“You sure that’s what he is?” she asked.
That got my attention. “What do you mean?” I stepped closer to Mr. Wong. “He looks like every other departed I’ve ever seen. Maybe a tad more monochrome.” He was awfully gray.
“No, he’s not like every other departed,” she said.
Garrett watched our exchange, more interested in the receiver he was holding than in anything supernatural. He liked things he could see. Things he could touch and explain. For a guy who hailed from a family of practicing voodooists, not to mention went to hell and back, he was not very comfortable discussing the supernatural realm.
I squinted again, trying to see what she was seeing. “How do you know? What are you seeing?”
But she just stood there, her eyes glazed over, her face alight, her expression reverent. Pari wasn’t the most reverent person I’d ever known. Covered in tattoos, with her long dark hair styled in bold waves, she liked thick black liner and thin black skirts. If I had to describe her in one word, it would be rebellious.
“What?” I asked again. I turned my head this way and that. “What are you seeing?”
“Nothing,” she said, blinking out of her stupor. “Nothing at all.” She scanned the rest of the area. “But I do think I found part of your problem.” She pointed into my bedroom.
“Really?” I hustled to her side, stood there a moment, then walked into my room. Despite my earlier assessment that my bedroom hadn’t been disturbed when the intruder ransacked the place, something seemed to be missing. I rested my hands on my hips and looked around, trying to put my finger on it. My dresser hadn’t been disturbed. My closet seemed okay, considering it was my closet. My bed sat untouched, the Bugs Bunny comforter lying exactly as I’d left it that morning: in total disarray.
But something wasn’t right.
“Reyes. Alexander. Farrow,” I said.
Seconds after I spoke his name, Reyes walked into his bedroom, and I looked across the open space directly from my room into his.
He waited for me to continue.
“I feel like there’s something missing from my bedroom.”
A dimple appeared at the corner of his mouth. “You don’t say.”
“Any idea what that might be?”
He glanced around my room as well, then shrugged. “I can’t imagine.”
“Oh, wait,” I said, stepping from my room into his, “wasn’t there something here? Like, I don’t know, a wall or something?”
He looked up. “You could be right. I do seem to remember a barrier of some kind here.”
“Yep,” I said, stepping closer, “I definitely remember a partition separating our apartments.” When his only response was a mischievous tilt of his full mouth, I asked, “Where did you put my wall?”
He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against his doorframe. “What makes you think I took it?”
“It was there this morning.”
“And that means I took it? Maybe you just misplaced it. Where exactly did you see it last?”
I pressed my lips together. “You tore down my wall.”
The smile he wore could’ve charmed the panties off a nun. Completely unrepentant, he admitted, “I tore down your wall.”
I stepped closer and he locked his long arms around my waist. “My apartment isn’t a safe place,” I warned. “It gets broken into a lot, it’s haunted, and it has a terrible aversion to cinnamon schnapps. Long story.”
“And you think taking down this wall was a bad idea?”
“Well, now that there is no barrier here, the curse that has been cast upon my humble abode has now seeped onto your side, too.”
“This is a non-seepage opening.”
“Really? Because it looks pretty seepy.”
“Seepy?”
“Seepy. And now we have this really long bed,” I said, nodding toward our two beds butting up against each other, no headboards in between. Then all the wondrous possibilities took shape in my mind. I beamed at him. “We can play Twister on it!”
“Twister.”
“And we can have massive pillow fights. I will, of course, kick your ass.”
“Will you?”
“Wanna bet on it?”
“I think you’ve done enough betting for a while,” he said, referring to my pathetic attempt to cash in at the poker table.
“That was with a lying, cheating demon. You can hardly blame me for losing to someone who eats souls for dinner.”
“I think your friend is upset.”
I whirled out of his embrace to check on Pari. She was staring again, only instead of the reverence she had when looking at Mr. Wong, she was regarding Reyes with a wariness that, if I wasn’t mistaken, resembled trepidation. She was terrified.