Second Grave on the Left

Chapter Six

After parking my cherry red Jeep Wrangler, also known as Misery, half a block away, I swooped back into Mission: Impossible mode to traverse the dangerous domain tucked within the borders of the southern war zone. Gangs proliferated in the poverty-stricken area surrounding the asylum. And the asylum itself, abandoned by the government in the fifties, was now owned by an established biker gang known as the Bandits. For the most part, they were old school, their primary colors reflecting a loyalty to God and country.

I scanned the area, paying special attention to the Bandits’ main house beside the asylum, also known as a Rottweiler den of iniquity — the Bandits loved them some Rottweilers — then I started up the fence as fast as I could. Admittedly, it wasn’t very fast. In all the years I’d trespassed on Bandit turf, the Rottweilers had been out on patrol only a handful of times. The gang usually kept them inside during the day. Praying my luck would hold, yet keeping a weather eye, I clawed and slipped my way to the top of the fence, cringing as the metal wire dug into my fingers. Guys made this stuff look so easy. The only things I liked to scale on a semi-regular basis were those same guys who made this stuff look easy.

Dropping to the other side, I had to stop and regroup, partly to wallow in self-pity and partly to take inventory of my throbbing fingers. Fortunately, they were all present and accounted for. Losing a finger in the line of fence scaling would suck.

After another quick glance at the house, I dashed to the basement window I’d been using to gain illegal access to the asylum since I was in high school. Abandoned asylums had always been a particular fascination of mine. I toured them — also known as breaking and entering — regularly after accidently discovering this asylum one night when I was fifteen. I’d also discovered Rocket Man that night, a relic from 1950s science fiction, when spaceships looked steam driven and aliens were as unwelcome as communists. And I discovered that Rocket was somewhat of a savant in the fact that he knew the names of every person who had ever died, millions upon millions of names stored in his childlike mind. Which came in really handy at times.

I scooted through the basement window on my stomach and dropped into a somersault, landing on my feet on the cement slab of the basement. ’Cause that’s how I roll.

The times I’d tried that same maneuver only to land on my ass with dirt and cobwebs coating my hair didn’t count. I turned to latch the window from the inside. Avoiding Rottweiler jaws always took precedence while visiting Rocket.

“Miss Charlotte!”

For like the gazillionth time that day, I jumped, cutting my finger on the latch. And it was still early. Apparently, this was Scare the Bejesus out of Charley Day. Had I known, I would’ve ordered a cheese ball.

I whirled around and looked up into the grinning face of Rocket Man. He scooped me up into a hug that was soft and warm despite my assailant’s frigid temperature. My breath fogged when I laughed.

“Miss Charlotte,” he said again.

“This is like being hugged by an ice sculpture,” I said, teasing him.

He set me down, his eyes glistening and happy. “Miss Charlotte, you came back.”

I chuckled. “I told you I would come back.”

“Okay, but you have to go now.” He clutched me around the waist, and I suddenly found myself being stuffed back out the basement window. The same window I had just latched.

“Wait, Rocket,” I said, planting my feet on either side of the windowsill, feeling oddly ridiculous. And quite ready for a pelvic exam. I’d been kicked out of asylums before, but never by Rocket. “I just got here,” I protested, pushing against the sill. But holy mother of crap, Rocket was strong.

“Miss Charlotte has to go,” he repeated, not struggling in the least.

I grunted under his weight. “Miss Charlotte doesn’t have to go, Rocket. She promises.”

When he didn’t budge, just pushed me closer and closer to the window, I lost my footing. Before I knew it, my right leg slipped and I found myself being crammed against the tiny window.

That was when I heard the crack, the chilling sound of glass splintering beneath the force. Damn it. If I had to get stitches, Rocket was so going to pay. Well, not literally, but …

I was doing my darnedest to twist and maneuver away from the decades-old glass when Rocket disappeared. In an instant, I dropped to the cement floor, landing mostly on my left shoulder and a little on my head. Pain burst and spread like napalm throughout my nerve endings. Then I realized I couldn’t breathe. I hated when that happened.

Rocket reappeared, picked me up off the ground, and stood me up. “Are you okay, Miss Charlotte?” he asked. Now, he was worried.

All I could do was fan my face, trying to get air to my burning lungs. The fall had knocked the breath out of me. The fact that it was a non-life-threatening condition did little to lessen the state of panic I was slipping into.

When I didn’t answer, Rocket shook me, waited a moment, then shook me again for good measure. I watched the world blur, refocus, then blur again, wondering if the knock to my head had me seizing.

“Miss Charlotte,” he said as I gulped tiny rations of air, none quite large enough to fill the void of imminent suffocation, “why did you do that?”

“What? Me?” I asked, sticking to monosyllabic utterances. I’d work my way up to bigger words in a few.

“Why did you fall?”

“I can’t imagine.” Unfortunately, sarcasm rarely translated into Rocket language.

“New names. I have new names,” he said, dragging me up the stairs. He patted the crumbling walls like they were made of precious metals. That was what Rocket did. Carved name upon name of those who had passed, and while the asylum was huge, I knew he would eventually scrape through the cement-covered walls. He would eventually run out of space. I wondered if the building would fall, if it would crumble to Earth like the people who had been memorialized by Rocket’s hand. If so, what would that do to him? Where would he go? I’d invite him to my place, but I didn’t know how Mr. Wong would take to an oversized kid with a scraping fetish.

“I thought I had to leave,” I said, my lungs relaxing at last.

He stopped on the top step and looked up in thought. “No, you don’t have to go now. Just don’t break the rules.”

I tried not to laugh. He was such a stickler for the rules, though I had no idea what they were. Still, I had to wonder what all that stuffing-me-out-the-window business was about. He’d never tried to bounce me before.

“Rocket, I have to talk to you,” I said, following behind him. He patted the wall on his right as we walked through the crumbling building.

“I have new names. They should not be here. No, ma’am.”

“I know, sweetheart, and I’ll get to them, but I have to ask you something.”

Before I could get hold of his shirt to slow him down, he disappeared again, and it took everything in me not to drop my head into my hands in frustration. Rocket took ADHD to a whole new level.

“Miss Charlotte,” I heard him call from down the same hall. “You need to keep up.”

I took off toward his voice, hoping the crumbling floors would hold and wishing I’d brought a flashlight. “I’m coming. Stay there.”

“All of these,” he said when I reached him. “All of these. They should not be here. They have to follow the rules just like everybody else.” And Rocket knew it was my job to help them cross. I looked at the wall he’d referenced. It held hundreds of names from dozens of countries. It amazed me how he knew this stuff.

I decided to test him, to see what would pour out of him at the mention of Reyes’s otherworldly — for lack of a better term — name. But first I would ask about Mimi Jacobs. I needed to make sure she was still alive. “Okay, but I have some names for you now.”

He stopped and turned to me. Nothing on Earth got Rocket’s attention faster than the mentioning of a name. His eyes shone eagerly, almost hungrily.

I stepped closer, not wanting to lose him if he took off on one of his quests through the haunted halls of the asylum. “Mimi Anne Jacobs. Her maiden name was Marshal.”

He bowed his head, his lids fluttering as if he were a search engine scouring the recesses of his own mind for information. He stopped and looked back at me. “No. Not her time yet.”

Relief washed over me, and I braced myself for the next name. I knew it was fruitless to ask Rocket anything else about Mimi, though I suspected he knew more. Now Reyes. After placing a hand on his arm for good measure, I asked, “Rocket, what do you know about Rey’aziel?”

His lips pressed together and he stood motionless for a heartbeat, two, then leaned into me and said quietly, “It shouldn’t be here, Miss Charlotte.”

Rocket had said that before when I asked about Reyes Farrow. Apparently, he knew they were one and the same.

I squeezed his arm reassuringly and whispered, “Why?”

His face transformed. “Miss Charlotte, I told you.” He chastised me with a scowl that looked more like a pout. “He should never have been a boy named Reyes. He’s Rey’aziel. He should never have been born at all.”

I’d also heard that before. “Rocket, is his corporeal body still alive?”

He bit his lower lip in thought before answering. “The boy Reyes is still here, but he broke the rules, Miss Charlotte. No breaking rules,” he said, wagging a finger in warning.

Once again, I breathed a little easier. I was terrified Reyes’s body would pass before I could find him. The thought of losing him petrified me.

“Martians can’t become human just because they want to drink our water,” he continued.

“So, Rey’aziel wanted our water?” I was trying so hard to understand his metaphors, but it wasn’t easy. Nothing about Rocket was easy.

His boyish eyes focused on mine. He stared a long moment before answering. “He still does,” he said, his fingers brushing over my cheek. “He wants it more than air.”

I breathed in softly. Rocket rarely seemed so lucid, so rational. So poetic. “Reyes said once he was born for me, to be with me. Is that what scares you, Rocket? Are you afraid for me?”

“It’s Rey’aziel, Miss Charlotte. Of course, I’m afraid for you. I’m afraid for everyone.”

Oh. That was probably bad. I squared my shoulders and faced him head-on. “Rocket, do you know where his body is?”

He shook his head with a tsk. “He can’t break the rules.”

“What rules, Rocket?” Maybe the clues were in the rules Reyes had apparently broken. I knew I was grasping at straws, but without Angel’s help, I had nothing.

“No playing hide-and-seek in the house.”

“Which house?” I asked, a little surprised by his answer. Reyes was hiding his body. Was that the hide-and-seek Rocket was referring to?

He stilled and looked down for a moment as if sensing something. Without warning, he slammed a hand over my mouth and shoved me against the wall. Leaning into me, he glanced around the room, his eyes wide with fear. “Shhhh,” he whispered. “It’s here.”

And in that moment, I felt him. The room became charged with heat and static, like an electrical storm was brewing within its walls. With the fluttering of wings, a darkness exploded in on us, swirled like obsidian clouds in the midst of Armageddon. When he materialized, he stayed ensconced inside his robe, his face shadowed, hidden from view.

Oh, yeah. He was pissed.

I pushed Rocket’s hand off me and stepped toward him. “Reyes, wait—”

Before I could say anything, I heard the sing of metal being drawn. My breath caught when I realized he was going to use his blade on Rocket.

“No, Reyes,” I said, jumping in front of Rocket, but the blade was already in full swing. It whirred through the air and stopped a fingerbreadth inside my rib cage, on the left side. The sting was instantaneous, but I knew there would be no blood. Reyes killed with the skill of a surgeon, only from the inside out. No external trauma. No evidence of foul play. Just a pristine slice so clean, so sharp, it stumped even the best doctors — or coroners, depending on the outcome — in the country.

Time seemed to stand still as I looked down at the blade, at the sharp edges and menacing angles. It hovered parallel to the floor, an inch inside my body, and glistened with a blinding light.

Reyes jerked the blade back and sheathed it inside his robes as I tipped awkwardly toward the wall, my heart stumbling over its own beats. He pushed back the hood of his robe, concern drawing his brows together, and leaned toward me as if to catch me. I pushed at him and whirled around, but Rocket was gone. Then I turned on Reyes. My anger at his utter stupidity was reaching an all-time high.

“You seem to be very willing to hurt people these days.” The realization had me doubting everything I’d come to believe about him. I’d come to believe he was kind and noble and, okay, deadly, but in a good way.

“These days?” he asked, incredulous. “I’ve been hurting in your behalf for quite some time, Dutch.”

That was true. He’d saved my life more than once. He’d hurt people who were going to hurt me more than once. But each and every time, the person had been guilty of something very bad.

“You can’t just go around hurting people, killing people, because you want to. I realize your dad didn’t teach you—”

With a growl, his robe disappeared and he turned from me, the heat of his anger like the blast from an inferno. “And to which dad would you be referring?” he asked, his tone even, hurt that I would even mention them.

He had been a general in hell. He’d led his father’s armies into battle and suffered unimaginable consequences. Then he escaped and was born on Earth. For me. But the life he’d planned — the one where he and I grew up together, went to school and college together, had children together — became nothing more than remnants of a dream when he was kidnapped as a young child and traded to a monster named Earl Walker, the man he’d gone to prison for killing. The life he lived on Earth, the abuse he lived through, defined tragic.

I stepped closer. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring either of them up.”

He glanced over a wide shoulder, his muscles rippling under the weight of his memories. “You have to stop looking for me.”

“No,” I said, my voice a mere whisper.

His mouth formed a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes a heartbeat before he turned away again. “My body will be gone soon enough. It can’t take much more.”

With a sharp pain, my heart contracted at the thought. “Are they torturing you?” I asked, my breath hitching in my chest.

He stood studying Rocket’s work, raised a hand, and ran his fingers along a name, the fluid lines of his tattoo undulating with the movement. “Mercilessly.”

I couldn’t stop the sting in my eyes, the wetness pooling along my lashes.

He was in front of me at once. “Don’t,” he said, his voice sharp, menacing. “Don’t ever feel sorry for me.”

I stumbled back against the wall again. He followed. I liked this better. It was easier to be angry with him when he was being an ass. What I hadn’t expected was his probing caress. While he was pretending to fondle, to seduce, he was actually checking the wound he’d just given me, his hand soothing, his caress healing.

“Why did you hurt Pari?” I asked, still amazed that he could be so gentle, and yet hurt so easily.

He pushed away from the wall. “I never hurt your friend. I don’t even know who she is.”

I blinked in surprise. “But, she summoned you.”

“Did she tell you that?”

“Yes. She said she summoned you, Rey’aziel, in a séance.”

He chuckled, the sound harsh. “So your friend thinks she summoned me like a dog?”

“No, that’s not it at all.”

“I can’t be summoned by a group of teen nitwits playing urban legend. Only one person alive can summon me,” he said, gazing at me pointedly.

Did he mean me? Could I summon him? “So, it wasn’t you?”

He only shook his head.

“Then, you didn’t hurt her?”

He paused and eyed me for a long moment. “You know what I find most interesting?”

This was a trick. I could feel it. “What?”

“That you honestly believe I am capable of hurting innocent people for no reason.”

“You’re not?” I asked, hope softening my voice.

“Oh, no, I’m more than capable. I just didn’t realize you knew that.”

Fine, he was bitter. I got that. “Were you going to kill Rocket? Is that even possible?”

“He’s already dead, Dutch.”

“Then—”

“I was just going to send him away for a while to cower in fear. He’s good at that.”

“So, you’re cruel, too,” I stated, matter-of-fact.

He slid his long fingers around my neck, the heat blistering, and raised my chin with his thumb. “I was a general in hell. What do you think?”

“I think you’re trying really hard to convince me how bad you are.”

He smiled. “I spent centuries in the underworld. I am what I am. If I were you, I’d take off those rose-colored glasses and think about what it is you’re trying to save. Just let my body die.”

“Why don’t you kill it yourself?” I asked, impatience bubbling inside me. “Just get it over with? Why are you letting them torture you?”

“I can’t,” he said, dropping his hand, and I stilled to listen. He clenched his jaw in frustration. “They’re guarding my body. They won’t let me near it.”

“The demons? How many are there?”

“More than even you could handle.”

“So, then, there’re two?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine myself handling even one.

“If they succeed in taking me, you have to figure out what you’re capable of, Dutch, and you have to do it fast.”

“Why don’t you just tell me?”

He shook his head. Naturally. “That would be like telling a fledgling it can fly before it leaves the nest. It has to do it, to know it can on a visceral level. It’s instinct. If I do go back, if I am taken when my body dies, you’ll be alone. And yes, they’ll find you eventually.”

Well, crapola.

Rocket was gone, and there was simply no telling when he would be back. I once went two months without seeing him, and that incident had nothing to do with Reyes. No telling how long he would hide this time.

I strode back to Misery, my mouth still hot from the blistering kiss Reyes gave me before he disappeared, and called in some backup. Then I checked in with Cookie.

“Nothing yet,” she said, filling me in on her findings, or lack thereof.

“That’s okay, keep digging. I’m going to see Warren after this. Call me if you find anything interesting.”

“Will do.”

Taft, an officer who worked with my uncle, pulled up behind me in his patrol car as I closed my phone. A couple of neighborhood kids stood giggling, thinking I was getting in trouble. Kids in these parts rarely saw police as a positive force. It was hard to get past men in uniforms taking your mom or dad away in the middle of the night for a domestic disturbance.

I stepped out as Taft adjusted his hat and made his way toward me, scanning the neighborhood for signs of aggression. He wore a crisp black uniform and military buzz, but he wasn’t the one I needed to see.

“Hey, Taft,” I said, getting the pleasantries out of the way before looking at the departed nine-year-old girl on his heels, aka Demon Child. “Hey, pumpkin.”

“Hey, Charley,” she said, her voice soft and sweet, as if she weren’t evil.

Much like the devil himself, Demon Child had many names. Demon Child for one, as well as the Spawn of Satan, Lucifer’s Love Child, Strawberry Shortcake, or for short, a particular favorite of mine, the SS. She was Taft’s little sister and had died when they were both young. Taft had tried to save her from drowning and spent a week in the hospital with pneumonia for his effort. And she never left his side. Until she found me. And tried to claw my eyes out through no fault of my own.

The first time we’d met, she was sitting in the back of Taft’s patrol car as he was giving me a ride from a crime scene. When Strawberry thought I was after her brother, she called me an ugly bitch and tried to blind me. It left an impression.

She looked back, her long blond hair falling in disarray around her face, spotted the crumbling insane asylum, and folded her tiny arms in distaste. “What are we doing here?”

“I was wondering if you could do me a favor.”

She turned back to me, her nose wrinkled as she considered my statement. “Okay, but you have to do one for me back.”

“Yeah?” I asked, leaning against Misery. “What do you need?”

“David is dating someone.”

“Oh,” I purred, pretending to care. “Now, who’s David?”

She rolled her eyes as only a nine-year-old could. “My brother? David Taft?” She hitched a thumb toward him.

“Oh! That David,” I said, offering him a conspicuous giggle.

“What’s she saying?” he asked.

I ignored.

“She’s ugly and she wears too much lipstick and her clothes are too tight.”

“So, she’s a ho?” I chastised him with a scowl.

He turned up his palms. “What?”

“Deluxe,” Strawberry said, confirming my suspicions. She pointed straight at him. “You need to have a talk with him. That ho stayed all night. Really.”

I pressed my lips together and jammed my fists onto my hips, hoping I wasn’t bleeding internally from Reyes’s blade. I hated it when I bled internally. If I was going to bleed, I wanted to see the evidence, revel in the heroics of it all. “I most certainly will.” After tossing him a glower of disappointment, one that had him glaring back in annoyance, I explained why I needed her. “While your brother and I have our talk, will you go into that building and look for a little girl?”

Taft and Strawberry both eyed the building with skeptical frowns. “That building looks scary,” she said.

“It’s not scary at all,” I lied. Like a dog. What could be scarier than an abandoned mental asylum where, according to legend, the doctors did experiments? “There’s a nice man named Rocket who lives there with his little sister. She’s even younger than you are.”

I’d never seen Rocket’s sister, but he told me countless times that she was there with him. She’d apparently died of pneumonia during the Dust Bowl, and from what he told me, I was guessing her age to be somewhere around five.

“His name is Rocket?” The thought made her giggle.

“Yeah, speaking of which…” I leaned down to her. “While you’re in there, see if you can find out Rocket’s real name.” I had yet to get any real info on Rocket’s origins, though I’d scoured every record I could find on the asylum. Apparently, Rocket Man was not his real name.

“Okay.”

“Wait,” I said a microsecond before she disappeared. “Don’t you want to know why you’re going in?”

“To find that little girl.”

“Yes, but I need information from her if she has it. I need to know if she can tell me where to find Reyes’s body. His human body. Can you remember that?”

She crossed her arms again and said, “Duh.” Then she disappeared.

I ground my teeth just a little, certain Strawberry was God’s way of punishing me for having one-too-many margaritas last Thursday night that resulted in an ugly, tabletop version of the hokey pokey.

As Taft stood at attention, still eyeing the building with concern, I rested against Misery, propping a booted heel on her running board. “Look,” I said, luring his attention my way, “your sister says the chick you’re dating is a ho.”

He turned to me, aghast. “She’s not a ho. Well, yeah, okay, she’s a ho, thus my dating her, but she knows?”

I shrugged, incredulous. “Dude, I have no idea if your GF knows she’s a ho.”

“No, I mean Becky. She knows I’m dating someone?”

I threw my palms up. “Maybe if I knew who Becky was—”

He stared at me, appalled. “My sister.”

“Oh! Right!” I said, going for the save. Who knew Demon Child would have such a normal name? I expected something exotic like Serena or Destiny or the Evil One That Comes in the Night to Make Us Chilly.

Taft’s radio squawked out something I found completely incoherent. As he strolled toward his patrol car to talk in private, my cell rang out. It was Cookie. “Charley’s House of Excruciating Pain,” I said.

“Janelle died in a car accident.”

“Oh, man, I’m so sorry. Were you two close?”

After an annoyed sigh, she said, “Janelle, Charley. Janelle York? Mimi’s friend from high school who died recently?”

“Oh, right,” I said, going for the save again. I seemed to be doing that a lot lately. “Wait, a car accident? Mimi told Warren Janelle was murdered.”

“Exactly. According to the report, she’d been ill. They think she passed out at the wheel and crashed her car into a ravine off I-25. But it was ruled accidental.”

“Then why would Mimi say she was murdered?”

“Something had her spooked,” Cookie said.

“And maybe it’s connected to our murdered car dealer.”

“That would be my guess. I think you need to have that other talk with Warren soon. Find out why he was fighting with a man only days before said man was found dead.”

“Great minds think alike, baby. I am so on it.”

“Is that Cookie?”

Strawberry had appeared at my side. I closed my phone and looked at her. “The one and only. That was fast. Did you find Rocket’s sister?”

“Of course.”

Awesome. I never knew if she really existed or if she’d been a figment of Rocket’s imagination. I waited for more info. Like forever. “And?”

“She’s blue.”

Blue? Well, she did die of pneumonia. Maybe the lack of oxygen turned her blue. “Okay, besides that.”

She did the crossing-of-her-arms thing. If it weren’t so cute, it would be annoying. “You’re not going to like it.”

“Does she know where Reyes’s body is?”

“No. She went to look. But she said Rey’aziel should not have been born on Earth.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“He’s very powerful.”

“Yeah, I figured that out a while ago.”

“And if his human body dies, he will become what he was born from the fires of hell to be.”

Okay, that was new. “Which is?” I asked, my voice edged with a wary dread.

“The ultimate weapon,” she said as if she were ordering an ice cream cone. “The bringer of death.”

“Well, crap.”

“The Antichrist.”

“Damn.”

“He is more powerful than any demon or any angel that ever existed. He can manipulate the space-time continuum and bring about the destruction of the entire galaxy and everything in it.”

“Okay, I get it,” I said, holding up a hand to stop her. I suddenly found myself fighting for air. I just had to ask. It couldn’t have been something easy, something non — world destroying. Oh, hell no. It had to be all apocalyptic and ghastly. Well, this sucked ass. I had no idea how to fight that. But finding Reyes’s body suddenly became imperative. “You found out a lot in that five minutes.”

“I guess,” she said with a shrug.

I switched gears, dropped down into neutral, then shifted myself into denial before looking back at Strawberry. “So, did you find out Rocket’s real name?”

“Yep,” she said, running her fingertips over the sleeve of my sweater. It was disturbing.

I waited. Like forever. “And?”

“And what?”

“Rocket’s name?”

“What about it?”

Deep breaths. Deep calming breaths. “Pumpkin head,” I said, calmly and deep-breathily, “what is Rocket’s name?”

She looked up as if I were insane. “Rocket. Duh.”

My teeth slammed together again. If it weren’t for her large, innocent eyes, the perfect pout of her bowlike mouth, I would have exorcised her right then and there. Well, if I knew how. I lowered my head instead, played with an errant string on my jeans. “Is Rocket okay?”

She shrugged. “Yeah, he’s just a little scared.”

Damn it. Reyes could be such a butthead. Freaking Antichrists. A thought emerged. “Hey, so what’s his little sister’s name?”

Her mouth dropped open before she glared up at me. “Do you even listen?”

What the heck did I do now? “What?”

“I already told you. Her name is Blue.”

“Oh, really?”

She nodded.

“Her name is Blue?”

She crossed her arms — again — and nodded, slowly, apparently so I would understand.

“Does she have a last name, mayhap?” Smart-ass.

“Yep. Bell.”

I sighed. Another nom de plume. “Blue Bell, huh?” Well, that wouldn’t bolster my investigation any. Rocket Man and Blue Bell. Wonderful. No, wait. Now I had a Rocket Man, a Blue Bell, and an alleged Antichrist. Never let it be said that life in Charley Land wasn’t interesting.

“So, why won’t Blue Bell come out to meet me?” I asked, slightly hurt only not.

“Really?” She eyed me like I was part blithering and part idiot. “Because if you had died and wanted to stay on Earth to hang with your bro for all eternity, would you introduce yourself to the one person in the universe who could send you to the other side?”

She had a point.

Taft finished his conversation and strolled back over. “Is she here?” he asked, looking around. They always looked around. Not sure why.

“In the flesh,” I said. “Metaphorically.”

“Is she still mad at me?” He kicked the sand at his feet.

Had I not been shell-shocked over the pending apocalypse, I would have laughed when Strawberry did the same, her tiny pink slippers skimming over the ground, disturbing nothing. “I wasn’t mad,” she said. “I just wish he would stop taking ugly girls to dinner.” Before I could say anything, she reached up and curled her fingers into mine. “He should take you to dinner.”

To say that the mere thought horrified me would have been a grievous understatement. I threw up a little in my mouth then swallowed hard, trying not to make a face. “She’s not really mad,” I told Taft when I recovered. I leaned in and whispered, “Just please, for the love of God, find a girl good enough to take home to your mother. And do it soon.”

“Okay,” he said, confusion locking his brows together.

“And stop dating skanks.”