Charmed (Death Escorts)

by Cambria Hebert

  A text came through my phone and it beeped in my hand. Irritation cracked through me at the disruption. It was the irritation that gave me clarity. All these feelings I’d been having, the lack of interest in my job… the guilt. I wasn’t cracking under the pressure from G.R.

  It was her.

  She was the reason I was changing. She was the reason I was losing focus on my goals.

  Feeling disgusted with myself, I looked down at the text.

  Don’t think he’s noticed yet. Everything go as planned?

  It was from Storm. He was keeping an eye on G.R. so we would know when he noticed his secret collection was gone. It hadn’t been easy getting those bodies and the soul out of there the other night, but we did it. Instead of keeping everything together in one place, we split up the bodies, Storm hiding two of them and me taking the girl and the jar with the soul in it.

  I glanced inside my closet, making sure she was still there, and then looked under the bathroom sink at the jar.

  All went as planned. Will be home tomorrow, I typed back.

  Target is getting on a plane, he replied.

  When?

  First thing in the morning. It wasn’t morning yet in Alaska.

  Thanks for the heads up.

  Ugh. Where was she going? How long was she going to be gone? I didn’t remember her mentioning a trip to me, yet I hadn’t really talked to her since that day in the café when I rushed out of there. Ever since then I’d been too busy trying to find something to use against G.R. And too busy thinking about Frankie, the voice in my head whispered.

  Damn. I was getting sloppy. Exactly what G.R. wanted. Shit, I wouldn’t be surprised if he knew she was going out of town and he sent me here just so I would miss that much more time with her.

  With a growl, I punched a button on my phone and dialed her. She answered on the first ring.

  “Charming, this is a surprise,” she said. Her voice was friendly yet slightly reserved. My weird behavior at lunch the other day clearly left an impression on her. And now here I was calling her at a very late hour (for her).

  “Rosalyn,” I began, interjecting warmth that I wasn’t feeling into my tone. “It has been a few days, sorry about that. I had an unexpected business meeting and had to fly to Los Angeles.”

  “You don’t have to explain, Charming,” she replied. “It isn’t as if your every move is my business.”

  I shut my eyes in frustration. See, this was the bad part about being “gay” because if we had some sort of romantic connection, she would feel entitled to knowing every move I made and I could likely romance her into forgiving the way I acted.

  Still, the way I was feeling lately being her friend was hard enough, let alone trying to act like her boyfriend. My eyes strayed down onto the beach to look for Frankie. She was still picking up shells, using her dress as a bucket to hold them.

  I laughed. “Well, of course not. But I figured since we were friends and also working on the fundraiser together, I should keep you informed.”

  “About the fundraiser,” she began, and a ball of ice formed in my gut. If she told me she didn’t need my help anymore I was going to freaking kill her just to be done with her and forget about the damn money. “We will have to postpone our planning for a few days. I’m actually at the airport now. I must go out of town.”

  The air in my lungs expelled. “That’s no problem at all,” I replied. “I can work on a few things on my end and then when you get back we can regroup.”

  I wanted to ask her where she was going. I wanted to ask her why, but I wasn’t about to. Appearing too interested right now could be the nail in my coffin. She was already sounding a little distant and cool, and giving her any other reason to doubt my motives for hanging around her would be stupid on my part.

  “Well, yes, that would be great,” she replied, her tone losing some of its coolness.

  “Just let me know when you arrive back in Alaska and have a safe flight.”

  “Thank you,” she said. I thought she would hang up then and after a second I pulled the phone away from my ear, but when she began to speak again, I yanked it back up.

  “Charming, is there another reason you called so early?”

  “Not at all. I was just sitting here watching the sun rise and I realized the last time I saw you was kind of rushed. I figured I would take a chance and see if you were still up.”

  “Oh. Well, I’m sure the view there is much nicer than the one here.”

  “I don’t want to make you jealous,” I teased.

  She laughed. “Yes, I would think so. Okay, well, as long as everything is okay with you…” Her words died off.

  “Absolutely. The other day I’d gotten up to go talk with a business acquaintance and then I received a call that there was a fire at one of the properties I own. Naturally, I rushed over, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as the man on the phone made it seem.”

  After that, I was glad most of her reserve had melted away and I hoped I managed to stay in her good graces. When we finally hung up the phone, the ache in my head had turned into a pounding.

  Looks like the job was delayed for… well, for I didn’t know how long. I was going to have to have Storm find out where she was going and when she was returning.

  I glanced at the clock. Not even eight a.m. and I was exhausted.

  Frankie appeared on the deck below, dumping a huge pile of shells onto the floor by her feet. Sand scattered everywhere. Then she picked up the hose and started spraying them off creating puddles and globs of wet sand. I shook my head. This place had never seen such a mess. Not only was there sand and shells everywhere, but her towels were draped over the chairs, and her flip-flops lay forgotten near the stairs.

  It looked like a home.

  Like a place where people could be happy.

  I thought again about the place I was missing earlier.

  Without a second thought, I tore downstairs and out onto the deck, startling Frankie, who was still using the hose. She jumped, spun around, bringing the hose with her, and splattered me right across the chest.

  I flinched and growled her name.

  She burst out laughing. “That’s what you get for scaring me.”

  I snatched her towel off the chair and began drying myself. “I came down here to tell you to pack up.”

  “You want to leave?” I didn’t miss the disappointment clouding her tone.

  “Yes, but we aren’t going back to Alaska just yet.”

  “Where are we going?” she said, instantly suspicious. “Do you have another job?”

  “No.” The relief in my voice made me want to mentally kick myself. “I want to go home.”

  “I thought this was your house?”

  “I have a lot of houses,” I answered, hoping she would get my meaning. I didn’t want to explain the way I was feeling right then. It was bad enough I was feeling it.

  She nodded. “Where is home?”

  “Scotland.”

  Chapter Thirty

  “Majestic - having or displaying majesty or great dignity; grand; lofty.”

  Frankie

  I was so getting fired. There was no way the dragon lady was going to let me call off sick the rest of the week from work without demanding pictures of me at the hospital, unconscious and with an IV sticking out of my arm.

  But I got the impression Charming wasn’t ready to go back to Alaska yet, and to be honest, neither was I. This was my chance to see places I’d never seen before, to be spontaneous and do something exciting. If I got fired from the job I hated, then I guess I would get another one. I mean there had to be tons of crappy jobs just waiting to suck away my soul when I got back.

  And then there was Charming.

  He was as bossy and demanding as ever, hogging the remote on the plane, slinging insults about everything I did, and generally annoying the crap out of me, but even still, there was something different about him.

  I couldn’t quite put my finger on what I was sensing other
than… something about him was changing.

  His insults weren’t quite as nasty, he handed me a blanket on the plane before I even asked for it, and on the way to the airport he stopped and bought a box of donuts and ordered me a coffee loaded with sugar. And he hadn’t once put on a pair of trousers.

  It seemed that our time on the beach had created some kind of tumultuous truce between us. It was kind of nice.

  Of course, Charming had yet another crazy expensive car waiting at the hangar when we touched down at the airport. This time it was a black Ferrari. But not even a car as nice as a Ferrari could steal my attention from the sights of Scotland.

  It was majestic.

  No other word could even come close to the rolling hills that seemed to be carpeted in a grass so thick and green it almost looked made up. I really only thought that places like this existed in books. But here I was breathing in the incredibly fresh air and looking out over miles of green.

  After we left the airport, Charming drove to this tiny market where he picked up a few essentials for the fridge, explaining it was easier to get those things here than where we were going. Not too much later, he was pulling the Ferrari onto a ferry of all things and we were setting out across the sea toward the Shetland Islands. I didn’t know Scotland consisted of islands. I thought it was just a big lump of land like every other country, but oh my, was it so much more. The Shetland Islands were comprised of many islands, the largest one simply called Mainland. Charming explained that this was where his home was.

  Once we were able to disembark the ferry, we drove in silence (I had my face plastered to the window) down a two-lane winding road. We passed sheep farms, more endless rolling hills, and sea views that were incredible. The farms all had stone cottages plopped down in the center, with grass all around. It was the most peaceful place I’d ever been.

  And I wasn’t the only one affected by this place.

  If I had thought Charming was changing before, I knew it now. It was almost like night and day. I kept sneaking glances at him out of the corner of my eye as he drove, wondering what side of him I would see next.

  “Aren’t the sights to your liking?” he said, glancing at me, then looking back to the curving road.

  “Are you kidding? This place is amazing. I won’t even make you pay me a million dollars when I get fired. This place is worth it.”

  He flashed his teeth. “Then why do you keep looking over here?”

  I paused. I thought about making a smart-ass crack. I decided I would try being real. “Because of the way you look here.”

  “And how do I look?”

  “Like you’re finally somewhere you can breathe.”

  He didn’t say anything for a long time, and then all he said was, “We’re almost there.”

  Not too much longer, he pulled down a long and private road that took us around a wide curve. When the Ferrari made it around the bend, a house came into view. It wasn’t what I was expecting after seeing the modern glass place on the beach.

  But it was so much better.

  It looked like an old giant farmhouse that was built nestled into the side of one of those sweeping hills and hadn’t been touched since. It was all white brick, painted and worn. The windows were small, but there were many and they lined the house in rows, each with its own pair of painted black shutters. Those were pealing and chipped as well. The roof was a traditional roof with black shingles (those actually looked fairly new) and it was in the traditional shape (kind of like a big triangle perched on top of many boxes). The grass around the building itself was trimmed, but everything else around the property was long and shaggy; the tall green blades swayed back and forth with a gentle breeze.

  As we drove along the narrow road toward the house, I looked over toward Charming, but my eyes didn’t see him. They went directly to the sweeping view of the sea that sat miles away, facing the house. Calm, dark-blue water met a rugged and rocky coastline, and I instantly wished I had a pair of boots to go exploring on the stones.

  “How long have you owned this place?” I asked, my voice an awed whisper.

  “Longer than you’ve been alive.”

  That was… wow. I didn’t know whether to be amazed or creeped out.

  The driveway wasn’t paved and I was partially shocked when he drove the Ferrari right across the dirt road and pushed a button, lifting a black barn-style door. Clearly, he had modernized the house in some ways.

  “I had the interior of the place gutted. It’s completely new inside. When I bought the house, it wasn’t livable.”

  “By whose standards?” I scoffed.

  “Well, not even the wayward sheep who had found their way inside appreciated the leaky roof.” When he looked at me, his eyes twinkled and I realized the green in his irises matched the green that surrounded us here.

  I smiled. “Well, give me the grand tour,” I exclaimed and scrambled out of the car to meet him eagerly at the door.

  I could tell he was excited to show me his home, the only place he truly loved to be. I think it was his excitement that made me so excited because I knew this place had to be special if it elicited this kind of reaction from someone like him.

  The home was… It was everything anyone could ever want but never dream up. Exposed beams, floors made of old barn wood, and accent walls of the same white brick as the outside filled this house. Hand-braided rugs, richly upholstered furniture, and rooms without the boundaries of walls made it feel like more than a refurbished building, more like a place that someone loved. Of course, mixed in with all the old elements were all the new ones—a huge stone fireplace, a huge open kitchen with granite surfaces and stainless-steel appliances, and the amenities of remodeled bathrooms and a home theater. The house was so large that he didn’t even show me the entire place.

  The last stop on his tour was my room, which had a view of the sea. It was a large room with a queen-sized bed, luxurious bedding, and an adjoining bath that was made up of natural stone and contemporary fixtures.

  “Well, what do you think?” he said, watching me gaze around the room.

  “It’s the most beautiful place I’ll ever see.”

  He grinned. “How do you know?”

  “I know.”

  “It took me years to get this place like this.”

  “Most people wouldn’t have had the time and the money,” I said, running my hand over the ultra-soft and thick comforter.

  “I guess being a Death Escort has some advantages.”

  The coldness in his tone had me looking up. He thought I was insulting him. In truth, I’d been thinking out loud.

  “I wasn’t trying to insult you.”

  “What, then? Were you trying to remind me what you think about my money and how I earned it?”

  “No.” I defended. “I—” I stopped trying to explain myself and sighed. “It was just a comment, a slip of the tongue. I don’t have to remind you what you do. You remind yourself enough on your own.”

  His eyes narrowed.

  “The truth is you’re a Death Escort. You kill people. Repeatedly. I’m just trying to figure out if that’s something I can live with.”

  “Something you can live with?” he repeated. “Are you saying you thought of me and you… together?”

  “I—well—” Words failed me. I felt like a complete idiot. Maybe I was suffering from a major case of jetlag. I have no idea what would possess me to say that stuff out loud.

  Well, no. I did know what it was. It was the pull, the attraction that was always there between us. It was the swirl of energy that seemed to only encompass him and me when we were in the same room. It was the beat of butterfly wings inside my stomach and the way my skin vibrated beneath his touch. Hadn’t he felt those things too?

  The way he kissed me, the way his fingers reached for mine… the way he sometimes whispered the truths that lay deep inside him. I wasn’t making those things up. The electricity between us was so thick I could almost scoop it out of the air. Why woul
d he pretend it wasn’t there?

  “So is it?” he said. His tone sounded weird and it broke through my inner monologue of panic. “Is what I do something you could live with?”

  I wanted to say yes. I wanted to know without a doubt that I could look him in the eyes every day when he came home and not wonder about who he killed that day, who he plotted against. I wish I wouldn’t have to think about the person he was taking away from loved ones, tearing an entire family apart with a senseless death.