The Dirt on Ninth Grave

  I began to panic. As adrenaline took a huge dump in my nervous system, a calmness came over Lewis’s face. A determination. A disregard for his life. And my life, for that matter.

  He stood up, set his jaw to extra firm, and headed straight for us, his movements sure. Steady. Calculating. And I realized he’d sautéed his marbles and had eaten them with a nice Chianti.

  “Stay back!” the guy yelled when he noticed Lewis. He pointed his gun at him.

  Francie screamed when she realized what was happening. Shayla covered her mouth in shock. But Lewis kept walking, even with the gun pointed right at him. Right at his heart.

  There was brave, then there was suicidal.

  “Hurry up!” he yelled at me, keeping the gun trained on the massive, bearlike creature coming to get him.

  I had to do something before Lewis got killed, but what?

  Oh, wait. I’d give him the money and he’d leave. Okay. I could do that.

  I took my key and opened the register. Dixie had been robbed more than once, so she insisted on using a register that required a key to get into the cash drawer.

  The man grabbed my hair and shoved my face toward it. Now he was just showing off.

  “Put the cash in a bag,” he said.

  We didn’t have any bags at the register, so I opted for a takeout box. He didn’t seem to mind. I took cash out by the handfuls and stuffed it into the cardboard box. The adrenaline pumping through my body was giving me hot flashes. I felt a line of perspiration along my upper lip and under my eyes. Even more so when I heard sirens in the distance.

  Someone had already called the cops, and my first concern was for Mr. V and his family. What if their captors thought the authorities were coming for them? What would they do?

  I was only half finished – the big bills were stashed underneath the cash bin – and Lewis was getting closer by the millisecond.

  “Keep coming, bitch,” the robber said to him.

  The absolute determination in Lewis’s expression made me groan aloud. I sped up, hurrying to get the robber out of the café.

  Just as I finished and closed the takeout box, the gun went off with an earsplitting bang, and my life flashed before my eyes.

  11

  I was dropped as a baby.

  Into a pool of awesomeness and badassery.

  —T-SHIRT

  Or, well, the last month of my life flashed before my eyes. It was full of regrets and bad decisions. For example, I totally should have eaten that York Peppermint Patty that fell on the floor of my apartment. The three-second rule only applied when other people were around. No one would have known it sat there for at least a minute before I noticed.

  No. No. I would’ve known. I would’ve had to live with myself and —

  I blinked. Squinted. Blinked again. No one was moving. No one was screaming or ducking to get away from the gunfire. In fact, no one was doing much of anything. I scanned the café, the frozen faces that swam around me. Everyone looked like posed manikins in an art exhibit on the American experience. My ears rang, probably from the blast, but it sounded like I was underwater.

  Then, in a moment of absolute clarity, my jaw fell to my knees. I’d stopped time.

  I really was a time traveler!

  I closed my eyes. This rocked so hard.

  My lids sprang open again as all the implications of such a gift paraded through my mind. I wondered what time period I was actually from. It couldn’t have been that long ago. I didn’t say things like thee and thou, and I’d known how to use a coffeemaker from Day One as if it were ingrained in my DNA.

  But I was most definitely a time traveler. I even knew the lingo. Quantum mechanics. Hyperspace. Flux capacitor.

  Hell.

  Yes.

  That’s why no one knew me. I probably hadn’t been born yet!

  I wiggled my way out of the robber’s hold. Finally getting a good look at him, I took note of every aspect of his face that I could. I wanted to be able to describe him to a sketch artist should the need arise.

  The tip of the gun had a fiery blast of powder exploding out of it. And a few inches away, a bullet hung in midair. It seemed surreal. Enigmatic. Unfathomable.

  I walked around to examine its trajectory. It was headed straight for Lewis’s heart. I doubted his cousin would really shoot him, but the odds of a real robbery taking place on the same day we’d planned a fake one were astronomical. Enigmatic. Unfathomable. Clearly fate was punking us.

  Unfortunately, I wasn’t entirely certain what to do about any of it. It wasn’t like I could stop a bullet. But maybe I didn’t have to. I looked beyond Lewis. No one would be hit if the bullet just kept going. It would shatter the window and end up in the alley somewhere, but better that than the alternative.

  Okay. This could work. All I needed to do was move Lewis out of the way. I stepped to his side, placed my hands on his beefy arm, and pushed. He didn’t budge. Apparently things were stuck when I stopped time. When I bent it to my will.

  I dug in my ankle-booted heels and tried again. He moved. Not far. Maybe an inch. But enough for me to know he could. I pushed again and again, shoving with all my might until I’d turned him and pushed him out of the way of the speeding bullet. He now stood at a forty-five-degree angle to the floor, which would be awkward when I restarted time. He would certainly fall. I could live with that.

  Wait. I stilled as another conundrum hit me. How did I restart time? What if I couldn’t? What if I was stuck here? Forever? Lost in an inescapable time loop until I grew old and died? I needed to watch Back to the Future to get pointers, but I couldn’t even do that. Panic started to set in, and I had to take deep, calming breaths.

  Surely, if I’d stopped it, I could restart it again. How hard could it be? But before I even attempted such a feat, I had to do something about the robber while I could. An idea hit me instantly. I took off my apron. The material became stiff. It was still malleable, but once off me, it became like a bendable piece of plastic. It defied the law of gravity and every other law I could think of.

  I hurried over to the robber, molded it to his face, and tied it around his head. It would be enough to fluster him when time returned. To throw him off his game. I pried the gun out of his fingers and pushed it onto the floor beside Lewis.

  Then I stood back to examine my handiwork. I brushed my hands together at a job well done before checking out the others in the immediate vicinity.

  What few customers we had sat terrified. They’d been caught in mid-scream or mid-duck, trying to scramble to safety. Cookie looked more confused than afraid. She’d been entering an order when all hell broke loose.

  Oddly enough, Erin stood like a warrior princess. Her jaw jutting out. Her legs slightly apart. Her hands balled into fists at her sides. It was as though she had every intention of kicking the guy’s ass. I felt an odd sense of admiration swell up in me. A camaraderie. And I suddenly wanted to be friends with her. Not like braid-each-other’s-hair friends, but definitely more than just mortal enemies. Anyone who could stand up to danger like that deserved a closer look.

  Shayla, the tiny wood nymph, stood at the workstation, her face the definition of shock, a hand thrown over her mouth as she looked on in horror. She’d screamed. The love of her life was in danger. I would’ve screamed, too.

  Speaking of whom…

  I walked over to Reyes. He still sat at the booth, his darkly handsome features full of anger, his rich brown eyes glittering with it.

  Now was my chance. I sat on the edge of the bench beside him. Tucked a wayward curl behind his ear. Ran the backs of my fingers over his shadowed cheek and jaw. Then I leaned in and placed the tiniest kiss on his full mouth.

  “I’ve loved you for a thousand years,” I said, because it seemed true. To the core of my being. I was so drawn to him it hurt. I could only pray he’d get over his ex someday.

  No. That was wrong. If I should pray for anything, it would be for his happiness, no matter who he ended up with. If he l
oved her, if he was devoted to his ex, then he deserved to have her. On the condition that she loved him back, of course.

  In the distance, I heard a low rumble. I turned toward it. The earth began to quake beneath my feet. It sounded like a train. A speeding train that had every intention of crashing into the café. After a quick scan to assure myself there was no train despite the rumble growing louder and louder, I turned back to Reyes. He was gone.

  Startled, I fell off the bench and landed on my ass. No one else had moved, not an inch, but Reyes had vanished.

  The sound grew louder. I could feel the rumble deep in my chest. A split second before the train crashed into me, and time – yes, it was time roaring around me – bounced back into place, I saw the winged being again. In a flutter of soft white feathers and black down on the underneath, a man appeared. A stunning man with dark hair, a super-angry expression on his face, and a sword in his hand.

  I scrambled back as he strode toward me, the same determination I’d seen on Lewis’s face in his expression. He raised the sword when he got closer, and a scream wrenched from my throat.

  I raised a hand as though to block the blow, certain that all I would accomplish was the loss of that hand. But it was a reflex. An automatic response to someone slicing me in two.

  A heartbeat before he swung, the smoke appeared again. The same smoke I’d seen earlier in the storeroom. It billowed up and around the being. The angel. It had to be an angel.

  The angel stopped, lowered first the sword, then his head. He kept a wary eye on the smoke. Tightened his hold on the hilt. Then, to my surprise, spoke.

  The language had round vowels and soft consonants. It was ancient and graceful and untainted.

  “Show yourself,” he’d said, and somehow the fact that I knew a celestial language got lost in all the other crap going down.

  The black fog ignored the command and continued to grow until it obscured my view of the angel completely. But I heard the clanging of swords even over the roaring train. Before I could make out what was happening, the train crashed into me. Time crashed into me. I felt like I’d jumped from a high cliff and splashed face-first into freezing cold water, the force was so jarring. It knocked my breath away, but at the last second, I remembered I was supposed to be with the robber.

  I jumped to my feet and sprinted through the awakening of time. Movement that started out slow progressed quickly until, just as I slid into place beside the robber, it bounced back completely.

  The bullet zinged through the glass. It didn’t shatter it, but the café would now have a nice-sized hole to cover up.

  Finding it impossible to get his balance, Lewis stumbled and fell back against the hard floor, but as he did, his gaze locked on to the gun that had magically appeared beside him. He lunged for it and closed his fist around the handle.

  The man beside me struggled to remove the barrier on his face. In an almost comical move, he tore it off, then searched frantically for the gun. A gun that was now being held on him.

  “Get down!” Lewis shouted, and everyone in the café dropped to the floor. Everyone but the robber. He stood stunned, unable to figure out what had just happened.

  I stepped back as Lewis advanced.

  “Get the fuck on your knees,” he said, his tone suddenly menacing.

  Shayla hurried toward us but stopped short to let Lewis do his thing. Left with little choice, the robber raised his hands and slowly sank to his knees in disbelief.

  The only ones who didn’t drop to the floor were Erin, Shayla, and Reyes.

  Reyes!

  He was right where I’d left him. The same hard expression on his face. The same sour disposition. His muscles tightened as I studied him. His jaw clenched. His hands curled into fists. When he lowered his arm and pressed it to his side, realization hit me. He was hurt. A dark red stain spread over his rib cage to saturate the shirt he wore.

  I gasped and started toward him, but his expression hardened even further. He rose from the seat and strode out the back door. I wanted to run after him, to check on him, but I couldn’t leave Lewis to take on the bad guy alone.

  The sirens grew louder, and I braced myself for what was to come. Cops. News crews. Gawkers in every shape and size. The spotlight was not a place I liked to be, so I slowly sank into a chair and willed myself to become invisible. I’d let Lewis absorb the brightest rays and keep to myself as much as possible.

  Two hours later, the cops had taken our statements, arrested the bad guy, and both congratulated and admonished Lewis for his bravery-slash-bullheadedness. He would’ve died if I hadn’t stopped time.

  Or had I?

  Did I have anything to do with what happened? Clearly there was more to Reyes than met the eye. Even my supernaturally inclined one.

  He’d managed to elude the cops. No one could say for certain he was in the café except Francie and me. And she wasn’t talking. I had to give her brownie points for that. Not a lot. Maybe, like, three.

  Cookie and I had been sitting together through most of the interrogations, along with Bobert, who’d stormed in after the fact. Cookie was shaken up. No doubt about it. And yet she was handling it all way better than I thought she would. She seemed more concerned about me than about herself. Come to think of it, the second Bobert found out she was okay, he seemed more concerned about me as well.

  I wanted to ask him about the FBI contact, but I didn’t dare bring it up in front of a room full of cops. Ian was among them. He didn’t say a word to me, however, so there really was a silver lining inside every dark cloud. I’d wondered.

  The chaos that followed the incident rivaled that of an impromptu visit from the president. Streets were blocked off. Cars were searched. No idea why. News crews set up around the perimeter. And everyone within a five-mile radius was questioned ad nauseam.

  “We need to go to that house thing.”

  I turned toward Cookie. “The house thing?”

  “The mansion. But only if you’re still up for it.”

  She was trying to get my mind off everything. To distract me lest I become depressed and start a round of self-mutilation treatment. “Let’s go, then. We’re getting pedicures,” I said to Bobert in a lyrical, come-hither voice. “I’m pretty sure you want to join us.”

  “I’m pretty sure I don’t,” he said, matching my singsong voice. He leaned in and took my hand. “But if you need anything, Janey…” He left the offer hanging in the air and a slip of paper nestled in my palm. After giving that hand a quick squeeze, he stood and stretched. “You girls have fun.”

  We watched him go, and I put my head on Cookie’s shoulder. “I like him.”

  “I do, too,” she said.

  Francie’s voice broke into my musings. “Reyes! Are —? Is everything —?”

  He strolled past her, ignored a scowling Ian, and made a beeline straight for me. At least he wasn’t glaring. “Are you okay?”

  “I’ll be right back,” I said to Cookie before taking hold of the hem of his shirt and leading him away from the melee amidst the scowls of Ian Jeffries. When we were in a relatively cop-free zone, I lifted my hand to his side. The side that had been soaked in blood.

  He let me lay my hand on it, just barely, just enough to let him know what I would be referring to in my next question. He didn’t move but watched me with the intensity of a cobra.

  “I should be asking you that. Are you okay? And Reyes, what the hell happened today?”

  “You and your friend foiled an attempted robbery.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “That’s what I saw.” He loomed over me. He’d showered and, from the feel of it, wrapped his wound.

  I thought of what I’d said to him when time had stood still. Embarrassed, I lowered my head to nudge a piece of loose baseboard. “You didn’t see anything else? Or, maybe, hear anything else?”

  “Like what?”

  I still had my hand on his side, careful not to press. He reached out and hooked a finger into the belt loop
on my jeans. It felt so natural, so fulfilling, to be there with him. To talk with him as if we did it every day. As if we’d been doing it every day for years. Not even the heat of Ian’s fury could penetrate the warmth I was getting from Reyes.

  He inched closer. I saw his inch and raised him a three.

  “What should I have heard?” he repeated.

  “Nothing. It’s… dumb.” I gazed up at him, pleading. “But I saw the blood.” I grazed my thumb over his bandages. “What happened?” Could he have fought the angel? How would that even be possible? It wasn’t like he had a sword hanging from his belt. But it was getting harder and harder to deny the fact that he was shrouded in darkness. It cascaded off him. Pooled at his feet. And looked exactly like the black smoke that had taken the woman from the storeroom. That had stopped the angel from slicing me into bite-sized chunks.

  I had so many questions. Possibly most important of all, why the hell had an angel, a celestial being, tried to kill me? That was wrong on so many levels.

  “Please tell me what happened.”

  A grin tugged at one corner of his mouth. “You first.”

  I dropped my hand and stepped back. I couldn’t. There was still a chance that I was as crazy as a soup sandwich, and I had no intention of spending the rest of my life locked in the mental ward of a hospital. Or, possibly worse, downing a cocktail of psych meds everyday.

  He let go of my belt loop, then put his fingers under my chin to tilt my face toward his. But he didn’t say anything. He just perused. Studied. Ran his thumb over my mouth. Caused quakes of hunger to shudder through me.

  “Reyes —”

  “This is a crime scene,” Ian said, his hand resting on his gun.