First Grave on the Right

by Darynda Jones

  “I’ll talk,” Julio said through the speakers. “I’ll tell you what I know, but I want immunity from prosecution. I didn’t kill no one, and I ain’t going down for this.”

  With a twinkle in my eye, I turned, high-fived Julio’s tía Yesenia, the woman who’d raised him and wouldn’t leave the earthly plane until he straightened his shit out—her words—then strode out of the station with a relieved smile plastered on my face. Uncle Bob would call me later with the details, and I could explain the terms of our deal then. At the moment, I was tired and sore and in dire need of a long, hot bath. Had I known what awaited me at home, my needs may have shifted in a more sensual direction.

  * * *

  With thoughts of bubble baths and candlelight swimming through my head, I unlocked my door and sneaked into my apartment, trying not to disturb Cookie and Amber across the hall. It was late. The sun had drifted to the other side of the world hours ago, and I hated to keep Cookie up two nights in a row. Before coming home, I’d stopped by the office and found that Neil, in a surprising act of kindness, had couriered a copy of Reyes’s file to me. I wasn’t sure how legal it was, but I couldn’t have been more grateful if he’d handed me the winning Powerball ticket. The file had a note attached to it that simply read, You didn’t get this from me.

  I checked with Dad for any messages, just in case Rosie, the woman I’d helped escape from her abusive husband, needed anything, sneaked a quick bite of green chili stew, then humped it back across the parking lot to the Causeway. Though the lack of messages from Rosie was a good thing, I couldn’t help the concern that prickled down my spine, wishing she would call despite my strict orders.

  Flipping on the living room light, I was in the middle of a quick hello to Mr. Wong when Reyes turned toward me. Reyes, standing regal and godlike in front of my living room window. Reyes Farrow. The same Reyes Farrow who was lying in a coma in Santa Fe an hour away. He turned back to stare out the window, giving me a chance to put my stuff on the snack bar.

  I stepped forward then, eased closer to him. He shifted, cast his powerful gaze downward, and examined me through his periphery. Though he was clearly incorporeal, he seemed to be made of a matter denser than human flesh, more solid and unyielding.

  I scrambled for something to say. Somehow, You’re really hot in bed didn’t quite have the ring I was looking for. In an act of desperation, I blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

  “They’re going to take you off life support in three days.”

  He looked toward me then, starting at my feet and traveling slowly up. A tingling warmth followed in its wake, suffusing every molecule in my body with an irradiating energy that pooled in my abdomen, swirled, and percolated low in my belly, branding my flesh and deboning my limbs. I struggled to stay focused.

  “You have to wake up,” I explained, but he remained silent. “Can you at least give me your sister’s name?”

  His gaze lingered on my hips before continuing its journey north.

  “She’s the only one who can stop the state.”

  Still nothing. Then I remembered Rocket’s reaction to him at the asylum. His fear. I stepped closer, careful to stay out of arm’s reach. Despite the fact that my body was shaking with his nearness, begging for his touch in a Pavlovian-style response that would’ve made any behaviorist proud, we needed to talk.

  “Rocket’s afraid of you,” I said, my voice suddenly hoarse. When he paused at Danger and Will Robinson, I asked, “You wouldn’t hurt him, would you?” Then his gaze, piercing and turbulent, locked on to mine.

  Though we stood several feet apart, his heat radiated toward me. Hard as I tried not to, I took a step closer. I had so many questions, so many doubts.

  More than anything else at that moment in time, I wanted to know—pathetic as it sounded—why he hadn’t visited me the night before. He’d come every night for a month, then nothing, and my insecurities were getting the better of me. Reyes frowned, his brows inching together over deep mahogany eyes, and tilted his head to the side as if wondering what I was thinking.

  As badly as I wanted to ask my own self-indulgent questions, I had to make sure Rocket was in no danger from him, though I couldn’t imagine why he would be.

  “If I asked, real nice with a cherry on top, would you please not hurt Rocket?”

  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 fa
ct, 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.”

  Okay, this was just weird. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”

  “No. I just wanted you to know that. For future reference and all.”

  When I realized he might have been alluding to Reyes, I sucked in a soft breath. “Angel, do you know something about Reyes Farrow?”

  He flinched and looked up at me in surprise. “No. I don’t know anything about him. You got a job for me or what?” he asked, changing the subject.

  Damn. Nobody knew anything about Reyes, but everyone sure seemed to stand at attention when I mentioned his name. I’d kill to know what was going on.

  I filled Angel in on our case with the lawyers and the wrongly convicted Mark Weir. He couldn’t wait to meet Elizabeth, naturally. Then I sent him to see if he could come up with a connection between the kid who’d died in Mark’s backyard and the missing nephew.

  “Oh,” Angel said before he left, “Aunt Lillian’s here. I like her.”

  I tried not to look disappointed. “I like her, too, but her coffee sucks. Mostly ’cause it’s nonexistent.”

  He snickered and went on recon. In the meantime, Aunt Lillian took off with Mr. Habersham, the dead guy in 2B. I didn’t even want to know what that was about. A knock on the door had me rushing to zip up my boots. I was meeting Uncle Bob in twenty, and I couldn’t imagine who would be at my door this early in the morning.

  Smoothing my brown sweater over my jeans, I glanced through the peephole and came to a screeching halt, metaphorically, when I saw Officer Taft. No way was this happening. Not now.

  I opened the door slowly, mostly because it hurt. My entire body hummed in a dull, continuous ache. “Yeah?” I asked, peeking through the slit.

  “Hey,” he said, looking at me like I was half crazy, “I was just wondering if I could have a word with you.”

  “What kind of word?” I couldn’t open my door farther. I knew she was there. I could feel the heat of her laser glare trying to sear my gray matter. And singe my hair.

  “Is this a bad time?” he asked, shifting uncomfortably. “I’m sorry to bother you—”

  “Yeah, yeah. Got it. It’s okay. What do you need?”

  “I just think that, well, strange things have been happening.”

  Damn. My shoulders slumped against the door, and I eased it wider to reveal the blond-haired, blue-eyed spawn of Satan. Plastering my hands over my eyes, I cried, only a little melodramatically, “No! You did not do this to me! You did not bring her to my home, my sanctuary.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his gaze darting around in fear. “It’s true, huh? I’m being haunted.”

  Demon Child sighed in annoyance. “Not haunted. Just watched.”

  I freeze-framed my tantrum and eyed her. “That’s called stalking, dear, and is in fact frowned upon in most cultures.”

  “Can you … can you see someone?” Taft asked, leaning in to whisper.

  “Dude, she can hear you. Just come in before the neighbors start talking.” That was an excuse. The neighbors had started talking the moment I moved in. But may as well move the circus inside, let them burrow in my humble abode, take root on my furniture, raid my refrigerator.

  I gestured for Taft to sit on the sofa while I took the opposite chair. “I’d offer you coffee, but my Aunt Lillian made it.”

  “Um, okay.”

  “So, what do you want to know?”

  “Well, it’s just that strange things have been happening lately.”

  “Mm-hmm.” I was trying really hard not to yawn.

  “You know, like I keep hearing this bell that sits on my mantel, but no one’s there.”

  “I’m there,” she said, looking up at him. “I’ll always be there. I love you so much.”

  I glared at Demon Child. “Seriously? This early?”

  She stuck out her tongue at me.

  “I’ve heard stuff around the station about you. You know, blah, blah, blah.”

  I kind of
lost my train of thought and left Taft to his own devices as my gaze drifted to the spot where Reyes had stood only hours earlier. I’d never encountered anything like him. In fact, I’d never encountered anything supernatural besides the departed. No poltergeists or vampires or demons.

  “Why are you so bright?” Demon Child asked. “You look kind of dumb.”

  Well, maybe demons.

  After tossing her my best sardonic scowl, I decided to piss her off. I was pissed for having to put up with her ass. It seemed only fair.

  “Officer Taft is talking, dear. Shut up.”

  The anger that sprang into her eyes was a little funny. I was seriously going to have to convince her to cross. Angel and I could play exorcism again. He hated playing exorcism. Mostly because he looked silly, writhing around on the floor, pretending to burn from the holy tap water I was throwing on him.

  “Look,” I said, interrupting Taft. “I get it. And yes, you have a little girl following your every move, probably the one from that accident you told me about. She has long blond hair, silvery blue eyes—but that could be ’cause she’s dead—and pink pajamas with Strawberry Shortcake on them.” I glanced over at Taft. “Oh, and she’s evil.”

  Taft was a cop through and through. He’d learned how to keep a poker face, so it took me a moment to see the anger simmering inside him. The energy that was building encircled him in a mirage, like when you see water on the road where there is none.

  Was it something I said?

  He bolted to his feet, and I followed suit. “How the fuck do you know that?” he asked through gritted teeth.

  What? “Um, because she’s standing right beside you.”

  “Where I’ll always be,” she said. “Forever and ever.”

  Not if I had anything to say about it. Strawberry Shortcake was becoming a nuisance.

  Taft nearly came unglued. His anger arced out like a Tesla coil. He stepped toe to toe with me, and I steeled myself against whatever he might bring. But I swore on all things holy, if I got hit, tackled, or pushed through a skylight one more time this week, I was going on a killing spree. Starting with him.