Darynda Jones - First Grave on the Right

His gaze dropped to my mouth, making it difficult to breathe, to concentrate, to resist jumping him right then and there. I had to focus.

“Blink once for yes,” I said before losing all sense of self-respect and attacking. He was obviously a very dangerous being, and I was beginning to wonder more and more just what kind of being that might be. Maybe he was like me and Rocket. Maybe he’d been born with a purpose, a job, but then his life turned out bad like Rocket’s and he’d never been able to fulfill his duties. The fragile hold I had on my self-control was thinning. I was getting lost in the sparkling gold flecks of his eyes. I felt like a child, mesmerized by a magician, lured to his side by sheer force of will.

He turned suddenly, breaking the spell he had me under, as if something had demanded his attention. Then he was in front of me, his sensual mouth barely inches from mine.

“You were tired,” he said, disappearing in a swirl of dark mass before he’d even finished his statement.

I stood in the aftereffects of his presence, the rich tones of his voice flowing down my spine like molten gold, as Cookie rushed through the door.

“Garrett called, said you got hurt,” she said, rushing to my side. “Again. But you’re upright.” She tilted her head slightly to the left. “Sort of. Have you ever considered that maybe your ability to heal so quickly is part of your being a grim reaper?”

Reyes was here, in my living room, standing before me as solid and ethereal as the statue of David.

“Charley?”

The heat of his mouth, so close to mine, lingered still. Wait. I was tired? What did he mean by … Oh, my god. He was answering my question about why he hadn’t shown up last night. The question I didn’t ask aloud, but thought. That was disturbing.

“I could slap you. If you think that would help.”

Blinking to attention, I focused on Cookie at last. “He was here.”

She scanned the room, her eyes wide, uncertain. “That big, bad thing?”

“Reyes.”

She stilled, chewed her bottom lip a moment, then looked back and asked, “Did you say hey for me?”

The next morning, I was still sore. But again, I was still breathing. The cup half full and all. I’d made it to the bathroom without one mishap. Surely that was a sign my day was going to go well. I figured I was due because my night hadn’t. Reyes was a no-show. Again. I tossed and turned, and the next thing I knew, Uncle Bob sent me a text.

After getting over the shock of that little jewel — Ubie didn’t text — I tried to read it. Something about FECAL DABL and HIKE SCHOOP. It was enough to make me look forward to the day. We were going to Reyes’s high school.

I’d stayed up half the night reading Reyes’s prison jacket, the file thick with priceless tidbits of information about him. It was truly one of the most interesting things I’d ever seen in print. He had the highest IQ of any prisoner in New Mexico history. What did they call it? Immeasurable? He’d kept pretty much to himself in prison, though he did have a few friends, including a cellmate who’d been paroled six months earlier. And that corrections officer at the hospital had been telling the truth. Reyes had saved his life during a prison riot. The officer had been locked inside when the riot began and a group of prisoners surrounded him. He had been knocked nearly unconscious by the time Reyes showed up, so he didn’t have any concrete details of what went down. He just stated that Reyes saved his life, then dragged him to safety, hiding him until the riot was over.

I was so proud of Reyes. I knew he was one of the good guys. While all the information in his file would lend itself nicely to countless fantasies to come, none of it led me to his sister. In fact, there was no mention of her at all.

I’d considered bringing Garrett into this whole thing. If anyone could find Reyes’s sister, he could. But that would take some explaining. Putting that idea on the back burner, I stepped out of the shower to find Angel Garza, my thirteen-year-old attitude-infested investigator, leaning a hip against the sink.

“Need me, boss?” he asked, running his fingers along the faucet.

“Where have you been?” I reached for my robe while he wasn’t looking. “I was worried. You never stay gone this long.”

“Sorry. I was hanging with my mom.”

“Oh.” Keeping my suspicions in check, I wrapped a towel around my hair. I had been buck naked only seconds earlier, and the consummate flirt, Angel Garza, didn’t even notice. Something was wrong. Angel lived — metaphorically — to see me naked. Especially buck naked. He’d told me so on several occasions. But instead of ogling me, he was fondling the faucet. Something was definitely off in Angel land.

Dead thirteen-year-old gangbangers were so moody.

Angel and I had hooked up soon after I met him on the Night of God Reyes, as I liked to call it. He’d followed me through high school, college, and eventually into the Peace Corps. When I finally opened my own investigations business, we negotiated a deal where I sent his mother the money he would have made working for me — anonymously, of course — and he became my top, number one, and only investigator.

But eventually Angel started seeing the benefits of our arrangement from another angle. He did his darnedest to convince me to take money from people using our unique situations.

“Dude, we could have such a racket,” he’d say.

“ Racket being the optimal word.”

“Think about it. We could go to these people’s relatives that died and score like maniacs.”

“That’s extortion.”

“That’s capitalism.”

“That’s punishable with one to four in the state pen and a substantial fine.”

He’d eventually get frustrated and accusatory. “You’re just using me for my body.”

The day I use a thirteen-year-old dead guy for his body is the day I have myself committed. “You don’t have a body,” I’d remind him.

“Throw that in my face.”

“Technically, you don’t have a face either. And even if we did make money with our abilities, it’s not like you can go buy a new skateboard.”

“Man, extra money for my mom.”

“Well, there is that.”

“And I like the light-up.”

“The what?”

“The light-up,” he’d say. “You know, that look people get when they finally realize you’re for real. It’s like electricity. It makes me tingle all over. Like a blanket full of static.”

Ew. “Really? I’ve never heard that.”

“Yeah, and I like it when people realize we’re out here.”

I leaned in close once and asked him, “Do you want your mom to realize you’re out here? Do you want her to know?”

“Nah. It took her too long to get over me.”

All in all, he was a good kid. But his behavior today was very out of character.

I scooted him out of the way and started digging through my makeup bag. “Is everything okay?” I asked as nonchalantly as possible.

“Sure,” he said with a shrug. “You look like hell, though. I can’t leave you alone for two seconds.”

“I’ve had an interesting week. I got Rosie off,” I said, referring to our assisted-disappearing case. It was Angel’s idea for her to go back to Mexico, and he’d done a lot of the legwork locating the small hotel on the beach for sale. We had to do some creative fund-raising, but it all worked out in the end.

He touched a bottle of perfume I had on the counter. “You know, it’s not all bad here,” he said cryptically.

After marveling at all the new shades of green on my face, I put my foundation down and looked at him.

“On this side, I mean. It’s not like we get hungry or cold or anything.”