Eleventh Grave in Moonlight(16)

Issues girl got all up in my face. She did it to everyone. What she didn’t expect was for me to see her.

“I need a pencil!” When she screamed, her mouth opened really wide, and her tongue was a little blue. Of course, that could have been a side effect of her being dead.

I did a mom thing and grabbed her ear.

“Ouch,” she said as I dragged her into the restroom. “What the hell?” She rubbed her ear when I let go. “How did you do that?”

“Haven’t you noticed that I’m a little brighter than the other kids on the playground?”

“So, I still need a pencil.”

“You don’t need a pencil. And your screaming is the most grating thing that’s happened to me all day. That’s saying a lot. Trust me.”

“Wait. You can hear me?”

I finished checking the stalls and then went to a sink for a hair check. Still longish and brown. Okeydokey, then.

“Yes, I can hear you. What the hell is up with the pencil?”

Now that I had her attention, she seemed perfectly sane. “I just … I needed a pencil for a test.” She turned around in circles like a dog chasing its tail. Maybe not that sane. “Is this a hospital gown? Does it open in the back? Can you see my butt?”

“Do you remember what happened to you?”

She stopped twirling. Thank goodness, because I could indeed see her butt.

“I was … I fell. I remember I leaned over to ask another student for a pencil and the room started spinning. I…” She looked at her hands. Then the gown. Then her bare feet. “Am I … am I dead?”

“I’m sorry.”

“I was two semesters away from graduating.”

I hitched a hip onto the sink and waited for her to absorb it all. She walked into a stall and sat on a toilet.

She buried her face in her hands. “How is this even possible?”

“I don’t know, hon, but since you didn’t cross when you died, you can cross through me. I’m sure you have family waiting.”

“Cross?”

I nodded.

“Like, to the other side?”

Reyes materialized then, but he kept his distance this time. Not that it was a very big restroom. He crossed his arms at the farthest end and leaned against the back wall.

“I believe you missed the sign on the door outside,” I said, teasing him even though he was a grumpy bear.

He took me in from head to toe, then back up again, pausing at my mouth. Both times. Sizing me up?

The girl rose and peeked around the stall door.

I refocused on her. “Yes, hon, to the other side.”

“But I can stay if I want to?” She had yet to look back at me. Her gaze was laser locked onto my husband.

“Or you can go. Just walk right through me,” I said, encouraging her. “Your family will be excited to see you.”

“That’s okay.” She wiggled her fingers at him. “I think I’ll stay.”

That time, I crossed my arms and glared at the man. Two. Two in one day who had refused to cross. Or was it three? Either way, I was losing my touch.

In a move that was part supernatural necessity and part theatrics, Reyes slowly dematerialized, cell by cell, disintegrating into a cloud of billowing smoke. Then he was gone.

The forlorn look on the girl’s face said it all. No way was she leaving now. Damn it. I thought about telling her about the butt thing but decided against it. She’d leave when she was ready. At least she’d stopped screaming.

* * *

I ended up going back to class after all, after talking to some of my classmates, then I hit an all-night diner with a couple of them. We’d bonded instantly the first day of class. Mostly because they worshiped coffee almost as much as I did. Almost.

Reyes joined us incorporeally, as did our Scottish friend. They spent the whole time eyeing each other as though waiting for the other one to make a move. Which neither ever did.

Our group eventually got kicked out of the all-night diner. Apparently my definition of all-night and theirs were two totally different things. We said our good-byes, which would have gone better if I could’ve remembered their names. I was so bad with names. And the one girl I thought I knew the name of kept looking at me awkwardly every time I used it, so I finally gave up the struggle. Which was real. The struggle.

Oddly enough, they all knew my name. Probably because Mr. Hipple had used it so much in class. For better or worse, I did tend to make an impression.

By the time I got home, however, Reyes was already asleep. Or he was faking it. Either way, boy was hot. His lean body shimmered in the low light, one arm thrown over his eyes, the other wedged behind his pillow. His wide chest took up half the bed. He had one leg out from under the covers. One hip open to the moonlight streaming in from the massive windows. He was like a Greek god. Sleek. Surreal. Temperamental.

Did the Fosters see the darkness in Reyes? Is that what compelled them to take him when he was a baby?

I shifted. Not all the way. Just a little. Just enough to see what they might have seen. Darkness, yes, but so much more.

The world around me changed from the blackness of night to bright, bursting colors. Oranges and reds and yellows, swirling in a perpetual storm where lightning and tornadoes converged. And Reyes, seemingly so serene, burned brightest of all. Engulfed in flames, a true child of hell. But at the center, at his core, was the darkness. The same darkness he tried to hide. He tried to overcome.

I shifted back to the tangible plane, changed into a nightie that fell just past my hips, and slid in bed beside him to spoon, my favorite utensil. I was only there for about five seconds, nestling against him, burying my face in his hair, when he spoke, his voice deep with sleep.

“Did you do it?” he asked, the tenor of his voice as smooth as he.

“Did I do what?”

He took the hand I’d draped over him and lifted my fingers to his mouth, scalding the tips one by one as he tasted me, then said, “Drop the case.”

I decided it was high time I broke in our new sofa: Captain Kirk.

* * *

Captain Kirk wasn’t as comfortable as I thought he would be. Not after snuggling with a hell-god. I was able to get in about three hours before Mr. Coffee began serenading me. Whoever invented a coffeemaker with a timer deserved a Nobel Prize. He’d probably saved more lives than Prozac.

I slipped on a pair of bottoms and tiptoed past the angel lounging against my living room wall, the arch of his wings brushing our twelve-foot ceiling, to get to the kitchen. The same kitchen I was fairly certain used to be my neighbor’s apartment. Reyes had remodeled the entire apartment building.

Thankfully, he bought it first.

But he took out all the apartments on the entire top floor and reconstructed it to create only two: ours and Cookie’s. Now I lived in an apartment that resembled a Park Avenue penthouse. And it had the kitchen to back that up. Gorgeous industrial appliances. Deep Tuscan hues. And my favorite part: a butler’s pantry.

I cracked up every time I thought about it. Still, if we ever did get a butler, he’d have his own little corner of the world. With running water and a wine rack. The lush.

Part of me wanted to offer the celestial stalker a cup of joe, but I didn’t want him to stick around. If Reyes found one of them in our apartment, he could come unglued. And gluing that man back together was not an easy task.

It was still dark out when I padded back to the captain and sipped on my cup o’ panacea. But even with a cure-all flooding my cells, my brain felt like one of those inflatable bounce houses. I had so many question marks jumping and colliding and twisting arms and breaking ankles, pretty much like a real bounce house at a seven-year-old’s birthday party.

What had ADA Parker meant when he called me a god eater? I mean, Reyes was a god and I liked to nibble on him, but what an odd thing to call someone. Unless I was drunk when I hit an all-night drive-through and ordered chicken McGodlets—with fries, of course—I’d never eaten a god in my life. Still, I bet they’d be good with ketchup.

And hell was going to freeze over? I just thought that was a saying.

Then there was Uncle Bob. No idea what got his panties in a twist, but he’d best iron them out pronto. And Reyes. I could only take men ordering me around for so long. It was like we were in the Middle Ages. If they’d had programmable coffeemakers. And cell phones. And water bras.

But possibly the most important question mark bouncing around my brain was that of Dawn Brooks, the little girl who was very likely abducted by the Fosters. If that were the case, however, where was she now and why would Shawn corroborate their alibi?

I needed to bring in my FBI BFF ASAP, but I doubted Agent Carson got to the office before eight o’clock. I checked my Bugs Bunny watch. Two hours to go.

Which meant I had two hours to get to know the newest member of our clan. When Reyes remodeled, he opened up the storage units on top of the building, leaving the metal beams exposed and turning the whole thing into a massive skylight.

But there was something else really special Reyes had left exposed. A little blond boy. As in tiny. As in way too young to be hanging out—literally, his feet dangling over the side of whatever beam he happened to be on—in the scaffolding of a twenty-four-foot ceiling. He’d been there since we moved back in, and I had yet to coax him down. Although, admittedly, throwing bread at him was probably not the best way to win his trust, but I was afraid to throw anything harder. Huge plates of glass overhead.