Dangerous Lovers (138 page)

I got up and scooted over, making more room for her on the couch. Then I pulled the Tiffany-blue throw off the back and wrapped it around my shoulders. I didn’t know where to start. I didn’t know how much to say… Piper was my best friend, my family, but some of the things I shared with Charming had felt so private… so
mine
that I didn’t really want to share them.

She must have sensed my hesitation because she got up and went into the kitchen, and I heard her opening and shutting cabinets and filling the kettle with water. A few minutes later she came back with two mugs of steaming hot tea. It was the Ginger Twist kind she loved and I kept here for her. She handed me a mug and I wrapped my hands around it. The warmth that radiated into my hands reminded me of riding in his Porsche with the heated seats. A sob caught in the back of my throat and I took a sip of tea to push it down. The tea had honey in it. A lot of honey. Just the way I liked it. I gave Piper a watery smile.

“He drove me nuts. From the minute I first laid eyes on him, he got under my skin. And then he kidnapped you. When he walked into the DMV that day, all I could think of was calling the cops. But I couldn’t.”

Piper nodded and sipped her tea.

“Instead, I vowed that I would get in his way. Stop him from doing to anyone else what he did to you.” I took a breath and finally admitted the truth. “But that was just an excuse. An excuse to be near him.”

“You loved him even then,” Piper said and I shook my head in vehement denial.

“No. Maybe.” I sighed. “I don’t know.”

“But the more I saw him… the more I saw. You know? There are so many layers to him… so much he hides.”

“He was like a puzzle that you wanted to figure out. Pieces that you just had to align.”

“Yes,” I said, the butterflies in my stomach acting up again. She did get it. She knew exactly what I meant. “I could never make excuses for what he does, what he’s done. I hate it, but…”

“But you don’t hate him.”

“No. I don’t.”

“Maybe he is just as much a victim in all of this as everyone else,” she said quietly, shocking the crap out of me.

“How can you say that?” I asked, fortifying myself with more honey with tea.

“I don’t know why Charming became an Escort, but if he was in any kind of position like Dex was, then he probably didn’t have a choice. Sometimes people get caught up in things and then they don’t know how to get out.”

“Dex did,” I said, the words falling from my lips before I could stop them.

“Yes, he did. And it cost him his life.” Her eyelashes swept down, hiding her hurt. I started to apologize, but her quiet words shocked me, cutting off whatever I was about to say. “Sometimes I wish he hadn’t found a way out because then he’d still be here. With me.”

Her words sank into me, squeezing my heart and making it hard to breath. “Piper,” I whispered.

“I know. For him to still be here would mean I would have to be dead. But sometimes I still think…” She shook her head.

What it must be costing her sitting here talking to me about this. She’d already been through so much. I let the subject drop, not wanting her to have to relive anymore. As hurt as I was by Charming, I knew that it was nothing compared to what I would be feeling if he were dead.

“Did he try to kill you?” she asked.

I laughed. “No.” That probably would be easier than this. “He… he showed me the person he was beneath the charm. I thought it was the real him. And then he disappeared. It was all just to get me into bed.”

She gasped. “You slept with him?!”

I looked at her. “Well, I never claimed to be a nun!”

She grinned. “Well?”

“Well, what?”

She rolled her eyes. “How was it?”

I sighed. “He totally rocked my world.”

She grinned again.

“He used to be a boxer. He has these boxing gloves…” I felt heat pooling between my legs and I clamped my lips shut. Reliving sex with Charming wasn’t going to make this any easier.

“You know what we need?” Piper declared.

“What?”

“Pizza. Soda. Candy. And a bunch of horror movies where the dumb virgins run up the stairs instead of out the front door. It will make us feel better about ourselves for not being that stupid and for not being virgins.”

I lifted an eyebrow. “Who you getting it on with?”

“Please. It’s been so long I might as well be a virgin.”

I laughed. “Someday, sista, someday.”

“Not anytime soon,” she said, getting up and grabbing the phone, but not before I caught yet another flash of hurt in her eyes. “I’ll order the pizza. Go raid the stash of candy you have hidden in your underwear drawer.”

I made a sound of mock surprise. “I do not have candy in
there
.” Then I went off to get it because that’s exactly where I kept it.

In my room, I pushed past the lace panties knowing they were all gonna have to go in the trash. I would never be able to wear another pair of those again without thinking about the things I did with Charming while wearing a pair. I loaded up on candy and then I remembered my emergency stash. The box of truffles I kept hidden in my closet.

I dumped what I was holding on my bed and went to my closet, pulling open the door.

My eye caught something it didn’t recognize.

I looked.

I looked again.

I forgot all about the truffles, stood there, and stared.

At the body hanging in my closet.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

“
Joke - something said or done to evoke laughter or amusement, especially an amusing story with a punch line.”

Charming

He took me to his office, but he could have taken me to the depths of hell and I wouldn’t have cared. I was just glad we left before he could take his shitty mood out on Frankie.

I didn’t know what she would think when I wasn’t there, but I was hoping I could get back without being gone too long. And then I could explain. I wasn’t exactly sure how I was going to explain the fact that I pissed off the Grim Reaper even more than I already had by stealing some of his favorite bodies and jamming his pet soul into a jar.

G.R. didn’t waste any time but instead went behind his desk, reaching under the chair for the secret button. I expected the wall to open immediately and when it didn’t, I looked up.

“How do I know you just aren’t playing more games?”

“You should know by now I don’t play games when it comes to a job.”

He just stared at me and I realized he was trying to decide if I was just grasping at straws, if I was trying to find out his secrets by saying I already knew them. Because the minute he pressed that button, I would know for sure that he did have a secret stash of bodies and a wayward soul. He would know that I found his weakness.

“You gonna push that button?” I said. “The wall isn’t going to open itself.”

And just like that he knew. Cold seemed to seep into the room around me, the kind of cold that stiffened your limbs, the kind of cold that crept over bodies when they died.

He pressed the button and the section of the bookcase opened, just as silently as it had the first time. He walked past me and into the narrow hallway that led to his closet-sized safe and stopped. “Get in here,” he commanded.

I walked over to the door but didn’t go any farther.

He drew a key out of his pocket, unlocked the door where the bodies wouldn’t be, and opened it wide.

The silence that surrounded us was so thick you couldn’t even cut it with a knife. He pivoted around to stare at me, his eyes glowing an odd shade of violet. Then he turned away again, opening the second door, the door to the secret apartment.

He called out for the soul, not calling her by name, and I wondered if that was on purpose or if she just didn’t have one. I stepped forward, looking toward the entrance, and I knew when he realized she was gone because a chair flew by and hit the wall, smacking whatever was there and shattering some glass.

I prepared myself for his wrath as he faced me.

“How did you manage to pull this off?” His voice was deadly calm.

“You’d be surprised what a man can pull off when he’s aptly motivated.”

“Where is she!” he roared. His anger was so intense that it was palpable energy that flew off him and barreled toward me.

It slammed into me, sending me backward, my feet dragging across the floor as it pulled me. It would have yanked anyone else off their feet. It would have flattened them into the wall and knocked them unconscious.

I wasn’t just anyone. I had a few abilities that I could use to my advantage.

My body absorbed most of the energy he threw, using it to fuel my cells and pump me up for a fight. I might not win against G.R., but I could do some damage.

I dug my feet into the large area rug that covered most of his office, planting them solidly apart. What was left of the energy kept going, pulling at my hair and my clothes until it snapped away, crackling behind me and knocking over everything that sat on his desk.

My body was overfull with energy, so much so that my fingertips crackled with it, so I flung my hands out, sending back some of what he gave me. The energy had a red glow about it, and it moved so fast it looked like the retreating taillights of a car speeding along the highway at night.

The Reaper moved, but not fast enough. Speed was my specialty. It hit him in the shoulder, singeing a hole in his perfectly tailored shirt and knocking him to the side. He didn’t fall down because he caught himself on the edge of a nearby club chair, but watching him stumble was pure pleasure.

His eyes flashed violet again, a color I never thought of as threatening until now. Thinking fast, I picked up one of the chairs that sat in front of his desk, the same chair I used for many of the lectures I was made to endure, and I threw it at him. It moved slower than the energy so he was able to dodge it, but it landed on the edge of his sleek glass coffee table, shattering the entire sheet of glass.

A few of his security guards came rushing into the room. They all had the telltale ring of their souls around them, marking them as Escorts. These must be new ones because I didn’t recognize any of their faces.

“Take. Him. Down,” the Reaper growled, pointing at me.

All three of them rushed me. I sucked in some of their eager energy and cracked my neck, ready to take them on.

The first one lunged and I kicked him in the thigh, crippling his leg and making him go down. I used the surprise of his fall to grab the next one closest to me, and I punched him right in the jaw, snapping the head on his shoulders. He came back for more and I instinctively dropped into a boxing position and began bouncing on my feet. The lighter I was on my feet, the harder I would punch.

The way my stance and body position changed, the Escort knew I wasn’t some inexperienced kid—like him. I saw the doubt in his eyes when he lashed out and I smacked his arm away and nailed him again, right in the eye. Then I put him in a headlock and slammed his body into the other one, who was climbing up from the floor. Both of them went down in a heap.

I turned to the final Escort, the one who’d been silently watching. This one had an orange ring around him, and he decided he was going to use a weapon instead of his fists. He reached over and grabbed a letter opener off the desk, brandishing it like a knife.

I laughed.

“You know,” I said as I kicked, sweeping both his legs out from under him and watching him fall hard onto his back, “most people who try to defend themselves with a weapon end up having it used against them.” And with that I snatched it out of his hand and stabbed him in the upper thigh.

He howled in pain.

I swiped my arm across my forehead, breathing heavily, and looked over at G.R. “You got any more kids you want to send in here?”

His eyes narrowed. “So smug,” he spat. “Do you think the way out of getting Recalled is by trashing my office and taking what’s mine?”

“I think a little extra insurance never hurt anyone.”

“I ought to Recall you right now,” he spat.

“Go ahead. You’ll never see those bodies or that pretty pink soul again.” It was a direct challenge. A skittering of fear actually moved down my back. I didn’t want to be Recalled. Only now it wasn’t for the same reasons as when I took those bodies.

Before, I just wanted to win, to prove I was the best Escort there was. To get the best of G.R.

But now, now it was because of Frankie.

I wanted to be with her. In any way she would have me (hopefully whatever that way was included sex).

He lifted his hand and once again, my soul began to pull out of my body. “We have a deal,” I reminded him. “My job isn’t over. You can’t Recall me unless I fail.”

Like a rubber band, my soul snapped back into my body.

“I don’t go back on my word.”