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.
“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.”
It was something I’d counted on, something that throughout the years I knew to be true. The Grim Reaper always kept his word. He never went back on a deal. I was beginning to think he was going to prove me wrong this time, but thankfully, it appeared he wasn’t.
“However, I never said I couldn’t make the job impossible. I never said I couldn’t make your life a living hell.”
He lunged across the room and grabbed my arm, his hand wrapping around my arm.
The pain was severe, an instant searing sensation that started where he touched me and worked its way up my arm, like a spreading infection, a growing disease. My veins began to turn black and they showed through my skin, which was now completely white.
I couldn’t say anything. I just stood there, caught between life and death, as the pain spread throughout my entire body. I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. The pain was so intense that it robbed me completely of sound.
And then my eyesight began to go. Dark spots started swimming in my vision until there were so many everything went completely dark and I could see nothing.
Is this what it was like to be touched by the Grim Reaper? I thought death by him was instantaneous, that it was swift and final. Where was this pain coming from? Why did it hurt so incredibly bad?
When my insides were completely obliterated, I slid to the floor, dead. Only I wasn’t dead. Just the body I’d been using for the past twenty years. I was hovering above my body, staring down at what a mess it was. The pain of what happened still vibrated in my soul. It almost looked like I’d been electrocuted to death. Kind of felt that way too.
And just like that, I no longer had a body. Not one that I could actually live in.
“I hope that didn’t hurt too bad,” G.R. said, sounding rather thrilled with himself.
“I thought when you touched someone, they died instantly.”
“Humans, yes. For them it is pain free and blissfully quick. But for Escorts, it’s entirely different. My bodies are different. To truly destroy one of my creations, it’s much harder.”
One of his creations? Did he think he was Frankenstein? The guy collected bodies, bodies he stole from other people. He didn’t create them.
“And what a waste this one was.” He frowned. “It was a good one.” He looked at me. “But you certainly didn’t deserve it.”
“That body was more mine that yours,” I spat.
He looked at me and lifted an eyebrow that seemed to reach halfway up his wide forehead. “That body was never yours. It was on loan to you. I am the one who collected it. I am the one who prepared it for a soul that was not its own, and I am the one who made it possible it didn’t rot like a body is supposed to. The reason that body served you so well is because I was the one who made it possible.”
You know, it kind of pissed me off that he was standing there trying to take away my claim to the body I wore for twenty years.
It also occurred to me that since my body was completely unlivable, I was now in a very tough position with the Target. Basically, I was going to have to start over.