Darynda Jones - First Grave on the Right

I learned two things from that experience: that most people would never believe in my abilities, even those closest to me. And that most people would never understand the devastating need of those left behind, the need to know the truth.

Regardless of how things had turned out, I’d caused a lot of pain that day. And a lot since. I should have made sure Rosie Herschel boarded that plane. I should have escorted her to the security checkpoint and then slipped one of the personnel a twenty to make sure she stayed put. Zeke couldn’t have found her before the plane boarded. He was with me. Had she changed her mind? Surely not. She was like a kid in a candy shop, ridiculously excited about the new life awaiting her. The enormous burden of living under the constant threat of violence had already been lifted from her shoulders. No, she hadn’t changed her mind. And instead of protecting my client, I was playing dodge-the-right-hook with her scum-of-the-underworld husband.

But therein lay the rub: She’d trusted me. With her life. And once again, I had let someone down in the most severe way possible.

I felt Angel standing across the room and glanced up through my lashes. His head was down, his eyes darting occasionally to my right, where Reyes sat. In the dark, I realized he was there as well, sitting patiently beside me. Not touching or demanding. Heat drifted off him like sand off a dune.

Angel wouldn’t come closer. Not with Reyes so near. He was afraid of him. I was beginning to understand that Reyes wasn’t the average everyday entity. He even freaked out the dead people.

I curled back into my blanket, buried my face. “You could have told me,” I said to Angel, my voice muffled through the thick material.

“I knew it would upset you.”

“That’s why you took off for two days.”

I could almost feel him shrug. “I just figured you’d keep thinking she got away. You know, that nobody would ever find her.”

“On the bedroom floor in a pool of her own blood?”

“Yeah, I hadn’t figured that part out yet.”

“I wanted her to be happy,” I said by way of explanation. “I had it all planned. She was going to open a hotel, get to know her aunt all over again, and be happier than she’s ever been in her whole life.”

“She is happier than she’s ever been in her whole life. Just not in the way you wanted. If you could know what it’s like here, really like, you wouldn’t be so sad.”

I sighed. For some reason, that knowledge didn’t really help. “What happened?”

“She did everything right, just like you told her,” he said. “She left dinner simmering on the stove. She left her purse with her wallet in it on her nightstand. She left her shoes and coat in the entryway. He would never have suspected she’d just run away. He would have thought something had happened to her.”

“Then what? What went wrong?”

“Her baby’s blanket.”

My head whipped up. Angel was peeling paint off the side of the snack bar, doing his best not to look in Reyes’s direction.

“She went back for her baby’s blanket,” he explained.

“She didn’t have a baby,” I said, confused.

“She would have, if he hadn’t sucker punched her in the gut.”

I buried my head again, fought the sting of tears.

“She’d knitted it. Yellow because she didn’t know if it would be a boy or a girl yet. She lost the baby the night she mustered the courage to tell him she was pregnant.”

My lids squeezed shut, forcing the most useless tears I’d ever cried past my lashes. The blanket absorbed them, and I wished with all my heart it would absorb me as well. Just swallow me whole then spit out the bitter bones. Why was I even on Earth? To make a fool of myself and my family? To hurt people I’d never met?

“But Zeke Herschel was in jail,” I said, unable to fully accept what had happened.

“He made bail almost the minute they booked him; his cousin is a bail bondsman.”

I knew that, but I never expected her to go back.

“Herschel caught her as she was leaving the house a second time. And he knew from the look in her eyes what she was doing.” Angel chewed on his bottom lip a moment before continuing. “After he … did what he did, he found your card in her pocket and put two and two together.”

A long silence ensued as I tried desperately to figure out my role on this Earth. Clearly, I was going about the whole grim reaper thing wrong. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe there was no going about it. Maybe I was just supposed to live my life without trying to help people, without trying to fix their problems, living or otherwise.

“It wasn’t your fault, you know,” Angel said after a while.

“Yeah,” I said, my voice spent as fatigue and depression set in, “right. It was probably Rosie’s fault. We can blame her.”

“That’s not what I meant. I just know how you are. You take everything onto your shoulders like that guy who holds up the world, and you shouldn’t. You’re not nearly as muscular.”

“Why do you suppose I’m here?” I asked him. Angel. A thirteen-year-old departed gangbanger.

“Just ’cause you’re supposed to be, I guess.”

“Oh, right, I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

“Why do you think you’re here?”

“To wreak havoc and misery upon the masses,” I answered. “Duh.”

“Well, if you knew…” A glimmer of a smile lifted the corners of his mouth.

Reyes stirred beside me, and Angel’s gaze darted to him.

“Why do you suppose he’s here?” I asked Angel, indicating Reyes with a nod of my head.

Angel thought about it, then said, “To wreak havoc and misery upon the masses.” He left out the duh, and I realized he was serious.

I glanced at Reyes. His gaze was locked on to Angel, as if in warning.

“I’m outta here,” Angel said. “My mom has a hair appointment in the morning. I like to watch her get her hair done.”

It wasn’t the lamest excuse he’d ever used, but it was pretty darned close.

“Will you just tell me next time?” I asked.

He winked at me, the flirt. “We’ll see.” Then he was gone.

“Why do you suppose I’m here?” I asked Reyes as he sat beside me. He didn’t answer. Naturally. “You saved my life. Again. Are you planning on waking up anytime soon? I don’t know how long I can hold the state off.”

My pulse had quickened the moment I realized he was beside me. Now that we were alone, it charged headlong into warp drive, heedless of any stars lurking nearby. Reyes’s energy was like a tangible thing, electric and arousing as it encapsulated my body. He hadn’t moved, but I could feel him everywhere.

Trying to keep my wits about me, or at least nearby, I asked him, “What are you, Reyes Farrow?”

Without saying a word, he reached over and took hold of the blanket, tugged it off me, exposing my skin to his heat. I leaned toward him, ran my fingertips along the silky lines and curves that made up his tattoo. It was futuristic and primitive at once, a combination of intertwining lattice that ended in sharp tips like those on his sword and smooth curves that wound around his biceps to disappear under his shirtsleeve. The tattoo was one solid work of art that spanned his shoulder blades and spiraled over both shoulders and down both arms. And it meant something. Something big. Something … important.

Then suddenly I was lost. I fell in like Alice in Wonderland, stumbled along the curves, feared I would never escape. It was a map of an entrance. I had seen it before in another life, and I didn’t associate it with fond memories. It felt like a warning of some kind. An omen.

And then it hit me. It was the tumbling, mazelike mechanisms of a lock that opened a realm of devastating darkness.