Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet (Charley Davidson)

11

Since killing people is illegal,

can I have a Taser just for shits and giggles?

—T-SHIRT

Maybe Art was right. Maybe Harper had repressed something. An inciting incident that set this whole thing into motion.

If anyone would know, it should be her first therapist.

I called Cookie and after going through verbal instructions on how to turn the ring volume down on her phone, I got the information for Harper’s first therapist, a psychologist named Julia Penn. She was retired, and Cookie couldn’t get any contact information other than an address. She lived in Sandia Park just over the mountains. I had a thousand and one things I wanted to do today, including check on Harper and Quentin, and pay a couple of old friends a visit, namely Rocket, a departed savant who lived in an abandoned mental asylum. But I decided to pay her a visit anyway. It shouldn’t take too long.

I drove on the historic byway of Turquoise Trail through a rich landscape to the prestigious San Pedro Overlook, an affluent community at the base of Sandia Park.

Struck by its beauty, I called Cookie back.

“Did I not mention the ring thing is bothering me today?”

“Cook, how can you have a hangover? You were fine at four-ish this morning.”

“It hadn’t hit me yet. It hit me later. Around seven twenty-two. Are those Gemma’s pants?”

“Yep.”

“How did she—?”

“I have no idea. Look, I just called because screw this apartment building crap. Since we can’t have the cool apartment, I say we move out here.”

“That’s a great idea,” she said.

“I know, right?”

“Except, you can’t pay your rent.”

“All the more reason to move.”

“And houses out there are priced higher than you can count.”

“It sounds silly when you put it that way.”

“You know those women in nursing homes who have to be restrained around the clock because they mix up everyone’s medication and steal all the bedpans?”

“Yes,” I said, wondering what I was walking into.

“That’s going to be you.”

She was probably right. If I lived that long.

I drove up to a stunning adobe casita with a three-car garage and a manicured lawn, wondering if I could afford something like that if I sent all my purchases back and sold Misery. Behind it were the Sandia Mountains and in front, gorgeous red-rock canyons. Julia met me out front and led me around the house to the back.

“I got a call from Mrs. Lowell,” Dr. Penn said as she showed me to an outside patio behind the house. She had a fire burning in a kiva fireplace. “I’ve been expecting to hear from you. But I didn’t expect you to show up on my doorstep.”

Wonderful. Had Mrs. Lowell called the PTA as well? Maybe Harper’s childhood friends? Or her second-grade teacher and high school volleyball coach. She must have been on the phone for hours.

Dr. Penn, an averaged-sized woman with long gray hair pulled back into a hair clip, motioned for me to sit, her outdoor furniture elegant to the extreme. “I can’t talk about the case. I’m sure you know that.”

“I’m aware that you can’t talk specifics, so I was going to ask some more general questions. You know, things that could apply to anyone.”

She offered me an impatient smile.

“Do you know what the symptoms of PTSD are?”

“Are you going to attack me, Ms. Davidson?”

“Not at all. I just want to make sure you know the symptoms.”

“Of course I know the symptoms.”

“Did you not recognize them in Harper? It sounds to me like they were genuine.”

“Do I come into your office and tell you how to run your investigations?”

I thought a minute. “Not that I’m aware of, but I haven’t been in my office for a while now.”

“Then please, Ms. Davidson, don’t tell me how to diagnose a patient. I think I’ve had a few more years of experience than you.”

Snobbish much? “So, what you’re trying to tell me is that you screwed up but you can’t take it back because it would look bad.”

“You can see yourself out, yes?” She rose and started for her back door.

I stood as well. “Or did Mrs. Lowell pay you to misdiagnose Harper? To keep her drugged and compliant?”

If my stepmother’d had money, I had no doubt in my mind that she would have done that very thing. To shut me up. To keep me from causing trouble or embarrassment.

She turned on me. “I am a psychologist. I rarely recommend drugs and am not licensed to prescribe them.” She turned to her fireplace. “Every psyche is different. Some are more fragile than others. Harper missed her father, what she once had with him. She saw Mrs. Lowell as a threat. It’s all in the timing.”

“Ah, the marriage. But what if something else happened? Looking back, knowing what you know now, could she have had a form of PTSD?”

With a sigh of resignation, she said, “It’s possible. But I even tried regression therapy.”

“You mean hypnosis.”

“Yes. I shouldn’t be telling you this, and I only am because Harper hired you and her stepmother said to cooperate, but she lost a chunk of time. A week, to be exact. She couldn’t remember anything about the week she spent with her grandparents. Nothing at all.”

“And she’d stayed with them during the Lowells’ honeymoon, right?”

“Yes, but they doted on her hand and foot. Now, that is all I can tell you. The Lowells are very good friends of mine. I’ve already overstepped the bounds of confidentiality.”

“I just have one more question.”

With a beleaguered sigh, she said, “Fine. What is it?”

“Are you renting or did you buy this outright?”

When I’d asked Dr. Penn about her house, she became slightly volatile, accusing me of accusing her of taking payoff money to be able to afford her luxurious lifestyle. I really just wanted to know if she was buying or renting. Clearly we’d gotten off on the wrong foot.

On the way back to the big city, I called Gemma for more intel. “So, how’s the head?” I asked.

“What the hell did Cookie put in those margaritas?” She sounded like she had a cold. It was funny.

“Your guess is as good as mine, which is why I only had one.”

“Oh, my God, I had like twelve.”

Being the loving, nurturing sister that I was, I laughed. “Let that be a lesson.”

“Never drink twelve margaritas in a row?”

“No,” I said with a pfft. “That’s totally acceptable. Never trust Cookie.”

“Got it. Have you seen my pants?”

“Speaking of which, how did you get home without them?”

“I borrowed a pair of your sweats. I ran into a convenience store with them on. I talked to neighbors out in their yard when I pulled up. And only after I got inside did I realize they had ‘Exit Only’ written across the back.”

“You stole my favorite sweats?”

“I wanted to die.”

“It’s weird that sweats would make you suicidal. I’d analyze the crap out of that if I were you.”

“Do you actually wear those in public?”

“Only when I go out in them. Hey, how hard is it to diagnose PTSD?”

After a long pause, she said, “Charley, I know why you’re calling, and yes, hon, it’s painfully obvious you’re suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder.”

“What? No. I’m talking about a client.”

“Mmm-hmm. And does this client have brown hair and gold eyes and talk to dead people?”

“Subtle. Don’t make me yell into this phone,” I said with an evil smirk. Twelve margaritas would make that thought very unappealing.

“Oh, for the love of God, please don’t.”

“Okay, then focus. It’s not for me. Really. How easy is it to diagnose in a child?”

“Well, unless the patient doesn’t remember anything that happened to him or her, then it’s pretty easy. I mean the symptoms are fairly universal, although each case is a little different. No matter what happened, it should be fairly straightforward. Anything from a car accident to a natural disaster to soldiers exchanging fire on the battlefield can cause it.”

I decided to take a stab in the dark. “What if something happened to a young child, but she didn’t remember what it was? Or maybe she saw something? Or heard something? Can that cause PTSD?”

“Absolutely. But that happens even to adults. I once had a case where a woman was in a car accident and couldn’t get to her crying son. She couldn’t see him, but she could hear him. And before help could arrive on scene, he passed away. She heard his last cries.”

“Okay,” I said, interrupting her. “I don’t like this case.”

“I didn’t either, but I have a point.”

“Fine, then, but make it quick.”

“Afterwards, she had what is referred to as hysterical deafness, or psychosomatic hearing loss.”

“Like the guys who go off to war and go blind for no apparent reason.”

“Exactly. Their minds can’t absorb the horrors they’ve seen, so the brain refuses to pro cess visual information. The visual cortex shuts down. It’s completely psychological. But those are pretty extreme cases. PTSD is usually much less blatant, so oftentimes people don’t even realize they have it. Like, say, a PI who was held captive and suffered great physical and emotional trauma.”

“Are we back to this again?”

“Charley, let me hook you up with a friend of mine.”

I straightened. Now she was talking my language. “Is he cute?”

“She is a very good psychotherapist. One of the best in the city.”

“Wait,” I said as another thought occurred to me.

“No more waiting.”

“What if this happened decades ago? Would it have been harder to diagnose PTSD back then?”

“Possibly. PTSD has been around since the dawn of man, but it only gained notoriety as a diagnosis around the eighties. Then it took a while to catch on.”

“Thanks.” That might explain how Dr. Penn had missed it. Why she looked so hard at other causes of Harper’s illness. I had to find more about what happened to Harper during her parents’ honeymoon.

I decided to do a quick drive-by at Pari’s place to check on Harper. The shop wasn’t open yet, it was still early for a tattoo parlor, but Tre was there looking at Internet porn. He had good taste.

“Where’s Pari?” I asked him.

He shrugged and I sensed a jolt of hostility. “She’s out.”

Uh-oh, trouble in paradise. He seemed really bummed. Not enough to hold my attention, though. I looked past him at the pictures of clients Pari had on her wall and pointed. “Hey, those are the Bandits.”

I stepped closer to the pic of the ragtag team of bikers. They owned my favorite mental asylum, for some bizarre reason, and the picture was of my favorite three bikers ever: Donovan, Eric, and Michael. They were showing off their tats, each of them posing like bodybuilders, but something about them clicked in the back of my mind. I’d seen them out of context recently, in another situation, another environment. It was odd. Something about their shape. Tall, medium-tall, and just plain medium.

“Okay, well, I’ll just be back here.”

Tre shrugged, his acknowledgment barely noticeable.

I wondered about the Bandits as long as my ADD would allow me to, then moved on to my childhood dream of being an astronaut and how I would’ve tried to save the world if a comet were headed toward Earth. I concluded that the human race was doomed.

“Hey, Harper,” I said, ducking into her closetlike room.

She’d been looking out a window the size of a business card and turned to me. “Hi.”

“Do you have a minute?”

“Really?” she asked, indicating her surroundings with her upturned palms.

“Right,” I said. “I hope Pari is treating you well.”

“She’s kind of different.”

“That she is.”

“Did you talk to Art?”

“Yes, and he’s definitely not our guy.”

“Oh, I know that. I was just hoping he might have figured something out.”

“Well, he did have some pretty interesting comments,” I said, my clever meaning disguised in a subtly subversive way. “He seems to think something happened to you while you were staying with your grandparents.”

She stood again, her jaw set in frustration. “It always comes back to that, but I just don’t remember. For some reason, by the time my family got me into therapy and I’d started to analyze what could have happened, I’d completely forgotten that week. It’s not all that unusual. I mean, how much about your childhood do you really remember?”

She had a point. Even my childhood was pretty spotty, and I could recollect anything if I wanted to. I couldn’t imagine how much a normal kid would forget.

“But he said you’d changed after you came back.”

She looked at me, confused. “He hardly knew me. My parents dated and got married before we knew what happened. Let’s just say we were not brought into the loop on that decision.”

“That’s weird. I wasn’t brought into the loop with my parents’ marriage either.”

“Really? How old were you?”

“Twelve months.”

She giggled. “I can’t imagine why they didn’t ask your opinion.”

“I know, right? Well, if you don’t have anything, I guess I might have to actually do some investigative work.”

She grinned. “Isn’t that what you do?”

“Oh, yeah, sure. Right.” I nudged her with my elbow. “I am a PI, after all.” Telling her I could talk to the dead and often used them to help me solve crimes might be awkward at this juncture. It would be best if she thought I had my crap together instead of scattered from here to Timbuktu, like, say, the crap on a cattle ranch. “Have you checked out Tre? He’s well worth the effort.”

Her shoulders raised in modesty. “Not yet.”

“Well, see that you do, missy. Hard manly flesh like that shouldn’t go to waste.”

“Okay. I promise.”

I stepped out of Pari’s shop just as my phone rang.

Speaking of whom, “Hey, Par.”

“Where the heck are you?”

I stopped and looked around. “Right here. Where are you?”

“You’re here?”

“Here where?”

“Charley.”

“Pari.”

“You’re supposed to meet my dates.”

“Oh, right. That’s where I am. I’m almost there.”

“Are you sure? Because we’re on a pretty tight schedule.”

“Positive.” Knowing it’d take me forever to get a parking space, I took off in a full-out sprint. I may not look good when I got there, but I’d be damned if I was late. Or, well, later.

Fortunately, the Frontier was a mere two blocks away. I thought about ordering a carne adovada burrito and a sweet roll before sitting with Pari and—did she say dates? As in more than one? But she might hurt me. Still, their sweet rolls were a thing of beauty.

The Frontier was an odd sort of place just across from the University of New Mexico. It ran the length of several partially divided rooms. I finally found Pari and her dates in the very last one. There weren’t many people in that part. Several students were having a Bible study group in one corner, and a homeless man named Iggy sat at a booth off by himself. Pari and her dates—literally, as there were three men sitting with her—were stashed in the farthest corner.

This wouldn’t be awkward at all.

She brightened when she saw me and motioned me over, looking only mildly ridiculous in her sunglasses, knowing I would be there.

“Hey, you!” She stood for a hug. “I haven’t seen you in forever. How weird that we’d run into each other here.”

Oh, okay, we were playing that game. I wished she would’ve filled me in. I thought we were playing the I-have-trust-issues game. Why else would she want me to sit there and measure their honesty while she grilled them?

“This is Mark, Fabian, and Theo. Guys, this is Charley. She sees dead people.”

I rolled my eyes. I closed them first so no one would see, but the minute my lids locked down, my eyes did somersaults.

She laughed and patted my back hard enough to dislodge my esophagus. Maybe she was perturbed that I was late. “Just kidding.” She waved a dismissive hand at them. “Nobody can see dead people. You should join us.”

Before I could answer, she shoved me into the nearest chair. This was going to be the worst dates I’d ever been on. Though she had good taste, I’d give her that. They all had varying degrees of dark hair and tan skin. Mark and Fabian were Hispanic, and Theo was Caucasian with something else thrown in for good measure. Possibly Asian.

“So, Mark,” she said, sitting beside me, “have you ever been arrested for kiddie porn?”

Oddly enough, my forehead dropped into the palm of my hand.

But Mark was good-natured enough to laugh it off. “Well, so far nobody’s found my stash.”

After an appreciative laugh, she turned to Theo. “How about you?”

Theo was a little less accepting. “Am I being interrogated?”

Pari snorted. “What? Absolutely not. But have you?”

After an hour of the guys pretending they weren’t on an interview and me pretending I was just there to eat despite the fact that I never got any food, I came to one, noticeable conclusion: Pari was a big fat liar.

“So?” she asked after they’d left. I was exhausted. Trying to read every emotion while wading through hers was like trying to sprint in five feet of water.

“So?” I asked in return.

“Sooooo?” she asked again, believing that drawing out the O would make me spill quicker. She raised her brows and waited for my answer.

“Pari, the only one who lied throughout this entire conversation was you.”

She balked. “You were reading my emotions?”

“Par, I can’t weed through them like you obviously think I can. I can’t pick and choose. It’s an all-or-nothing kind of gig.”

“Oh. So?” She raised her brows expectantly.

“Well, I did manage to figure out three things.”

“Wonderful.” She shimmied in her chair and settled in for the telling of my great and mighty insights.

“You’re afraid of squirrels. You’ve never been to Australia. And you’re a convicted felon.”

Her face fell. “I could’ve told you that.”

“Yes, but you didn’t. Now, why is that?”

With a defensive shrug, she said, “It was a long time ago. I was really young.”

“How young?”

“Twenty. Okay? Now, what did you think about—?”

“What were you convicted of?”

“Chuck, we aren’t here about me. So, which one did you like?”

“They were all three pretty great, though I’m having a hard time seeing you with an investment broker. But you have good taste, I’ll give you that. So, what were you convicted of?”

“Fine,” she said, grinding her teeth. “In a word, hacking.”

I could not have hidden my surprise if someone had paid me to.

“What? I was young.”

“You’re a computer whiz?”

“Was. Was a computer whiz. Now I’m not allowed near a computer. It’s the terms of my probation.”

“So, that means you’ve been on probation for almost nine years.”

“Yeah. I got ten years’ probation for hacking into a federal vault and funneling money to my mom’s bank account. I thought it would be funny. And it was until I got caught.”

“You funneled money?”

“Eighteen dollars.”

“Wow.” Apparently everyone knew how to funnel money but me. I was so behind the times. “I just never knew. But really? Only eighteen dollars?”

“That’s why I only got probation. Like I said, I just thought it would be funny.” Her shoulder lifted into an innocent shrug. “And I’d get bragging rights. You have no idea how addictive bragging rights are in the hacking world.”

“Obviously. But you have a computer in your office.”

“I can have one for business purposes.” She raised a finger to make sure I knew she was serious. “No Internet of any kind.”

“But you do have Internet. I saw Tre looking at porn on your computer.”

“What?” She seemed appalled.

“Like you don’t do the same thing.”

“Yeah, but I don’t work for me. He does.”

“That’s why you were trying to rewire everything,” I said, the truth hitting me like a brick.

“He was looking at porn?”

“You were trying to hide the fact that you have Internet.”

“Yes, yes,” she said, growing annoyed. “It’s so frustrating. I can’t even have a computer with a modem. So I have to work around that.”

“I am so in awe of you right now. I always wanted to be a computer whiz, and I would’ve been if not for Paul Sanchez.”

Her brows rose in question.

“He told me computers were alien technology and they used them to track us.”

“Weren’t you abducted by aliens once?”

I nodded. “Exactly why I stopped going around them. By the time I figured out Paul was wrong, I’d sailed past my prime. Now, thanks to him, I can hardly program a universal remote.”

She blinked. “So, about my dates?”

“You can do better.”

I looked up into the eyes of the bartender Dad had hired, only she was looking at Pari, and the invitation dripping off her in spades was like looking at a waterfall of sin and sensual degradation. A fact that was not lost on Pari if the dreamy expression on her face was any indication.

“I’m Sienna—” She slid a card across the table toward Pari. “—if you want to interview me.”

One corner of her mouth lifted into a wickedly dimpled grin before she turned and started out the back door.

“So,” Pari said, gathering herself in a rush of emotion, “you’re just going to walk away?”

Sienna flashed a gorgeous smile and walked back to us. And I was so not doing the interview thing again.

“I have to get something to eat before I die. And I need a mocha latte. Do they have those here?”

Pari shrugged, suddenly very disinterested in anything I had to say.

“Thanks for caring, Par.”

“What do you do, Sienna?”

The woman sat in my seat when I stood, making it clear I was not welcome. I felt so appreciated. I strolled to the front and ordered a carne adovada burrito, a sweet roll, and a café mocha. Then I had to figure out how I was going to pay for it. I pulled out my cards. Three of them. Everything I had left.

“Okay,” I said, trying to cipher in my head, “put three twenty-seven on this one.” I handed it to her. “And two fifty on the flowery one.” I handed her the flowery one, too.

The girl took the cards from me and rolled her eyes. I could’ve knocked the shit out of her. She’d have good reason to roll her eyes then. But knocking the shit out of rude people wasn’t my style. Heckling them every chance I got was. Hopefully she’d screw up soon. I didn’t have all day.

“And four whatever is left on the blue one that looks like a camel died on it.” She went to take it from me, and after snatching it back, I leaned in and said, “If it’s not too much trouble.”

She gritted her teeth and said, “Not at all,” before jerking it out of my hand. Then she mouthed the word loser as she swiped it and punched in numbers. Oh, yeah, this girl was going down. She had no idea who she was messing with. And, sadly, she didn’t seem to care.

I hoped her drawer came up short at the end of her shift. Karma’s a bitch.

She pushed the sales key on the register, and an alarm went off. Damn it. Did my card not go through? Maybe I mixed them up. But why would an alarm go off? Didn’t the little machine just decline the card and go on its merry way?

The manager, a twenty-something guy who would forever look like he’d just gotten his braces off and was late for a chemistry exam, ran over with a humongous smile on his face.

“You won!” he said, his enthusiasm more than I could bear at the momen—

Wait. I’d won?

“It’s our anniversary, and your order has been randomly chosen as today’s lucky winner,” he said, squealing like a kid on a roller coaster. He clapped his hands together, his excitement suddenly infectious.

The surly girl’s mouth dropped open, and I couldn’t help the smug expression I offered her. Oh, the agony of it all. The anguish. The torture! In your face, girlfriend.

No. No, I had to be the bigger person. It wasn’t her fault she was born a loser. I mouthed the word. It was infantile, but I did it anyway. She rolled her eyes again.

I turned to the manager with an expectant smile. Maybe I’d won a cruise. Or a yacht. Or a small island. “I won?”

“You won,” he said. Everyone around me started clapping. Except for Iggy, the homeless guy in the corner. He didn’t seem to care. But everyone else was super-excited for me. “You won a year’s supply of our famous sweet rolls.”

I stilled. This … this couldn’t be real. A year’s supply? “No way!” I shouted. This was so much better than a yacht. Especially since I lived in a desert.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. He hurried to the back, then reappeared with a booklet of some kind and a camera. After the surly girl took pictures in which I was fairly certain she cut off my head, I walked to the back room again to wait for my burrito and was congratulated by a few customers as they passed by my table. I felt like a celebrity. Like I’d won the lottery. Or an Academy Award.

Since Pari was busy being seduced by an Egyptian goddess, I decided to give them some alone time. And to let my nerves calm down a bit. That little adrenaline rush was more taxing than I thought it would be. I strolled back one room and sat in a center booth.

As I sat waiting for my number to pop up on the marquee, my mouth watering as I imagined the red chili in the burrito and the butter dripping off the sweet roll, I decided I had to get out more. Two months without the sugary goodness of a sweet roll was entirely too long to wait. What the hell had I been thinking?

I hadn’t been thinking. I’d gone crazy. Gemma was right. I had a disorder. I’d have to see if there was an OTC I could use. Like a salve. Or a medicated powder.

I was so into my musings that it took me a while to sense the darkness sitting nearby. So close, I could taste it on my tongue. The raw acidity of rotten eggs filled my mouth and nostrils until my stomach heaved in reflex. I fought the feeling and looked to the side toward a man staring at me in a tweed suit and tan fedora. He had his legs and hands crossed and looked like he could have been a professor at the university.

“This is quite an honor,” he said, nodding an acknowledgment.

He had a smooth English accent, the tenor to his voice pleasant but not very deep. His smile was kind and affectionate, but I didn’t miss the darkness lurking just behind his eyes. Still, if this was a demon, why wasn’t he scrambling toward me with drool dripping off his chin? Wasn’t that what they did?

“To be close enough to you to taste the sweetness of fear wafting off your flesh.” He tilted his face up and drew a deep ration of air in through his nostrils. Then he closed his eyes as though savoring what he found there.

And he was right. I was afraid. I couldn’t move, I was so afraid. What if he came after me? What if he pounced? I’d be dead before I could say, Um, Reyes?

He refocused on me with a sheepish expression. “Forgive me. I’ve heard stories of the girl with no fear, so please excuse my surprise.”

“Surprise of what?”

“You’re afraid of me.”

“I’m not afraid of you,” I said, lying through my chattering teeth.

“Of course you are.”

“Those stories were exaggerated anyway.”

The next expression he offered held more wolf than sheep. “I doubt it. Something happened. Your aura has been damaged. So it would be horridly unfair of me, but I’m finding it difficult to hold back. I seem to want nothing more than to rip out your jugular with my teeth and smell the copper in your blood.”

“I have a guardian.”

“But I’m here on a mission,” he said, ignoring me. “I have a message.”

“Have you tried texting?”

“If the boy will stop hunting us, we will leave you alone to live your life and die naturally, though I have to warn you, traditionally reapers don’t live long in corporeal form. Still, you shan’t die by our hands. We will not interfere in your life in any way. We’ll only—” He turned up a careless palm. “—watch from afar.”

That was disturbing.

“But when your body dies,” he continued, lowering his head in warning, “you’re fair game.”

“The boy?” I asked.

He smiled. “Rey’aziel.”

“Reyes is hunting you?”

“You didn’t know?”

I shook my head. It seemed the only movement I could manage. “No.”

“Did you think he just happened upon my soldiers at that ridiculous contest?”

“You mean the fights?” I asked, frowning. “I hadn’t given it that much thought.”

“He has been hunting us down like dogs.”

“Not like dogs.” I shook my head once more. “You don’t deserve the high praise of such a comparison.”

A lecherous grin stole across his face. “There she is. The girl with no fear. It is no wonder he is obsessed. He always was such a clever boy.”

Surely he was talking about someone else. Reyes was no more obsessed with me than he was with dryer lint. He just needed me alive for this war that supposedly hovered on the horizon. He’d told me so on several occasions. “So let me get this straight,” I said, trying to wrap my head around the goings-on of the underworld. “He stops hunting you, and you stop attacking him.”

“We have never attacked him, dear girl. We have no need of him just yet.”

“I would beg to differ. I saw what your demons did to him in that basement.”

“Touché, but that was only to get to you. We can get to him anytime. Those tattoos are there for a reason, love. You, on the other hand, are protected. A treasure not so easily gained. But you do have part of it correct. If he stops hunting us, he’ll live much longer in his physical form, fragile as it is. No more stab wounds. No more gashes of which to tend.”

I jerked to attention. “Gashes?” The bandages he had at the fights.

“You have no idea what the boy has been up to, do you? He’s grown up. Become quite the warrior, if his ability to down my soldiers while hardly breaking a sweat is any indication. But you care for him.” He turned a curious gaze on me. “Perhaps I could make a deal with you instead.”

“What?” I asked, realizing I was actually negotiating with the devil. Or, at the very least, one of his minions.

He unfolded a hand and held it out to me, palm up. “Come with me now. Your death will be quick, and you will rule by my master’s side.”

“Your master? Meaning Satan.”

“That is one colloquialism, yes.”

“Why on all that is holy would I do something like that?”

“Because you have no idea what you’re capable of. What you can do defies everything you have ever known. But right now, you are just a silly girl running about in an ape suit. You’ll be so much more powerful when you shed it. You will shine like the brightest star and you will have just as much power as one.”

Okay, so this guy seemed to know what he was talking about. “Tell me what I’m capable of.”

He leaned in, his eyes black caverns behind the light brown of the human’s he inhabited. “Anything you can imagine.”

Again? Really? “Why do you want me so bad? There have been other reapers.”

“But none like you, my dear. We want you, but we need both of you to gain the advantage. You are so close to doing our jobs for us anyway, we’d just like to be around when the gate is actually opened.” When I questioned him with my eyes, he asked, “What do you think happens when the key of darkness is inserted into the locket of light?”

He raked a salacious gaze from the top of my head to the tips of my booted toes. I felt violated. And repulsed.

“It’s like opening a door directly from hell and straight into the heart of heaven. How many soldiers do you think can slip through before that door is closed? We just have to be at the ready when it happens.”

He couldn’t possibly be saying what I thought. “So, you mean if Reyes and I get together?”

“Yes, well, there’s a bit more to it than that, but that’s the basic idea. Why do you think the master made the son? It wasn’t because he longed for a family, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

I was starting to feel sick. The acrid smell of him made me dizzy. That combined with the constant surge of fear had me almost doubled over with nausea. But I didn’t dare take my eyes off him.

“I’m going to have to turn down your kind offer,” I said, praying he’d leave so I could run to the bathroom.

“Pity. But I do understand. The human mind is so limited, it’s hard to see past the rotting flesh of humanity to bigger and better things.” He seemed so civilized, so educated.

“Is the accent yours?” I asked.

“No, it belongs to the ape I’m wearing. But I like it. I think it suits me.” He rose and adjusted his tie almost joyously. Then he walked around, bent over, and whispered in my ear, the acrid smell of him overpowering. “Tell Rey’aziel hello from Hedeshi.” He straightened and pointed to the coupon book on my table. The one I’d just won. “That was my gift to you, by the way. A token of my admiration.”

When he turned to walk away, a handful of college kids a couple tables away started clapping, their faces alight with appreciation. He stopped and offered them a regal grin. They were applauding as though we’d just given them a theatrical production. But that’s exactly how it would look from their end. Anyone watching would think we were actors, probably rehearsing for a performance at the university. How could the conversation we’d just had been real?

Hedeshi held up a hand in true thespian style and took a bow as I sat dumbfounded. He bowed again as he left; then all eyes turned toward me. Waiting to see what my exit would entail. They were about to be very disappointed.

I looked down at the coupon book for a year’s worth of sweet rolls. With shaking legs, I stood and smiled to our audience, then walked over to Iggy and handed him the book. Knowing I would never make it to the bathroom, I ran out the back door and almost emptied the coffee I’d had on the way over onto the pavement as a cat watched me, her ears twitching in curiosity. Then I took a deep breath, straightened my jacket, and summoned Angel.