Second Grave on the Left

Chapter Twenty

My eyes drifted shut as the creatures closed in. I was the grim reaper, for heaven’s sake. Literally. Reyes said I could fight them, but how? I didn’t even own a sword. But I was bright, damn it. I had that going for me. So bright, the departed could see me from continents away. Or so I’d been told. If the demons had been banished from the light, why could they get close to me? Why were they not banished in my light?

My eyes flew open.

The moment I thought it, the moment the idea popped into my head, a visceral force sparked inside me, vibrated with energy, shook with need, churned and grew, building and building until I could no longer contain it.

“Angel,” I said, unable to control the energy swirling within me, “run.”

Three things happened simultaneously. Angel’s hand left mine, the prickly points of razor-sharp teeth pierced the skin around the back of my neck, and light exploded out of me in every direction, flooding the room with brilliance, saturating and swallowing every shadow. The roar of raw energy consuming everything in its path drowned out the screams of demons. They burst into flames, burned like paper into ashes, and when the light returned to me, tucking itself safely inside the core of my being, I stood for a long while contemplating the utter coolness of what had just happened.

“Charley,” Uncle Bob said, bursting into the room, “what was that sound?” Dad was on his heels as they rushed down the steps.

“Wait,” I called to them, holding up a hand. “Just stay there a minute.”

“Is that Farrow?” Uncle Bob asked.

“Call an ambulance.” I inched closer and realized that Reyes’s incorporeal self was nowhere around. My heart seized until I heard his voice echo off the walls.

“It’s still vulnerable.”

I swung around to see him crouching on a shelf, balancing on the balls of his feet, one hand raised, gripping the hilt of his sword. The tip of the blade was at rest on the ground in front of him. It was almost as tall as I was. His robe billowed around him, up and over his head to fill every corner of the room. It swelled and receded, and I felt like an ocean of dark mass had swallowed me. He was the most magnificent being I’d ever seen.

And he was here. He was alive. “I thought I had vanquished you, too.”

He turned his head, but I couldn’t see his face. “I’m no demon. I was forged in the light.”

“The light from the fires of hell,” I reminded him. He didn’t respond. Suddenly I was angry. Why did everything about being a grim reaper have to be so difficult? “Why didn’t you just tell me I could do that?”

“As I said, it would be like telling a fledgling it could fly. You have to know you can do it on a visceral level. Had I told you, I would’ve been doing you no favors.”

“What if I hadn’t figured it out, Reyes?”

His hooded head tilted to one side. “Why question such things? You did it. You succeeded. End of story. But that is still vulnerable,” he said, eyeing his corporeal body, the tattered, shredded shell of the man he used to be.

“You’ll be fine when we get you to a hospital.”

“To what end?”

I turned back to him. “What do you mean?”

“Do you think that was it? Do you think my father will just give up? That was a win for him. He now knows a portal walks the Earth. He’ll stop at nothing, and he’ll find a way to take you down. To rip you apart limb from limb to get at your core, your essence. And he now knows your weakness.” He glanced back at his body. “You don’t understand what will happen if my father gets ahold of me. There’s a reason I need to ditch my corporeal self, Dutch. It’s a chance I can’t take.”

“Charley, I need to get to him. He’s dying.”

I could hear the sirens of an ambulance growing louder. “Just one moment,” I said to Uncle Bob. I didn’t know what Reyes would do if Uncle Bob got near him. “What do you mean? What reason?”

Reyes toppled from the shelf to land effortlessly in front of his physical body. “They can find me. They can track me through this body,” he said.

“You already told me that. But there’s another reason. What is it?”

He shook his head. “You cleared the path. Now I can finish this.”

The realization of what I’d done stunned me to my toes. I stepped closer. “Why didn’t you just kill me when you had the chance? Why do this?”

“Charley,” Dad said in warning, “what’s going on?”

Reyes raised a gloved hand to my face. The heat that emanated from him caressed me like hot silk. “Kill you?” he asked, his velvety voice winding its way to my core. “That would be like smothering the sun.”

I blinked in helplessness as Reyes turned and raised his blade, both hands on the hilt of the massive weapon. As he brought it down with a lightning-quick strike, I bolted through time, ducked under his arms, and covered his body with my own. The blade came to a stop millimeters from my spine.

He lifted it with a growl. “Move,” he said, his voice edged with a hard warning.

“No.” I couldn’t stop the evidence of emotion from bursting forth, from stinging my eyes. I ground my teeth as I lay on Reyes. Soaked with blood, his body was still like an inferno, hot, vital and alive. His heart beat underneath my palms. His pulse roared in my ears. “I’m not letting you do this.”

He took a menacing step forward and lowered his hood so I could see the hard lines of his face. “You don’t understand what will happen if they find me, if they take me.”

“I do understand,” I said, my voice pleading. “They’ll torture you. They’ll use the key to get onto this plane. But—”

“It’s not that simple.”

That was simple? “Then what? Just say it.”

He worked his jaw, reluctance radiating off him. Finally, he said, “I’m like you. I’m the key.”

“I know. I understand that.”

“No, you don’t.” He rubbed his forehead with a gloved hand. “Just like you’re the portal into heaven—” He dropped his head as though ashamed. “—I’m the portal out of hell. If they get ahold of me, legions will come through, and they will not have to piggyback to get onto this plane.”

I took a moment to absorb his meaning. It was hard to believe. We were so much more alike than I’d ever imagined. Both keys. Both portals. One to heaven and one to hell. Like a mirror.

“They would have direct access through me, just like the departed have direct access to heaven through you. And the first thing they’ll do is hunt you down. They’ll have a way out of hell, and with you, they’ll have a way into heaven. Now, move, or I’ll move you.”

He would do it, too. He would move me, throw me across the floor to get to his body. I felt such desperation when I looked up at him, such agony. So I raised my hand and spoke.

“Rey’aziel, te vincio.”

He stopped, his eyes widening in disbelief.

“That’s right,” I said when he gazed at me in question, “I bind you.”

He stepped back, the shock plain on his face. “No,” he said, grabbing at his robe as it disintegrated around him. His blade fell and seemed to shatter and disappear when it hit the floor, and he looked back at me, his eyes pleading. “Dutch, no.”

The guilt that stabbed through my heart felt a hundred times worse than anything he could have done to me with his sword. The accusing stare, the betrayal in his eyes. Then he was gone. In an instant, his corporeal body came to life with a loud gasp. He seemed to seize, his teeth welded together as he writhed in pain, the agony on his face so evident, so absolute.

“Uncle Bob!” I screamed, and he and Dad barreled toward me. “Please, help him.”

They loaded Reyes into the back of an ambulance. He’d already been fitted with oxygen and an IV. His steely body looked so vulnerable, so childlike. I wanted nothing more than to wrap him in my arms and make everything bad that had ever happened to him go away. But that would involve the magic of fairy tales. Even with my abilities, or possibly in spite of them, the last thing I believed in was magic.

Uncle Bob, Dad, and I had rehearsed our story before the ambulance arrived. The three of us had been heading to my apartment, so the story went, for some paperwork on a case when I heard a sound in the basement. We found Reyes there unconscious and called an ambulance. It sounded good if one didn’t look too close. But after I’d told it about twenty thousand times, it got kind of old.

I sat in the waiting room at the hospital, still wrapped in my dad’s jacket to cover my blood-soaked clothes and hoping for word on Reyes’s condition as another doctor drilled me with questions. “Look, that’s all I know. I have no idea how he was injured or what happened, and I’m sorry some of the injuries look days old. I just found him like that.”

Neil Gossett, after dismissing the physician with a scowl, sat down next to me, two coffees in hand.

“Thanks for that,” I said.

“Where’s your uncle?”

“He had to go back to the station. We just solved a pretty big case, and he’s taking statements.” He was also going to let Cookie know what happened. She’d be glad we found Reyes.

“Well,” Neil said, handing me a cup and frowning at the blood still on my hands, “the way I see it, Reyes woke up in that long-term-care unit with amnesia. He was in a coma, after all, with a head wound. Didn’t know who he was, much less where he was. Can’t possibly be held accountable for escaping when he had no idea he was doing it.”

I gaped at him. With a grin, he reached over and closed my mouth.

“You would do that?” I asked, appreciation evident in my voice.

“I would do that.”

I sighed a breath of relief. “Neil, thank you so much.”

“Don’t mention it,” he said, taking a sip. “No, really, don’t mention it. I like my job.”

I smiled. “Oh, hell yeah. Now I have something to blackmail you with. Hmmm,” I said, taking a long sip of hot java, “what do I need?”

“Your head examined?” he asked. “Which, by the way, you don’t have to resort to blackmail to get. I know some people who know some people.”

“If I want my head shrunk, I’ll talk to my sister.”

“Oh, dude, your sister is so hot.” He sat back, his expression full of reminiscent thought.

“Ew.” She was beautiful, but still. Neil Gossett? With my flesh and blood? Not likely. “I have to tell you something.”

He straightened. “Sounds serious.”

“It is. I bound him.”

“What?”

With a heavy sigh, I said, “I bound him, like tied him.”

He leaned toward me and asked under his breath, “Should you be telling me this?”

“Not like that.” After a backhand to his shoulder, I lowered my eyes, ashamed at what I was about to tell him. “I bound his incorporeal self to his corporeal body. He can’t leave it. He’s bound to it.”

“You can do that?”

“Apparently. It just kind of came to me.”

“Wow.”

“No, what I mean is, he’s mad.”

He paused and leveled an astonished stare on me. “What?”

“He’s kind of furious,” I said, shrugging one corner of my mouth.

Neil worked his jaw a moment, as if trying to figure out what to say. “Charley,” he said, apparently decided, “I’ve seen Reyes furious once, remember? It left an impression.”

“I know and I’m sorry. He was going to essentially commit suicide. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“So you infuriate him then send him back to prison?” he asked, his voice a harsh whisper.

I cringed. He made it sound so bad. “Pretty much.”

“Holy shit, Charley.”

“What’d she do now?”

We both looked up. Owen Vaughn, the guy who tried to maim me in high school, stood over us in his black police uniform. Shiny badge and all.

“Vaughn,” Neil said by way of a chilly greeting.

Owen tapped his badge. “Officer Vaughn,” he corrected. “I need to know what happened in that basement.”

Oh, for the love of Pete’s Dragon. “I gave my statement to Detective Davidson,” I said, challenging him with my eyes.

“Don’t you mean Uncle Bob?”

“That’s the one.”

Owen looked down the hall each way, then leaned down to me. “Would you like to know what I think of you?”

“Um, is that a trick question?”

“Never mind,” he said, straightening. “I’ll save it for a more appropriate time.” He smirked in anticipation. “Like the day I haul your ass to jail.”

As he stormed off, Neil asked, “Seriously, what the hell did you do to him?”

“You were his danged friend,” I said, throwing a palm up. “You tell me.”

Neil stuck around awhile; then Cookie showed up with food and a change of clothes. She tried to get me to go home, but I just couldn’t leave, not before knowing Reyes’s condition. Dad came and went. Gemma came and went. A doctor finally came out, his eyes weary. Reyes was in ICU, but he was doing remarkably well, all things considered. Still, I couldn’t leave. Angel showed up around dark and stayed the entire night with me. He sat on the floor beside my head as I laid claim to a small padded bench and slept as well as could be expected on a small padded bench.

Uncle Bob came back early the next morning, a little annoyed. “Why didn’t you go home?”

“’Cause.” I rubbed my eyes then my back, glancing over at Angel. “Did you stay here all night, babe?”

“Of course,” he said. “That guy over there was eyeing you the whole time.”

“Who, that man?” I asked, pointing to the guy asleep across from me. “I think he just sleeps with his eyes open like that.”

“Oh. That’s just wrong.”

“Yeah. So what’s up?” I asked Ubie.

“We’re going to Ruiz. We were granted a permit to exhume the body of one Mr. Saul Romero.”

“Oh, good. Who’s Saul Romero?”

“The guy Hana Insinga is allegedly buried under.”

“Oh, right. I knew that.”

“So, you in?”

I offered a weak shrug. “I guess. The state won’t let me see Reyes anyway.”

“Then why the hell did you stay here all night?”

I shrugged again. “Glutton. I need a shower.”

“Come on, I’ll take you. We have to pick up Cookie, anyway, and meet the sheriff up there.”

We pulled into the Ruiz Cemetery right behind Mimi and Warren Jacobs. Kyle Kirsch was already there with his father. From the crimson lining their eyes, I’d say neither got much sleep. Kyle’s mother had been picked up in Minnesota and was awaiting transport back to New Mexico. And, sadly, Hy Insinga was there as well, her face the definition of agony. My heart ached for her.

“It’s that one,” Mimi told the Mora County sheriff, pointing to Mr. Romero’s grave. “The second one on the left.”

Two hours later, a team from the Office of the Medical Investigator from Albuquerque was lifting out the twenty-year-old remains of Hana Insinga. The pain on her mother’s face was too much to bear. Grateful she had a friend with her, I went back to Ubie’s SUV and watched as Hy Insinga walked up to a trembling and sobbing Mimi, worried what the outcome of that reunion would be. They hugged each other for a very long time.

Three days later, Reyes Farrow, after showing remarkable and unexplainable improvement, was released into the care of the Penitentiary of New Mexico’s medical team. I drove to Santa Fe to see him, literally quaking in my boots as I stood in line with the other visitors, waiting my turn to be ION scanned for drug residue. But a guard pulled me out of line and told me Deputy Warden Gossett wanted to talk to me first.

“How you holding up?” Neil asked when the guard showed me into his office.

I was getting used to the organized clutter and sat across from him. “I’m good,” I said with a shrug. “Taking a little break from the PI business at the moment.”

“Is everything okay?” he asked, alarmed.

“Oh, yeah. Just nothing too pressing. So what’s up? Can I see him, or is he still in the medical unit?”

Neil glanced down before answering. “I wanted to tell you this myself instead of them telling you in the visitation area.”

My heart lurched in my chest. “Did something happen? Is Reyes okay?”

“He’s fine, Charley, but … he refuses to see you.” He tilted his head in regret. “He had the state deny your application.”

I sat in stunned silence a full minute and absorbed the meaning of what he said. A vise locked around my chest and was inching closed. My periphery darkened. I could barely breathe, and I needed out of there. “Well, I’ll be going, then.” I rose and headed for the door.

Neil rounded his desk and caught my arm. “Charley, he’ll change his mind. He’s just angry.”

I offered a smile. “Neil, it’s okay. Just … take good care of him?”

“You know I will.”

I walked out of the prison with a smile on my face and drove home fighting the suffocating weight of sorrow tooth and nail. Wetness slipped past my lashes nonetheless. It was pathetic. I contemplated my future on the way. What would life be like without Reyes Farrow in it? He could no longer separate from his body. He could no longer come to me, talk to me, touch me, save my ass every other day. After a lifetime of having him practically at my beck and call, I was alone.

By the time I pulled into my apartment complex, I realized in a most deplorable and humbling way that I was now one of those women, one of the hundreds of women who tried to see him, who tried in vain to get close. I was Elaine Oake.

I was nobody.

After trudging to my apartment, I fired up my computer and skimmed a few e-mail messages marked urgent, two from Uncle Bob. Deciding they could wait, I exited and checked my fake e-mail while making up excuses to hit the sack at 11 in the A.M. I wanted to be productive, but lethargy sprinkled with traces of depression was calling to me. A message from Mistress Marigold popped onto the screen. It was probably the exact same message she’d sent Cookie and Garrett. Barely interested at that point — and wondering if I really needed to ever take another breath again — I clicked on the link and read it.

I’ve been waiting a long time to hear from you.