And he seemed to be made only partially of flesh and blood. The rest of him was smoke and shadows, and the mere sight of him, the magnificence of him, weakened my knees.
Charley put one hand on a hip. “Where have you been?” she asked, clearly annoyed.
“Miss me?”
“Not even,” she said, adding a snort to emphasize her apparent distaste. She didn't fool either of us.
“You're such a bad liar.” His grin widened to reveal a set of white teeth, and I doubted I could've torn my gaze away if someone had paid me. Simply put, he was stunning. Thick black hair. Full mouth.
Piercingly dark eyes with long, inky lashes. And quite possibly the most devilish grin I'd ever seen.
“I've told you before, I'm a wonderful liar. You're just really astute. And I have a case, if you don't mind.” She tried to sidestep him, but he braced an arm on the other side of the doorjamb and tilted his head.
“What's wrong?”
“What?” she asked, her voice thin and airy. He was getting to her. “Nothing. I have a case.”
He pressed his lips together and studied her a long moment. When she gestured for him to move, he looked over her head and asked, “Who‟s the dead chick?”
“Reyes…” She looked at me apologetically then turned back to him. “That is horridly rude.”
“Um, son of Satan?” he said, apparently referring to himself. “Don't you want to know what I'm doing here?”
“No.”
Wait, did he say son of Satan?
“I have every intention of kneeing you in the groin if you don't move,” Charley said, squaring her shoulders.
Reyes leaned in until his mouth was at her ear. “I'm incorporeal at the moment, Dutch.”
She kneed anyway, and at once he was gone. Vanished into thin air. Dark smoke lingered, along with a deep chuckle that faded into silence almost instantly. Charley turned back to me. “Sorry about that. We have a few things to work out. Respect for my clients, for one thing.” She said the last through gritted teeth before heading out the door.
I followed. “Did he say „son of Satan?”
“Yeah. It's an evil incarnate thing. And, trust me, he wears it well.”
I couldn't imagine him wearing anything badly.
We stepped into the night air, thick with a syrupy darkness, and yet it didn't hinder my eyesight at all, besides perhaps muting the colors. But again, the streetlamps darkened the area directly below them. The effect was surreal.
“This,” Charley said, gesturing toward a red Jeep Wrangler, “is Misery. I'm in love with her, but don't tell my sister. She's a psychiatrist and would psychoanalyze the crap out of that.”
We climbed in and Charley brought the Jeep to life, turning on the heater with a shiver. That's when I realized I wasn't cold. Or hot. Or anything. Temperature, like taste and texture, was apparently lost on me. As we drove down a street I didn't recognize, I clasped my hands in my lap and asked her reluctantly, “Was he there for me?”
She raised her brows in question.
“The son of Satan. Was he there to take me to Hell?”
After turning into a convenience store, Charley pulled to a stop and shut off the Jeep to give me her full attention. “Listen to me. I promise you, if you were scheduled for the southbound flight, you would already be there and we would not be having this conversation.”
“But, I've so obviously sinned.”
“No kidding?” she asked, a teasing smile lighting her face. “Because I‟m pretty sure I've sinned a few times myself. And according to some religions, I'm about to sin again.”
I blinked and looked around, trying to figure out what she was talking about.
“I'm going to march in there and make myself a mocha latte with whipped cream. Caffeine. Calories.”
She leaned in and whispered, “Unabashed pleasure.”
I couldn't help but smile back. “Didn't you just drink a cup of coffee?”
“Well, yeah, coffee. This is a latte. A mocha latte. With whipped cream. So not the same thing.” She winked then jumped out of the Jeep.
I decided to go in as well.
“And besides, I finished that coffee off”—she looked at her watch—“minutes ago.”
“You make me laugh.”
“And you're in a convenience store at five in the morning in a nightgown and bunny slippers,” she said, keeping her voice low.
She was right. I should have had the decency to feel self-conscious. “So, what's the story with you and that guy?”
“Reyes?” she asked, taking out her cell phone as the machine filled her cup. She opened it and actually pretended to talk into it, I guess in case anyone was watching. “Well, besides being the hottest thing this side of Mercury — I mean, he was forged in the fires of Hell,” she said with a waggle of her brows as she filled a second cup, “he's something of a pain in the ass.”
“But you like him.”
She put a lid on both cups, stuffed one in the crook of her arm so she could still hold the phone, then headed for the cashier. “If you're talking about the fact that he makes my innards mushy and my knees weak, then, yeah, I like him.” She pulled the phone to her chest to indicate a break in her conversation and said to the clerk, “We have to stop meeting like this.”
He smiled shyly as he handed over her change. “See you tomorrow night?”
“If you're lucky,” she said with a flirty wink. She could give lessons.
“You come here a lot?” I asked.
With a shrug, she climbed back into her Jeep. I crawled through the door into the passenger's seat.
“Only every night or so. They have really good lattes. But again, he's a pain in the ass.”
“The store clerk?”
“Reyes.”
“Oh.” I couldn't help but wonder what Charley's life was like. I mean, what kind of being glows in the dark and hangs out with the son of Satan? “So, do you have super powers?”
Turning onto Central Avenue, she offered me a questioning gaze. “You mean, like, can I fly?”
I laughed. “No. Wait,” I said, rethinking. “Can you?”
She laughed that time. “Not unless I'm on some very powerful painkillers.”
“Then, besides being very shimmery, what does a grim reaper do?”
“You know, everyone says I'm really bright. I don't see it.” She studied a hand, turning it over and over. “Neither do the living, thankfully. But I pretty much just hang out and help the departed with their unfinished business, for lack of a better phrase, those who didn't cross initially and are wandering the Earth. And when they're ready, they can cross through me.”
“Through you?” I asked, a little stunned. “Literally?”
“Yeah. Didn't I mention that?” When I shook my head, she said, “I hope that doesn't scare you. You look like you've seen a ghost.” She burst out laughing, and I was slowly drifting back to my three-legged horse paradigm. After a moment, she sobered and said, “Okay, too soon. Newbies don‟t have the best sense of humor.”
“Sorry. I‟m a little dead right now.”
She smiled and nodded. “That's good. You're catching on.”
I smiled, too, but I turned away so she wouldn't see. I didn't want to get too comfortable here, in this place of void, of loneliness.
We pulled into the parking lot of a Presbyterian hospital and made our way up to the maternity ward.
That was when I realized what she was doing, checking to see if anyone died in labor or something like that. Shame consumed me. I'd made the decision to die. I felt it. I would never have made it to the delivery ward.
“Are you really going to drink both of those?” I asked her.
“Oh, no. This stuff is currency ‟round these parts.”