Fifth Grave Past the Light (13 page)

She nodded.

Quentin raised his brows, waiting for her to show him something. There were few things Deaf people found more amusing than hearing people who knew just enough sign to be dangerous. But he seemed genuinely interested.

“But it’s dumb,” she said, deflating a little now that the spotlight was on her.

“No.” I encouraged her to stand. “I bet it’s great.”

“Okay, well, I can sign ‘I am very special.’ ”

“Perfect,” I said. I had interpreted for Quentin so he would know what to expect, just in case what she signed was nowhere near what she was trying to say.

Since she had the room, Amber stood and cleared her throat. No idea why. She lifted her hands and produced three signs for us that were supposed to be
I, very,
and
special.
I was thrilled she didn’t throw in the
am.
There was no such word in American Sign Language. The
am
that did exist was thanks to any number of English sign systems that had very little to do with the actual language.
Very
was bad enough, but I could forgive her that one.

Still, there is a certain nuance to any language, a certain gradation, and shifting that nuance can change the meaning of a message entirely. One misplaced hand shape or one wrong movement, and the sign switches from a noun to a verb, or from one adjective to another. It would be like replacing the
p
in
puck
with an
f.
It may be one small sound away from the same word, but it was one giant step away from carrying the same meaning.

So when Amber did the movement in the English word
very
backwards, and extended the movement in the word
special,
using all the fingers on her right hand instead of the two allotted, I found myself more than a little taken aback.

I blinked.

Quentin blinked.

And believing we hadn’t understood her, Amber signed her sentence again, to my utter horror. I lunged forward and grabbed her hands before glancing back at Quentin. He now wore a smile that expressed just how much he appreciated Amber’s forthrightness.

I slammed my hands over his eyes. He giggled and tugged them down.

“What?” Amber said in dismay, clamping her hands behind her back. “What did I say?”

“She – She didn’t mean that,” I said to Quentin.

“I didn’t mean what?”

“I’m pretty sure she did,” he said.

“Nothing, sweetheart.” I pulled Quentin out of his chair. “We need to be going anyway. Thanks for dinner.”

Cookie sat with her mouth open, trying to figure out what had just happened.

“I think we should stay,” Quentin said, the smile on his face gleaming. “See what else she knows.”

“Absolutely not.” I dragged him out the door.

Just as I closed it, Amber called out to me. “What’d I say?”

I leaned against the door and repeated my earlier sentiment. “She didn’t mean that.”

He rolled his eyes with a soft laugh. “I know what she was trying to say. I’m not a moron.”

“Right. Sorry. But wipe that smirk off your face.”

“What smirk?”

I pointed to it. “That one.”

He tried to wipe it away with a swipe of his hand, to no avail.

“And just for the record, Amber does
not
—
” I leaned in and whispered the next signs to him. “— fuck or give head.”

He cracked up again, doubling over before sobering and asking, “Do you think that’s how her teacher really taught her to say ‘I am very special’?”

I hadn’t considered that. “Probably not. Unless, of course, she worked her way through college as a call girl.”

His shoulders shook; then he paused, sobered, and looked to the side. I felt it, too. A heat wafting toward us. We both watched as Reyes topped the stairs, his gait like that of a panther. Every move full of purpose, every motion made with the dangerous grace of a predator.

His gaze virtually sparkled when it landed on me.

“Mr. Farrow,” I said as he passed.

He remembered Quentin. I could see recognition in his eyes. “Ms. Davidson,” he said before nodding at Quentin as he strode past. He went to his apartment, closed the door slowly.

“I can see him, too,” Quentin said, his signs guarded, his expression wary. “I can see who he is. What he’s made of.

“Made of?” I asked.

“He’s dark,” he said, suspicion permeating every word. “It surrounds him like a shroud of black mist. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Just like I couldn’t see my own light, I couldn’t see this perpetual darkness that surrounded Reyes unless he dematerialized and came to me incorporeally. But I’d been told about it before. Angel had mentioned it to me once. I thought he’d been exaggerating.

“Yeah, well,” I said, wrapping an arm into his, “he’s had a hard life.”

He couldn’t seem to tear his gaze off Reyes’s door. “What is he?”

After the conversation we’d just had, I wasn’t sure I wanted him to know. He had been traumatized enough. But I didn’t want to lie to him, either. “I’m not sure I want to tell you,” I said, ushering him down the stairs.

He thought a moment, then said, “I’m not sure I want to know.”

I dropped Quentin off at the convent, said hello to all the sisters, played a quick game of Yahtzee, got my ass kicked, then headed back to Rocket’s place with a new piece of equipment lying across my backseat. If I couldn’t climb over the fence, I’d go through it.

I brought out the bolt cutters, which were much harder to use than I thought they would be. And they were heavy and bulky. What the hell? It looked so easy in the movies. Like pruning an azalea bush. But this was work. I should’ve bought gloves. My hands were so wimpy.

After finally making an opening big enough for me to squeeze through, I forced my head through first and realized I’d left several clumps of hair in the links and lots of DNA on the sharp edges I’d just cut. This was so not going as planned. I finally crammed my body through the fence, comparing the unpleasant experience to my birth, and found the basement window I always kept unlocked. I wanted to use the key I had, but all the locks had been changed. Whoever C&R Industries were, they would pay dearly for my blood loss.

I took out a flashlight and navigated the staircases of questionable worth.

Strawberry Shortcake appeared in the glow of my light. Strawberry, aka Becky Taft, aka Officer David Taft’s little sister who died when he was eleven, was a nine-year-old ball of fire who could teach Reyes’s dad a thing or two as far as I was concerned. I called her Strawberry because she was still wearing the Strawberry Shortcake pajamas she’d passed in. She stood with her fists on her hips, her long dark-blond hair hanging in tangles down her back, and I always thought if I actually liked kids, I might have liked her. Probably not, but it was a thought.

“Hey, pumpkin,” I said. “Where’s Rocket?”

“He’s hiding.”

“God, he loves that game.”

“No, he’s hiding because of you. He has to show you something.” She glowered at me accusingly.

I tried not to giggle. “Show me what?”

“Someone on the wall. He’s scared you’ll get mad at him.”

“Really? Well, now I’m totally curious.” Then I thought a moment. What if it was my name? What if the bolt cutter slipped and I’d accidentally cut my own throat and bled to death but I didn’t know it? That would suck.

“Can I brush your hair?” she asked as she led the way, her disposition doing a 180 on a dime. Kids. Can’t live with ’em. Can’t eat ’em for lunch.

Then I realized what she was asking. “No!” I shouted before reining in the surge of fear that overcame me to say in a nicer voice, “No, pumpkin, maybe next time.”

But it was too late. She stopped, crossed her little arms over her little chest, and whimpered like a puppy. Crap. That was all I needed. The SS following me around, tormenting me because I’d hurt her feelings. “Fine, okay, you can brush my hair when we find Rocket. But no scissors. I know what you did to your dolls.”

She gasped, utterly appalled. “Only the bad dolls.”

Oh, yeah, she was completely sane.

We found Rocket in one of the rooms in the medical ward. Which was by far the creepiest ward of them all.

“Hey, Rocket Man,” I said, easing up to him. He sat in a corner, curled into a ball. I seemed to be sending a lot of people into the fetal position lately. I knelt beside him and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

He shook his head and curled further inside himself. I’d never seen him like this.

“Yeah, what’s wrong?” Strawberry said right before she poked him with a stick.

He slapped at it.

“Strawberry!” I said. “Don’t poke Rocket. Holy cow. Where’s his sister?”

Rocket’s sister went by the name of Blue Bell. No idea why. I’d met her only once. A tiny angelic thing with a short bob and overalls.

Strawberry shrugged and went to poke him again.

I took the stick from her. “I thought you wanted to brush my hair.”

“Oh, I do! I do!” She took off back down the hall, I could only assume to get a hairbrush.

“Okay, Rocket Man, what’s bothering you?” When he shook his head again, I enticed him with, “I’ll bring you a soda next time.”

He bit his bottom lip.

“A grape one.”

“With an umbrella?” he asked.

The last time I had to bribe him with a soda, I’d put a little umbrella in it, a leftover from Hawaiian night at Calamity’s.

“With an umbrella,” I promised.

He wiggled until he was sitting with his back against the wall, his arms folded on bent knees. “Okay, but you’re going to be mad.”

The SS showed up then with a brush she’d retrieved from God only knew where.

“Sit on your bottom,” she ordered. “And be still. I have a lot of work ahead of me.”

I sat down and frowned at her while pulling out my hairband. “There is nothing wrong with my hair.”

“I know,” she said, suddenly defensive. “It’s not really ugly. It’s just dumb.”

Well, that cleared that up. Next time I went to the hairdresser, I’d tell her what Strawberry thought of my hair. Maybe she could explain why it was dumb.

I gave her my back and let her take my hair into her fingers. She raked the brush through it, beginning at my scalp and ripping through it to the very tips of my tips. Hopefully I’d have a few locks left when she was finished.

I was always a little impressed with what Strawberry could do. Not all departed could move objects, much less carry them around and use them. I think the only reason she could was because no one had mentioned otherwise and the contrary had never occurred to her.

After another good scraping of my roots, I noticed a tiny hand sticking out from the wall beside Rocket. It was Blue’s. She was holding on to her brother’s arm like she was scared of me or scared for him.

“Rocket, why do you think I’ll be mad at you?”

“Because.”

“Do I ever get mad at you?”

“No, Miss Charlotte, but one time you got upset.”

“Okay, I’ll try not to become upset.” By that point, my scalp was on fire. Strawberry scraped and ripped and tugged until my scalp bled. “What’s wrong?”

“I’ll have to show you, Miss Charlotte.”

Blue tugged at his arm, trying to pull him through the wall with her.

“It’s okay, Blue. She’s gonna bring us a grape soda with an umbrella.”

Rocket pointed behind my head. When I turned to look, Strawberry took a handful of hair and jerked.

“Ouch!” I grabbed my hair and pulled it out of her grasp. “Holy crap, Strawberry.”

“You moved,” she said, gazing at me as though I were an idiot.

I finally got a good look at the brush in her hand. “Where’d you get that?” It was oddly shaped with dirty bristles all the way around a broken plastic handle.

“The supply closet.”

There was only one kind of brush that I knew of that had bristles all the way around.

“Oh. My God.” I jumped up and screeched at her. “That’s a toilet brush!”

She lifted her tiny shoulders. “Okay.”

“Strawberry! That’s disgusting.” I swiped at my hair, trying to clean it. Maybe I had some Lysol in Misery. Or some hand sanitizer.

“Whatever,” she said, and I had to remind myself that she’d died sometime in the nineties, at the height of the
whatever
revolution. Her vocabulary was so different from Rocket’s, who’d died in the fifties.

I finally calmed down enough to look where Rocket was pointing. I walked over to the wall, swallowing back dry heaves. I would never live this down. I tried to find the name he pointed to, but just like always, name upon name had been scratched into the wall’s surface. It was hard to know where one name ended and another began.

“A little more,” he said, pointing past me.

I took another step and saw a cleared space with a name set apart from the others. I saw a
W
and an
O.
I inched closer until I could read the last name of three.
farrow.
I wavered, dived into a calming state of denial, then took another step.
alexander
. I stopped. My lungs seized as I stood there. My eyes tracked across the letters until they zeroed in on the first name. The only name I knew him by for over a decade. The name that meant so many things to me.

Beautiful.

Feral.

Dangerous.

Untamable.

“Are you mad, Miss Charlotte?”

The name blurred but I said it to myself over and over. Let the sounds caress my mouth, slide over my tongue, slip through my lips. Reyes. Reyes. Reyes.

“Are you upset?”

Blue had come through the wall. I could see her in my periphery. She tugged at his arm, tried to pull him through the wall with her.

“I don’t understand,” I said, my disbelief so utterly complete. “I just saw him.” I turned to Rocket, anger rushing through me like a wildfire. “He’s not dead. I just saw him.”

Rocket’s eyes widened as he watched me. He pushed into a standing position.

“Charley,” Strawberry said, her tone scolding, “you need to stop that. You’re scaring Blue.”

“He’s not dead,” I said to Rocket.

“Not yet.” He shook his head. “Not yet, Miss Charlotte.”

I was in front of him at once, had the dirty collar of his shirt wrapped into my fist before I even thought to do it. To make sure he didn’t disappear on me like he was so fond of doing. “When?” I asked, knowing exactly what his answer would be.

He tried to talk, his mouth opening and closing like a goldfish, but I’d scared him.

I pulled him closer until our noses touched. “When?” I repeated.

“Not when. Not how. Only who. N-no breaking rules.”

I steadied my voice, pronounced each syllable carefully so he would understand every word that left my mouth. “I will rip your sister in two.”

“Days,” Rocket said as a tear fell over his lashes. He shook uncontrollably. “H-he only has a few days.”

“Why? What happens?” When he hesitated, I reached down without taking my eyes off him and curled my fingers into his sister’s overalls. She didn’t fight me. She kept her arms wrapped around her brother’s leg. But my point was taken.

“He gets sick,” he said, his lids fluttering as he left this realm and peeked into the supernatural world. “But it’s not real. It’s not human. You have no choice.”

“What? What do you mean I have no choice?”

“You – You have to kill him. It’s not your fault.”

Why would I kill Reyes? I wouldn’t. Period. But clearly something would set me on that path. “How do I stop it?” I asked, the words hissing through my teeth.

He came back to me, his gaze sharp and clear. “You don’t, Miss Charlotte. That’s breaking the rules.” When I dipped my head to regard him from underneath my lashes, he added, “No breaking rules.”

“Charley, I’m telling my brother,” Strawberry said. She was standing beside me, hands on hips, a comical glare on her face.

“Can it be done?” I asked him.

“It can be done, but you would have to break the rules. Something bad will happen.”

“Works for me.”

I shoved him against the wall, unable to control the fury that had taken hold of me, and stormed out. Back outside the gate, I climbed into Misery, gasping for air, my cheeks wet from emotion and regret. What had I done?

I swiped angrily at my cheeks and left Rocket’s with a thousand more questions than when I’d entered. I couldn’t lose him. I couldn’t lose Reyes. And I had absolutely no intention of killing him, so that pretty much settled that. But still, what could warrant such an extreme action?

I wasn’t sure I could face the plethora of women in my apartment just then. I had lost control. With Rocket. The gentlest soul I’d ever known. I threatened his little sister, a five-year-old who hid in dark corners and cowered in shadows to avoid people like me. Threatening her took some kind of balls. I should be proud of myself, bullying a mentally challenged man and five-year-old girl.

And according to Rocket, I was about to lose the only man I’d ever loved.

The best place for me, the only place where I could clear my thoughts and find answers I still needed, was in my office, so I headed that way.

I walked in to find the restaurant and bar teeming with patrons. Again. Not horridly unusual for a Saturday night, but just like the last couple of days, the room was filled to the brim with women, and there were a lot more off-duty cops than normal. No doubt the sudden influx of feminine mystique lured the hunters. Officer Taft was there, Strawberry’s big brother, and the last thing I wanted to tell him was that I’d just threatened two of the dearest people ever to exist right in front of his little sister. Strawberry may seem all that and then some, but my behavior was inexcusable. And worse, I had no idea what came over me. I’d become livid in seconds flat.

In trying to duck Taft, I walked right by a table with a familiar face. Jessica was there. Again. What the hell? It was too late to veer off my path now. She would know I was trying to avoid her. I had no choice but to walk by her table.

Jessica spotted me and smirked as I hurried past. This was so the wrong day to fuck with me. I paused mid-stride and backstepped until we were face-to-face.

“Oh, hey, Jess,” I said, plastering on a huge smile and sprinkling so much fake sugar in my voice, I’d have to change my name to Splenda.

She blinked in surprise, then regarded me with enough distaste to warrant a bitch-slap, but I refrained. “What do you want?” she asked, and her friends snickered right on cue. It was inspiring, really.

“I’ve just been so worried about you, what with the chlamydia you got in high school on top of the herpes. I wanted to make sure you were practicing safe sex.”

Her jaw fell open long enough for her friends to realize I wasn’t lying. It was thoughtful of her really, to confirm everything I’d just said like that. I’d have to send her a thank-you card later.

“Are you okay?” I asked her when her face turned a lovely shade of scarlet.

“I do not have herpes,” she said from between clenched teeth. Her gaze bounced among her friends self-consciously. “And I know why you’re here. You may as well give up.”