Darynda Jones - Second Grave on the Left

“Oh,” I said again, my brows furrowing.

“We’re going to play hopscotch.”

“Okay.”

“Oh, yeah, she said to hurry.”

“Wait!” But Strawberry was already gone. “Freaking dead people.”

“What?” Gemma asked, her interest utterly piqued.

It was kind of nice to be so open. I glanced at Uncle Bob knowingly. “She said that if I was going to find Reyes, I had to listen for what only I could hear. I don’t know what that means.”

“Charley,” Gemma said, “I know what you are.”

My jaw started to drop open before I caught myself. I glanced around self-consciously. “Gemma, nobody at this table knows what I am.”

“And why is that?” Dad asked.

Gemma grinned. “I know you’re in love with someone,” she said. Then she offered a conspiratorial wink, and I realized she was covering. She did know what I was. When the hell did that happen? “And I know you have abilities you’ve never told us about.”

Dad leaned back and eyed us both. He wanted answers I simply wasn’t willing to give. Not just yet.

“Would it help to know I use my powers only for good?”

His mouth slid into a thin line.

“What does your heart tell you to do?” Gemma asked.

I plopped my chin into a cupped palm and started stabbing my side of hash browns with a fork. “My heart is too in love with him to think clearly.”

“Then stop and listen,” she said. “I’ve seen you do it. When we were little. You would close your eyes and listen.”

I would. My shoulders straightened with the memory. She was right. Sometimes when I would see Big Bad in the distance — who later turned out to be Reyes — I would stop and listen to his heartbeat. But he was near me at the time. That was why I could hear it. Or was it?

Gemma chastised me with a frown. “Close your eyes and listen.” She leaned in and whispered into my ear. “You’re the grim reaper, for heaven’s sake.”

I kept my surprise hidden behind a mask of reluctance. “How did you know that?” I whispered.

“I heard you tell that kid Angel when you first met him.”

Holy cow, I’d totally forgotten.

“Now concentrate,” she said, eyeing me like she had all the faith in the world.

Drawing in a long breath, I let it out slowly and closed my eyes. It came to me almost immediately. A faint heartbeat in the distance. I focused on it, centered everything else around the sound. It grew louder the harder I concentrated, the rhythm so familiar, the cadence so comforting. Was it really Reyes’s? Was he still alive?

“Reyes, where are you?” I whispered.

I felt a warmth, a rush of fire and heat; then I felt a mouth at my ear and heard a voice so deep, so husky, the low vibration curled over me in sensual waves. “The last place you will ever look,” he said almost teasingly.

I opened my eyes with a gasp. “Oh, my god, I know where he is.”

I scanned the faces around me. They all sat waiting expectantly. “Uncle Bob, can you come with me?” I asked as I jumped up. He slammed another bite into his mouth and got up to follow. So did Dad. “Dad, you don’t have to come.”

He offered a sardonic gaze. “Try to stop me.”

“But this might be nothing, really.”

“Okay.”

“Fine, but your food’s going to get cold.”

He grinned. I looked back at Gemma, unable to believe that she knew what I was. But the thought of Dad knowing crushed my chest. I was his little girl. And I wanted to remain that way for as long as possible. I leaned toward her just before I ran out the door. “Please, don’t tell Dad what I am,” I whispered.

“Never.” She leaned back and smiled at me reassuringly.

Wow, this was nice. In an Addams Family kind of way.

Where was the one place I would never look for Reyes? In my own house, naturally.

I raced across the parking lot as fast as my killer boots would carry me, not waiting for Dad or Uncle Bob, and practically stumbled down the basement stairs. It was the only logical explanation. All the apartments were rented with college in session. Reyes had to be in the basement.

When I finally skidded to a halt on the cement floor, the door up top had closed, and I realized I’d forgotten one thing. Light. The switch was at the top of the stairs. I turned to go back up but stopped. An odd kind of anxiety skimmed along the surface of my skin, like static electricity rushing over raw nerve endings. The first thing that registered was an odor. A pungent aroma hung thick in the air. The acidic scent burned my throat and watered my eyes.

I covered my nose and mouth with a hand and blinked into the darkness. Geometric figures started taking shape. Sharp angles and protruding joints materialized before my eyes. When my sight had time to adjust, I realized the shapes were moving, crawling one over the other like giant spiders, dripping off the ceiling, crushing each other for a spot up top.

I stumbled back before I realized they were everywhere. I turned in a circle, completely surrounded.

“They sent two hundred thousand.”

I spun around and saw Reyes, fierce, sword drawn, so savage, so breathtaking, I shuddered.

“In numeris firmatis,” he said. Strength in numbers.

They wanted him so badly, they were drooling. Literally. Dark fluid dripped from their razor-sharp teeth to form puddles on the floor. That’s when I saw his corporeal body, a shredded shell of what he was before, and my knees gave beneath me. I clutched at the stair rail to stay upright, fought back a dizzy spell with a shake of my head, then refocused. He was unconscious, soaked in a mixture of his own blood and the thick, black saliva of demons.

“This is all that made it through,” he continued.

All? The basement was hardly small and now held two, maybe three hundred of them. Demons. Like black soot and ash with teeth.

The light flickered on, and in that instant, I understood. They had been banished from the light. And in it, they disappeared. “Turn the light out!” I screamed, because I could no longer see them.

“What?” Uncle Bob asked from the top stair.

“Turn off the light out and stay out.”

“No, keep the light on,” I heard Reyes say. “If you can see them…,” he said, repeating his earlier warning.

But Uncle Bob obeyed.

Reyes growled in annoyance. He stood fully robed, the black mass rolling in waves around him, his blade glinting even in the dark depths of the basement. They were closing in on him, and they just kept coming, crawling over themselves, oozing out of cracks and crevices and dropping from the ceiling, fighting for a front position among legions.

My heart thundered in my chest as I scanned the beings around me. And just as Reyes had warned, they saw me. One by one, their skeletal heads turned in my direction. They seemed — in a nightmarish, optical illusion kind of way — to smile, their wide mouths and razor-sharp teeth forming an upturned crescent as they lowered their heads in preparation for attack.

“Turn on the light,” Reyes repeated, his voice strained as he swung his giant blade when one got too close. “It’ll blind them, give you time.”

“Charley, what’s going on?” Ubie called from the other side of the door. I looked up. The stairs were completely blocked now, packed with dozens upon dozens of real-life, state-of-the-art demons.

It took a moment to absorb the reality of my environment. I stood transfixed, utterly stunned.

Then Reyes was in front of me, the warning in his voice so desperate, so determined, it sucked the already fleeting breath out of my lungs. He held his blade at the ready, leaned in, and said, “Don’t make me kill you.”

They were advancing. Reyes stood in front of me, ready to swing. Angel appeared at my side, his eyes wide with terror. And I realized between heartbeats just how much I had utterly and completely fucked up. I should have listened to Reyes. I should have heeded his warning.