“Absolutely, but I don’t think you can wear my clothes. You’re more of an eight, maybe?”
He was even more uncomfortable. And confused. And he clearly had no sense of humor. “I meant stools. Would you like to switch barstools?”
“Oh!” I snorted. “Okay, sure.”
We switched seats and I was now closer to my beloved uncle. A fact that I had to emphasize by stealing sips of his whiskey. Straight up. Holy moly, that stuff burned all the way down. That time when I coughed, it was for real. So was the seizure. Without interrupting his conversation, Ubie patted me on the back. Hard. Hard enough to knock me forward into the bar. He was so sweet.
I decided to stick with my coffee. We loved each other, Joe and I. We would have a quiet wedding on a beach with only a few friends present, and I would be secretly praying for a blender. Surely someone would get me a blender.
Three women sat at the table right behind us. They were louder than most and difficult not to hear. I couldn’t help but catch their conversation as I waited for Ubie to get off the phone. After a quick look-see over my shoulder, I realized it was Jessica’s friends minus Jessica. Too bad. I really missed her.
“He drives a muscle car,” one of them said, clearly talking about Reyes. I could not believe he was still the main attraction. He’d been there two weeks. When would they get enough? I had a feeling even if I said yes to his proposal and slapped an engagement ring on him, they’d still come, their hearts full of hope and dreams. How could I possibly blame them? If he weren’t mine, I might do the same.
“I haven’t heard from her all day,” one of them said.
“Text her.”
“I have. She’s pouting. She does this.”
Were they talking about Jessica? If so, they couldn’t have been more right.
“She’s missing out,” one of them said, a purr in her voice.
Of course, I knew Reyes had come in. I felt his heat the moment he walked through the door.
“And, oh … my … god,” one of them said. “He’s … he’s wet.”
The room quieted as it often did when he walked in. I turned to him.
He walked right up to me and the fact that we were both soaking wet spoke volumes.
“Of all the gin joints in all the world.”
“You forgot something.” He tucked something into my hands. A bra.
My bra!
What the—? I wiggled my shoulders, testing Danger and Will. Yep. No support whatsoever.
He watched me for a sec, then said, “Want me to put it on for you?”
“Okay, but I doubt it’s your size.”
I lifted Uncle Bob’s firewater and stole his napkin to pat Reyes’s face. He studied me from under his spiked lashes, his deep, coffee-colored irises glistening in the incandescent light. His mouth, full and sensual, tilted up at one corner, exposing the most charming dimple I’d ever seen, and I stopped, just to absorb him, just to memorize every line of his face, every curve. After we stared into each others’ eyes a long moment, he sobered and asked, “What’s wrong with your uncle?”
“What?” I was still staring. I shook out of it and said, “I think he’s upset about Cookie’s date.”
“Ah. That makes sense.” He ran a finger over the back of my palm. “Is he ever going to ask her out?”
“If he doesn’t, I’m going to beat him to death with wet noodles.”
“Does he know that?”
“He will soon enough. It’ll be a long, slow death. Arduous and labor intensive. Hopefully I won’t get a repetitive motion injury.” I couldn’t help but let my hand rest on his hip. I hooked a finger in his belt loop and pulled.
He eased forward, a willing participant. “I saw your apartment, by the way.”
“I thought that was compliments of your Dealer. Now, I’m not so sure.”
“Why?”
“He said he didn’t do it.”
“Ah, right, I remember. And you believed him.” It wasn’t a question, but I answered anyway.
“Why would he lie? He has the dagger. He freely admitted to taking it.”
“Dutch, they lie because that is what they do. That is who they are. They lie when the truth would sound better. So, can I sever his spine yet?”
“No, you can’t. I think he could be an asset.”
“You’re partly right. He can be an ass.”
I gave him an admonishing glare. “Are you here to cook?”
“Nah, Sammy’s got it covered. I’m just here.”
Oh, how nice. “You mean just the two of us? Like on a real date?”
“If our dates are going to include your uncle and your best friend, then yeah.”
I laughed out loud, and asked, “Okay, why are you really here?”
“Just keeping an eye on you.”
“Reyes, you can’t babysit me forever.”
“Would you like to bet on that?”
“I mean, you have a life. I have a life. We both have lives.”
He glanced toward the man in the seat beside me. It was just a glance, nothing more. But the man stood immediately, excusing himself. Reyes sat down and pulled me closer to him, leaning in like we were lovers having a flirtatious conversation. But what he said next was anything but flirtatious. “Have I explained fully what the Twelve is?”
“Yes. They’re mean, horrible beasts who want to eat me for breakfast.”
“Wrong,” he said. “I want to eat you for breakfast. They want to rip you apart and hand your soul over to my father on a silver platter.”
“I don’t get it. If your father imprisoned them, why would they want to do him any favors?”
“They’re the Twelve. There is no understanding them.”
He’d rested his hand on the bar. As I leaned toward him, he let his fingers brush across Danger’s nipple. She sprang to life, pushing against the restraint of my blouse, craving more of his touch. I couldn’t blame her.
“We have an audience.”
When his words sank in, I finally realized that we did indeed have an audience. Half the room was staring at us. I started to lean back when Reyes said, “Not them.”
He nodded toward Uncle Bob.
I turned to him. “Oh, sorry, we were just talking about how lovely this rain is.”
“I bet.” His disposition had changed. It was weird. He looked over at Cookie and her date, and instead of anger and jealousy, there was just anger. And some of it seemed directed at me.
“So, about Brinkman and his cars.”
“Yeah, it seems that his dealership is a front to launder money. He runs way more through it than he sells, but he hides that by duplicating titles.”
“And they are just finding this out? What does that mean?”
“What that means is that if they can get him for that, they may not need Emily Michaels to testify against him. Agent Carson is working toward that goal.”
“You’re working with her?”
“More like consulting. We have a plan. Maybe you could help?”
“I am so there.”
He nodded, but his anger was still present, simmering just under his curmudgeonly surface. “Are you okay, Uncle Bob?”
He looked pointedly at Cookie. “I’m fine. I have to get to a meeting.”
When he left, I turned back to Cookie and shrugged. She shrugged back at me, thanked her date, and nodded toward the back door, indicating she was headed home. I followed her out, my shoes still squishy.
“Your uncle seemed upset,” she said when I caught up to her.
“He did, didn’t he? Oddly upset, but in the wrong way.”
We passed the alley where Reyes’s muscle car had been only a little while earlier. I wondered where he was keeping her parked. Any man who would risk his paint job for the feel of a woman was a winner in my book. I decided to check on him before hitting the sack.
The next thing I remembered was Reyes smiling down at me as the sun filtered into his apartment, his hair mussed, his lids hooded with the thick remnants of sleep. I stretched as those three little words that every girl longs to hear slipped from his mouth with effortless ease. As though they did it every day. As though they didn’t mean the world to me.
With one corner of his mouth tipping sensually, he asked, “Want some coffee?”
And I fell.
I fell hard.
15
The most important thing is to not be on fire.
Ask someone who is on fire, and they will tell you
that the most important thing is to
not
be on fire.
—TRUE FACT
The first thing on my agenda, besides finding out who trashed my place, was to confront Captain Kangaroo. Oh, and I had to get ahold of Garrett and set up a meet with the Dealer so they could do their homework together. They were taking Vague Prophecies and Muddy Supernatural Innuendos 101, but that class didn’t really get interesting until the second semester in VPMSI 102.
Now that my mind was on the subject, I’d never managed to figure out where Garrett found the knife. He said his acquisition of the dagger wasn’t one of his finer moments. That could’ve meant anything from a museum heist to an illegal excavation of a dig in Romania to a con to swindle it out of an elderly investor.
Or maybe he stole it from a temple. Of doom! That would be cool.
His vagueness only made me all the more curious. Like he didn’t know that would happen. The butt. I wanted so very much to ask him about his family, too. Another area he’d been very vague about. According to the research Cook and I had done behind his back, his great-grandmother was a true voodoo princess, quite a renowned one. She was born in New Orleans and practiced her art openly to become one of the most famous voodoo priestesses in history.
Our research uncovered the fact that his grandmother’s gift was passed down to an aunt of Garrett’s and possibly his sister. A sister! It was hard to imagine Garrett with a sister. Still, I wondered if a little of that gift hadn’t been passed on to him. He was such a skilled tracker. His methods often went beyond the average interviews and Internet searches. He seemed to have a sixth sense where his job was concerned. Something a voodoo prince might possess, as it were.
He didn’t talk about his family much, but that didn’t stop me from finding out about them. Honestly, he couldn’t tell me something like some of his family was sensitive to otherworldly occurrences and expect me not to follow up on that. Seriously? Did he not know me at all?
When I arrived at the police station, I was told the captain was in a meeting and that I would have to wait in the lobby. Fine. I could wait him out. If I had to sit there all day, I was not leaving this station until I knew what the captain was up to.
I dived into my bag and fished out my phone so I could at least do something semi-productive while I waited. After I found my favorite icon, I waited for
Bejeweled
to load and proceeded to kick some sparkling ass.
A voice filtered toward me through my mesmerizing grid of jewels.
“Your aura is very bright.”
I glanced up at the woman sitting across from me. She looked normal enough, with short blond hair and sensible shoes, but most people who mentioned auras weren’t that normal.
“Thanks,” I said, going back to my game.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” she continued, despite my super big hint that would suggest she not.
“Really? That’s weird.”
“Actually,” she said, “I know who you are. We’re a lot alike. I’m here to help them with a case, too.”
I nodded.
“What I mean to say is, I know you’re psychic.”
I finally paused the game and asked, “Are you punking me?”
“No, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. I’m psychic, too.”
“Is Pari punking me?”
She pulled her bag closer to her chest. “No.”
“Is Cookie punking me? It’s not in her nature to punk, but I find everyone has a little bit of punk buried deep down inside them.”
“No.”
“Is Swopes punking me?”
“No, I actually am a psychic.”
“Is—?”
“No!” she said, her voice echoing throughout the room A nice couple who looked like they’d done one too many hits of methamphetamines looked over at us. She lowered her voice to a hissy whisper. “Nobody’s punking you!”
“Gah, testy.”
She loosened her hold on her bag and smoothed her pants with one hand. “I just thought maybe we could work together sometime. We both provide a service for law enforcement. Like the case they called me in for. We could team up and solve it together.”
I decided to fess up, to give her a chance to come clean or suffer the consequences. “Look, I know who you are, too, Ms. Jakes. I’ve seen your show.” Wynona Jakes was getting very rich off her
abilities,
and it made my skin crawl every time I thought about it.
“You’ve seen my show?” she asked, brightening.
“Sure have. You’re what I like to call a con artist, a person with a natural talent for reading people coupled with some fairly good acting skills.”
“Well,” she said, straightening in her seat to show me how appalled she was, “I thought you of all people would understand what it’s like to be accused of deception when our gifts are very real.”
“I know exactly. And I’m certain you don’t. I’ve seen what happens when your ‘predictions’
—
” I added air quotes to emphasize the euphemism. “—don’t pan out. I saw a young couple lose their home because they believed you when you told them to invest everything they had in their crazy uncle’s pilot project.”
“That was hardly—”
“And I saw a mother praise you because you said her son, who’d been in a motorcycle accident and was in a coma at the hospital, was going to pull through.” I leaned forward and looked her square in the eye. “He died while she was at the studio listening to your garbage. Do you know what that did to her? The guilt she felt? The shame and devastation?”
She turned away from me, the remnants of her outrage rolling out of her like a summer heat.
“Look,” I said, trying not to feel guilty for calling her on what boiled down to fraud, “I get it. You’re looking for a book deal. To each his own. I’d be angrier if you were legit and using your gifts immorally, but in answer to your question, no, I won’t team— Wait. Did you say they called you in to help on a case?”
“Yes.” She raised her chin and smirked. “A Detective Davidson called me. He said he saw my show and wanted to consult with me on a missing persons case.”