“Will you tell Danielle about the safe?”
Danielle was his girlfriend—pregnant girlfriend to be exact. He’d stashed a quarter of a million dollars in one of those rental safes in the post office. It was stupid not to use a real bank, but I didn't tell him that, because he was dead. My insult would have made him feel bad, and his night was already on a foul, downward spiral.
“I don’t think I can interfere,” I said.
“Do you think they’ll find Cathy?”
I rolled my eyes. Would it be wrong to call him a man-whore? I decided it would be, since him and his wife were not together in the year preceding his death. At least, that’s what he claimed. His wife evidently wasn’t pleased with their arrangement, because tonight, she lodged a bullet in his small intestine and dragged him into the Atlantic.
“I’m sure the cops will do all they can do.” Like when they gave me a ticket for trespassing ten minutes after my rescue. He seemed pleased with my answer so I opted not to tell him about my legal bullshit.
We stopped above the whirlpool, and he looked down and sighed. “Are you sure it’s okay?”
“Does it look like hell to you? You don’t see bright red pitchforks hanging out, do you? Besides” —I pointed to the other 14 people diving in— “they don’t look scared.”
He hung his liquid head and shrugged. “I guess you’re right. See you, Charlotte.” Of course he’d never see me again, but I waved goodbye. As the light sucked him in, I wondered what the afterlife was like on the other side. Moonlight acted as my guide to the surface. The sound of my heart—and someone else’s speedy, normal heart—thudded in my ears, and I swam faster. I pushed my head out of the water, inhaling the muggy night air.
The other heart continued to pound, stronger and faster.
Someone was waiting for me.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Rob pulled me aside as soon as I walked into Romano’s Saturday night. “You passed your drug test.” He leaned on the bar with his face pulled into the long, anteater look he did when he was deep in thought. “And I hired your friend, Sophie.”
I shoved my bag beneath the bar. “Thanks for sounding so disappointed about my drug test.”
“I’m keeping my eye on you, Charlotte. And your friend,” Rob warned. He walked off, stopping at different tables to harass customers and suck up to Summer Kids. I wondered about the actual results of my drug test. I pictured the workers in the lab handling my test and snickered.
Hmm. Well, she’s not a pothead and she hasn’t been shooting up heroin, but she’s excessively high on salt. Is that what the kids are floating on these days?
Sophie hopped in front of me and twirled in a circle. “So what do you think?” Not sure what the big deal was. She wore the same outfit as me—the white Romano’s t-shirt and black work pants. The only difference between us was she looked happy to be working.
“You look great?” Sober Sophie would take some getting used to, especially since she worked with me now, but it was awesome to have her back. She smiled, twirled a few more times, then grabbed someone’s receipt from the counter.
She didn't ask for my help all night, and I had to admit, I was impressed. I forced myself to endure her cigarette habit when she took a break. Being so close to the heavy smoke made my skin leathery. “How was dinner with your boyfriend?”
When she called yesterday evening to ask if I wanted to go to the teen club in Savannah, I told her about my plans. Not a very smart move, because Sophie didn’t buy my story about Golden Boy and I being nothing but friends. Because friends kiss, right?
I played with a dust bunny on my pants and smiled at a few customers passing by. They scowled at Sophie, possibly wondering if her cigarette butt would end up in their grilled salmon salad. “He’s not my boyfriend, okay? But dinner was good. What’d you do last night? Go to Onyx.”
“Negative. Went to my grandma’s with Mom and Dad, and before you ask, it sucked.”
Laughing, I asked, “Why didn’t you just go with Andy?”
Sophie's shoulders sagged and she shook her head miserably. “He won’t talk to me!”
Uh oh. Whenever the best friends didn’t speak, my life reeked. He’d ignore her until she became teary-eyed and depressed. There was no way I was letting him screw up her sobriety. Sometimes, I wished they’d just date and get it over with.
No, I take that back.
The fights would only escalate if they were a couple.
Rob threw the door open, scowling at us. “Girls, get your asses inside. I’m not paying you to smoke and gossip.” Sophie didn’t make a wise crack about Rob being a cash pirate, and it worried me.
I needed to have a one on one with Andy A.S.A.P.
***
Lorelei gripped her steering wheel, running her thumb nails roughly across the leather. “We have a meeting today.” At 5:30 in morning, she called me to her cottage. And like an idiot, I went. This was her first explanation of what was going on.
“A meeting? At” —I rapped my knuckles on the dashboard clock— “6:21?”
She glared and jabbed the power button on the radio. It was amazing how she went from nervous to irritable to some other form of crazy, all in a matter of seconds. In two minutes, she’d be ecstatic about something. “Hermes needs to see us.”
He sure picked a weird spot, I thought when she parked by the entrance to my school’s football field. We stood in the middle of the field, me digging the heel of my flip-flop into the 20-yard line mark, and Lorelei playing with her phone.
“He says he’ll be here shortly,” she declared.
“You have E.S.P. with the gods?”
She scoffed. Whatever happened to all that B.S. about no question is a stupid question. “No, text messaging, silly.”
I’m not sure what I expected. A horse drawn chariot, maybe, or for Hermes to show up in a cloud of smoke and sparkles, but neither happened. Instead, he walked across the field like a regular person—you know, if regular people were insanely beautiful. His black hair was styled in a buzz cut, and he wore jeans and a snug light blue t-shirt that showed off his abs. When he drew closer, I noticed his eyes matched his shirt.
Hermes was hot soccer player meets well-coiffed Disney Channel movie star.
He didn’t look any older than Cam, and that was pushing it. “What is he, like, eighteen?”
“Looks are deceiving, Charlotte. Hermes has a thousand up on me. Remember what I told you about pointing out a god?” I nodded, and she said, “Listen to your heart.”
I waited for the beat, but it didn’t come.
Oh goody. Gods come around and stop our hearts. What happens when they go away? Convulsions and death?
Hermes stopped in front of Lorelei, bent to kiss her, and clutched his heart after she turned her cheek. He ran his mouth from her jaw line to the corner of her lips. The skin he touched changed to shimmering silver. “Aglaope, it’s been awhile.”
She snorted. “Sixty-five years, to be exact.” Her frosty tone and MMA fighter stance floored me. She and Hermes used to be an item. “Charlotte, this is Hermes—messenger for Zeus, sports enthusiast, and thief. Basically, a tool.”
Ouch.
“Good to meet you,” I said. He took my hands and sparks of electricity flowed beneath my skin. My flesh slowly lightened until it matched Lorelei’s cheek. “Whoa . . .”
“I always love the new ones,” he sighed, letting me go.
“I know you do,” Lorelei snapped. “What do you want?”
Hermes and Lorelei stared at each other—two immortals with a boatload of past relationship issues. I wanted to slink away before one of them choked the other out, or worse, started a hate-fueled make out session.
“Demeter has a message for you.”
Lorelei drew her eyebrows together and chewed on the middle of her lip. “And she sent you to deliver it? I was pretty sure she hated you.”
“Apparently not as much as she loathes you and your new”—he flicked his hand at me�
��“protégé.”
Did he have to be so flippant about me?
While Hermes and Lorelei argued about the message Demeter sent, I sulked to the bleachers. I never pegged her as a tantrum thrower, but she jumped up and down like a lunatic. Some people got off on witnessing drama. Not me. Three minutes of watching them attack each other just about put me to sleep. I pulled out my phone and amused myself with Tetris.
Heels clacking on the concrete bleachers interrupted my concentration, and I lost the game. I slammed my phone shut and stuck it in my pocket. “We’re leaving!”
I looked up at Hermes. Lorelei sucked air through her teeth. “Watch, he’ll make a stupid grand exit to impress you.” Sure enough, five seconds later, Hermes hovered at least thirty feet above the football field. He waved at me then blew Lorelei a kiss. “See what I mean? Someone should tell him that winged Birkenstocks are tragic.”
“I take it you don’t like Hermes?” I asked her in the car.
“Demeter sending messages through Hermes is what I don’t like. She hasn’t done this in over a thousand years . . . I’m going to have to call Thel and see what she thinks. Next thing you know we’ll be summoned by Zeus and the rest of the gods.”
I played with the lock button on the side of my door, listening at the continuous clicking. I wanted to ask her what Hermes had told her, but I knew she wouldn’t be honest about it. Whatever it was bothered her—I could tell by the way she clacked her teeth together. “Maybe they will. Then they’ll sacrifice us to the Kraken,” I joked.
She swerved onto the shoulder of the road. “I hate when you try to be humorous.”
***
Andy invited me over to his place, one of those kickass houses on stilts, Monday after school for a horror movie marathon. Since I wanted to corner him about Sophie, I seized the moment.
“You’re not watching.” he stuffed his face with a handful of barbecue flavored pork rinds. He flashed a food-filled smile when I made a face. It was impossible to pay attention. The movie—a straight to DVD rip-off of Saw—sucked.
I whacked him with a fringed throw pillow and covered my nose. “Ugh, you’re disgusting.” He threw a handful at my hair. I retaliated by chucking my dirty flip-flop at his chest. He shrugged and wiped his hands on the arm of the couch. I hoped his mom would do a sniff test and freak out on him.
“They’re better than water. That all you drink now?”
What was with everyone bugging me about the stupid water? At least I wasn’t stirring dollops of salt into it as I wanted. I brought my knees to my chest. “When was the last time you talked to Sophie?”
He scratched his afro, avoiding my gaze. “I hate when you do that.”
Of course, I knew exactly what he disliked, but I asked, “Huh?” He shoved the bag of pork rinds onto the coffee table.
“Changing the subject. And I haven’t talked to her in a few days because it’s complicated.”
Sophie and Andy were normal. I was a freaking monster who could drown a man just by singing to him. Throw in a relationship with a boy I never imagined dating and my life exceeded complicated. “You should just ask her out,” I said.
He didn’t speak. Andy always counted when he was angry, and sure enough, he answered me after counting to fifty. I saw him mouth the number. “No.”
“Do you even have a reason for being pissed at her this time? You know, besides the fact that you can’t just tell her the truth?”
“Ask Jason Nelson.”
Jason was a jerk who had sex with any female who moved, and Sophie fit his minimum requirements. Why didn’t I figure out there was more to the story when I told her I would talk to him? My own life was too dramatic to worry about my friend’s love triangle, or square, or whatever it was. I hoped that refusing to intervene would set them on the path to fix things on their own.
My visit with Andy lasted another excruciating hour where he spent the final thirty minutes bugging me about Francesca. When I told him to ask Lorelei, his pissy mood returned and he offered to drive me home.
Sometimes, he was bitchier than the Summer Kids who came into Romano’s.
I was already irritated when I stepped into the house, but finding Lorelei in the kitchen playing Scrabble with Cam and my dad just made me want to vomit. Did she ever go home?
“Have fun with Andy?” Dad looked up, smiling.
I felt like a jerk for being jealous, but when she was around, it was as if Dad finally discovered his perfect daughter. Made me sick. “Oh, yes,” I said. “I got to listen to him whine about his love life.”
My dad excused himself, and I glared over Cam’s shoulder at Lorelei. “What are you doing to them,” I mouthed. Lorelei could send men into a daze with her singing— I witnessed that when she took me shopping. Had she tried that hazy routine on Dad, on my brother? I refused to let her hypnotize either.
“You should join, Char,” Cam said, holding a square playing piece up at me.
Yep, definitely brainwashed.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The type of scratches on your car is the best way to gauge just how screwed up a person is. Fingernails created the ones on the side of my Jeep, stretching from the base of the window down the driver side door. I was dealing with a psychopath. Fun.
“Hey, Goose,” Matt said from behind me, “why’d you . . . oh shit.”
He came beside me and knelt down to get a closer look. I pressed my hand flat against part of the artwork and frowned at him. “Pretty, isn’t it?”
“Who’d you piss off?”
Your girlfriend. I wouldn’t say it, but she seemed like the logical suspect. “I called some Summer Girl an idiot at work,” I said. The longer I stayed a siren, the less I twitched when I lied.
“And Rob Romano let you get away with that?”
I shook my head. A lock of hair fell over his eye, and he blew it out of his face. “What Rob doesn’t know won’t hurt him.” I pretended to fish through my bag for my keys, even though I knew they were in the side pocket. “Besides, everyone knows Rob just cares about the money. Does crazy stuff to some people.”
Matt snorted, standing up. “You have no idea.” The humor in his voice didn’t extend to his face. Fear, then desperation, flashed in his dark eyes. He blinked, and the look dissolved.
My curiosity didn’t. “What’s that mean?”
At first, I didn’t think he would answer me. He stood still with his forehead scrunched and cheeks sucked in. I did not move either, hoping he would keep talking. After a painfully long moment, he relaxed his face.
“People will do anything if they have debt hanging over them.” He grinned and winked, but I wasn’t convinced everything was alright. “Or if they’re greedy.”
What would Matt know about debt? Maybe Eva is threatening him. Or he owes someone money. I bit my tongue so I wouldn't annoy him with more nosy questions.
“You got any colleges in mind yet? I hear those college girls bust windows, too,” he said. No wonder Andy hated when I changed the subject. I wanted to be annoyed, but laughter returned to his eyes. I gave him a close-lipped smile, straightened, and brushed a strand of hair from my lips with the back of my arm.
Before Mom died, I planned on going to Bradford since it was her Alma Mater. It was still an option, but I’d have to qualify for a bunch of scholarships. It was somewhat sad because most people believed Dad got an enormous life insurance settlement after she died. If that were the case, Cam would be at school. Guess nobody realized that suicide doesn’t pay out. Morbid to say that, huh? “Not sure—what about you?
“I’m taking classes at community college after this then heading to NYU.”
“What are you majoring in?”
“English. Told you, your mom was my favorite.”
Hearing that from anyone else would have sucked. Matt was sincere, and I nodded slowly. “Awesome.”
On the ride home, I didn’t think about Eva or my keyed car. I thought about my mother. Kyle accused her of having sex with him a f
ew weeks before the school year ended last summer. I knew something was wrong when I returned home after seeing a movie with Sophie and found her sitting at the kitchen table with a bottle of vodka.
She never drank.
I’d flipped on the kitchen lights, and Mom seemed so fragile, so thin and exhausted. She begged me to kill the switch. I listened. That was Friday. By Monday, she was placed on leave without pay. By Wednesday, the whole school buzzed with the rumor.
Two weeks later—the week summer vacation began—she died, and everyone assumed it was true. Even Dad and Cam sometimes thought the same, though they never said those exact words aloud. I could just tell.
Just like I knew she never touched Kyle.
I realized I’d pulled into my driveway. Dad’s truck was gone, and I needed release therapy.
***
Singing felt peaceful and soothing.
The music pouring from my lips sounded like something that should have been in a concert hall. I laughed at Wyatt the morning he swore I sang, but I did, and it sounded damn awesome. I sat cross-legged on the rocks by The Lighthouse with my hands stretched out in front of me. Salt water sprayed my palms and traveled to the rest of my body, waking my senses and making me feel healthy, alive.
I lay flat on my back and stared at the darkening sky, entranced by the swirling lavender and gold sunset. Finally, I squeezed my eyes shut. Separated myself from reality. I hummed softly. Waves rocked around me, the subtle sound fusing with my voice like well-timed percussion.
“Charlotte?”
“I’m thinking, Mom.” As soon as I spoke the words, I shot straight up. I stumbled around like a crazy person, trying to point out where her voice came from. “Mom? Are you there?”
“Help me.”
I didn’t think before I dove. I waited for her to speak again and for her hand to grasp mine, but it never happened. On top of everything else stressing me out, I was sporadically hearing my mom's voice. She was constantly in my thoughts, so I was sure it was possible.
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