me heart palpitations. And he didn’t exist? Heck, I could have told them that.

“Farrow has no birth certificate,” the prosecution stated after the two-week trial ended. “He has no medical records, no social security number, no school records beyond a three-month stint at Yucca High. On paper, this man is a ghost.”

A ghost. As Morpheus would say, fate is not without a sense of irony.

Farrow’s father, Earl Walker, was found dead in his car after a group of hikers discovered it at the bottom of a canyon five miles east of Albuquerque. Though his body had been burned beyond recognition, the autopsy concluded that he’d died from blunt force trauma to the head. Several witnesses saw Farrow fighting with his father the day before Walker was reported missing by his fiancée.

“Our hands were tied,” Stan Eichmann, the lead defense attorney for Farrow, stated after the verdict was handed down. “There is much more to this case than meets the eye. I guess we’ll never know how it could have turned out.”

Eichmann’s statement was only one of dozens of mysteries surrounding this case. For example, Walker has no social security number either and has never filed a single tax return.

“He had nothing that would establish him as a law-abiding citizen,” Eichmann said. “He seemed to be living under several aliases. It took weeks to track down what we believe was his real name.”

“This is actually more common than you might think,” the prosecution stated. “But it’s a choice career criminals make as adults. Farrow, on the other hand, has never existed. According to our records, he was never born, and DNA results conclude that Walker was not his biological father. Based on what we know about him, if I had to guess, I’d say Reyes Farrow was quite possibly abducted as a child.”

My breath caught in my chest. Could he really have been abducted?

I quickly scanned the rest of the article.

Farrow never took the stand in his own defense, leaving jurors hard-pressed to see past the circumstantial evidence despite the defense’s success at debunking several key theories pertinent to the prosecution’s strategy.

The article went on to talk about Walker’s fiancée, Sarah Hadley. She’d testified that Reyes had threatened Walker on several occasions — right — and that they were both in fear for their lives. Yet another witness, an associate of Ms. Hadley’s, refuted the statement, swearing under oath that Walker’s fiancée was secretly in love with Farrow and would have left Walker in a heartbeat to be with him. The witness stated that if Ms. Hadley was afraid of anyone, it was of Walker himself.

“This is a case about a broken heart and a broken mind,” Eichmann told the jury minutes before they broke for deliberation. “Walker’s criminal record alone casts numerous doubts as to the legitimacy of anything even remotely resembling a motive by his only child.”

His only child? But Reyes had a sister.

“The circumstances surrounding his death are about as transparent as I am,” Eichmann continued.

Farrow, who had been taking night classes with a stolen social security number before his arrest, ironically, toward a law degree, stood impassively, his head bowed slightly, as the verdict was read.

My heart sank in my chest with the image of Reyes standing in a courtroom, waiting for his peers to judge him, to find him guilty or innocent. I wondered what he felt, how he coped with their decision.

“The mystery that is Reyes Farrow deepens by the minute,” I said. Walker’s fiancée was, for lack of a better phrase, full of shit. Abused children rarely attack their abusers, much less torment them. And women were never secretly in love with someone who they believed might kill them at any moment.

“But murder, Charley.”

“Do you know how many people are in prison for crimes they didn’t commit?”

“You think Reyes is innocent?”

In my dreams. “I’d have to see him in person to know for certain.”

Her brows slid together. “Is that part of your ability?”

Though I’d never really thought of it that way, I said, “Yeah, I guess it is. I forget that not everyone can see what I see.”

“Speaking of which, you said you saw him again tonight? Were you talking about Reyes?”

“Oh, right.” I straightened then winced with the action and burrowed back into my seat, wondering where to begin. Better just to get it all out in the open, air my dirty laundry, so to speak. “You know how I’ve never told you certain things, because I didn’t want you to have to seek therapy?”

Cookie laughed. “Yes, but you know you can tell me anything.”

“Yeah, well, that’s a good thing, because you’re about to get a crash course in all things grim. I’m lost.”

“Aren’t you usually?” she said, mischief glittering in her eyes.

“Funny. I’m not talking about my usual state of confusion. This is different.”

“Different from utter chaos?” When I scowled, feigning annoyance, she shifted in her chair, and said, “Okay, you have my complete attention.”

But I was still stuck on the utter-chaos thing. Cookie was right. My life tended to be in either park or overdrive, careening through traffic with little thought to the cars around me or the destination. “I do just sort of stumble through life, don’t I?”

“Well, yeah, but that’s okay,” she said with a one-shouldered shrug.

“Ya think?”

“Sure. We’re all just sort of stumbling through life, if you ask me.”

“Still, this whole grim reaper thing should have come with a manual. Or a diagram of some kind. A flowchart would have been nice.”

“Oh, you’re right,” Cookie said with her supportive, I’ve-got-your-back head nod. “One with colored arrows, huh?”

“And simple, easy-to-read yes/no questions. Like, ‘Did death incarnate visit you today? If no, skip to step ten. If yes, stop now, ’cause you are so screwed, girlfriend. You may as well call it a day. Take a deep breath, because this is going to hurt. You might want to phone a friend about now, tell her to kiss your ass good-bye.…’ ”

I realized Cookie wasn’t doing her supportive, I’ve-got-your-back head-nod thing anymore. I glanced at her suddenly pale face. It was kind of pretty. Sure made the blue in her eyes stand out.

“Cookie?”

Just as I was about to check for a pulse, she whispered, “Death incarnate?”

Oops. “Oh, that,” I said with a dismissive wave of my hand. “He’s not really death incarnate. He just looks like death incarnate. Come to think of it, he looks like death.” I glanced up in thought and decided to ignore the cobwebs on the light fixture for the time being. “He kind of looks like, well, a grim reaper. Except I’m a grim reaper and he looks nothing like me. But if I didn’t know what grim reapers really looked like, not that I’ve ever met one besides myself, I’d say that’s exactly what he resembles.” I glanced back at her. “Yep. Death incarnate should just about cover it.”

“Death incarnate? There really is such a thing?”

Perhaps I was going about this the wrong way. “He’s not really death. He’s kind of cool, I guess, in a terrifying way.” She whitened further. Darn it. “When you eventually have to seek therapy, will I have to pay for it?”

“No,” she said, straightening her shoulders, pretending to have everything under control. “I’m good. You just took me by surprise, that’s all.” She waved me on with a wiggle of her fingers. “Go ahead. I can handle this.”

“Swear?” I asked, suspicious of the blue around her lips.

“Pinkie swear. Crash course. I am so ready.”

When she gripped the arms of the chair as if preparing for an aerial assault, my doubts reemerged. What the bloody heck was I doing? Besides scarring her for life?

“I can’t do this,” I said, reevaluating my telling her everything just so I could tell her about Bad in the warehouse to get her opinion on the whole thing. I couldn’t do that to Cookie. “I’m sorry. I should never have mentioned any of this.”

She peeled her hands off the arms of her chair and looked at me, purpose glimmering in her eyes. “Charley, you can tell me anything. I promise not to freak out on you again.” When my gaze turned to one of utter doubt, she clarified, “I promise to try not to freak out on you again.”

“It’s not your fault,” I said, bowing my head. “There are some things people are better off not knowing. I can’t believe what I almost did to you. I apologize.”

One of the consequences of my being honest with those close to me was the effect it had on their psyche. I’d learned long ago that, yes, it hurt when people didn’t believe me, but when they did, their lives were changed forever. They never saw the world the same again. And such a perspective could be devastating. I chose very carefully who I let in. And I’d told only one other person on Earth about Bad, a decision I’ve regretted ever since.

Cookie edged back into her chair, picked up her cup, and gazed into it. “Do you remember the first time you told me what you are?”

I thought back a moment. “Just barely. If you’ll recall, I was into my third margarita.”

“Do you remember what you said?”

“Um … third margarita.”

“You said, and I quote, ‘Cookie, I’m the grim reaper.’ ”

“And you believed me?” I asked, incredulity raising my brows.

“Yes,” she said, coming to animated life. “Without a shadow of a doubt. By that point, I’d seen too much not to believe you. So what on Earth could you tell me now that would sound worse?”

“You might be surprised,” I hedged.

She frowned. “Is it really that bad?”

“It’s not that it’s bad,” I explained, trying to allow her to keep a little of her innocence and possibly her sanity, “just maybe a little less believable.”

“Oh, right, because there’s a grim reaper on every street corner these days.”

She had a point. More often than not, however, my abilities got me into trouble and took away people whom I’d believed I could trust. Those facts alone made me hesitant now, no matter how much I thought of Cookie. Honestly, what had I been thinking? Sometimes my selfishness astounded me.

“When I was in high school,” I said, angling for the old it’s-for-your-own-good spiel, “I told my best friend too much. Our friendship ended badly because of it. I just don’t want that to happen to us.”

Not that I could place all the blame on Jessica. Past experience and my mad skill at reading people should have stopped me from telling my ex — best friend more than she could handle. Still, her sudden and complete hatred of all things Charley Davidson struck hard. I simply couldn’t comprehend where her hostilities were coming from. We were best friends one minute, then mortal enemies the next. It was such a shock. I still thought about it often, even though I realized years later she’d just been scared. Of what I could do. Of what was out there. Of what my abilities meant in the grand scheme of things. But at the time, I was devastated. Betrayed, once again, by someone I’d loved. By someone I’d thought loved me.

Between Jessica’s hostilities and my stepmother’s indifference, I sank into a very deep depression. One that I hid well with sarcasm and sass, but the incident sparked a cycle of self-destructive behavior that took me years to crawl out of.

Oddly enough, Reyes was the one who knocked me out of the depression itself. His situation made me appreciate what I had, namely a father who didn’t kick my ass for the sheer joy of it. I had a dad who loved me, a commodity Reyes lacked. Yet he wasn’t wallowing in a cesspool of self-pity. His life was a hundred times worse than mine, but he didn’t feel the least bit sorry for himself. Not from what I’d seen, anyway. So I’d put my little pity party on hold.

Trust, however, was another issue. Trusting the living had never been my strong suit to begin with. But this was Cookie. The best friend I’d ever had. She’d accepted everything I ever told her without doubt or contempt or instantaneous musings of monetary gain.

“And you think I won’t be able to handle what you tell me?”

“No. That’s just it. If anyone can handle it, you can. I just don’t know if I want to do that to you.” I put a hand on her arm and leaned forward, willing her to understand. “It’s not always better knowing.”

After a long pause, she gathered the files with a weak smile on her face. “Your abilities are a part of you, Charley, a part of who you are. I don’t think there’s a thing you could tell me that would change my perception of you.”

“It’s not your perception of me I’m worried about.”

“It’s late,” she said, slipping papers into a file folder. “And you need to get to bed.”

Had I hurt her feelings? Did she think I didn’t want her to know? Sharing every part of my life with a very best friend whom I could confide in would be like finding the pot of green chili stew at the end of the rainbow. Did I dare? Could I risk one of the best things that had ever happened to me?

It was late, but as wonderful as slipping into unconsciousness sounded, the thought of telling Cookie everything — of her knowing the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth — had my adrenaline pumping. It would be nice to have someone to trust in, a confidante, a comrade in arms and hair gel, despite the fact that it was almost two in the morning and I was exhausted and sore and near comatose. I just prayed neither of us was biting off more than we could chew. I did that once with bubble gum. It wasn’t pleasant.

Maybe I could take a chance. Just this once. Maybe she’d come out of it unscathed and as sane as she was going in. Not that that was saying much, but still.

I ran a finger along the edge of my coffee mug, unable to meet her gaze. I was about to change her life forever. And not necessarily in a good way. “He’s like smoke,” I said, and I felt her still beside me. “And he’s powerful. I can feel it pulse off him in waves. It makes me weak when he’s near, like he absorbs a part of me.”

She sat quiet for a few stunned moments, then placed the files back on the desk. She’d crossed a schism, a gap between two worlds that few people even knew about. As of this point in time, Cookie Kowalski would never be the same again.

“And that’s who you saw today?” she asked.

“In the warehouse, yes. But this morning as well, when Reyes appeared in the office.”

“This being was there?”

“No. I’m beginning to think he and Reyes are the same kind of being. But Reyes is real, a human, and then I keep seeing these blurs lately and having unimaginable sex in my sleep, and then he shows up in my shower—”

“Shower?”

“—and he called me Dutch the day I was born, just like Reyes, only Reyes was too young to be there when I was born, duh, so how did he know? How did the Big Bad know what Reyes would call me fifteen years later?”

The coffee mug slipped from my fingers, as Cookie placed it on the desk. “No more caffeine.”

“Sorry,” I said, trying to suppress a sheepish grin.

“We should start at the beginning.” She patted my arm in support. “Unless you want to start with the shower scene.”

“There’s just so much I’ve never told you, Cookie. It’s a lot to handle.”

“Charley, you’re a lot to handle.”

I chuckled, snatched my cup back, and downed the last of my coffee.

“When did you first have contact with this being?”

“The day I was born.” Wasn’t she listening? “That was the first time I saw ‘the Big Bad,’ ” I said, adding air quotes for effect.

“The Big—”

“He’s the smoke. He’s this creature-slash-monster-type thing that shows up at the most bizarre times. Mostly when my life is in danger. We should make popcorn.”

She scooted to the edge of her seat. “And he was there the day you were born?”

“Yep. I just call him the Big Bad because Humongous Slithering Creature that Scares the Ever-Lovin’ Piss Outta Me is too long.”

Cookie nodded, enthralled with where my story might lead, aware by now that my accounts were a bit more engrossing than the average my-aunt-had-a-ghost-living-in-her-attic tale. Mine were not the stuff of campfires or slumber parties. Which could explain the lack of invitations growing up.

“Anywho, like I said, he was there the day I was born.”

She held her cup in limbo between the table and her mouth, trying very hard not to drool. I hadn’t realized until that moment how much she’d been craving to know more. How much my silence had affected her.

With brow knitting, she asked, “So, how do you know that? Did someone tell you?”

“Tell me what?” My coffee mug was pretty. It had a tiger lily on it, my favorite flower. I was studying it in an attempt to keep my eyes off Reyes.

“That this big, bad creature was there when you were born.”

“Um, what?” What the heck was she talking about? Maybe I was unconsciously slipping into unconsciousness after all.

“How did you know it was there the day you were born?”

Oh, right. She didn’t know that part yet either. “I pretty much remember everything from day one.”

“Day one?”

I nodded, noticing for the first time that one petal of the tiger lily brushed the rim of the mug just so.

“Day one of what? The first grade? Desert Storm? Your menstrual cycle?” She hissed in a breath of realization. “That’s it! It all happened when you had your first period. A hormone thing, right? That’s when you figured it all out?”

I grinned. She was funny. “Day one of my life. My existence. My presence on Earth.”

“I’m not following.”

“The day I was born,” I said with a roll of my eyes. Cookie wasn’t usually this slow on the uptake.

She sat in stunned silence after that. It was weird.

“I know. That throws everyone.” After running my finger along the brightest orange petal, I added, “Apparently it’s rather rare for people to remember the day they were born.” The petals opened in an explosion of color, darkest at the center, at its most vulnerable point.

“Rare?” she asked, finding her voice at last. “Seriously? Try nonexistent.”

“Well, that’s just odd.” I traced the next petal. “I remember it like it was yesterday. Not that yesterday isn’t fuzzy.” Then I ran out of petals and my gaze drifted up and locked on to Reyes’s again. The pain and anger in his expression were almost palpable. And the color of his eyes, the rich, deep brown, grew darker as it neared the centers, their most vulnerable points.

“My god, Charley, you remember being born?”

“I remember him.”

“This big, bad guy?”

“The Big Bad. And I remember other things, too, like the doctor cutting the cord and the nurses cleaning me off.”

Cookie sat back in astonishment.

“He said my name. Or what I thought was my name.”

She inhaled a breath of realization. “He called you Dutch.”

“Yes, but how? How could he possibly have known?”

“Hon, I’m still working on the day-you-were-born thing.”

“Right, sorry. But could you hurry up and get over it? I have questions.”

Her expression turned dubious. “Got any other astonishing tidbits to impart?”

With a shrug, I said, “Not really. Unless you count the fact that I’ve known every language ever spoken since that whole day-I-was-born thing. That’s probably worthy of note.”

I was tired, so I couldn’t be completely positive, but I had the distinct feeling Cookie seized.