I sat back in stunned disbelief. “Well, that just seems counterproductive. I mean, He booted me for breaking one little rule. And He’s just going to sit back and watch His world be destroyed?”
He shrugged a noncommittal brow.
“I don’t believe it.” I crossed my arms in defiance.
“Doesn’t matter. As of this moment, He’s staying out of it. I’m not saying He’ll let this continue indefinitely. This is His realm, after all. But right now we’re on our own.”
I nodded, still reeling at that little nugget of gold.
“What’s with you and Garrett and Osh?”
“What do you mean?”
“I sensed some … hostility.”
“I did open a hell dimension on this plane.”
“And that’s it?” I’d sensed more than just an accusation in their emotions.
“Unless you know something I don’t.”
Damn it. Once again I couldn’t tell if he was lying or not. Anyone else on the planet and I’d be good to go, but noooo. Not Mr. Farrow.
Still, we did agree, once upon a time, to no secrets. Surely he’d tell me if there was something else behind their hostilities.
Reyes turned right on San Mateo, heading for Gemma’s office first. Cookie pinged her cell. Hopefully she’d still be there.
He slowed when we passed through the barrier of Albuquerque and the Shade. I filled my lungs and held my breath, not sure what to expect, but nothing happened. I didn’t feel any different. I didn’t see anything of particular note. Everything looked the same, completely normal if not a little hazy.
Even through the mist, rays from the setting sun on our right ribboned across the horizon in reds and yellows and oranges. A classic New Mexico sunset. The perfect homecoming gift.
“Is this haze supernatural?” I asked him.
“Yes. Most humans can’t see it.”
He turned again, and we passed through a residential area. Kids were playing in the front yard of one house while a man was working on his car in another. “Why didn’t you want me coming alone? Everything seems pretty normal.”
“In case you’ve forgotten, you’re a blazing beacon of light.”
“Can the demons from this hell see it?” I asked, alarmed. I’d seen them once, the demons, while they ate the bones of the priest who killed Amber. He’d been incorporeal. The priest. And yet his bones still crunched when they ate them.
I shivered at the memory, marveling about how the colliding dimensions were wreaking havoc on my town in more ways than one.
“Yes.” He said it so resolutely, I had to question his reasoning.
“What makes you think so? I mean, they don’t have eyes.”
“They don’t need them.”
“And you know this because…?”
He pulled to a stop in front of Gemma’s office. “Dutch, I created them for you. Their sole purpose was to sense you. To track you.”
“Ah. Right. I forgot.”
“There’s one more thing you should be aware of.”
“Is it bad? It’s bad, huh?”
“We can’t shift. That much I remember from my time inside. We can’t dematerialize.”
“So, if something goes horribly wrong, we’re stuck.”
“Until we can physically cross through the barrier, yes.”
“And you didn’t think that was worth mentioning before we dove in headfirst?”
He planted a patient stare on me. “Would that have stopped you from coming?”
“Oh, look,” I said, changing the subject. “Gemma’s car.”
My sister’s new Jaguar sat in front of an adobe office building. She was a head shrink and a darned good one if not for that tiny blemish on her record where she fell in love with one of her patients and had to stop seeing him professionally so they could date. I hated when that happened.
“Wait here,” Reyes said, stepping out of Misery.
“Wait here? I’m not waiting here.”
He turned and growled at me. Low and deep and guttural.
I parted my lips and took him in, all scruffy hair and wide shoulders. “Now you’re just trying to seduce me.”
He narrowed his lids, but his mouth softened nonetheless. “I just want to make sure there aren’t any around.”
“Demons?” I asked, snapping to attention. For some reason I’d never understand, I yanked my feet off the floorboard, tucked my knees under my chin, and wrapped my arms around my legs. “You think they’re here?”
“I don’t know,” he said, fighting off an attack of the dimples.
Apparently, I was hilarious.
He walked around Misery, scanning the area as he went, and opened my door for me. “Looks clear.”
I pulled my knees closer, trying not to panic. “Did you check under the car?”
He grinned, then bent to look up Misery’s skirts. “No demons there.”
If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was enjoying my trip down terror lane. “You do remember them, right? No eyes? No noses? Just huge mouths with cracked lips pulled back to look like the smiles of those who enjoy torture and the scent of formaldehyde?”
“Creator,” he said, reminding me. “I know very well what they look like.”
I climbed out of Misery and glowered at him. “Let me just state for the record, Guillermo del Toro has nothing on you.” I reached up and tapped my finger against his temple. “There’s something really messed up in there, buddy.”
“I’ve been trying to tell you that since we met. We should hurry.”
“Right.” We took off toward the door, but I stopped and looked at him again. “You created them. Why can’t you just, you know, un-create them? Wave your hands and make all this disappear?”
“Because this isn’t Hogwarts.”
“But you’re a god,” I said, on the verge of whining, until I realized he’d just referenced Harry Potter and I fell a little deeper into the abyss of love. I shook it off and added, “And this is your creation.”
“Two words: Frankenstein’s monster.”
“Oh, yeah, that makes sense.”
“I created the Shade with the intent that it would never be released from its boundaries. It should have remained encapsulated in the god glass for all eternity. I’ve never released a hell dimension. I have no idea how to close one once it’s been set loose.”
He’d been trapped in the Shade for God knows how long, and when he escaped, he was not the same Reyes we all knew and loved. If he could’ve done something about it, he would have. But I still felt there was a connection of some kind. That the answer lay within my husband and his abilities.
A line of cars drove past, honking their horns and yelling obscenities like floats at a drunken Rose Bowl parade. They held up signs about this being the end of times and how the apocalypse was nigh. Sadly, it was never nigh enough.
“If you think about it,” I said as we stepped up to Gemma’s entrance, “Albuquerque is the new Bermuda Triangle.”
He nodded, still scrutinizing the doom-and-gloom parade.
I opened the door and walked into the wake of a tornado. The receptionist’s office had been vandalized. Books and papers lay strewn across the floor. Shards of glass from a broken lamp peppered the carpet.
“Gemma!” I burst through her office door and found much of the same. Turned-over chairs. A broken coffee table. Glass from a window littering the ground.
Then I saw sneakered feet. Bare calves. A prone female body.
“Charley?”
I whirled around, and Gemma rushed into my arms. I hugged her hard, then looked back to where the woman lay on the ground. “Gemma, who is that? What happened?”
She followed my gaze. “Carolyn. She’s a patient. She just … she attacked me.” Gemma choked back a sob and buried her face in the crook of my shoulder as Reyes looked around.
I closed my eyes and filled my lungs. “Gemma, was she infected?”
After a loud swallow, she looked back at me.
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen one in person. She just went crazy. She just— Wait.” Her eyes rounded. “If she was infected, am I going to get it?”
“No, hon. I don’t think that’s what’s going on here.”
I looked back at the woman. She had mutilated herself before coming after Gemma. Before becoming enraged.
After checking out the rest of the office, Reyes walked up to us, his expression dire. He put a hand on my head, blocking my vision, and brought us both into his embrace.
My chest hurt. We’d done this. We’d caused this devastation, and lord only knew how many more would die because of it.
“We have to stop this,” I said to him.
He nodded, his expression impassive, but I felt the tension humming beneath his steely exterior.
I called Uncle Bob and filled him in through choking sobs so the police could cordon off the scene. I told him to check out Gemma’s office personally and call it in as an anonymous tip so we wouldn’t have to wait around. We needed to get to Pari’s as soon as possible.
We had to practically force Gemma to come with us. Apparently, her boyfriend, Wyatt, was supposed to meet her there later. She didn’t want to leave, but I assured her we would get word to him where she was.
After a lightning-quick battle of rock-paper-scissors, I won the honor of riding shotgun. Gemma climbed in back, and I took the seat next to my main squeeze. He wrapped my hand in his as he drove, and I turned to look out the window. I just needed to get through the next few days, the next few hours, before I lost it completely. Before everything we’d done, all the suffering we’d caused, sank in.
Pari was our next stop, and I could only hope she hadn’t suffered through a similar situation. She was closer to ground zero than Gemma had been. Much closer. And if I knew Pari, she was right in the middle of it.
5
Patience:
That thing you have when there are too many witnesses.
—T-SHIRT
By the time we got to Pari’s place, Central had devolved into a torrent of chaos. The infected were multiplying in droves, but with all the drinking and rowdy behavior, it was impossible to tell who was infected and who was just having fun. Lining the south side of the University of New Mexico, Central had been a designated party area for years, but this was ridiculous. I could only hope Pari had not become someone’s party favor.
The minute Reyes pulled into the alley behind Pari’s shop, I had my door open and was sprinting toward her back entrance.
“Stay here,” I heard him tell Gemma as I tore through Pari’s back door.
He was fast on my heels when I came to a screeching halt in front of Pari’s office. I peeked inside. Papers strewn everywhere. A broken lamp. A keyboard sitting perilously lopsided on a stack of binders.
I breathed a sigh of relief. Nothing out of place, thank God.
“Pari!” I yelled, hurrying through her shop to the front waiting area.
“Charley?” Pari turned toward me from the reception desk. She’d been helping a gorgeous couple choose a tattoo. One man had his index finger planted on a picture of matching hearts, but his partner held up a pair of snakes wrapped around two wrists.
“Pari,” I said, gaping at her, “what the fuck?”
“Charley?” she said again, speechless for once in her life. Then, snapping to her senses, she rushed into my arms. I’d been getting that a lot lately. Thank Reyes’s Brother I was a hugger.
“Are you even paying attention to the news?” I scolded.
“Charley. You’re here.”
“Nothing gets past you,” I said, kissing her cheek. “And have you noticed the ruckus outside?”
“Yes,” she said, squinting at me. “But I had a client tonight. I had to see him one more time.”
I gasped. “Are you hooking up with someone?”
“What? No. Well, yes, but not him. I mean, he’s cute and all, like really cute, but that’s not it.”
One of the men spoke up then. “What if we got the snakes in the shape of a heart?” he asked his partner.
“Hey,” the other one said, brightening just as a beer bottle slammed against Pari’s front window.
“Sorry, guys,” I said, disentangling Pari and shooing them out. “Shop’s closed.”
The disappointed couple started for the front door. I dove onto the tall desk, reached over, and grabbed their collars.
They both made strangling sounds and turned back to me, appalled.
“Go out the back. It’s sketchy out there.”
A little wasted themselves, they did as they were told, giggling and stumbling into one another. But when they passed Reyes, they stopped short and both their jaws fell open.
“I know, I know. He’s a looker.” I shooed again. “I hope you guys have a long and wonderful life together.”
One corner of Reyes’s mouth tipped up. “Jealous?”
“Please.” I took hold of Pari’s hand and led her toward the office before turning back to him. “Unless I should be. I’ve been gone a long time. Is there something you want to tell me?”
His only answer was to go to the front and close up the shop for Pari.
“Do you think I should be jealous?” I asked her.
“Charley.”
“Pari.”
“Chuck.”
“Par.” I stepped closer until we were nose to nose. “Seriously, hon, I can do this all day. Now where’s your bag?”
“You’re here.”
“Is this it?” Reyes asked. He held up a bag he’d found hanging on a coat rack.
“That’s it.” I foraged through it, found her ginormous sunglasses, and pushed them onto her face.
“Wait.” She grabbed my arm, suddenly ecstatic. “You’re here. I was waiting for a client, but he didn’t show. I wanted to tell you about him. How are you here?”
“I don’t know. I just kind of materialized in the Sahara Desert.”
“Wow. Chuck, you gave up your life to save Amber.”
“Not really. I’m still a god. I knew I wouldn’t die die.”
She sank onto the nearest chair. “Where have you been?”
“Marmalade,” I said, trying to stand her back up again. “It’s a quaint little corner of the universe with wraiths and a charming view of eternal darkness. We need to get you some clothes.”
She gasped and looked down, then sagged in relief. “Oh, my God, I thought I was naked again. I do that sometimes.” She glanced at Reyes and winked.
He chuckled and reminded me, “We need to get to the hospital.”
“Hospital?” she asked.
“Yes, we’re trying to find out what’s going on. What this infection is.”
“Cookie said something about a hell dimension.”
“Yep, and we are smack-dab in the middle of it. Clothes?”
“Oh, right.”
She led us up a flight of stairs to her tiny apartment and started throwing things into a bag. Haphazardly, unless she really felt she was going to need a feather boa and a riding crop at the warehouse. Well, maybe the riding crop.
“So, Chuck,” she said, going for the toiletries.
“Yes, Par.” I found her underwear drawer and went to town.
She peeked around the corner and busted me holding up a pair of lace boy shorts. “I know you’ve been through a lot, but … hey, did you get brighter?”
I stuffed them in the bag. “I don’t think so.”
“You did.” She walked out to look me over. “You’re brighter. I can barely see you even with my shades on. You’re burning the retinas out of my head.”
“You’re exaggerating.”
“If you say so, but if I go blind, I expect you to heal me.”
“Deal. Now, what’s this about a guy?”
She headed back to the bathroom. “Sorry, right, it’s just, I know you have a lot going on.”
“Par, no offense, but that’s never really stopped you.”
Reyes picked up a pair of handcuffs
.
“True. Okay, so this guy came in the other day, right?” She tossed toiletries into a makeup bag as she spoke.
“Mm-hm.” I motioned for Reyes to put the cuffs down.
“He just wanted a touch-up of an old tat.”
He tossed them into the overnight bag.
“I’m with you so far,” I said, taking the cuffs out. “Socks?”
“Yes, please. It’s just, he had a little ink here and there, but he was mostly into what I thought was branding. I mean, it’s not what I’m into, but who am I to judge? I have Satan riding a unicorn on my ass.”
“No way.”
“Way.” She came out and stuffed the makeup bag into the overnight. “So, he takes off his shirt. The tat is across his upper back. Nice lines. Clean. But he has all these names covering his torso and arms.”
I nodded, pretending to understand the dilemma.
“Dozens. Men. Women. Some even written in some kind of foreign script.”
“Okay.”
“So, I ask him about them. He says they’re names of all the people who have broken his heart. I’m thinking, cool, he’s bi and just really, really unlucky in love. And kind of a ho, if you know what I mean.”
“Maybe he’s a glutton for punishment.”
“Maybe, but the more I look, the more I think there’s something else going on. I looked at a couple of names that were fresh. Like still scabbed over. And I realized they weren’t brands but cuts. Self-inflicted, if I had to guess. And one was Merry. Not M-A-R-Y, but M-E-R-R-Y. It’s a very unusual way to spell it, right?”
“True.”
“It’s just that I remembered something in the news about a Merry Schipplet who went missing a couple of weeks before he came in. I only remembered it because of the unusual spelling. This young girl was going to graduate her high school valedictorian. She’d been accepted to Vassar. She was going to spend her summer in Tanzania helping out at a refugee camp. Her disappearance made national headlines. Chuck, her parents … they’re devastated.”
I opened a binder to look at some of her latest tattoos. “I’m sure they are. You think there’s a connection?”
“I didn’t until I saw another fresh one. It had scabs, too. It said Mark.”
“M-A-R-K?”
Summoned to Thirteenth Grave Page 5