There was no sense of urgency.
I remembered nothing about the background or her surroundings—only her and the overwhelming sense of sadness and loss.
How would I live with that image forever burning a hole in my mind?
What would I do without her?
I blinked and looked up when I felt a hand on my arm.
“I know something’s wrong. That vision was bad, wasn’t it? That’s why you’re upset.”
“Upset? How could I possibly be upset?” I said. “I got the entire day off, a delivery of flowers, Chinese food, the best cupcakes ever, and I’m about to watch a thoroughly entertaining movie with my favorite person in the world.”
She nodded her head once. “You got it good girl. And to make it even better, I propose a slumber party.”
“We haven’t had one of those since high school.”
“We’re overdue.” She grinned, but I saw the brief cloud of worry in her eyes. She only wanted to sleep over to be certain I was all right.
I liked the idea of having her here tonight. I might not worry as much. I nodded. “That would be fun.”
She rolled her eyes. “I know.” She grabbed her cupcake and settled back onto the couch, picking up the remote to start the movie. Just as the credits were rolling on the screen, she hit the pause button.
“Oh, I forgot. Some guy came by to see you earlier.”
“A guy?” I asked, automatically thinking of Dex. “Was he wearing glasses?”
She shook her head. “Nope. And he looked like a Ken doll. Perfect hair, clothes, and teeth.”
“Well, that’s not Dex,” I mumbled to myself and Frankie laughed. “But he is good looking,” I added.
“Well, he can definitely pick out flowers.” We both looked at the daisies. “Anyway, it was before you got here with the food and I answered the door. He must’ve thought I was you because he was being all slick and charming. When he called me Piper, I laughed and told him he had the wrong girl. Turns out Ken isn’t so perfect after all. All that charm went right out the window. He was arrogant, sarcastic, and rude,” she said with a how dare he tone to her voice. “I took great pleasure in throwing him out.”
I laughed. “What did he want?”
“I have no idea. He was probably selling a vacuum and when he figured out I wasn’t buying he decided he didn’t have to be nice.”
“Well, I’m glad you had to deal with him and not me,” I said, using my finger to swipe some of the icing and pink sugar off the top of the cupcake. It melted the second it hit my tongue.
“Yes, well, I figure since I had the job of tossing him out I deserve two cupcakes.” She leaned forward to pull out another cake and held them both up, one on each side of her face, and grinned.
“There better be another one in that box for me.”
“You know it, sister,” she sang, then looked at the TV. “Now hit play. I wanna see some abs!”
I hit play and with the help of some very hot guys and some tasty dessert, I was able to forget about the vision. Even still, I knew the time would come when I would begin to worry again.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Babysitter - A person who cares for or watches over someone or something that needs attention or guidance.”
Dex
I was upstairs enjoying the comfort of my king-sized bed and the flat screen when the sound of the doorbell echoed through the townhouse. I ignored it, knowing it was probably just some kid selling Girl Scout cookies and Hobbs would answer it anyway. When it rang a few minutes later, I pushed up onto one elbow. “Hobbs! The door!”
I knew he was down there. I could smell dinner cooking. Just because he was cooking dinner didn’t mean he couldn’t answer the door too. He was, after all, a butler. He was probably trained in things like this.
I focused back on the TV and the bell rang again, three times in a row. Whoever was at the door was very impatient. I tossed the remote on a nearby pillow and jumped off the bed and made my way downstairs, muttering the whole time about finding better help.
I walked past the kitchen, where Hobbs was nowhere to be found, but noted that dinner looked done. He was probably at the door right now. Made me sorry I’d gotten up. I walked around the corner and into the entry way where Hobbs wasn’t.
I shook my head and opened the door, expecting to snarl at some little kid, but it wasn’t a kid.
It was a man with a strangely bright red pulsing cloud around him. It was exactly like what I saw at the college.
“About damn time. It’s freezing out here,” the man said, pushing past me to let himself into my house.
“Who the hell are you?” I said, zeroing in on the black duffle bag he carried.
“Your babysitter,” he replied, taking in the entryway, and then spun to look at me.
He was tall, a few inches taller than me, and had dark hair that was styled a little too perfectly. His green eyes watched me as he set down his bag to unbutton his black coat.
“I’d invite you to make yourself at home,” I drawled, “but you aren’t staying.”
He smirked and took his coat off the rest of the way and hung it on the nearby coat rack. Then he walked away, farther into my house.
“Did you not hear what I just said?” I told him as he went into the kitchen.
“Yes, I’m not welcome here. But you don’t make the rules,” he said as he lifted the lid to the pot on the stove. Then he glanced at me. “Honey, you cooked,” he said in falsetto.
“Get out.”
“Here’s the thing. You might live here, but this isn’t your house. Yet,” he said as he looked through all the cabinets. So he was an Escort, like me. Storm had been right about us being able to identify each other.
“What are you talking about?” I said, pretending not to hear the meaning behind his words.
He sighed dramatically and looked at me. “We have the same employer and since you seem to be having trouble completing the job you were assigned, G.R. sent me here to make sure you did it.”
“He gave me two months,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest.
“One of which is already gone.” He’d resumed his cabinet searching and made a face when he found what he wanted, reaching in to pull out a large white bowl.
“So?” I prompted.
He took the lid off the pot on the stove, grabbed the nearby ladle, and began scooping homemade chili into his bowl.
Where was Hobbs? Why had he suddenly disappeared? Clearly I was going to need help getting this guy out of here. Of course, I was also glad he wasn’t here to listen to the truth behind my income.
“So, a job like this should’ve taken a week, tops,” he said, smug. “My first job took me two days.” He spooned a huge amount of sour cream onto the chili and then added an equal amount of shredded cheese.
Part of me was curious. I wondered about the other Escorts and what it was like to essentially kill people for a living. I also had some questions that I hadn’t thought to ask when I was given my job. I’d been a little preoccupied with the new body and the shiny car. Maybe I could get some answers before I kicked him out.
I went farther into the kitchen and made myself a similar looking bowl of chili and sat at the opposite end of the island.
“So you’re an Escort and you were sent here by G.R. to make sure I did what I was told.” It wasn’t really a question, just me summing up the reason he was here.
In response, he shoved a huge bite of food into his mouth. He certainly didn’t have a problem making himself at home.
“How long have you been an Escort?”
He paused and glanced at me. “A very long time.”
“How many bodies have you had?”
He took another bite and seemed to think it over as he chewed. “A few,” he replied after a while.
We ate in silence for a few minutes, but there was something I really wanted to know. “How many people have you murdered?”
He lowered the spoon toward his
bowl. “I’ve lost count.”
I digested that along with my chili. It was good chili, but I wasn’t sure how it would settle with death. Even though I’d tried to “Escort” Piper to her death several times now (and not very successfully), I still couldn’t quite wrap my head around the fact that I was basically an assassin for hire. I had a pretty crappy life, but even to me, that stuff only happened in movies.
I mean, why would a man make a business out of killing people? What did he gain? How did he never get caught? Was this some sort of modern day mob? A crime ring? I’d lived on the streets long enough to know that this wasn’t a gang. It was too upscale to be a gang.
I put my spoon down and looked at my visitor. It was hard to really focus on him because all I saw was red.
“Did you die too?”
He stopped eating and put his spoon in the bowl. “All of the Escorts died at some point.”
“But why?”
He gave me an are you serious look and rolled his eyes. “How am I supposed to know why we all died? If there’s one thing I’ve learned all these years it’s once you’re fated to die, you die. You can’t outrun death.”
But that bus wasn’t aiming for me. It had been aiming for Piper. Did that mean she was really the one meant for death? Or had it been me all along?
“But why didn’t we end up in heaven? How did G.R. find us?”
“People that die violent or sudden deaths don’t cross over right away. I guess it’s because their spirits are too shocked to realize they’re dead. Sometimes they’re good candidates to be a Death Escort and G.R. finds them and makes them a deal, like he did with you.”
I made a good candidate because I was easily seduced by money. Anyone who never had anything would be. Add that to the fact I became a killer as a child and you had a perfect match.
“What’s your name?” I asked, turning away from the heavy topic for a minute.
“Everyone calls me Charming,” he said with a smirk.
“Charming,” I said, deadpan. “Are you serious?”
“I come by it honestly.” He got up and filled his bowl with another serving of chili.
“People think you’re charming?” I scoffed. I thought he was an ass.
“I have a way with people.”
I made a rude sound. “Do people thank you while you’re killing them?”
“I give the friendless a friend, the depressed hope, and the rejected acceptance. When their time is up, they go happier than they were.”
I looked at him again, looking past the red, trying to see what he claimed others saw in him. All I saw was white, perfect teeth, wide shoulders and a sarcastic grin. He was wearing dark jeans and a heavy grey sweater with a zipper near the neck. It had a collar, which was flipped up around his jaws.
To me he looked like a soap opera actor.
I watched one of those shows today and I thought it was ridiculously cheesy. But the ladies must like them, so maybe they liked him too.
But really, dude? You let people call you Charming?
“So basically you get close to people, get them to trust you—like you—and then you Escort them.”
“Pretty much.” He flashed me a grin that said he liked his job.
To do what he did, I wondered if he liked himself.
That thought brought me up short—I’d never thought about that before. About liking myself. I guess I always knew where I stood in the world. At the bottom. And I did what I could to survive. I never really had the luxury of self-worth. But sitting here now, it seemed self-worth wasn’t a luxury; it was something everyone should have.
Charming pinned me with a hard look. “Are you having second thoughts about the job?”
I sat up a little straighter. “Me? No.”
“Then why isn’t it done?”
“It’s been harder to kill her than I thought it would be.”
“Yeah, well, not finishing the job would be harder.”
“What do you mean?”
He smirked. “Seriously? Did you not ask what would happen if you didn’t do the job?”
No. I hadn’t. G.R. (when had he become G.R. to me and not Mr. Burns?) hadn’t really given me a choice about completing the job. It was this or an eternity in hell. It wasn’t a hard choice.
Charming rolled his eyes. “You were given an amount of time to do the job. To prove yourself as a Death Escort. If you don’t do the job, you get recalled.”
“Recalled?” I asked.
“As in that pretty purple spirit of yours gets sucked out of that body and you get sent into a fate I hear is worse than hell. An endless world of emptiness, caught between places, still thinking and feeling but being completely lost in a void of nothing.”
Hell actually sounded preferable. I shrugged. “I’m not worried about being recalled,” I said, the word sounding weird on my tongue. “I’ll get the job done.”
“You better. I’m very invested in this assignment. I’m going to be watching you.”
“Why would you care?”
“Let’s just say there’s something in it for me when she dies.”
Something inside me wanted to tell him to stay far away from Piper. The thought of him near her made my skin crawl. But I didn’t let it show. It would reveal more than I wanted to. And I didn’t really understand what those feelings meant anyway.
“What do you get out of this?” I pressed.
“Did G.R. tell you nothing?”
I shrugged. I was beginning to wonder that myself.
“Sometimes the Escorts get more than payment after eliminating a Target. Sometimes we get powers.”
“Powers.” I scoffed.
“It’s the reason we just don’t go around killing anyone. It’s the reason we have Targets.”
“So some lives are more valuable than others.”
“Exactly. Some of them have tons of money—those are mostly my Targets.” He flashed a grin and I got a glimpse of the charm he bragged about. It dawned on me he was used to charming people out of their money and then killing them. “And some,” he continued, “have abilities that are beneficial to us.”
Well, I knew Piper didn’t have any money. That meant she must have some sort of ability. What could it be?
I pushed that thought away because another was forming. “How could someone take another person’s ability? How would you even know who had one?”
“You don’t know?” Charming said, grinning like he had a secret no one else knew.
“Know what?” I growled. He was an irritating ass.
“Who you—who we—work for.”
“Yes, I do. You know I’ve met him.”
“But he didn’t tell you who he was, why he has the power he does.”
“Just spit it out already.”
“Well, maybe knowing who you’re dealing with will speed up the job completion.”
I gave him a just spit it out look and he grinned wider.
“Your new employer is none other than the Grim Reaper. The ultimate dealer of death.”
“The Grim Reaper,” I echoed, disbelief in my voice.
Charming spread his hands wide. “Who better to run a death ring? With a single touch he can claim a life. No one has the power to stop him and no one would even believe it to try.”
I sat there, partially stunned. I never in a million years imagined this. I knew he had to be powerful. I had known there was something I was missing… but this. This was not what I expected.
Yet I believed it. He went by G.R., mere initials for his full title. He kept bodies in his closet and radiated power, yet he seemed almost jolly. Of course he would be. Because he knew he’d never be stopped. He didn’t have to be mean and vile. If he wanted someone dead all he had to do was touch them.
And now I worked for him.
I worked for the Grim Reaper.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Crush - a strong positive emotion of regard and affection.”
Piper
I crept t
hrough the darkened apartment toward the couch where Frankie insisted on sleeping. I hoped she was comfortable, but I wasn’t sure my couch would be. I didn’t have a sleeper with a pull out mattress so she had to settle for the lumpy cushions. I tried to make her take the bed, but she refused, saying I needed more rest than she did.
I peeked over the back of the faded red velvet to see she had a couple blankets piled on her and all I could see was the top of her white-blond hair. At least she managed to sleep. Before creeping back to my room I glanced at the daisies still sitting in the center of the coffee table. They were still as gorgeous as yesterday.
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