“Who told you I had a new neighbor?” I heard him twist the top off a beer, the snap and hiss strangely comforting.
“I’ve been keeping tabs,” he said.
That probably wasn’t good.
“So what’s going on?” he asked again.
“What? I need a reason to come see my oldest and dearest friend?”
When he walked back to the living room and handed me a Corona, he kind of glared at me before sinking into a recliner.
“Okay, well, my old-ish and most annoying friend anyway.” I sat on the sofa opposite him, taking note of the chaos strewn about the room. Just like the last time I’d come to visit, the coffee table was littered with books and notes on the spiritual realm, heaven and hell, demons and angels. “I’ve been worried about you.”
“Why?” he asked after taking a swig.
“I don’t know. You just seem different now. Distant. Like you have PTSD.”
I knew from where I spoke. My TSD got P’d when I was tortured by a monster named Earl. While attempting to execute my rescue, Swopes was shot and died as a result. The doctors were able to resuscitate him, but he’d recently told me that while in the jaws of death, he went to hell. That worried me. What worried me even more was the fact that, while in the fiery pit of eternal damnation, he had a heart to heart with Reyes’s dad, an experience that had to be traumatic on all kinds of levels.
“I’m fine,” he said, as he had the last seventeen times I’d asked. “I’m just working on something.”
I scanned the area. “I can see that. Anything you want to share?”
“No.”
He’d said it with such determination, no way was I going to argue. “Roger that,” I said instead. Wait. Who was I kidding? “But you know you can tell me anything, right?”
He eased his head back, closed his eyes, and stretched out his legs in front of him, his foot sending a stack of notes sprawling across the floor. He didn’t care. “Stop fishing, Charles. It’s not going to happen.”
“Roger that.” I took a sip of beer, then added, “But this stuff looks really interesting. I could help with the research.”
“I’m good,” he said, his voice edged with a hard warning.
“Roger that.” I picked up a page of scribbled notes and tried to decipher his handwriting. “Who is Dr. A. von Holstein? And is he related, by chance, to a race of cows?”
He bolted upright and snatched the page out of my hand. Oh, yeah, that wouldn’t stimulate my curiosity. “I said no, Charles, and I meant it.”
I sat back. “Geez, roger that.”
After placing the paper back in the exact same spot from which I’d freed it, he leveled an exasperated stare on me. “Why do you keep saying ‘roger that’? You don’t get to say ‘roger that’ unless you’ve been in the military.”
I regarded my beer, pausing a long moment for dramatic effect, then said in a quiet voice, “Roger that.”
The sigh of annoyance he released was long and meaningful. I won. My journey to the dark side really was complete. And I owed it all to my bestie Darth. Where would I be without him? Without our friendship? I shuddered to think.
He polished off his beer, leaned forward to steal mine, then sat back to nurse it at a slower pace. “Who sent me there?” he asked, his voice suddenly distant, and I knew exactly what he meant. Who sent him to hell? “Why did I go?”
I folded my legs until they resembled a pretzel and settled back against the sofa cushions. “You saw me right after you died, right?”
He nodded, eyes closed, beer perched on a thigh while he rubbed the bottle absentmindedly with long fingers.
“And then your dad met you on your way to heaven to tell you that you had been brought back to life. That you had to go back.”
His fingers stopped but he didn’t answer.
“But before you went back into your body, you went to hell?”
That was pretty much all I knew about Garrett’s vacay down under. He’d refused to go into detail when he told me and had shut me out every time I’d tried to talk about it since. While I was hungry to know every minute detail of what transpired, he was determined to let me starve.
“You said you were sent for a reason,” I continued. “To understand. To learn more about Reyes. How he was raised. What he had done.”
Without opening his eyes, he said, “And you only made excuses for him.”
He was angry with me, but I’d surprised him at the time by knowing before he told me that Reyes was the son of Satan. By being okay with it, in his eyes.
“Like I said, he wasn’t raised in the most nurturing environment.”
“So you insist. And you take up for him every chance you get. A general from hell. A skilled assassin who rose through the ranks of a demon army, who lived for the taste of his kills, who became the most feared creation in their history.” Then he did open his eyes and pinned me with a lethal stare. “An abomination who was sent to this plane for one reason and one reason only. You.”
This would get us nowhere. I unfolded my legs and instead folded my arms across my chest in a defensive maneuver. “I told you, he was sent for a portal. Any portal. Not me specifically.”
The way I understood it, Satan had sent Reyes to this plane to nab a grim reaper. Reyes was Satan’s way out of hell and he supposedly wanted a way into heaven. With the two of us, he would have a direct door into the very realm he’d been kicked out of. But Garrett was dead set on the idea that Reyes had been sent for me specifically, which was ludicrous. There was no way for Satan to know that out of all the beings like me in the universe, I would be chosen to serve on this plane as the portal. I would be sent here. From what Reyes told me, there was an entire race of us, a fact I had yet to verify or explore. But he said I had a celestial family out there. I found the concept both intriguing and comforting.
“And I told you you’re wrong,” he said.
I would never win this. “Fine. So you sat around a fiery pit and swapped war stories with Reyes’s dad.” I picked lint off my shirt and asked, “What did he tell you?”
“It’s not important.”
I gaped at him. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“No, I’m not. What’s important is why I was sent there. I mean, who sent me? Who has that kind of power?”
He had a good point. Solid. Sharp. Pointy.
“One thing I did figure out while I was there is that they are all liars and manipulators. You can’t believe anything they have to say.”
“Is that a comment about Reyes?”
“If the fiery pit fits.” When I got up to leave, he added, “I’m working on something. I promise, Charles, the minute I know more, you’ll know more.”
He groaned and got up from his seat to follow me to the door.
I opened it, then turned back to him. “Swopes, I know you don’t like to talk about it, but you can’t just go to hell and come away unscathed.”
A humorless grin spread across his face. “Sure you can. What would you do if you were sent to hell?”
I stepped out. “Stop, drop, and roll? What I mean is, did anything bad happen? Did they, I don’t know, hurt you?” I leveled a probing stare on him. “Did they torture you?”
His grin morphed into something that resembled pity. “No, Charles. They didn’t torture me.”
He closed the door before I could say anything else. I stood there a solid minute, stunned, unsure of what to do, what to say, how to help. The only thing I knew for certain was that he’d just lied to me.
Not really in the mood to deal with Darth, I decided to try a new voice on the way home. I plugged in my phone, brought up the app, then listened as KITT powered up all systems. I was a huge Knight Rider fan growing up, dreaming of a car that could talk to me, one that could warn me of impending doom like terrorists ahead or cops running radar. And when Misery transformed into a supercar with a turbo engine and an array of onboard weapons, I was sold. At last. I could finally nuke people who refused to g
et out of the left-hand lane. Life was good.
But Garrett had been tortured. In hell, no less. The concept was so foreign, even with everything that I knew, I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around what he could have gone through.
What would they have done to him? I doubted the Chinese water torture came into play. But he was incorporeal at the time. Could the soul be tortured? Then I thought about all the people who supposedly went to hell, who supposedly spent an eternity burning in agony. Was that real? Could the soul burn? Could it be cut? Torn? Brutalized?
My mind reeled with all the potentialities bouncing through it. It was hard to imagine hell as a physical place, a real place, even though Reyes was created there. Grew up there. It was just so foreign. So otherworldly. So creepy.
KITT broke into my thoughts, suggesting we fire a missile before telling me to take the next exit. Alas, I did not bond with KITT as much as I’d hoped. His music kind of sucked and his weapons were useless against the power of ignorance. I’d voted him off the island before I even pulled into my parking space.
“What do you think?” I asked the elderly dead guy in my passenger seat. I’d picked him up somewhere around Lomas and Wyoming. He seemed nice. He was also as naked as the day he was born. Trying not to look at his penis was proving harder than I thought it would be. “Is it breezy in here to you?”
He didn’t answer, so I left him to his thoughts and took the stairs up to my third-floor apartment, where I found a sticky note on my door. I’d been getting them a lot lately. Ever since my number one suspect in an arson case took the apartment I’d coveted for years and moved in down the hall. Two things led me to suspect the son of evil incarnate had taken up flamethrowing. First, he’d smelled like smoke a few nights ago, and I later learned that a condemned apartment building had been torched that very night. Second, the first time I saw Reyes Farrow was in that very apartment building being beaten by the monster who raised him, Earl Walker. After a little more digging, I discovered that at some point in his life, Reyes had lived at every address the arsonist was hitting. The realization caused a ribbon of dread to knot in my stomach, to twist it into a mass of raw nerve endings that pulsed with empathy and regret for what Reyes had gone through.
I looked down at the note. This one read: What are you afraid of?
What was I afraid of? The fact that he may be the very person burning down buildings left and right? The fact that I might have to have him arrested and sent back to the same prison in which he’d spent ten years doing time for a crime he didn’t commit? The fact that arsonists have a unique psyche that leans toward either extreme arrogance or extreme sexual deviance? Reyes had neither as far as I knew, but did the idea of finding out otherwise scare me?
“Hey, Ch-Charley.”
I looked over my shoulder and saw my new dead friend Duff standing beside me, shifting his weight from side to side with nervous energy. “Hey, you,” I said, unlocking my door.
“I – I thought m-maybe you might need someone to talk to after wh-what happened.”
And there went my heart. Damn it. Time to see the cardiologist again.
“I’m okay, but thank you.”
“Oh, g-good. I’m glad.”
Part of my job was to help people cross over when they were ready. Sometimes that included the role of shoulder. As in to cry on. I held the door ajar and offered him my full attention. “Do you know what I am, Duff?”
He stuffed his hands in his pockets and kicked a nonexistent rock at his feet. “Y-yes.”
“You know you can cross through me when you’re ready.”
“Y-yes, I know. I just thought m-maybe I’d keep an eye on you for a while.”
I straightened. “An eye on me?”
He did it fast, but I saw it anyway. He glanced toward Reyes’s apartment. “Y-yes, you know, in case y-you need help or s-something.”
“Duff, I appreciate the offer, but —”
“I m-moved in down the hall if you n-need anything.”
I followed his gesture toward Mrs. Allen’s apartment. “Oh, okay. So, you’re living with Mrs. Allen?”
A shy smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “Y-yes. She has a dog.”
I put a hand on his frigid shoulder. “That’s not a dog, Duff. That’s a demon named PP. I’m about ninety percent certain he’s possessed.”
Duff chuckled. “At least he doesn’t have any teeth.”
“Just be careful. I think he has one fang left and he knows how to use it.”
After another quick glance toward the dragon’s lair, Duff lifted a hand. “S-see you later, then.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I said with a wink. “Just remember, steer clear of that fang.”
The smile that commandeered his features was contagious and charming. He took another step back, gave me a shy wave, then disappeared.
I started inside my apartment, then rethought that decision. If anyone would know what Garrett went through, what he had to endure in the fiery pits, Reyes would. He’d grown up in hell, after all, and then suffered a whole new version of the word here on Earth at the hands of Earl Walker, who had ended up with Reyes through nefarious means when he was very young, abused him mercilessly, then framed Reyes for his murder and had him sent to prison despite the fact that Earl Walker was alive and kicking.
Well, not kicking anymore, thanks to an expertly placed blade that Reyes himself had swung, but alive anyway.
I walked to his apartment and knocked. The fact that my hand shook a bit surprised me. It wasn’t like I’d never been in his company. Lots. And in various states of undress. But I’d never been to his humble abode, to his lair. He’d never had the home court advantage, and the realization that the minute I stepped through that threshold we would be on his turf gave me butterflies. That and the fact that I owed him. Again. He had saved my life tonight. Not from Tidwell but from Cookie. That woman was a menace.
He cracked the door open just enough to give me a partial view of him, and the butterflies swarmed. Especially when he cocked a brow in question.
“I thought we could talk,” I said, keeping my exterior calm. Unassuming.
For a moment I thought he was going to brush me off, tell me he was tired or he had work to do, he hesitated so long. But he turned and busied himself while I tried to peek over his shoulders into his apartment. Then he faced me again. A wicked grin crinkled one corner of his mouth as he secured another sticky note on the door before shutting it in my face.
I blinked, then read the note.
Use the key.
Oh, for the love of gravy. I marched back to my apartment, grabbed the key from my bag, then went back and used the darned thing, trying to figure out what the big deal was. Though I had to admit, I liked having it. I liked having access to his place, his life. I’d been denied him so long, it was nice to have one small piece of him, one tiny token of confirmation. It slid easily into the lock. Turned like it had been recently oiled. And naturally my mind came up with all kinds of situations for which that could’ve been a metaphor. I was such a ho.
I walked through the apartment and spotted one Mr. Reyes Farrow busying himself in his kitchen. In a domestic capacity. The image was jarring and endearing at once and I had to tear my gaze away before he noticed. I couldn’t let him get too used to the idea that I adored him. Best to keep him guessing.
I had yet to see his new digs. It wasn’t at all what I’d expected. Of course, I really didn’t know what to expect. Perhaps something in cool tones with lots of grays and chrome. What I got was warmth, very much like the man himself. It was nice. Lots of textures with earthy colors and a freestanding black marble fireplace separating two rooms. In the next was a pool table with dark wood and a cream-colored top. It was stunning. His apartment had a homey feel I hadn’t expected.
I looked up as he walked back in, his swagger drawing attention to his hips, up his slim stomach to a set of wide shoulders that would make any man proud. I knew they made me proud. He wore a white button-dow
n hanging loose over jeans. The sleeves were rolled up, allowing his tan forearms to show from underneath. That led me to his hands. He had the most incredible hands, and his arms were like steel. I should know. I’d been held captive in them before. It was a place I longed to return.
He handed me a glass of red wine. Another nicety I hadn’t expected.
“A toast?” he asked, raising his glass.
“What are we toasting?” I clinked our glasses together, then brought mine to my lips.
“The fact that a girl I know named Charley survived another day.”
He didn’t call me Charley often, and it somehow seemed more intimate than when anyone else said it. It felt nice, the syllables falling from his mouth like honey.
When I didn’t drink, he called me by the nickname he’d given me. “Dutch?” And that felt even more intimate. His voice, rich and velvety and smooth like butterscotch, thrummed a string somewhere deep inside me. “Are you okay?”
I nodded and finally took a sip. A fruity heat filled my mouth, warming my throat as I swallowed the crisp liquid. “I’m fine,” I said. “Great, actually, thanks to you. Again.”
One corner of his mouth tilted, the gesture charming.
“I love what you’ve done with the place.”
He smiled and looked at his own masterpiece.
“I’m still not sure how you convinced the owners to shell out the money,” I said.
“I can be very persuasive when I want to be, and besides, they didn’t shell out anything. I paid for the remodel.”
“Oh. I didn’t realize.”
“I hear that the owner’s a little crazy anyway. She’s always getting into sticky situations. I was glad to help her out with this remodel.”
I had never met the owner of the apartment building itself. The only contact I had was with the landlord, Mr. Zamora, and a light pang of jealousy spiked within me with his intimate use of the word she. It galled me. I was not a jealous person. Had never been jealous of anyone for any reason, but in walks Reyes Farrow and suddenly I’m that chick from Fatal Attraction. Next thing you know, I’ll be boiling rabbits.
Fifth Grave Past the Light: Number 5 in series (Charley Davidson) Page 4