Darynda Jones: Third Grave Dead Ahead

“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, like 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.”