But something wasn’t right.
“Reyes. Alexander. Farrow,” I said.
Seconds after I spoke his name, Reyes walked into his bedroom, and I looked across the open space directly from my room into his.
He waited for me to continue.
“I feel like there’s something missing from my bedroom.”
A dimple appeared at the corner of his mouth. “You don’t say.”
“Any idea what that might be?”
He glanced around my room as well, then shrugged. “I can’t imagine.”
“Oh, wait,” I said, stepping from my room into his, “wasn’t there something here? Like, I don’t know, a wall or something?”
He looked up. “You could be right. I do seem to remember a barrier of some kind here.”
“Yep,” I said, stepping closer, “I definitely remember a partition separating our apartments.” When his only response was a mischievous tilt of his full mouth, I asked, “Where did you put my wall?”
He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against his doorframe. “What makes you think I took it?”
“It was there this morning.”
“And that means I took it? Maybe you just misplaced it. Where exactly did you see it last?”
I pressed my lips together. “You tore down my wall.”
The smile he wore could’ve charmed the panties off a nun. Completely unrepentant, he admitted, “I tore down your wall.”
I stepped closer and he locked his long arms around my waist. “My apartment isn’t a safe place,” I warned. “It gets broken into a lot, it’s haunted, and it has a terrible aversion to cinnamon schnapps. Long story.”
“And you think taking down this wall was a bad idea?”
“Well, now that there is no barrier here, the curse that has been cast upon my humble abode has now seeped onto your side, too.”
“This is a non-seepage opening.”
“Really? Because it looks pretty seepy.”
“Seepy?”
“Seepy. And now we have this really long bed,” I said, nodding toward our two beds butting up against each other, no headboards in between. Then all the wondrous possibilities took shape in my mind. I beamed at him. “We can play Twister on it!”
“Twister.”
“And we can have massive pillow fights. I will, of course, kick your ass.”
“Will you?”
“Wanna bet on it?”
“I think you’ve done enough betting for a while,” he said, referring to my pathetic attempt to cash in at the poker table.
“That was with a lying, cheating demon. You can hardly blame me for losing to someone who eats souls for dinner.”
“I think your friend is upset.”
I whirled out of his embrace to check on Pari. She was staring again, only instead of the reverence she had when looking at Mr. Wong, she was regarding Reyes with a wariness that, if I wasn’t mistaken, resembled trepidation. She was terrified.
She took a deliberate step back when Reyes looked at her, then another and another until she backed up against Sophie and could go no farther.
“Pari,” I said, inching toward her, “this is Reyes Farrow, my, um, neighbor.” I didn’t know how to introduce him. Was he my boyfriend? Lover hardly seemed appropriate. And he wasn’t my fiancé. Yet. Still, boyfriend just didn’t seem right. “Pari?”
She snapped out of it and began gathering her equipment. “I’ll get to work on this ay-sap.”
Garrett had stepped to the doorway and was inspecting the new construction. It was uncanny. No one would ever have known a wall was ever there. It had been finished and painted to match and simply looked like one long room.
He turned to Pari. “Don’t worry, Farrow scares everyone.”
I scowled at him as I stepped past. “Are you okay?” I asked her, but she didn’t look up at me.
“I’m fine.”
I realized she was panting, but the emotions pouring out of her were only partly fear. There was so much mixed in there, I couldn’t decide which one was causing her the most grief.
I put a hand on her arm. “Pari, hon, sit down.”
She looked up at last, cringed against the light, jammed on her sunglasses, then said, “No, it’s okay. I’m fine.”
I led her to my sofa anyway. “You guys play nice,” I said, my tone warning. Not that it would do any good with those two, but they didn’t always get along. Once we got settled, I spoke softly to Pari. She was not the type to get rattled. I didn’t think she could get rattled. “What’s wrong?” I asked her.
She pulled in her lower lip, then leaned over to me and whispered, “What is he?”
She was the second person to ask me that lately. I didn’t know how much to tell her. She knew what I was because she could see me, my light, but what was she seeing with Reyes? “What does he look like to you?”
“He looks like, I don’t know.” She dared a quick look over my shoulder. “Have you ever seen the sky at night when the stars weren’t out but it was crystal clear, the sky such a deep dark black that you were sure you could drown in it, it was so beautiful?”
I nodded knowingly. “Yes, I have.”
“He’s that.” She slammed her eyes shut as though picturing him in her mind, afraid to look again. “He’s the deep, dark kind of beauty that you’d sell your soul to have.”
Wow, she was good. “I can’t argue with you there.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it. Like him. He’s made of fire. A black fire that’s so dark, so intense, instead of giving off light, he absorbs it. Bends it to his will.” She gave me her full attention then. “This is your Reyes,” she said, matter-of-fact.
“This is my Reyes.”
She cleared her throat, swallowed hard, and adjusted her collar. “I can see the appeal.”
“You seemed scared, Pari.”
She nodded. “Oh, I was. I am. Don’t get me wrong, but holy shit, there’s nothing sexier than something that beautiful, that enigmatic, and that deadly all rolled into one. Well,” she added, “as long as he’s not trying to kill me.”
I chuckled. “Can I give you a proper introduction?”
“No!” She started gathering her things again. “I mean, no, thank you. He’s just so – He’s too – I’m just not sure —”
“Gotcha,” I said in understanding, but burning with curiosity on the inside. I wanted to see exactly what she saw.
I looked over my shoulder toward him. He was leaning against his own doorway, and Garrett was leaning against mine. It was a standoff as old as time, when cavemen would challenge each other to a fight to the death with clubs. One of them had to be the alpha, and neither was willing to accede to the other. I squinted at Reyes, concentrated, gave it my all. Nope. He was just the hot guy next door. No starless nights or black fire.
“Oh, your phone is probably most definitely being tapped. Stop by and I’ll give you a clean one. You can use it for anything you don’t want them to hear, but just remember, they can hear you even when you’re not on your phone. Phones are the fastest and cheapest form of surveillance out there. If you need to have a conversation that you don’t want them to hear, you must take the battery out of yours. Don’t just turn it off.
“Call me later,” Pari said to me before tossing a wave to Garrett and hurrying out of my apartment.
“Okay. Don’t be a stranger.”
I realized Reyes was watching me when I stood to show Pari out, but the girl was fast, so I turned my attention back to the problem at hand. The wall thing. Seriously, who did crap like that?
Pinching Garrett’s ribs as I passed, I walked up to Reyes and stood with my arms crossed.
“Yes?” he asked playfully.
“This wall thing is not over.”
He hooked a finger in the top of my jeans and pulled. “We have a wall thing?”
My hands instinctively rose to his chest, the hard expanse smooth under my fingers. “We have a wall thing.”
; “Charley!” Cookie called out.
“In here,” I called back, mesmerized by the dimples at either side of Reyes’s mouth.
She rushed in, winded with flushed cheeks. “What do you think of this outfit?” she asked, spinning in a circle until she noticed Garrett. Whom she’d just charged past. “Oh, hi, Garrett.”
“Cookie,” he said with a nod.
She’d been getting ready for the third and final date in Operation Punk Ubie. If this didn’t work tonight, she might have to do something drastic, like – gasp! – ask the man out herself. But she was a knockout. If this didn’t work, he was an idiot who didn’t deserve her.
“I was just getting ready for a date. Thing. Not really a date, but —” She frowned. “Where’s your wall?”
I jammed my fists onto my hips and glared at her. “That’s what I’d like to know, missy. Speaking of which,” I said, turning back to the wall thief, “why on earth would you tear down my wall?”
He shrugged a shoulder. “You live next door.”
“Yes,” I said, acknowledging that tidbit of info, “but why did you tear down my wall?”
He grew serious, studying me from beneath hooded lids. “You live next door.”
“Oh.” His meaning sank in at last.
Cookie sighed. “That’s what I want, damn it.” She pointed to us and questioned Garrett. “Is that asking too much?”
Garrett looked horrified by the thought.
“Okay,” I said, walking to her and straightening her scarf, “I found this guy in an ad in the back of the Weekly Alibi.”
“Wait, you don’t know him?” she asked, appalled.
“No, but he’s an actor. We need an actor for this one. Someone who can, you know, act.”
She groaned. “This could backfire in so many ways,” she said, and she was right, naturally, but I had to see the coffee cup half full. We were doing this for a reason. It would work. And unicorns sparkle in moonlight.
18
Remember, it’s all fun and games
until somebody loses an eyeball,
and then it’s, “Hey! free eyeball!”
— T-SHIRT
As I busied myself putting all my numbers in the phone Pari had loaned me, Cookie’s date showed up. Right on time. We ran through the script and told him that the whole thing was being taped for a new hidden-camera show that could be picked up by HBO. “If you want it to air,” we told him, “you really have to sell it.”
He was tall and well built if a bit too young and too clean-cut for what we were asking of him, but he’d agreed to our little skit and to the fact that we were more or less punking the man we were setting up.
“I wish you were going to be there,” Cookie said to me.
“Me, too, but if he sees me there, he’ll know something is up.”
By the time they left for the date, Cookie looked a little green in the gills.
“Chin up, hon. This is our last try.”
“But is all this really necessary?” she asked, clearly wanting to back out. “Again, if he wanted to ask me out, he would have, right?”
“Do you even know my uncle Bob?”
“Okay, you’re right.”
She took her date by the arm and let him lead her down the stairs to a waiting limo. This would be good.
Minutes later, it seemed, my new phone rang. Reyes and Garrett and I had been discussing the prophecies and the Dealer. Garrett agreed to meet with him, to try to figure out what on earth was going on. But for now, I had an untraceable phone calling my name.
I slid my finger across the screen to answer. “Hey, Cook, how’s it going?”
“Charley,” she said, almost screaming at me, “get down here, now! Robert’s going to kill him!”
I scrambled to my feet. “What? Where are you? What happened?”
“They’re fighting. Robert confronted us, and your actor guy thinks it’s all part of the script. Robert’s going to kill him! Get down here!”
I was running out the door before I knew it. “Where are you, exactly?” I asked, taking the stairs down three at a time. Garrett and Reyes were right behind me.
“We’ll take my truck,” Garrett said, heading in that direction.
We followed him and hurried inside as he started the engine.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“They’re behind that little Italian place by the theater.”
“Which theater?” he asked as he pulled out. I sat in the middle between Garrett and Reyes, trying to calm Cookie down.
“Put Uncle Bob on the phone,” I said to her.
“I tried. He won’t listen. He’s furious, Charley. He thinks this guy is some kind of stalker or something.”
“Did you tell him what we talked about?”
“Yes! I did everything just like we discussed. I called Robert and told him I was on a date from that online service, but that my date was making me very uncomfortable. I told him I didn’t feel safe and asked if he would come pick me up. That was it! I didn’t say anything else, but Robert stormed in when he got here, put the guy in a choke hold, and dragged him out. They’re arguing now. Just hurry, Charley. Please!”
“We’re almost there,” I said, thanking the creator for giving Garrett a lead foot. “Just try to get Uncle Bob on the phone. Tell him it’s me.”
“O-okay, I’ll try.” I heard arguing in the background, then Cookie trying to talk to an insane man who went by the name of Robert Davidson.
“Just stay back, Cookie,” he growled at her.
Then I heard scuffling and Cookie screamed and I buried my head in my hands. What had I done?
“Charley!” Cookie cried into the phone, “He has a gun!”
“What?” I couldn’t believe this was happening. “No! No, no, no, no, no! Cookie you have to tell Uncle Bob it was all an act. Cookie?”
In the next instant, a sharp crack splintered the air, and the phone went dead.
I scrambled over Reyes before Garrett came to a complete stop, but Reyes grabbed my arm and held me until he could get out, too, and run over to the melee with me. Cookie stood in the lamplight behind a shopping strip by the theater complex. A crowd had gathered, and I heard sirens in the distance as I came to a screeching halt beside her.
She was in tears, her head down, her shoulders shaking.
Then I saw Uncle Bob. He was covered in blood, and Cookie’s date was unconscious on the ground. I threw my hands over my mouth to stop a scream from escaping.
Cookie must’ve really sold it. She must’ve convinced Uncle Bob she was scared of this guy, and Uncle Bob reacted. I never dreamed in a million years he would react so blindly, with so much rage.
I stumbled forward to check the guy’s pulse. His heart raced beneath my fingers and I almost passed out from relief. I immediately tore open his shirt to look for the wound. Perfect, unmarred skin gleamed in the lamplight. I saw no wound. No gushing blood. No sign that a near-fatal struggle had just occurred.
I heard Uncle Bob’s voice in my ear. He’d leaned down, his mouth at my ear, and whispered, “Is he dead, or do I need to put another bullet in him?”
The words faded as I sensed a more salient emotion. Something wasn’t right.
I turned to look up at Uncle Bob; his expression was grim, and the emotion pouring out of him matched that look. But it wasn’t him. It wasn’t Uncle Bob I was feeling, his usual cautious reaction to any adrenaline-spiking situation. He was a seasoned cop.
And he smelled wrong.
While his shirt was covered in blood, my olfaction did not pick up its signature coppery scent. It picked up – I sniffed the air – tomatoes. Ketchup, to be exact. Then I realized it wasn’t rage flowing through Uncle Bob’s veins, but resentment. And the man I was examining felt anything but fear. Or agony after having been shot. That was what was wrong. Different.
I’d been duped.
I scrubbed my fingertips over my face and looked up at Ubie. “When did you figure it out?”
&nbs
p; He reached down and helped Cookie’s date, who was grinning, up off the pavement. “If you’re going to set Cookie up with a date to make me jealous, the guys you set her up with should at least be straight.” Cookie’s second date was with a friend of mine. A gay friend. How had Ubie known that?
I stood and brushed myself off. Cookie glanced between us, partly relieved and partly confused. “You picked up on that, did you?”
“Yes, Charley, I did.”
“How did you know this was all a setup?”
“Give me a little credit. I am a detective. And neither one of you could lie your way out of a paper bag.” He turned and glared at Cookie. “You need to take a class or something.”
“We are excellent liars,” I said, defending our honor. “And this was my idea, Uncle Bob. Cookie didn’t even want to go along with it.” Had I just blown Cookie’s only chance to hit it with my uncle?
“Believe it or not, I figured that out as well.”
“How?”
“Cookie would never come up with something this harebrained.”
I folded my arms over my chest. “I resent that remark.”
“And she would never go so far as to hire an actor.”
Troy, the actor in question, grinned some more. “How’d I do?” he asked Uncle Bob.
“You have a fine career ahead of you, son.”
“And,” Cookie said, completely offended as well, “Charley may be a horrible liar, but I’m an expert.”
“You keep telling yourself that, sweet cheeks.”
“But how – no when – did you two get together?” I asked him, indicating both Ubie and Troy.
“I subpoenaed your phone records and got the number off them.”
I gasped to show how indignant I was. “That is illegal!”
“So is just about everything you do on a daily basis,” he said to me. “I felt I needed to put you in your place on this one, hon. That’s why I called in Wynona Jakes.”