“This is so wrong.”
“I need at least —” He counted on his fingers “— seven hundred fifty dollars a month or I ain’t risking my life again for no one’s ass. Even yours.” He bent to get a better look. “Fine as it is.”
“Seven hundred fifty dollars a month?” I balked, gurgled, and sputtered like Mr. C. But in the back of my mind, I considered how much a real – as in living – detective would cost me, and it wasn’t no $750 a month. Then again, I couldn’t use any of his investigating in court. I couldn’t turn it in to APD as evidence of dick. So there was that to take into consideration. Still, he had saved my life a couple of times. That was worth something. “You drive a hard bargain, Mr. Garza.”
“Damn.” He shook his head. “You would have gone higher, huh?”
I winked. “You’ll never know. But what happens the next time your mom comes demanding answers? What then?”
He leaned against the counter and ran his fingers along the horrid chrome molding. “I don’t know. I think she bought the whole great-uncle thing.”
I lifted my hand to his cool cheek, ran my thumb along the fuzz over his top lip. “No, mijito, she didn’t.”
Angel and I had been together for over ten years, ever since I found him at an abandoned school, scared and alone. He meant so much to me.
Unfortunately, he’d died mid-puberty, and his hormones were the worse for it. He stepped closer and put his hands on the counter, one at each side, blocking me in. I rolled my eyes, but he just closed the distance between us and ran his mouth along my jaw, not kissing it. As though taking in the warmth, testing the texture.
“We could make this work, you know.”
“I will knee you in the groin.”
“I could give you a night you will never forget.”
“Because you will be writhing in agony all night and I will laugh unmercifully. It will be unforgettable.”
“You know what they say. Once you go dead —”
“Reyes lives next door.”
That did it. He stepped back and crossed his arms over his chest. “I told you not to let that pendejo into your life. We’re all going to pay for this.”
“What do you know about it?”
“Well, that’s pretty much it. We’re all going to pay if you two get together.”
“So I’ve been told, but if that’s all anybody has, then you can all bite me.”
“It’s wrong. It’s against nature,” he railed as I took my coffee and stepped over the woman in my kitchen archway. “You two can’t be together. It’s like milk and pretzels.”
“Look, Romeo, we came to an agreement with the pay, so can you talk to these women or not?”
“I already tried. They ain’t talking.”
I pressed my lips together, chastising. “You could have mentioned that.”
“You don’t understand. They’re here with you now. Just being around you will be healing to them. It’s like if you took the sun and shrank it down to the size of a basketball. It would still be the sun. It would still shine all bright and shit and burn just as hot. It would still be soothing. Healing. That’s you. Your light. It’s soothing like that menthol crap my mom used to rub on my chest. Your presence is like a salve.”
“I always thought my presence was more of an irritant. You know. Like paint thinner. Or napalm.”
8
It’s all fun and games until someone loses a testicle.
—T-SHIRT
Since Angel the pickup artist was no help whatsoever, I decided to see if Gemma could help. I tried calling her, but she didn’t answer. Did she not know me at all? That wouldn’t deter a grim reaper. Maybe a glum reaper or a bleak one, but never a grim.
I put down my coffee, grabbed my jacket, and wound through the throngs, dodging one who scurried between my legs and ducking under another hanging from the ceiling. My apartment would never be the same.
I opened the door only to find another gorgeous boy on my doorstep, only this one was still alive. He had blond hair and blue eyes and had stolen my heart the moment I first met him a couple of weeks back.
“Quentin,” I said aloud for no one’s benefit but my own. Quentin was Deaf. “Hey, sweetheart,” I signed. “How are you?”
Fortunately, as the grim reaper, I’d been born knowing every language ever spoken on Earth. That included the vast and beautiful array of signed languages.
A shy smile spread across his handsome face. He nodded a greeting and I threw my arms around him for a hug. He buried his face in the crook of my neck and held me to him a long minute. When he let go, he drew in his shoulders. Something was bothering him.
“What’s wrong?” I asked in alarm.
He shrugged and looked down, seeming embarrassed. “Everything is different now.”
My chest muscles tightened. He had been possessed by a demon hell-bent on killing me and ended up here in Albuquerque as a result. Artemis killed the demon that had possessed him, and Quentin basically woke up out of a catatonic state in a strange place with no family and no friends. But later I found out he had no family and no one to go back to in D.C., either, so I asked if he wanted to stay here. While he lived at the School for the Deaf in Santa Fe on the weekdays, we decided he’d spend his weekends at the convent with the sisters for now, at least until someone found them out and told the sisters they couldn’t have a sixteen-year-old boy living at a convent full of nuns. But the Mother Superior had fallen a little in love with him, like pretty much everyone else, and was breaking all kinds of rules to have him there.
Still, he’d been possessed. As in a demon had taken up residence inside his body and kicked him out for a while. I didn’t know how much of that time he would remember. How much it would affect him.
The reason the demon had possessed him in the first place, the reason they had possessed anyone, was because he could see into the supernatural world. Just barely. Just enough to make him a target. He could see a grayness where a ghost might be standing, but those who could do that could also see my light. In other words, they could pick me out of a lineup. They could lead the demons to me. Reyes’s dad wanted me, the portal into heaven, and he apparently wanted me bad enough to ruin the lives of other people. Some who had been possessed had died as a result.
“Why don’t you come inside?”
I opened my door farther. He started to go in, then stopped midstride. He surveyed my apartment, then took a wary step back.
Surprised, I asked, “Can you see them?” I figured even if he could, he could see only a fine gray mist where the women would be. But he was looking directly at them, his expression guarded, his stance almost hostile.
“I see them now,” he said, his signs sharp, frustrated. “Not like I did before. I see dead people everywhere.” He looked at me then, his brows drawn in anger. “Did you know the school in Santa Fe was built right by a cemetery?”
I sighed aloud. I did know that.
“So you can see them now? Not just their essence?”
He wrapped his arms around himself and nodded, refusing to take his eyes off the woman clinging to my ceiling. I had to admit, that had taken me by surprise, too.
I took a hand and put it on his face to gently bring him back to me; then I signed, “I’m so sorry, Quentin.” Seeing dead people walking around would put anyone on edge. While I had been born with the ability, I did try to see it from another’s point of view and I could understand how that fact would put a crimp in one’s outlook.
His eyes watered and his mouth formed a grim line.
“Why don’t we go in here?” I pointed behind him to Cookie’s apartment.
He nodded.
After closing my door, I knocked on Cookie’s, knowing her daughter, Amber, was home. Even then, I didn’t normally knock, but I had company. I didn’t want to catch Amber off guard. She was a twelve-year-old girl. She was probably prancing about to the latest pop song in her underwear. Or maybe that was just me.
Amber answered with her usual
bounciness; then she spotted Quentin. I figured he would stun her a little. He did. He’d stunned me a little when I first saw him, too.
“Hey, hon, can we use your living room for a minute?”
“Sure,” she said. She seemed to be overcome with shyness all of a sudden. Amber wasn’t exactly the shy type, but I got it. Quentin was arresting.
I signed as I spoke. “Awesome, thank you. This is Quentin. And Quentin this is Amber.” They both smiled a greeting and we stepped inside.
“Can I get you something to drink?” she asked him.
I quickly interpreted and Quentin waved a hand in negation. “No, thank you,” he signed.
And Amber melted. I could see it in her eyes. Her forlorn expression. Her hand over her heart. Subtlety was not her strong suit.
“Thanks, Amber,” I said, hoping to herd her out of the room. “We just needed a place to talk for a few. I’ll let you know if we need anything.”
“Okay,” she said, her voice breathy with newfound love.
Yep, I’d so been there.
We sat on Cookie’s earth-toned sofa, and Quentin took out his sunglasses. I almost forgot. He saw me as a spotlight shining in his face. That couldn’t be pleasant.
“So, what’s going on?” I asked him when he sat on the edge of the sofa. “How’s Sister Mary Elizabeth?”
Sister Mary Elizabeth was a mutual friend with a similar unique ability, only she could hear the angels as they chatted amongst themselves. And, according to the sister, they were very chatty.
“She’s good,” he said. His jacket sleeves were almost too long for his arms. The cuffs covered half his hands as he signed, but his hands were masculine already with hard angles and long fingers. “She said to say hi.”
“Oh, how nice. Tell her hi back. And now that we’re done with the pleasantries, what’s going on?”
He drew in a deep breath. “I used to see only ghosts, like shadows in the air. But now I see everything. I see people. I see their clothes. I see the dirt on their feet. I see the blood in their hair.”
I put a palm on his knee in support as he vented about everything he’d been seeing. I was a little surprised Sister Mary Elizabeth hadn’t called me about this. Then again, maybe he didn’t tell her. When he was finished ranting, he blinked back at me, wanting answers, wanting a solution. A solution I would not have.
“You see what I see,” I said, my face showing the empathy I felt. “You see the departed who are left on Earth, who haven’t crossed over. It’s not like in the movies. They aren’t here to scare you or hurt you.”
He kept his eyes focused on mine, hoping I had better news.
“They just want answers like you do. They want to finish something that was left undone.”
“Like unfinished business?” he asked.
“Yes. Who told you that?”
“My friends at school. They think it’s cool I see dead people.” He almost seemed proud of that fact. That was one thing about the Deaf community I always admired beyond belief – they were the most accepting lot I’d ever come across. It didn’t matter what else you had to deal with, blindness, mental challenges, fetal alcohol syndrome, autism, whatever else you were dealing with, if you were culturally Deaf, they accepted you as one of their own. Even, apparently, if you had supernatural sight.
“I think it’s pretty cool, too,” I said.
He looked down. “It’s okay, I guess.”
“But it can be scary.”
“Yes.”
“Just remember, they are exactly like us. They were us, they’ve just crossed to another level of existence.”
He furrowed his brows. “So it’s like they’re still alive?”
“Yes, very much so. They just don’t have their physical bodies anymore. And they could probably use a friend.”
His gaze slid past me. “I didn’t think of it that way.” I let him absorb that information a minute before he blinked back to me. “Maybe they want to go to heaven but they can’t find you.”
I shook my head. “The way I understand it, they can see me from anywhere in the world.”
His eyes rounded. “Even if they’re in China?”
“Even if they’re in China,” I said.
“How? There’s a whole planet between you and them. Can they see through things like we can see through them?”
“I have no idea. It’s strange. I can’t see my own light, so I have no idea how they do.”
That caught his attention. “You can’t see it? Your own light? Because it’s crazy bright.”
“Nope.”
“You can see them, but you can’t see your light?”
“Right.”
“That’s weird.” His mouth tilted into a mischievous grin. “Maybe you need help with your brain.”
“People keep telling me that. No idea why.”
He nodded, agreeing with those people, so naturally I had to tickle his ribs. And lo and behold, the kid was more ticklish than newborn babe. He laughed and pushed at my hands. When I didn’t give up my quest, he curled into a fetal position, his laugh husky and endearing.
“Are you mauling that poor kid?”
I looked over as Cookie walked in carrying take-out bags. “Only a little. He thinks I need mental help.”
“Well, if I have to take sides…”
His laugh grew louder when I found a particularly sensitive rib. “Peeeeese!” he said with his soft voice muffled from his jacket.
“Please?” I asked aloud. “You’ll get no quarter from me, mister.”
He wasn’t looking and I wasn’t signing, so I was speaking only for my own benefit.
And Cookie’s. “I brought a pan each of chicken Alfredo and spaghetti and an order of garlic bread.”
“Yum,” I said, letting Quentin up so he could apologize accordingly. His sunglasses were somewhere in the sofa and he blocked my light with a hand as he searched for them, a huge grin on his face.
“Is that who I think it is?” she asked.
“It’s Quentin,” Amber said, bounding in like a northern wind. “Isn’t he beautiful? And he has no idea what I’m saying. I can talk about him and he won’t know.”
Quentin chuckled and looked over at her.
She paused, her joy turning to mortification, then asked, “Aunt Charley, did you tell him what I said?”
“Yes, I did. And it’s rude to talk about people behind their backs.”
Her face turned a bright shade of scarlet. I almost felt sorry for her.
“You didn’t have to tell him.”
My expression softened in sympathy. “Do you think that’s fair? For you to take advantage of his hearing loss like that?”
“Well, if you put it that way.” She bowed her head and rubbed her fist in a circle on her chest. “I’m sorry, Quentin.”
I was impressed that she knew the sign.
Having finally found his sunglasses, Quentin propped them on top of his head and stepped over to her. “It’s okay.”
His smile disarmed her completely. She forgot all about her mortification. “Can you stay and eat with us?” she asked aloud.
I jumped over the back of the sofa, regretted it when I landed and almost took out a rubber tree plant, and interpreted what Amber had said.
Quentin shrugged and nodded. “Sure, thanks.”
And Amber was lost.
“Hi,” he said to Cookie.
She took his hand in hers. “It’s so nice to see you again, and you are welcome here anytime, Quentin.”
I interpreted, then added, “But only if Cookie and I are here as well.”
He gave me a thumbs-up, understanding my meaning completely. I didn’t miss the interest in his eyes when Amber opened the door. This had trouble written all over it. In permanent marker.
Amber took Quentin’s arm and led him over to the table, where she took out a pen and paper for them to write notes. I was soon demoted to third wheel. Since I’d been summarily dismissed without so much as a severance check,
I went to help Cookie in the kitchen, which – very much like my own apartment – was about five inches from where we just stood.
“Oh, heavens, Charley, I just can’t get over him. He is an absolute doll.”
“Yeah,” I said, keeping a close watch on the rascal, “that’s my worry. So how’d it go today?”
“Oh, my gosh, I learned so much.”
“Yeah, that’s great. But seriously, I have to figure out what’s going on with these women. I can hardly get through my apartment. And Nicolette? She’s alive? What’s up with that? They never come back to life.”
For some reason, Cookie poured the pasta into her own bowls.
“You realize you’re not fooling anyone.”
She ignored me. “Is Nicolette, you know, like a zombie?”
I curled a string of spaghetti onto a fork and slid it into my mouth. “She didn’t really look like the walking dead,” I said, talking with my mouth full. “You look more like the walking dead than she did. You know, in the mornings anyway.”
“That was uncalled for.”
“Do you know me at all?”
After Quentin and I crashed the Kowalski dinner, we sat around the table drinking tea and telling embarrassing stories about Amber. She was so in love, she didn’t notice when I told the one about where she’d tried to dye her hair with Kool-Aid and it turned gray for a solid week.
“I know sign language, too,” she chimed in after a bit.
“You signed ‘sorry’ earlier,” I said. “I was impressed.”
She blushed. “Yeah, I learned some in the second grade. My teacher taught us. She took a class in college.”
“A whole class?” I asked, trying not to sound facetious, even though I was. “That’s great.”
“Yeah.”
“And you still remember what she taught you?” Cookie asked her.
She nodded.
Quentin raised his brows, waiting for her to show him something. There were few things Deaf people found more amusing than hearing people who knew just enough sign to be dangerous. But he seemed genuinely interested.
“But it’s dumb,” she said, deflating a little now that the spotlight was on her.
Fifth Grave Past the Light: Number 5 in series (Charley Davidson) Page 12