“I hate you,” I told him around a bite of a sinfully good chocolate cake. “But I love these.”
He smiled. This smile wasn’t the kind filled with ego. It was a nice smile.
“Aren’t you going to eat one?” I asked him, setting it down and picking up my bright-pink cup filled with coffee. Somehow he managed to get his coffee in a plain white cup. I didn’t even know they had those here.
He shook his head. “I’ll leave the sugar consumption to you.”
“You don’t know what you’re missing.”
“Maybe not,” he said, watching me. I swear his pupils dilated when I poked my tongue out to lick away some frosting from my lips.
I took another bite, purposely leaving frosting behind, and then used my tongue once again to get it.
His eyes narrowed. “Are you doing that on purpose?”
“What?” I asked innocently while inside I did a little happy dance. It thrilled me to no end to know he wasn’t as unaffected by me as I previously thought. I felt less horrified by the way my body reacted to him.
“What kind of game are you trying to play, love?” he asked, leaning over the table and lowering his voice. Desire spiked within me.
I swallowed, knowing if I tried to make some smart reply, I would only end up babbling or making a fool out of myself. I looked at him, telling myself there was a lot more to him than a pair of green eyes and a sexy body.
It worked.
I sat back in my chair and set down the treat. “Can I ask you something?”
His eyes widened a little when he realized I wasn’t going to be falling all over him like the girl behind the counter.
“What?” he asked warily.
“Is it hard?” I began. “You know… what you do?”
His face and eyes seemed to close up. That little peak of genuineness I saw in his smile earlier completely disappeared. “I’ve been doing my job for a very long time.”
“How long?” I asked, remembering the time he said he knew Marilyn Monroe.
“Ninety or so years.”
Surprise had me sitting up a little straighter. I hadn’t really expected him to answer and I sure as sugar didn’t expect that amount of time.
“Ninety years,” I whispered to myself. Then I looked back up at him. “So, that body… your body… that’s not yours?”
“It’s mine, has been for a while. But it wasn’t my first one.”
Wow. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to wake up one day in a completely different body. Seems like it would be hard to know who you were.
I cleared my throat, wanting to get back to my original question. It was one of the thoughts that sent me here tonight, one of the thoughts that seemed to eat away at me.
“So is it?”
“Is it what?” he asked, picking up his coffee.
He knew what I was asking. Was he avoiding the question?
“Is it hard to kill people?” I lowered my voice, leaning in.
“No.”
Just like that.
I didn’t believe him. A man couldn’t kill for over ninety years and it never bother him. That just wasn’t natural… It wasn’t human. “I don’t believe you.”
His eyes snapped to my face and he set his coffee between us on the table. “Believe it. Killing isn’t as hard as you think. Most of the time it’s over in seconds, before the person even knows what’s happening. It’s not something I drag out.”
It’s not something I drag out. His statement was more telling than he realized. It was like he was saying he did it quickly to get it over with because it was something he didn’t enjoy.
“But what about the ones like Rosalyn?” I said, my stomach tightening at her name. “The ones you have to spend time with, the ones you get to know. Doesn’t it bother you then? Don’t you feel bad for all the things—all the life—you’re robbing from them?”
“It’s getting to you,” he said softly.
“What?”
“You’ve gone out to lunch and off shopping. You’ve inserted yourself into her life. You’ve made her your friend. And now you feel guilty.”
It didn’t surprise me that he knew I spent a little time with her on my own. I shrugged and picked at the top of a cupcake. “Why don’t you?”
He leaned forward even farther, a snarl curling his lips. “She isn’t my friend. Yes, I smile and make jokes, I pretend to listen to the words that fall from her lips, but I’m not really hearing. She’s not a person to me. She’s a job. A means to an end. It’s her or me.”
“She’s a person,” I said, not knowing what to feel or think about his words.
He shook his head. “She’s an assignment and if I don’t finish my assignment then I’m the one who gets Recalled. Death isn’t a place for a girl like you,” he said, his words taking on an angry tone. “Death is cold. It’s mean and it’s unforgiving. It’s every man for himself in my world and if I don’t do the job, someone else will.”
And that’s when I realized.
He really meant it when he said it wasn’t hard to kill. But the reason it wasn’t hard wasn’t because he’d done it so many times. It was because he wasn’t completely human. Yes, I joked about it before, but I never really considered that it might be true. This was a man who should have been dead. This was a man who walked around in a body that really wasn’t his. The reason he seemed so detached sometimes was because he was… Charming was completely detached from life, from living. All he knew was death.
I stood up from the table abruptly. My chair would have fallen back onto the floor, but I caught it, sliding it beneath the table and gripping the back with both my hands. I didn’t know what to say to him. All sarcastic remarks had completely faded from my brain.
“I have to go,” I said.
And then I rushed out into the night.
Chapter Fifteen
“Kiss - to engage in mutual touching or caressing with the lips.”
Charming
I finally said something that got to her. Yeah, I said stuff constantly that drove her crazy or made her mad, but I don’t think I ever said something that got this far under her skin so fast.
I watched her go, thinking I finally found the thing that would drive her away.
Maybe now I could finish this job without issue.
Funny, I thought I would be happier. I thought I’d feel lighter without having to worry about what she was up to that might ruin me.
I didn’t feel lighter.
I didn’t feel satisfied at all.
I dropped a five on the table, picked up the huge box, the coffee, and waved good-bye to the girl who let us in. She told me her name, but I wasn’t listening. I pointed to my cup where she’d scrawled her phone number and I grinned, making her think I was eager to call her. I wasn’t ever going to call her.
She blushed and disappeared into the back. I took the opportunity to increase my speed, stopping just behind Frankie who was fumbling to get inside her Jeep.
“You forgot your cupcakes,” I said, shifting the load to one arm and reaching around her with the other to open her door.
She didn’t turn around.
“Why are you here?” Her voice was slightly hoarse and my body tightened.
I set the box and coffee on the hood of her car, not bothering to say a word. I really didn’t have an answer anyway.
When my hands cupped her shoulders, she flinched. I told myself it didn’t bother me. That I knew she didn’t like me. It didn’t matter if she liked me or not. I was used to taking what I wanted.
I turned her around, my grip never leaving her shoulders, and pulled her closer so the space between us was maybe an inch at best. She looked up, her blue eyes confused and slightly hurt. My right hand found its way up to the back of her neck while the left tipped back her chin.
“Don’t,” she whispered.
I had to.
I lowered my lips to hers, wrapping my arm around her back and pulling her so close that there wasn’t ev
en room for air between us. She never appeared short, but when she was up against me like this, she felt it. My body had to hunch itself around her so I could taste her the way I really wanted to.
The last time I kissed her was to prove a point.
This time it was because I couldn’t not kiss her.
There was no resistance where I expected. It was almost as if she hadn’t just said, “don’t,” but instead murmured “please.” Her mouth was soft and pliable, warm and adept. She kissed like she had nowhere else to be but right here in my arms. It made me hold her tighter. It made me groan in the back of my throat and when I did, her tongue delved inside my mouth like it was trying to capture that sound, capture it and swallow it away so she would be the only one to have heard it.
Adrenaline poured through my limbs and they began to shake, a fine tremor that I would have denied if she called me on it. But thankfully, she didn’t. Because she was too busy kissing me back. I wanted to tear my mouth from hers, to kiss more than just one place on her body, but her lips were like a drug. A lethal drug that claimed me with a single dose.
I ran my hands down her sides and across her back, dipping lower so they cupped the roundness of her bottom. She made a sound, stretching up on tiptoes, wrapping her arms around my neck, trying to get closer. I kissed her harder, with more intent. My lips finally broke free of hers and blazed a path across her cheekbone toward her ear. Her chin tipped back, giving me greater access, and I sucked her earlobe into my mouth and kneaded it with my tongue. She made a sound that caused me to smile, and I pulled back to look down.
Her cheeks were flushed, her lips were swollen, and her eyes were unfocused like she had one too many drinks.
I kissed her again, a series of four short rapid kisses that blended into one.
This time when I pulled away, she sucked her bottom lip into her mouth and held it there. I told myself it was because she wanted every last taste of my kiss.
“Why did you do that?” she asked, her voice husky and low. “Why are you even here?”
“Do you need a reason for everything I do?” The truth was I didn’t know why I was here. I was out driving and the next thing I knew I was here.
“I think I do.”
I pulled the cupcakes and the coffee off her hood and held them out. When she took them, I lifted my cup off the top. “Because I wanted to.”
“You wanted to kiss me?” she stuttered out.
I wanted to wipe that look off her face—the one of contempt and disdain. The way she looked at me before leaving the bakery… had been like I was a complete and utter stranger. I didn’t want to be a stranger to her. I wanted to know I could make her feel something other than death.
By the look on her face, by the way her body hummed against mine, I would say I was successful. Which really wasn’t a surprise.
What I hadn’t expected was, for the first time in a very long time, I felt something other than death too.
Chapter Sixteen
“Human - subject to or indicative of the weaknesses, imperfections, and fragility associated with humans: a mistake that shows he's only human; human frailty.”
Frankie
I baked about one hundred cupcakes. My little kitchen had never seen so much icing and batter. When the cupcakes were done, I started on cookies and then moved on to sticky buns with a vanilla glaze.
I called in sick to work. The thought of facing that depressing place was too much to bear. I couldn’t be trapped like that. Not today. Not after.
When the phone rang, I ignored it. When Piper texted, I put my phone on silent. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I didn’t want to think. I had flour in my hair, batter on my apron, and cinnamon under my nails.
But it didn’t matter how filled up my kitchen got with desserts because my mind was still filled up with him.
Damn it.
How dare he kiss me like that? How dare he make me feel something for him other than hatred? His heart might beat like mine. His lungs might fill with air. He might walk and talk like everyone else out on the streets, but he was different. He wasn’t really human.
He was a machine.
A robot.
A killer.
He looked me in the eye and told me it didn’t bother him. He told me that he killed over and over again without regret.
But, really, I guess the problem wasn’t him. The problem was me. Because even knowing all those things, even knowing that he would kill again, I still felt things for him. Things I didn’t want to feel.
Death isn’t a place for a girl like you.
His words haunted me. He was right. And so I was going to stay away from death—from him. I was going to bake until I ran out of flour and move on with my life. I never should have gotten involved with him; it was stupid to think I could stop him, that I could chase him out of town.
No more.
From here on out, Charming could be someone else’s problem.
But what about Rosalyn? a voice inside me whispered. She deserved some kind of warning that Charming wasn’t who she thought. She’d become my friend and I couldn’t just let her walk right into her own death.
I was going to have to talk with her. But after that I couldn’t be friends with her anymore. It was too complicated and it made me feel guilty. Every time I was around her I felt like a liar. I didn’t like feeling that way.
I glanced at my phone, then away again. Not today. I couldn’t deal with this—with her today. Maybe later this week I would feel less shaky and more like myself. Then I would call her.
Then I would somehow tell her the truth about Charming.
Chapter Seventeen
“Socialite - a person who is or seeks to be prominent in fashionable society.”
Charming
I liked money. I liked cars and clothes. I liked having nice things and the ability to buy whatever I wanted. But sometimes the things I had to do to earn my money really sucked. And I didn’t mean the killing. Killing didn’t require much talking or much listening.
But spending time with a Target—specifically Rosalyn—required both.
I was starting to think that eventually going to hell wasn’t my punishment for murder—it was spending time with her.
It was a Saturday, a day most socialites would be lounging in bed, playing golf, or sitting by a pool. Not Rosalyn. No, she would rather drag me all over Fairbanks to scout locations for the fundraiser that I offered to help her chair.
What surprised me was that there were so many viable locations for such an event. I didn’t think this town consisted of much more than snow.
“Are you even listening to a word I’m saying?” she said, wrapping her hand around my elbow and looking up.
“I’m sorry, my brain’s starting to shut down from lack of caffeine,” I said and gave her my best smile.
“It has been a long morning. Let’s get some lunch and caffeine,” she said.
“Now you’re talking.”
“It will give us a chance to discuss all the venues and pick one.”
Internally, I groaned.
Her phone rang inside the designer bag she wore over her shoulder and she pulled it out. “Oh, it’s your sister!” she said, smiling.
My sister…
“Frankie, hi!” the Target said enthusiastically when she answered the phone.
Oh, yes. My sister.
I hadn’t seen or heard from her in over a week. Since I kissed her. Ever since that night, I went out of my way to avoid her. As much as I hated to admit it to myself, that kiss had shaken me. It made me feel things I didn’t want to feel.
After several days, I started to get the feeling I wasn’t the only one avoiding someone. She never showed up when I had plans with the Target, she didn’t show up to snoop around my house, and she never once tried to call.
Frankie was avoiding me too. Her avoidance irritated me for reasons I didn’t understand. I should be happy she was finally backing off. It’s what I wanted.
E
ven still, I had Storm check up on her. She could have been up to something that I needed to know about. He said she wasn’t. He said the only place she ever went was work except for two trips to a soup kitchen in the bad part of town where she delivered boxes of cupcakes and cookies.
It didn’t seem like her to give away all that sugar.
“It’s been too long,” the Target was saying into the phone. “You’ve been a stranger!”
I listened closely to hear what Frankie would say.
“I was hoping we could meet? I would really like to explain why I haven’t called.”
What exactly did Frankie plan on explaining to my Target? A feeling of alarm washed over me and I knew Frankie was going to somehow rat me out.
“I was just about to go have lunch with…” The Target looked up, about to tell my sister I was with her. I caught her eye and shook my head, placing a finger over my lips. “Umm, would you like to meet now?”
I nodded and she smiled.
Frankie suggested a nearby café and the Target agreed.
“What was that all about?” she said after she ended the call and was stuffing her phone back into her bag.
“I haven’t seen her in a while either. I thought I would surprise her.”
“You’re sweet,” she said, taking my arm again. “What’s it like to have a sister?”
“It definitely keeps me on my toes,” I replied, guiding her down the street toward the café. I couldn’t help but wonder what Frankie would do when she walked in and saw me at the table.
I would know in seconds if she really were planning on somehow turning the Target against me. I didn’t think she would go so far as telling her I was a Death Escort. I mean, that would only make her sound insane. But even just the slightest hint that I wasn’t exactly who I said I was would make this Target suspicious.
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