Charmed (Death Escorts)

by Cambria Hebert

  “It’s something I can do,” he replied. “Get in someone else’s body and borrow it. I don’t do it that often,” he explained. “It’s kind of painful depending on the size of the personality inside the body. That guy was bigger than most. Felt like I was a sardine jammed in one of those tiny cans.”

  Piper laughed.

  I looked at her like she had ten heads. “This isn’t funny,” I reminded them. “Why are you here?”

  “Actually, I just came to pick up something I left here,” the cloud replied.

  “You’re the one who put the body in my closet?” I asked.

  “You saw that, huh?”

  “Well, it’s kind of hard to miss,”

  “You were supposed to be in Scotland.”

  “I wasn’t about to stay there after he left me without a word,” I snapped.

  “Your boyfriend didn’t leave you. He was taken. By the Reaper, who he has managed to piss off in every way possible.”

  “He is not my boyfriend,” I replied automatically, but then the rest of his words caught up to me. “And isn’t the fact he pissed the Reaper off old news?”

  “He pissed him off some more. In new ways.”

  “The level of idiocy that man displays is beyond me,” I muttered, thinking that the next time I saw him I was going to smack him upside the head.

  But then my thoughts caused everything in me to still.

  I really thought I would never see him again. I really thought it was over.

  But it might not be.

  Amongst the stillness, the butterflies erupted.

  Maybe he really hadn’t meant to leave me. I looked down at his T-shirt that I was still wearing, the T-shirt he’d put on my bed to presumably put on after he joined me in the shower. Someone who was going to leave wouldn’t have bothered to do that. Would they?

  “What did he do?” Piper asked, drawing me out of my thoughts.

  “The Reaper had a secret stash of bodies kept under lock and key because they were important to him.”

  “Okay,” Piper said, urging him to finish.

  “Charming stole them and I helped him. I put one here. One at your house,” he said, gesturing toward Piper, who made a choking sound. “And he took one out of town with him. Not sure where he left that one.”

  The garment bag. The one on the plane I teased him about. It hadn’t been a suit at all. It had been a body.

  I was so out of my league.

  “You put a body at my house?” Piper said, her voice hollow.

  “Yeah,” he answered, sheepish. “I needed somewhere the Reaper wouldn’t look.”

  “How do you even know where I live?” she asked.

  There was a very heavy, drawn-out pause. “I knew Dex,” he finally replied.

  My eyes shot to Piper, whose face went white. “You knew Dex?”

  “Um, yeah. I was assigned to watch him and sorta you too.”

  “Oh,” was all she managed to say.

  I gave him a dirty look for upsetting her. “The body is still where you left it.” I was hoping he would take the hint and leave.

  He nodded. “I’ll get it out of here.”

  “Where are you going to take it?”

  “It’s needed,” was all he said. Then he turned to Piper. “I’ll get the one at your place when I leave here.”

  “I’m supposed to work later.”

  “You don’t need to be there. I can let myself in.”

  “That’s how he’s been getting into my apartment!” I burst out. “You’ve been helping him!”

  “I make a pretty good key,” he said smugly.

  Escorts were weird. They bragged about being criminals.

  “I’ll just get the body and get out of here.” He moved off toward the hall.

  “Wait, you said you had a message from Charming?” Maybe I should have acted like I didn’t care, but I did.

  “Oh yeah. He wanted me to tell you he was working on making room for the sun and he’d see you later.”

  Piper looked at me with a question in her eyes, wondering if I understood what he meant.

  I smiled. I knew exactly what he meant. It meant he was coming back.

  “Why couldn’t he tell me that himself?” I asked.

  “About that,” he explained. “The Reaper took his body away. Right now he looks like me, except he’s red.”

  Awww, he thought that would be a sufficient reply.

  “That’s not going to cut it. I need more info. Pronto.”

  Cloud guy sighed heavily, and with his sigh some of his body (or whatever) puffed out like breath on a winter’s day. “G.R. took away Charming’s body and locked him up at his mansion. He can’t Recall him because the only way an Escort gets Recalled is if they don’t finish a job. Charming still has a few months left to the job he was assigned, but the Reaper wants him gone. So he took his body and trapped him. He’s going to keep him there until time runs out for the job and then he’ll be able to Recall him.”

  Some people might say he was getting what he deserved after all these years of killing people who didn’t deserve to die. But somewhere along the line, I stopped thinking about him as a killer and started thinking about him as a man, a man trapped in an impossible situation. And thinking about him being Recalled—or truly never seeing him again—made me want to go to the Reaper’s house myself and start ripping stuff apart.

  “But what about the bodies he took?” Piper said. “Won’t that keep him from getting Recalled?”

  “Yeah, but the Reaper already has guys searching. Eventually he’s going to find them. That’s exactly why I need to start moving everything. The more I move it, the harder it will be to find.”

  “What’s your name, anyway?” I asked.

  “Storm.”

  Huh. It fit him perfectly. “All right, Storm, go jump in that body and let’s go.”

  “Oh, uh-uh. No. You are not coming with me.”

  “The hell I’m not.”

  “Do you have any idea what Charming would do to me if I let you go anywhere near the Reaper’s house?”

  “Do you have any idea what I will do if you don’t?” I ground out.

  “Sorry, but he’s scarier than you are.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest.

  He sighed. “Look, I don’t have time to argue with you. Getting this body to him is already hard enough with having to worry about you two.”

  “Why is it so hard?” Piper asked.

  “Because the body is empty. There’s no one in it and because of that I’ll have a black cloud around me that every Escort would see. If I get caught, they’re going to know it’s me before I even say a word.”

  “There was no cloud around you when you got here,” I observed.

  “That’s because there was someone else in the body. Best I can figure it, their soul hides mine.”

  I glanced at Piper to see if she thought this conversation was as unreal as I did. She seemed to be having about the same reaction.

  “Look, I gotta go. Time is of the essence. He’s gonna flip when he finds out I hid his body here at your place.”

  “What do you mean his body?”

  “That’s Charming’s original body. The one he died in. He seemed pretty shocked when he saw it.”

  Is that why it seemed so familiar to me? Did something inside me recognize it immediately?

  I rushed toward the bedroom, wanting to look at him again. I wanted to take in every detail about that body. I stopped just shy of touching it. It was so different from the way he looked now… so unpolished, so… flawed. But yet when I looked at him, at the overly long blond hair and full lips, it seemed perfect for him. For Olly.

  “Well, what are you waiting for?” I told Storm.

  “Some privacy might be nice,” he muttered. “Can’t a guy get dressed in peace?”

  Piper giggled. What was with her? Geez, he was not funny.

  I was about to point out his un-funniness when there was a noise in the living ro
om. It sounded like the front door opening and closing.

  All three of us froze, listening for more sounds.

  “Honey, I’m home!” called a voice I didn’t know.

  “Holy shit!” Storm whispered.

  “Who is it?” I demanded.

  “It’s the Reaper.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  “Balloon - a flexible bag designed to be inflated with hot air or with a gas, such as helium, that is lighter than the surrounding air, causing it to rise and float in the atmosphere.”

  Charming

  Not having a body was weird. I couldn’t really sit or stand… or do anything other than sort of hover over the floor. It was like existing but not existing. It made me think about Storm and I suddenly understood why he started trying to learn how to be more solid. I understood why he figured out how to borrow other people’s bodies. Because not having a shape of your own was like being caught between life and death.

  It also had a way of making a man feel very small and very out of control. And the more I concentrated, the harder it seemed to be. The second I moved or tried to go across the room, my body kind of dissipated away from itself. It didn’t hurt, but it was kind of alarming to watch what was left of you drift out and away.

  After a while I was so frustrated that I gave up and settled for just kind of floating there.

  I thought about Frankie, about what she was doing right then. If she was angry with me or if she was hurt. I wondered if she was eating a pound of candy and cursing the day I ever walked into her life. I hoped Storm was there by now. I hoped she at least knew I didn’t just abandon her.

  Of its own accord, my form started drifting down, moving toward the floor. I tried not to get excited that I was going down instead of up. Figured the minute I stopped trying to do something was the minute my damn body did it.

  I wished there was a clock in here. I wished I knew how long ago Storm had left. That’s the other thing about not having a body. There’s no internal clock to keep you posted on time.

  “Hey,” Storm whispered, coming right through the wall beside me.

  “Did you get to the bodies before he did?”

  “Yeah. I brought yours with me. It’s outside in the trees that border his property. You might as well use it.”

  “That’s one way to keep it on the move.”

  “Yeah. But you gotta stay out of sight, man. For many obvious reasons, including the red ring you’ll be sporting.

  I highly doubted I would be strolling down the street.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” I said, trying to rush toward the wall. I ended up going in the opposite direction with a trail of red following behind. I made a frustrated sound. “How in the hell do you control yourself?”

  “It’s not that hard. You just have to concentrate.”

  “All I’ve been doing is concentrating. My freaking brain hurts.” Wait. Did I even have a brain? Not having a body was so weird. I took a deep breath and tried again. I got the same results as before. A few colorful swear words slipped between my lips.

  “I told you it wasn’t easy,” Storm said. “It’s a good thing I brought the body here.”

  “Where was it anyway?”

  “I stashed it at Frankie’s.”

  “You stashed it at Frankie’s!” I growled, mad that he would involve her more than she already was.

  “You said to put it somewhere it wouldn’t be found.”

  The guy was an idiot. When I got my body back, I was going to deck him. Maybe she hadn’t seen it. I didn’t notice I was drifting down to the floor.

  “She’s something else,” Storm said, watching me. “She didn’t even freak out when she found it.”

  Well, shit. “She saw it,” I said, flat. Drifting even closer.

  “Yeah, and I also sort of borrowed a body in front of her.”

  Double shit. “Where is she now?” I growled, wondering how I was ever going to make this up to her. I wondered if I could. Then I noticed I was right beside Storm.

  “I’m on the ground,” I said, shocked. I hadn’t even been trying. I was too busy wanting to deck him in the eye.

  “Yeah, apparently pissing you off about your lady is like an anchor for you.”

  Huh.

  “You ready? We need to get your body out of the woods.”

  “Let’s do this.”

  Storm moved over toward the far wall. “This wall is an exterior wall. Once you’re through it, we’ll be outside. You’re not going to be able to blend into the shadows as good as me so once we’re out there, we gotta move fast. Just stick with me. Follow me.”

  Yeah, moving fast was a lot better in theory. Trying to cram a body, or non-body as it was, through a wall and outside wasn’t exactly easy. It took me four tries to get half my body out of the house and then another three tries to get the rest out.

  By the time I made it out and across the open yard and into the trees, I was pissed off and in a very foul mood. It didn’t help that I was staring down at my body—a body that was still kind of shocking to see. I wasn’t sure what it was going to be like to literally be back to my old self again.

  “I swear the next time you get your ghost ass in a body, I’m going to give you a black eye.” I threatened Storm. Threatening him made me feel better. And it kept my anger at the surface, giving my body a little bit of weight. If I started flying up here, there would be no ceiling to catch me.

  “Promises, promises,” Storm taunted. “Focus on the nose or the ears,” he instructed. “Aim for that and once you’re in, it will be a lot easier because it’ll be like going into a tunnel. There won’t be anywhere for your soul to go but inside.”

  My feet (or what would be my feet) were already close to the ears of my body so instead of trying to bend down and go in headfirst, I kicked out my foot, aiming for the ear. As I thought, some red went out and around the head, but some of it made it inside, creating a red trail leading inside and so I kicked again, shoving even more of myself in.

  Then something happened.

  Something I hadn’t expected.

  It was almost like the inside of my body was a vacuum and I was being sucked up through the hose. “Storm,” I whispered, trying not to sound as freaked as I was. “It’s sucking me in.”

  “Well, that’s a first,” he said, sounding a little surprised. It didn’t make me feel any better. “Just go with it. You want to get in there. This will just make it easier.”

  And so I went (like I had a choice). My body seemed to know exactly what to do with my soul and I began to move faster and faster. The body, which had been lying flat and lifeless on the ground, began to plump up and fill out. It became less like a piece of clothing and more like a living, breathing man.

  And then the red was gone.

  I was completely inside a body I thought I would never be in again.

  I stood up, looking down at my arms and legs, tossing the light-colored hair out of my eyes. I wasn’t really sure how I felt in that moment. I wanted to rush to a mirror, to look in and see if I recognized what I saw. I wanted to stand there in the yard and take stock of every part of me—to know if I felt any different, or if I felt the same…

  “Maybe it’s because it’s your body,” Storm was muttering to himself.

  “What?”

  “I was thinking that maybe the reason your soul went right in was because that was the body it actually belongs in.”

  We didn’t have time for theories on bodies and souls.

  “Let’s go to Frankie’s,” I said, my eyes darting around to make sure none of G.R.’s staff was lurking. “We can talk there.”

  The silence that came from Storm was anything but silent.

  “What?” I demanded.

  “Well…” he began, drawing out the word. “There’s something about Frankie you should know.”

  She didn’t want to see me again. She was pissed I left her, pissed Storm stashed a body at her house, and he didn’t want to tell me back there.
“Just tell me.”

  “When I was there getting the body,” he said, pausing.

  “Spit it out already!” I barked.

  “G.R. showed up,” he rushed out.

  “What?!” If I hadn’t already been inside a body, I knew all the red that made up my soul would have scattered for miles. The thought of Frankie and G.R. in a room together made my skin crawl.