Eleventh Grave in Moonlight(33)

I blinked. “And have you … I mean, did you ever…?”

After a long moment of silence, he said, “I have. Once. I was in a maximum-security prison, Dutch.” He let that sentiment hang in the air and faced me again. “Hand. Heart.”

I lowered my head. Forced myself to concentrate, then let the molecules in my hand drift apart. It was like sand on the wind, and slowly, I pushed them through his chest.

I expected to feel … something. His muscle. His rib cage. His left ventricle. But I didn’t feel anything.

“It’s because you are no longer on the plane where my body is,” he said, reading my mind.

Not literally. God, I hoped not literally.

“And, no, I can’t read your mind.”

Holy crab apples.

“You—or, more accurately—your hand is on the celestial plane while the rest of you and all of me are on the mortal one. It’s all about shifting from one plane of existence to another.”

“Then how did you…? Why did I come earlier?”

“Ah, that’s the next class. Advanced Cellular Manipulation for Fun and Profit.”

I laughed, and suddenly my hand was physical, lying against his chest again. Over his heart.

I jerked it back. “I didn’t do that.”

“Told you.” His grin was infectious. “You can’t just materialize inside someone without a lot of practice.”

“And a lot of anger, I suspect.”

“Yeah, that, too. Try it again.”

We did the hand-through-the-heart thing a few more times, then advanced to him standing still while I walked through him. Through his body. Literally. He stood in front of me, hands in his pockets, while I dematerialized my whole everything and just passed right through him.

I laughed the first time I did it and clapped my hands like a kid on a waterslide. Then I cleared my throat and returned to my normal state of absolute coolness.

Just kidding. I have never been to the state of Coolness, though Ubie told me he drove through it once.

“Meet me over there,” Reyes said. He dematerialized and rematerialized on the other side of the room. It was a large room. “Your turn.”

I drew in a lungful of air, then shifted onto the celestial plane. Wind whipped around me. Thunder crashed. Lightning hit. The colors were so bright I lost sight of Reyes and rematerialized where I stood.

“Again,” Reyes-Wan said.

“I can’t see you.”

“Then you aren’t looking.”

That was helpful. I shifted again and tried walking to where I knew Reyes stood.

“Don’t walk over here. Be over here.”

I gave up. “You know, I can’t tell if you’re channeling Obi-Wan or Yoda more.”

“Dutch, don’t make me come get you.”

That sounded menacing. Shifting for the seven millionth time, I tried to block out the storms raging around me. The scalding wind threatening to peel the skin from my bones. The thunderous roar. The clouds opened nearby, and a beam of light shot down to take a newly departed home.

Okay, don’t walk. Be.

I could be.

Reyes appeared in the distance. Much farther than he should have been. I fought the urge to put one foot in front of the other. I was incorporeal. Utter mist. Could I float?

I tried to lift off the ground. Nope.

If I couldn’t float—an activity I’d seen Reyes do countless times—how was I to get from here to there?

“Dutch, be here.”

I glared at him, clenched my fists, and … ordered space out of my way. One second later, I appeared. Right in front of him.

“Good. Now here.” He disappeared again. A second later, he was another few hundred feet away.

Ordering space to move aside, I did it again. I beamed up at him.

“Good. Now materialize.”

I ordered my molecules to realign. He did the same. Sunlight burst around us, and he nodded, gesturing for me to look over my shoulder. I did. Right as a semitruck plowed into us.

Its horn blared. I screamed and jumped into Reyes’s arm. Then I watched as it passed through us. Gears and rods and other mechanical stuff rushed through our incorporeal bodies. Two seconds later, a Nissan Maxima did the same. Then a Buick Enclave. Then a little white thing I couldn’t identify. A Dodge Ram. A Mercedes GLE. On and on until I realized we were on the interstate. I-25, to be exact.

I turned to Reyes and hit him on the shoulder. He grinned and disappeared again. After rolling my eyes, I followed. We were at Calamity’s. In the kitchen. There were two prep cooks prepping away, but they had yet to realize we were there. Which was a whole new can of worms.

When we materialized again, I threw my arms over Reyes to anchor him to the spot. He laughed, his voice soft and husky and deep.

“Okay, that was cool, but what if I want to go somewhere you are not?”

At the sound of my voice, the two cooks looked over at us, exchanged confused glances, then went back to work.

Reyes slid his arms around my waist. “You slow down. Think about where you are going. Get a mental picture of your target. It can be a person or a place. And you just go there.”

“I just go there. Okay.” I was actually a little thrilled that I was finally learning this stuff. Stuff Reyes had been able to do since he was little, though the dematerialization of his human body didn’t come about until more recently. “What if someone sees us materialize out of thin air? Won’t that be a little upsetting?”

“The human mind fills in the gaps. It is certain it saw us walk up or just come out of a closet. Whatever it needs to do to explain, it does. You only really need to be careful with children. It takes them a while to develop that skill.”

“What skill? Denial?”

“Pretty much.”

“I can’t believe we didn’t get squashed.”

“You can’t.” He lifted me up and sat me on the counter, then took down two cups and went for the coffeemaker. I had him trained so well.

“I’m pretty sure I can be squashed. Just like a bug. Only bigger and with more entrails. Then what, Know-It-All Man? If I’m a god and can’t die, then what? I’m still human, Reyes.”

He walked back with two cups of coffee. I took both. He raised a single, arrogant brow.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Did you want one?”

Without answering, he leaned in, nipped at the tender skin below my jaw, then turned and started making us lunch.

I put one of the cups down. Mostly because I started feeling silly when Sammy, Reyes’s head cook, walked in, took one look at me, and walked back out again, shaking his head.

In his own defense, he prolly had to pee or something.

“If I can’t die, then what happens if I really am hit by a semi? Or thrown into a huge meat grinder? Or locked in a car destined for a car crusher? I’m going to die.”

Reyes handed me a sandwich.

I took a bite. “Peanut butter and jelly?”

“We have places to be.”

“Another lesson?”

“More or less.”

He was really pushing the lesson thing today. He took a bite of his own sandwich as I continued.

“So, yeah, car crusher. You don’t live through that. No amount of stitches will put me back together.”

Reyes-Wan listened as he ate but didn’t offer an explanation.

I took another bite and decided to talk with my mouth full. “I get that the supernatural side won’t die. Everyone has a soul.”

That got his attention. He shot me a quick glance, then went back to his sandwich and checking the most recent delivery invoices.

“Or not. Either way, my body will not survive.” I swallowed and thought about the alternative. “At least, it had better not.” When he didn’t say anything again, panic rose in my chest. “Right? I would die. I do not, in any way, shape, or form, want to be a living pile of hamburger. And I don’t want to be a zombie. Have you seen their skin? Not even sunscreen would help with that.”

Silence. I hopped down off the counter and walked over to him. “Roda?” I asked, combining his name with Yoda’s. He didn’t find my sense of humor amusing. It happened.

He spoke at last. “It doesn’t work that way. Not for us.”

He turned to talk to Sammy as he walked into the kitchen again. Sammy had learned long ago not to put much stock in our conversations. He either thought we were bat shit or he didn’t give a rat’s ass one way or another.

And who came up with the animals for these euphemisms, anyway? Why bat shit? Why not cow shit or grasshopper shit? And why don’t we give a rat’s ass as opposed to a hamster’s ass?

My point being, I could pretty much say anything in front of Sammy. He took it all in stride. The angel standing beside the walk-in freezer, however, would just have to deal.

“But I’m still human, yes? I was born a human.”

“Yeah,” he said to him, completely ignoring me. “Just keep an eye on the driver.”

“You got it,” Sammy said, noting my indignation with a barely suppressed grin “What are you going to do?”

Reyes looked down at me at last. “We’re going to the beach.”

Suh-weet.

As Reyes took my hand and led me out, Sammy shook his head again. Probably because we didn’t have any beaches in Albuquerque. Not real ones, anyway.

The lunch crowd was vast as usual, but with Dr. Feel Good being gone so much lately, the demographics had shifted from a large percentage of women to some actual men. Or so I’d thought.