Third Grave Dead Ahead

  But now he was back to haunting my dreams. At least when he’d entered my dreams before, I actually got some sleep between rounds of hide-and-seek and tug-of-war. Now, I close my eyes for a second and he’s there in the most intense way possible. As long as I’m asleep, we’re going at it like rabbits on a bunny farm.

  And the worst part of the whole thing lay in the fact that he really was pissed as hell at me. As a result, he had no desire to be there. He was angry, consumed with rage, and yet oh so passionate, like he couldn’t help himself. Like he couldn’t control the heat coursing through him, the hunger in his veins. I couldn’t exactly control myself either, so I knew how he felt.

  But I’d summoned him? Impossible. How could I have summoned him growing up? Like that time I was four and I was almost kidnapped by a convicted child molester? I didn’t even know what he was. I’d been scared of him.

  Just then, I heard my front door crash open and decided it was time to clean up anyway. Coffee never felt as good on the outside.

  “What? Where are you?” I heard my neighbor who moonlighted as my receptionist and best friend say as she stumbled into my apartment. Cookie’s short black hair stuck out in all kinds of socially unacceptable directions. And she wore wrinkled pajamas, striped in alternating blues and yellows that fit tight around her robust middle half with long red socks that bunched around her ankles. She was such a challenge.

  “I’m here,” I said, hoisting myself off the sofa. “Everything’s okay.”

  “But you screamed.” Alarmed, she scanned the area.

  “We really need to soundproof these walls.” She lived right across the hall and could apparently hear a feather drop in my kitchen.

  After taking a moment to catch her breath, she leveled a cold stare at me. “Charley, damn it.”

  “You know, I get called that a lot,” I said, padding toward the bathroom, “but Charley Damn It’s not really my name.”

  She stepped toward my bookcase and braced herself with one hand while the other tried to still her beating heart. Then she glared. It was funny. Just as she opened her mouth to say something, she noticed the plethora of empty coffee cups scattered about the place. Then she glared again. It was still funny.

  “Have you been drinking all night?”

  I disappeared into the bathroom, came back with a toothbrush in my mouth, then pointed toward the front door with raised brows. “Break and enter much?”

  She stepped around me and closed the door. “We need to talk.”

  Uh-oh. Scolding time. She’d been scolding me every day for a week. At first, I could lie about my lack of sleep and she’d fall for it, but she started suspecting insomnia when I began seeing purple elephants in the air vents at the office. I knew I shouldn’t have asked her about them. I thought maybe she’d redecorated.

  I went to my bedroom and changed into a fresh pair of pj’s, then asked, “Want coffee?” as I headed that way.

  “It’s three thirty in the morning.”

  “Okay. Want coffee?”

  “No. Sit down.” When I paused midstride and raised my brows in questions, she set a stubborn tilt to her jaw. “I told you, we need to talk.”

  “Does this have anything to do with that mustache I drew on you while you were sleeping the other night?” I lowered myself slowly onto the sofa, keeping a wary eye on her, just in case.

  “No. This has to do with drugs.”

  My jaw fell open. I almost lost my toothbrush. “You’re on drugs?”

  She pressed her mouth together. “No. You are.”

  “I’m on drugs?” I asked, stunned. I had no idea.

  “Charley,” Cookie said, her voice sympathetic, “how long has it been since you’ve slept?”

  With a loud sigh that bordered on a whine, I counted on my fingers. “Around thirteen days, give or take.”

  Her eyes widened with shock. After she let that sink in, she asked, “And you’re not on anything?”

  I took the toothbrush out of my mouth. “Besides Crest?”

  “Then how are you doing it?” She leaned forward, her brows glued together in concern. “How are you not sleeping for days at a time?”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t close my eyes.”

  “Charley, that’s impossible. And probably dangerous.”

  “Not at all,” I assured her. “I’m drinking lots of coffee. And I hardly ever fall asleep while driving.”

  “Oh, my gosh.” She let her head drop into her palm.

  I popped the toothbrush back into my mouth with a smile. People like Cookie were hard to come by. Stalwart. Loyal. Easy to punk. “Hon, I’m not like you, remember?”

  She focused on me again. “You’re still human. Just because you heal really fast and can see the departed and you have this uncanny ability to convince the most mundane of persons to try to kill you—”

  “But he’s so mad at me, Cook.” I lowered my head, the sadness of my situation creeping up on me.

  She stopped and absorbed my statement before commenting. “Tell me exactly what’s going on.”

  “’Kay. Need coffee first.”

  “It’s three thirty in the morning.”

  Ten minutes later, we both had a cup of coffee à la fresco, and I was in the middle of describing my dreams—if one could call them that—to a starry-eyed divorcée with lust in her loins. She already knew about my binding Reyes to his physical body, but she didn’t know about the dreams. Not entirely. I’d just told her about my most recent encounter with God Reyes, a being forged in the fires of hell, created from beauty and sin and fused together with the blistering heat of sensuality.

  I fanned myself and refocused on her.

  “He was actually—”

  “Yep,” I said.

  “And he put your leg—?”

  “Yep. I think for ease of access.”

  “Oh, my.” A hand floated up to cover her heart.

  “Yep again. But that’s the cool part. The orgasmic part. The part where he touches me and kisses me and strokes me in the most amazing places.”

  “He kissed you?”

  “Well, no, not this morning,” I said, shaking my head. “But sometimes he does. Strange thing is, he doesn’t want to be there. He doesn’t want to be with me. And yet, the minute I close my eyes, there he is. Fierce. Sexy. Pissed as hell.”

  “But he actually lifted your leg—?”

  “Cookie,” I said, grabbing her arm and forcing her to focus, “you have to get past that part.”

  “Right.” She blinked and shook her head. “Right, sorry. Well, I can certainly see why you don’t want to experience that kind of trauma night after night.”

  “But I don’t get any actual rest. I swear I’m more exhausted when I wake up, like, three minutes later. And he’s just so mad at me.”

  “Well, you did bind him for all eternity.”

  I sighed. “Surely it’s not for all eternity. I mean, I can fix this.” I decided to leave out the part where I’d already tried to unbind him and failed miserably. “I’ll figure out how to unbind him, don’t you think?”

  “You’re asking me?” she asked, balking at the very idea. “This is your world, hon. I’m just an innocent bystander.” She looked at my Looney Tunes clock.

  As usual, my selfless concern for my fellow man amazed me. “You need to get back to bed,” I said, taking her cup and heading for the kitchen. “You can get in a good two hours before you have to get Amber up for school.” Amber was Cookie’s twelve-going-on-thirty-year-old daughter.

  “I just drank a cup of coffee.”

  “Like that ever stopped you.”

  “True.” She stood and headed for the door. “Oh, I meant to tell you, Garrett called. He might have a case for you. Said he’d get in touch this morning.”

  Garrett Swopes was a bond enforcement agent whose dark skin made the silver in his eyes glisten every time he smiled, a feature most women found attractive. I just found him annoying. We’d weathered some rough times, he and I, li
ke when he accidently found out about my otherworldly status and decided to have me committed.

  For the most part, he was okay. For the rest, he could bite me. But as a skiptracer, he was phenomenal and came in super-duper handy at times.

  “A case, huh?” That sounded intriguing. And slightly more profitable than sitting around twiddling my thumbs. “Maybe I’ll just run over there and talk to him about it in person.”

  She stopped halfway out the door and looked back at me. “It’s a quarter past four.”

  A huge smile slid across my face.

  Her own expression turned dreamy again. “Can I come?”

  “No.” I pushed her out the door. “You have to get some sleep. Somebody has to be sane during regular office hours, and it’s not going to be me, missy.”

  * * *

  A little over fifteen minutes later, as I stood knocking on Garrett Swopes’s door in my Juicy Couture pajamas and pink bunny slippers, I realized I may have died on the way over. I was so tired, I could no longer feel life flowing through me. My fingers were numb. My lips were swollen. And my eyelids had dried to the consistency of sandpaper, their sole purpose to irritate and drive the will to survive right out of me.

  Yep, I was most likely dead.

  I knocked again as a shiver rippled down my spine, hoping somewhere in the back of my mind that my probable deadness wouldn’t keep me from performing my supernatural duty, which was basically to stand there while dead people who hadn’t crossed immediately after their deaths crossed through me. But as the only grim reaper this side of forever, I provided an invaluable service for society. For humanity. For the world!

  The door swung open and a grumpy skiptracer named Garrett stood glowering at me with a fury I found difficult to describe, which meant I probably hadn’t died after all. He looked like he had a hangover. When hungover, Garrett could barely see elephants, much less the departed. He managed to growl a question from between his clenched teeth. “What?”

  “I need ibuprofen,” I said, my voice distant and unattractive.

  “You need therapy.” It was amazing how easily I could understand him, considering he had yet to unclench his teeth.

  “I need ibuprofen,” I said with a frown, in case he didn’t hear me the first time. “I’m not kidding.”

  “I’m not either.”

  “But I wasn’t kidding first.”

  With a loud sigh, he stood back and motioned me inside the bat cave. I looked down at my bunny slippers, silently begging them to hop forward, when Garrett curled his fingers into my Juicies and eased me inside.

  It helped. With the momentum I’d gained, I crossed his carpet straight to his kitchen cabinets, flipping light switches along the way.

  “Do you have any idea what time it is?” he asked.

  “Not especially. Where are your over-the-counter drugs?” I’d recently developed a headache. Possibly when I hit that telephone pole on the way over.

  Garrett’s bachelor pad was much tidier than I’d expected. Lots of tans and blacks. I rummaged through cabinet after cabinet in search of his drug stash. Instead I found glasses. Plates. Bowls. Okay.

  He stopped short behind me. “What are you looking for again?”

  I paused long enough to glower. “You can’t be this slow.”

  He did that thing where he pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. It gave me a chance to size him up. Mussed dark hair in need of a trim. Thick stubble along his jaw also in need of a trim. Manly chest hair also in need—

  “Oh, my god!” I said, throwing my hands over my eyes and hurtling my body against the counter.

  “What?”

  “You’re naked.”

  “I’m not naked.”

  “I’m blind.”

  “You’re not blind. I’m wearing pants.”

  “Oh.” That was embarrassing.

  He shifted his stance in impatience. “Would you like me to put on a shirt?”

  “Too late. Scarred for life.” I had to tease him a little. He was so grouchy at four thirty in the morning. I went back to scouring his cabinets.

  “Seriously, what are you looking for?”

  “Painkillers,” I said, feeling my way past a military-issue canteen and a package of Oreos. Oreos just happen to fall under the category of brown edibles. I popped one in my mouth and continued my noble quest.

  “You came all the way over here for painkillers?”

  I gave him a second once-over while crunching. Other than the bullet wounds he now sported on his chest and shoulder from when I almost got him killed a couple weeks ago, he had good skin, healthy eyelashes, six-pack abs. Cookie may have been on to something. “No, I came over here to talk to you,” I said, swallowing hard. “I just happen to need painkillers at this moment in time. They in the bathroom?” I headed that way.

  “I ran out,” he said, blocking my path, clearly hiding something.

  “But you’re a bond enforcement agent.”

  His brows snapped together. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Come on, Swopes,” I said, my voice sharp with accusation, “I know you track down drug dealers when you’re not watching Debbie Does Dallas. You have access to all kinds of drugs. You can’t tell me you don’t pocket a little crack here, a few prescription-strength Motrin there.”

  After scrubbing his face with his fingers, he strolled to a small dining room table, pulled out a chair, and sat down. “Isn’t your sister a psychiatrist?”

  I stepped into his bedroom and switched on the light. Besides the rumpled bed and clothes strewn about the room, it wasn’t bad. I hit the dresser first.

  “Actually, I’m glad you’re here,” Garrett called out. “I might have a case for you.”

  That was exactly why I’d come over, but he didn’t need to know that. “I’m not cleaning out your truck in search of some mysteriously lost object again, Swopes. I caught on.”

  “No, a real case,” he said, a smile in his voice, “through a friend of a friend. Seems this guy’s wife went missing about a week ago and he’s looking for a good PI.”

  “So why send him to me?” I asked, stumped.

  “Are you finished in there?”

  I’d just gone through his nightstands and was headed for the medicine cabinet in his bathroom. “Just about. Your choice of porn is more eclectic than I thought it would be.”

  “He’s a doctor.”

  “Who’s a doctor?” Nothing of use in his medicine cabinet. Absolutely nothing. Unless nondrowsy allergy medication could be considered a painkiller.

  “The guy whose wife is missing.”

  “Oh, right.”

  Who on planet Earth didn’t have aspirin in the house? My head ached, for heaven’s sake. I’d nodded off on the way over to Garrett’s place and veered into oncoming traffic. The honking horns and flashing lights had me believing I’d been abducted by aliens. Thank goodness a well-placed telephone pole put a stop to that nonsense. I needed stronger coffee to keep me awake. Or maybe something else entirely. Something industrial.

  I peeked around the door and asked, “Do you keep syringes of adrenaline on hand?”

  “There are special programs for people like you.”

  In a moment of sheer terror, I realized I couldn’t feel my brain. It was just there a minute ago. Maybe I really was dead. “Do I look dead to you?”

  “Does your sister have an after-hours emergency number?”

  “You’re not helping,” I said, making sure the disgust in my voice was unmistakable. “You would suck as a customer service representative.”

  He unfolded himself from the chair and headed for the fridge. “Want a beer?”

  I shuffled to the table and stole his seat. “Seriously?”

  A brow arched into a shrug as he twisted the cap off a bottle.

  “No, thank you. Alcohol is a depressant. I need these lids to stay open for days.” I pointed to them for visual confirmation.

  “Why?” he asked after a long
swig.

  “Because when they’re closed, he’s there.”

  “God?” Garrett guessed.

  “Reyes.”

  Garrett’s jaw pressed shut. Probably because he wasn’t horridly fond of Reyes or our unconventional relationship. Then again, nobody ever said consorting with the son of Satan would be easy. He set the beer on the counter and strode to his room, his movements suddenly sharp, exact. I watched him disappear—he had a nice tapering thing going on—and reappear almost instantly with shirt and boots in hand. “Come on, I’ll drive you home.”

  “I came in Misery.”

  “Exactly, and I think you’ve caused enough.”

  “No, my Jeep. Misery? Remember her?” Sometimes people found it odd that I’d named my cherry red Jeep Wrangler Misery, but Gertie just didn’t seem to fit. “She’ll be upset if I just leave her here on a strange side street. Alone. Injured.”

  He looked back at me, startled. “You wrecked your Jeep?”

  I had to think about that one. “I can’t be entirely certain. There was a telephone pole, screeching tires, the strong possibility of alien life. It all happened so fast.”

  “Seriously. I need your sister’s number.” He shrugged into the shirt as he hunted down his keys.

  “Desperate much? Besides, you’re not my sister’s type.”

  After Garrett escorted me to his truck none-too-gently, he climbed into the driver’s side and brought the vehicle to life with a roar. The engine sounded pretty good, too. I gazed out the window as we swam through Albuquerque, the night thick with an almost impenetrable darkness. The tranquil serenity didn’t help my current predicament. My scratchy lids were like lead and grew heavier and heavier with every minute that passed. Every second. Despite the discomfort, I fought with all my strength to keep them open, because this was better than the alternative: Reyes Farrow being drawn into my dreams against either of our wills, like an invisible force pulled him toward me every time I closed my eyes. And once inside my head, all our anger and inhibitions washed away into a sea of sensuality where mouths scorched and hands explored. Which sucked because we were both quite annoyed with each other.