Summoned to Thirteenth Grave (Charley Davidson #13)

by Darynda Jones

  “What’s this about your mother’s death?” Osh asked.

  “One of the wraiths told me that in order to stop the dimension, I needed to figure out what really happened to her.”

  “And have you?”

  Reyes stood and strode to the coffeepot to make more coffee. “We’re getting there. Why?” He turned back to him. “Is there something you’re not telling us?”

  Osh smirked. “I didn’t sup on her soul, if that’s what you mean.”

  Still, Osh had been on this plane for centuries. “Do you know something, Osh?” I asked, getting excited. “Did you hear anything?”

  A look of sympathy settled over his features. “No, sugar. I knew you were coming. Hell, who didn’t? But I’ve never heard anything other than your mother died in childbirth.”

  “You knew I was coming?”

  “Yes. And if I’d known you were going to be such a pain in the ass, I’d have stopped it myself.”

  I dropped my gaze.

  “I’m kidding, sugar.”

  “No, it’s just, we think someone did try to stop it. We think a demon attacked her while I was being born.”

  His expression turned to stone, and he stared at me for a good thirty seconds before asking, “Why do you think that?”

  “A human who could see into the supernatural realm when he was a kid saw it, but only for a second.”

  Osh stood, his brows knitting as though trying to grasp what I’d just said. “You’re sure?”

  “No. But I know something went horribly wrong that day. I know she wasn’t supposed to die.”

  “Let me see what I can dig up.”

  “And just what are you going to do?” Reyes asked.

  Osh tossed him a glare over his shoulder. “I’ll get back to you.”

  And he was gone.

  15

  Your clothes would look nicer on my bedroom floor.

  —T-SHIRT

  A half hour later, I stood in a steam-filled bathroom wrapped in a towel and gazing at the dark circles under my eyes, while Reyes showered beside me.

  “Where do you think Osh ran off to?”

  He turned off the water, seriously disappointing the departed Rottweiler chasing the streams bouncing off the floor. But she soon found another calling. She charged out the door, and a few seconds later, we heard giggling as Artemis found Meiko, her new best friend.

  “You know,” he said, not bothering with a towel as he walked to stand behind me, water dripping off him and pooling at our feet, “for some reason, Osh isn’t on my mind as much as he’s on yours.”

  I grinned. “Jelly?”

  He didn’t respond. Instead, he reached down, lifted my right leg, and braced my knee on the sink. Then he pushed me over said sink as his fingers found the sensitive flesh at my core.

  I gasped when he parted the folds there and rubbed softly. So softly I wanted to help, to push into him and against him and over him. But he’d wedged me between the sink and his hip, denying me a single inch of wiggle room.

  Grasping the edge of the sink, I closed my eyes and let the feel of him wash over me. His deft fingers. His hard abdomen. His even harder cock as it rested against the folds of my cunt, the tip pressing into me.

  I considered begging. I considered offering him money or a foot massage or my soul. Then I remembered he’d already won all three last night.

  No, that wasn’t true. He’d won all three, but that last one he’d won long ago.

  He slid his fingers inside me and massaged my clit with his thumb, the sensation heavenly. But I wanted more of him. I wanted to taste him and tease him and make him come in my mouth.

  “Oh, wait,” I said, rubbing my hip. “I have a cramp.”

  “Liar.”

  Fuck. How did he know? “No, I do. I swear,” I added, trying not to giggle.

  “Fine,” he said, acquiescing at last. “Let me just do this one thing.”

  “What one thing?”

  He leaned over me and brushed back a wet strand of hair to whisper, “Fuck you until you can’t stand up straight.”

  “That’s cheating,” I said, but he entered me in one, long, exquisite thrust.

  And the rest of the morning was spent with him doing his darnedest to meet, and/or exceed his goal. And what an admirable goal it was.

  Given we had so little time before the world ended should we fail, we couldn’t seem to get enough of each other. I focused on his touch. Memorized it. Savored it. Hoping it would last me the next 100 years. Praying it wouldn’t have to.

  * * *

  By the time we emerged from our penthouse suite, I could still walk. Barely.

  Cookie had showered and was already at her computer.

  Ubie had gone in to work despite my insistence that he take a horrible - itchy - rash - in - his - groin day. That shit always worked.

  And Garrett was still in his room, scouring the prophecies. Guy was dedicated, I’d give him that.

  I gave Cook her latest assignment, adding to her already toppling pile, and told her I wanted to know everything about our self-mutilating truck driver, Thaniel Just. While not important in the grand scheme of things, there was something about him. Something familiar. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

  “I want to know everything about him, Cook. His family. His education. His work history. Any criminal activity.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Cookie said, impatient. She put a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Look, you need to go check on your sister. Amber and Quentin said she seems upset.”

  “Really?” Concern sent needles prickling over my skin. “Okay.”

  Moments later, I found Gemma in her room, gazing out a dust-covered window.

  “Hey, Gem,” I said a little too lightheartedly.

  She turned, her eyes filled with tears.

  “Gem, what’s wrong?” I walked to stand beside her, biting my lip in apprehension.

  “It’s about when you were born.”

  “Oh,” I said, surprised. “Did you remember something?” A part of me hoped she hadn’t. She’d never seen into the supernatural realm, and after talking to Dr. Clarke yesterday, I wanted it to stay that way.

  She swallowed hard, then nodded. “I remember Uncle Bob had fallen asleep.”

  “Was this before or after the vending machine love fest?”

  “After. We were in the waiting room, and something woke me up.”

  Dread slid up my spine, cold and wet.

  “I don’t know how I didn’t remember it until now. I heard strange sounds coming from the hall.”

  No.

  “I walked toward them.”

  No, no, no, no, no.

  “I could’ve sworn I saw”—she stopped and turned away as though embarrassed—“I couldn’t sworn I saw a monster.”

  My lids closed. I’d wanted this information so badly the day before, but now . . . Would it be worth it? Would it break the thread holding Gemma together? She’d always had this perfect ideal of the world. No, she’d always needed it. And then there I was at every turn, challenging her ideals and her need to feel safe in a very unsafe world.

  What would knowing that a monster could’ve been responsible for our mother’s death do to her?

  She placed a pleading look on me, and my chest tightened. “Charley, I could swear I saw Mom fighting it. The monster.”

  Doubt mixed with a hefty dose of denial slammed into me. “She fought it?”

  “I think . . . this is going to sound crazy, but I think it threw her against a wall, only she didn’t hit it. The wall. She . . . she went through it. The monster dragged her back out and—” She covered her mouth with a shaking hand. “It pounced on her.”

  I felt Reyes at the door, his heat blistering, his wariness palpable.

  “The next thing I remember is waking up in Uncle Bob’s arms.”

  I couldn’t speak.

  “He told me that I’d fainted, but he was really upset. I remember him being really upset, and I felt bad. I t
hought that he was mad because I’d fainted. By that point, I didn’t remember anything about the monster. Just that Uncle Bob was agitated.”

  I couldn’t move.

  “He didn’t tell me until we got home that Mom had died, and he only told me because he was crying and I kept asking him why. He didn’t want to tell me, but I knew something was wrong.”

  I couldn’t breathe.

  “Charley,” she said, tears running down her face, “am I infected?”

  Her question shocked me out of my stupor. “What?”

  I pulled her into my arms, and she crumbled, sobs racking her body.

  “No. You are most definitely not infected.”

  “Then how do you explain it?” she said between hitches of breath. “How am I remembering things that couldn’t possibly have happened?” She drew back. “I get it. You’re the grim reaper. I’ve known for years, but how could Mom—our mother—fight a demon? It’s impossible. She wasn’t . . . she wasn’t like you. And I’m not like you.”

  “Gem, I think what you saw might have really transpired.”

  “No.” She shook her head and sat on the cot. “No, that’s not possible. I can’t see into your world, Charley. You know that. I’ve never been able to see into your world.”

  I thought about Dr. Clarke, about his ability and how it waned as he grew older, but clearly it didn’t dissipate entirely. “Are you sure you can’t? Have you ever seen a ghost or—”

  “Everyone has seen a ghost, Charley. I’m a psychiatrist. Everyone has seen a ghost, and 99 percent of the time there is a perfectly reasonable explanation.”

  “Okay, what about the other 1 percent?”

  “I may be Miss Logical, but I’ve seen far too much to dismiss the otherworld entirely.”

  “Thank you,” I said, sarcasm dripping from both syllables.

  She sniffed. “You know what I mean.”

  “And you know enough about the human psyche to realize you’ve been blocking this for a very long time.”

  “You think so?”

  “I do.”

  “So, you really don’t think I’m crazy?”

  “I didn’t say that,” I teased.

  Her experience could explain a lot more than just what happened to our mother. It could explain that why, if she was sensitive to the supernatural realm, she blocked it growing up. Even knowing I was the grim reaper, she blocked out the things she could clearly see. I had always blamed Gemma’s disinterest on our stepmother, but clearly, there was more to it than that. Clearly, it was a survival mechanism.

  “Think about it, Gem. If we were talking about one of your patients, and that patient had seen a monster attack her mother as a child but had no memory of it, what would you say to her?”

  “That she had blocked a traumatic event from her childhood.”

  “And if she’d blocked that event, maybe she blocked the tool that allowed her to see that event. Like hysterical blindness, of a sort. It’s possible, right?”

  She wrapped her arms around herself. “It’s very possible.” The next time she looked at me, her expression screamed desperation, sprinkled with the hope of skepticism. “I don’t know, Charley. Do you really think I had the ability to see into your world all this time?”

  “I do.”

  “I just . . . I can’t think anymore.”

  “I know, sweetheart. But that is exactly what you need to do. I need to know if you remember anything else. Anything at all.”

  After a moment where courage warred with the comfort of denial, she lifted her chin and nodded. “I’ll try.”

  “Thanks, Gem. I know it’s asking a lot.”

  “Charley, is that thing, that monster . . . is that what you deal with every day?”

  “Well, not every day.”

  “Then you’re not asking anything of me but to step up and stop being a child, stop pretending monsters don’t exist when I’ve known all along that they do.”

  “No, Gemma.” I pulled her into my arms. “It’s how anyone in your position would have coped.”

  “Not you,” she argued.

  “Gem, this wasn’t your burden to carry.”

  “Charley.” She leaned away from me and stabbed me with her best look of admonition. “I don’t care what you say, you are the bravest person I’ve ever known.”

  I fought a tightening in my chest. Now was not the time to argue with her, so I simply thanked her and hugged her for as long as time would allow, wishing we’d had this conversation years ago. I think we could’ve been great friends growing up. We’d wasted so much time.

  Once Gem and I calmed enough to stop clinging to each other, Reyes and I went to check on Garrett. But my head was reeling. Her account certainly validated the doctor’s, and the fact that she saw that at four years old crushed the ribs around my heart.

  We found Garrett in his room, books and papers with chicken scratches strewn about the small box.

  “Anything new?” Reyes asked.

  Garrett’s frustrated sigh spoke volumes. He threw a book against a wall. An old book. Probably an irreplaceable one. I crossed my fingers he didn’t get it from the library. They were pretty serious about book abuse. Librarians may come across as meek and docile, but do not ruin a book. Or three. By spilling coffee on them.

  “The prophecies all focus on you two and Beep and the ensuing battle with Lucifer. Nothing about a rogue hell dimension trying to take over the world except that one tiny excerpt, and I can’t even be certain about it.”

  “But it talked about a world within a world,” I said, arguing.

  “Yes, and Nostradamus could’ve been talking about the McDonald’s franchise taking over the world for all I know.”

  “But it talked about finding the heart and destroying it.”

  “Again, it could’ve been telling us to bomb the McDonald’s headquarters to stop it from taking over said world. Did you know they are in over 120 countries now?”

  “That’s a lot of Big Macs.”

  “On the bright side,” he continued, “the city is being quarantined. No flights in or out.”

  “You’re kidding,” Reyes said.

  “The CDC has declared a state of emergency. They don’t know what this is, so even though there hasn’t been that many deaths compared to the number of infected, the infected aren’t getting better. Not a single case has been released from the hospitals, which are officially overrun. But because of the quarantine, they can’t bring in outside help or shuttle the infected out of the city.”

  I braced myself for the news and asked, “How many deaths?”

  “Nine total.”

  I sank against the doorframe. Nine. Nine people had died because of something I did.

  Reyes wrapped his hand around my jaw and tilted my face up to his, his expression both reproachful and cautioning. “Now’s not the time.” He held me there a long moment, keeping his gaze locked on mine, until I nodded.

  And then I felt every molecule in my body separating as we shifted onto the celestial plane. Yet he held my gaze steady, his thick lashes creating shadows on his cheeks as his attention dropped to my mouth.

  A thumb brushed across my mouth, parting my lips just enough for his tongue to gain entrance. Just as it did, just as the warmth of his kiss infiltrated the sensitive tissue, we materialized in Jakarta.

  I pulled back to look around. The street we stood on was dark. Though it was barely 7:00 a.m. in Albuquerque, it was a little after 9:00 p.m. here. The noise from a local market wafted toward us, but we’d materialized on a side street so we could make our way to Pandu’s house without being seen.

  Pandu Yoso, a deaf, blind seven-year-old prophet, had written a set of children’s books that detailed my and Reyes’s journey from when we were merely gods in the celestial realm to when we were born on Earth all the way to when we had Beep. Only he chronicled them as though we were stars.

  The books were quite beautiful. Pandu told the stories to his parents, and they wrote them down. And e
ven though he was deaf and blind, Pandu had illustrated them. The thought of meeting this kid made me giddy.

  Garrett had discovered the books and made the connection. In them, Pandu called me the First Star, Reyes the Dark Star, and Beep Stardust, and I needed to know one thing: If he could see that far into the past, literally millions of years, could he see into the future as well?

  Though Pandu’s books were international bestsellers, his parents didn’t want to leave their family and friends, so they had built a small house at the edge of their old neighborhood. They could have afforded something much nicer in a more affluent part of town, but they had chosen to stay close. In cities like this, one’s neighbors often became one’s family. It was something that didn’t happen enough in the United States.

  We knocked on a freshly painted wood door. A young man answered, a crease between his brows.

  “Selamat Sore,” I said, dipping my head and wishing him a good night. I quickly added in Bahasa Indonesia, “We are very sorry to disturb you so late.”

  A woman walked up behind him, carrying a small child. She had the same crease of concern lining her brow line. They looked from me to Reyes then back again.

  “Selamat Sore,” the man said at last.

  “If it is no trouble, we would greatly appreciate it if we could speak to your son, Mas Pandu.” They exchanged wary glances, so I continued to plead my case. “I am the First Star.” It was a cheap shot, but I needed to see their kid. Tonight.

  Their lids formed saucers, and they studied us with a renewed sense of awe.

  “You are the First Star?” the woman asked. “The Star Eater?”

  I dipped my head in acknowledgment.

  “And you are the Dark Star?” she asked Reyes. “The Hellmaker?”

  He gave the barest hint of a nod, confirming his identity.

  Her hand rose softly to cover her mouth. The man motioned us inside, almost as though he were relieved to see us.

  “You are Pak Surya,” I said to Pandu’s father, using the customary title to show respect as they led us into a small sitting room.

  He nodded and gestured to his wife. “This is Kasih.”

  Having been given permission to use her name as opposed to her husband’s, I dipped my head again and said, “Bu Kasih. I am Charley, and this is Reyes.”