I opened my mouth to tell her, to ruin everything for Charming.
Only the words that came out had nothing to do with Charming at all.
The more I talked, the more I realized I wasn’t going to be confessing anything today.
“Exhume -
to revive or restore after neglect or a period of forgetting; bring to light.”
Charming
I drove straight to his house. That bastard had gone too far this time. I knew he was doing this. He had to be. There was no other explanation.
He opened the front door before I even knocked. He was wearing a long, black trench coat and his hand was clutched around something I couldn’t see.
I didn’t care what it was anyway.
I wasn’t leaving here until I got some answers.
“Charming. How nice of you to come unannounced, but I am on my way out.” He flipped up the collar of his coat and I saw that his hand was full of stones.
“Your killing spree is going to wait. We need to talk.”
“I suppose I have a few minutes.” He dropped the stones back into the bowl sitting on the table near the door.
I had a notion to reach out and shove them all to the ground, just to see his face when I did.
“Come along, then,” he called like I was some sort of dog.
In his office, he took a seat in the black chair he likely thought of as his throne and looked at me expectantly.
“Playing games with me isn’t going to work,” I said, not bothering to veil the anger in my tone.
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean,” he replied, but his eyes shined with glee.
I stepped forward and slammed both my palms onto the surface of his desk. The bowl of stones sitting nearby rattled. “Don’t play stupid with me!” I yelled.
He looked at his disturbed stones and then back at me, anger igniting in his eyes. “I will do whatever I want. I can see that my games are doing exactly what they are meant to.”
So he was admitting it.
I had known it was him. But knowing it didn’t stop the lance of pain that whipped over me. I couldn’t help but hope that maybe he wouldn’t know what I was talking about. That maybe somehow…
no
. It wasn’t possible without him.
“Where is she?” I demanded, pushing away from his desk to pace the room.
“Who?”
I snapped. I came here for answers and was met with this. With a roar, I lunged forward, sweeping my arm across his desk with only one thing in my aim.
The glass bowl of stones went flying into the air and dropping onto the floor like a lead weight. The bowl shattered into millions of tiny glass shards and the stones went everywhere.
G.R. jumped out of his chair with an enraged cry and rushed to the mess, staring down at it like his children had all been murdered. “How dare you!” he screamed.
“How dare you!” I shot back. “I want to know where she is. I want to know what you’ve been doing with her all this time!”
“I don’t have to tell you a thing.” He snarled, reaching down to pick up the stones. “You answer to me!”
I pounced on him, moving so fast it took him off guard. I wrapped my hand around his neck and lifted, holding him up so his feet dangled in the air. He eyes bulged in surprise. I don’t think he was shocked I was able to lift him like this—he knew I had abilities. I think he was shocked that I would dare touch him this way.
“Where is my sister?” I roared.
His office door flung open and two men rushed in. They grabbed me from behind, hauling me backward, but not before I could toss the Reaper against the wall. I smiled at the sickening thud his body made when it hit.
His minions wrenched me back, shoving me up against the wall and pinning me there. They were stupid if they thought they could pin me down. Using my super strength once again, I brought my arms around with great force and smashed the two men together. They collapsed onto the floor at my feet.
The Reaper was standing amongst his scattered stones, watching me, when I stepped forward.
He began to laugh. A deep laugh that started in his belly and reverberated outward until his entire body was rolling with sick pleasure. “You’re starting to crack,” he goaded. “I barely had to do a thing. A few sightings, the exhuming of the past. Why, Charming, I never knew how easy it would be to take you down.”
“Do I look down to you?” I growled.
“Perhaps not,” he replied. “But soon. It’s going to eat you alive, you know. The wondering. Where is she? How is she? Is she frightened? Does she need me? After all, that is why you took this job in the first place, isn’t it? Because
she
needed you.”
I ground my teeth together so hard that pain radiated up my behind my eyes. Damn him. How did he even know about her? I never talked about anything personal with him. Not once. Not ever.
He laughed again when I said nothing. Then to the guys who finally picked themselves up off the ground, he ordered, “Get him out of here.”
One of them had the balls to grab my arm. I swung around and decked him, busting open his lip and knocking him to the floor. The other one made a move like he would charge me, and I used the energy welling up inside me and released it from my palm, hitting him in the center of his chest.
He flew back and hit the wall, sliding down until he was nothing but a ragdoll sprawled on the floor.
I turned back to G.R. “This isn’t over.”
“We’ll see,” was all he said.
“Talk -
to speak of or discuss (something).”
Frankie
It was late when I heard a single knock on my front door. Late as in the hours that I am no longer decent looking. I wasn’t asleep. I stopped trying to even pretend I was going to about an hour before. I figured Piper was no longer was buying the “I’m sick” story and since my cell phone was still in Charming’s pants, I was guessing I’d missed a couple more texts or calls.
I tossed the TV remote down on the coffee table and padded to the door, swinging it open wide, not caring if Piper saw me at my most unattractive.
Only it wasn’t Piper.
“Charming.” I practically gasped his name. It was almost as if I had thought of him so much since lunch that my subconscious somehow conjured him here on my doorstep.
I wanted to cross my arms over my threadbare oversized T-shirt, to cringe from his stare and get a comeback ready for whatever insult he was sure to throw my way about the state of my appearance. But he didn’t say a word. In fact, he acted like he didn’t even notice my old as the hills shirt and holey sweats.
He was leaning on the doorjamb, like he was so tired he couldn’t hold all his weight. My mind automatically went to the possibility that he was somehow injured or hurt and I looked him over for some kind of confirmation. But he looked perfect as always. Except of course for his heavy posture and silent tongue.
“Can we talk?” he asked, quietly.
“Uh, yeah,” I replied, stepping back from the door while resisting the urge to ask him if he was playing some kind of joke on me.
He came inside, shutting the door, and trailed behind me as I went over to the couch and settled into the corner, draping a blanket over myself and tucking it around my bare feet.
He surprised me some more by sinking down on the opposite end of the couch. “I’ve never really had anyone to talk to before,” he said, not looking at me.
“Is this about what happened today at the café?”
He rubbed a hand down his face. “Seeing her got to me.”
“I didn’t know you had a sister.”
“I don’t. Not anymore.”
I wasn’t used to seeing him like this. Morose and quiet. “I don’t really understand what you’re saying.” Just from how well this conversation was going, I would have known he never actually talked to someone about this before even if he hadn’t told me.
“I had a sister a long time ago. Before I died. Before I became an Escort.”
A million questions sprang into my head. A million things I would love to know. I never really thought about Charming’s story, but of course he had one. And looking at him now, it seemed his story was the key to who he really was.
You know all you need to know.
I reminded myself.
You’re supposed to be washing your hands of him.
“He wants me to fail. I didn’t really realize how much.”
This time I didn’t say anything. I figured he was having enough trouble saying whatever it was he wanted to say without me interrupting and asking questions.
“He knew the one thing, the
one thing
that could throw me off. He found my weakness and he used it against me.”
“Now you know how it feels,” I said. The words were just a thought, something I hadn’t meant to say out loud.
He glanced up, his green stare pinning me in place. “What did you say?”
I swallowed and shook my head.
“Say it again,” he insisted.
“I said now you know what it feels like. For someone to use your weakness against you. For someone to basically be working against you.” He just kept staring, almost as if he were looking right through me. “Whatever he did to you… it sounds a lot like what you do to other people.”
“You’re right,” he said, realization dawning on his features. “I’m the Target this time.”
“So, the Grim Reaper wants you dead?”
He stared off into space. “I’m already dead. He just wants to Recall me.”
“Do you want a beer?”
The side of his mouth pulled up. “Yeah.”
I took the blanket with me into the kitchen, tiptoeing across the cold linoleum, and took out two bottles from the fridge and popped the tops. I juggled them with the blanket back into the living room where Charming had propped up his feet on the coffee table and had taken control of the remote.
“You’re watching an old movie?”
“I like old movies,” I defended.
“Yeah, me too.”
I tried not to gape at him. He actually said he liked something. It was a miracle. I handed him a beer and set the other one by his feet.
“Is that one for me too?”
“I didn’t think one was going to cut it.”
“You trying to get me drunk so you can take advantage of me?” he said, tilting the bottle to his lips and taking a long pull. His throat worked as he swallowed and I noticed he unbuttoned the top few buttons of his button-down.
“Two beers will get you drunk?” I scoffed. “Lightweight.”
I sat back down on the couch, squishing myself into the corner. He seemed to be taking up a lot of space.
“Why did you let me in tonight?” His serious tone caught me off guard.
So did his question.
“You looked kind of lonely,” I replied, my voice hushed.
He took another long pull of the beer and turned up the TV. We sat there watching while he finished off both beers. He didn’t talk anymore and I didn’t ask him if he wanted to. I figured that the very little he said was more than he’d ever told anyone.
That knowledge changed something for me. It made me less angry with him, less appalled. It was hard to tell yourself that you shouldn’t care about someone when that someone desperately needed you to care.
At some point I dozed off. I don’t know how long I slept, but when I awoke, it was to the sounds of an infomercial for some kind of booty shaking workout. Charming was still beside me. He’d fallen asleep too. His arms were crossed over his chest as it rose and fell with every breath he took. He looked more relaxed than I’d ever seen him. Funny, I never realized how “on” he always looked until I caught a glimpse of him “off.”
I decided not to wake him. Instead, I turned off the TV and used the blanket in my lap to cover him. As the cover settled over him, he wiggled a little deeper into the cushions. I resisted the urge to stroke his cheek, settling instead for taking advantage of his slumber to stare at him.
“You know what I think?” I whispered, knowing he couldn’t hear me. “You aren’t dead. You just don’t remember how to live.”
I turned the lock on the front door as I went past and then climbed into bed. I fell asleep almost instantly and slept more soundly than I had in weeks. I woke to the sun streaming through my curtains, but I didn’t think about the weather or how I could languish in bed because it was Sunday. My first thought was of Charming. I wondered if he would still be here. Of what I would say to him if he was.
One way to find out.
In the living room, I noted the door was still locked. My stomach began to flutter around as I peeked over the back of the couch. I expected him to still be there.
He wasn’t.
But my cell phone was sitting on the coffee table beside his empty bottles.
I glanced back at the door, which was definitely locked. How had he gotten out and locked the door behind him?