Second Grave on the Left (8 page)

I tilted my head in question. “What do you mean?”

“When I was fourteen, a group of friends and I were having a slumber party, and like most fourteen-year-olds do eventually, we decided to have a séance.”

“Okay.” This was going nowhere good.

“So, we went down into my basement and were all séancing and chanting and conjuring a spirit from beyond when I felt something. Like a presence.”

“Like a departed?”

“No.” She shook her head, thinking back. “At least I don’t think so. They’re cold. This being was just sort of there. I felt it brush up against me like a dog.” One hand gripped the opposite arm in remembrance, a soft shiver echoing through her body. “No one else felt it, of course, until I said something.” She glanced up at me, a dire warning in her eyes. “Never tell a group of fourteen-year-old girls having a séance in a dark basement that you felt something brush up against you. For your own safety.”

I chuckled. “I promise. What happened?”

“They jumped up screaming and ran for the stairs. It freaked me out so, naturally, I ran, too.”

“Naturally.”

“I just wanted away from whatever had materialized in my basement, so I ran like I had a reason to live despite my suicidal tendencies.”

Pari had been Goth when Goth wasn’t cool. Kinda like now.

“I thought I was in the clear when I reached the top stair. Then I heard a growl, deep, guttural. Before I knew what was happening, I fell halfway down the stairs, spraining a wrist and bruising my ribs. I scrambled up and out of there without looking back. It took a while for me to realize I didn’t fall. My legs were pulled out from under me and I was dragged.” She lifted her pant leg and unzipped her knee-high boots to show me a jagged scar on her calf. It looked like claw marks. “I’ve never been so scared.”

“Holy crap, Par. What happened then?”

“When my dad found out why we were all screaming, he laughed and went down into the basement to prove to us nothing was there.”

“And?”

“Nothing was there,” she said with a shrug.

“Did you show him the wound?”

“Oh, hell no.” She shook her head like I’d just asked her if she ate children for breakfast. “They’d already filed me in the
F
’s for ‘freak of nature.’ I wasn’t about to confirm their suspicions.”

“Holy crap, Par,” I repeated.

“Tell me about it.”

“So, what makes you think it was a demon?”

“I don’t. It wasn’t a demon. Or, well, I don’t think it was. It was something more.”

“How do you know?”

She twisted the leather straps at her wrist. “Mostly because I knew its name.”

I froze for a moment before saying, “Come again?”

“Do you remember what I told you about my accident?” She glanced at me, her brows drawn together.

“Sure I do.” Pari had died when she was six in a car accident. Thankfully, an industrious EMT brought her back. After that, she could see auras, including those of the departed. She’d learned that if she saw an aura with a particularly grayish tint and no body attached, it was the soul of someone who’d passed. It was a ghost.

“When I died, my grandfather was waiting for me.”

“I remember,” I said, “and thankfully he sent you back. I owe him a fruit basket when I get to heaven.”

She reached over and squeezed my hand in a rare moment of appreciation. Awkward. “I’d met him only once,” she said, wrapping both hands around her water. “The only thing I remembered about him was that he had Great Danes taller than I was, yet I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt he was my grandfather. And when he told me it wasn’t my time, that I had to go back, the last thing I wanted to do was leave him.”

“Well, I for one am glad he sent your ass packing. You would have been hell on wheels in heaven.”

She smiled. “You’re probably right. But I never told you the strange part.”

“Most people find near-death experiences pretty strange.”

“True,” she said with a grin.

“So it gets stranger?”

“A lot stranger.” She hesitated, drew in a long breath, then rested her gaze on me. “On the way back, you know, to Earth, I heard things.”

That was new. “What kinds of things?”

“Voices. I heard a conversation.”

“You eavesdropped?” I asked, a little amazed such a thing was possible. “On celestial beings?”

“I guess you could call it that, but I didn’t do it on purpose. I heard an entire conversation in an instant, like it just appeared in my head. Yet I knew I wasn’t supposed to hear it. I knew the information was dangerous. I learned the name of a being powerful enough to bring about the end of the world.”

“The end of the world?” I asked, gulping when I did so.

“I know how it sounds, believe me. But they were talking about this being that had escaped from hell and was born on Earth.”

My pulse accelerated by a hairsbreadth, just enough to cause a tingling flutter in my stomach.

“They said that he could destroy the world, he could bring on the apocalypse if he so chose.”

I knew of only one being who had escaped from hell. Only one being who had been born on Earth. And while I knew he was powerful, I couldn’t imagine him powerful enough to bring about the freaking apocalypse. Then again, what was? I totally should have paid attention in catechism.

“And so the night of the séance, in all my teenaged wisdom, I decided to summon him.”

I gaped, but only a little. “Right. Because that’s what we want to do. Summon the very being who can destroy every living thing on Earth.”

“Exactly,” she said, spacing my sarcasm. “I thought I might convince him not to. You know, talk some sense into him.”

“And how did that work out for you?”

She stopped and pursed her lips at me. “I was fourteen, smart-ass.”

I tried to laugh, but it didn’t quite make it past the lump in my throat. “So, for real? This being is going to bring on the apocalypse?”

“No, you’re not listening.” She pressed her lips together before explaining. “I said he is powerful enough to bring on the apocalypse.”

Okay, well, that was a plus. No prophecies of mass destruction.

“And so that night during the séance, I summoned him. By name.”

Goose bumps crept up my legs and over my arms in anticipation. Either that or Dead Trunk Guy had found me again. I glanced around just in case.

“But, like I said,” she continued, “he’s not what you think. He’s not a demon.”

“Well, that’s taking a frown and turning it upside down.”

“From the gist of the conversation, he is something so very much more.”

He was more, all right. “Pari,” I said, growing impatient, “what’s its name?”

“No way am I telling you,” she said with a teasing sparkle in her eyes.

“Pari.”

“No, really.” She turned serious again. “I don’t say it aloud. Ever. Not since that day.”

“Oh, right. Well—”

Before I could say anything else, she grabbed a piece of paper and scribbled onto it. “This is it, but don’t say it out loud. I get the feeling he doesn’t like being summoned.”

I took the paper, my hand shaking more than I’d have liked, and gasped softly when I read the name.
Rey’aziel.
Rey’az … Reyes. The son of Satan.

“It means ‘the beautiful one,’” she said as I read it over and over again. “I don’t know what he is,” she continued, unaware of my stupor, “but he caused quite a stir on the other side, if you know what I mean. Chaos. Upheaval. Panic.”

Yep. That would be Reyes. Damn it.

Chapter Five

WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU GET SCARED HALF TO DEATH, TWICE?

—T-SHIRT

My head reeling, I left Pari’s shop stunned, wandering aimlessly toward home before I remembered I had a job to do. And a job I would do. Time to pull the curtains back on my shadow. Whomever Uncle Bob had assigned to follow me was about to have a very bad day.

I opened my cell phone and answered as if it had been ringing. I stopped, incredulous. I looked around. Gestured wildly. “Meet? Now? Well, darn it, okay. You’re in the alley to my right? You’re that close? Are you crazy? You’ll be caught. Surely someone will suspect you might get in touch with me. Surely … Okay, fine.” I closed the phone, scanned the area, then eased between two buildings, the passageway leading to an alley, all the while throwing furtive glances over my shoulder.

After my production of
Casablanca
meets
Mission: Impossible,
I hightailed it toward a Dumpster and ducked behind it, waiting for my shadow to appear. As I sat scrunched, feeling oddly ridiculous, I played with Reyes’s name in my head, let it shape and slide over my tongue. Rey’aziel. The beautiful one. Boy did they have that right.

But why would he hurt Pari? I calculated ages. If Pari had been fourteen when she performed her little séance, then Reyes could have been no more than eight. Nine at the most. And he attacked her? Maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe she summoned something else accidently, something evil.

“Whatcha doin’?”

I started at the voice behind me and—having flailed a bit—fell back, my palms and ass landing in an illegally dumped oil slick. Wonderful. I ground my teeth together and looked up at a grinning departed gangbanger with more attitude than was socially acceptable.

“Angel, you little shit.”

He laughed aloud as I examined my filthy hands. “That was awesome.”

Freaking thirteen-year-olds. “I knew I should have exorcised your ass when I had the chance.” Angel died when his best friend decided to take out the
puta
bitch
vatos
who’d invaded their turf by utilizing the drive-by technique of execution so popular with the kids today. Angel tried to stop him and paid the ultimate price. Much to my eternal chagrin.

“You couldn’t exorcise a cat, much less a bad-to-the-bone Chicano with gunpowder in his blood. Besides, you hate exercise.”

Chuckling at his own joke, he took my outstretched hand and pulled me onto the balls of my feet. I needed to stay squatted behind the Dumpster, the prime tactical position for an ambush. “You don’t have any blood,” I pointed out helpfully.

“Sure I do,” he said, looking down at himself. He wore a dirty white T-shirt with jeans hanging low on his hips, worn-out sneakers, and a wide leather wristband. His inky black hair was cropped short over his ears, but he still had a baby face and a smile so genuine, it could melt my heart on contact. “It’s just kind of see-through now.”

I scraped my hands down the side of the Dumpster to no avail, wondering how many germs were hitching a ride in the process. “Do you have a reason for being here?” I asked, now swiping my hands at my pants. The oil was obviously going to remain stuck until I found some water and a professional-grade degreaser.

“I heard we got a case,” he said. While Angel had been a constant companion since my freshman days of high school, he agreed to become my lead investigator when I opened my PI business three years ago. Having an incorporeal being as an investigator was kind of like cheating on college entrance exams—nerve-racking yet oddly effective. And we’d solved many a case together.

Facing no such quandaries with the oil slick, he sat down in front of me, his back against the Dumpster, his eyes suddenly drawn to my hand as I knocked the rocks and soil off my left butt cheek. “Can I help?” he asked, indicating my ass with a nod. Thirteen-year-olds were so hormonal. Even dead ones.

“No, you can’t help, and we suddenly have not one, but two cases.” While Mimi was my professional priority, Reyes was my personal one. Neither was expendable, and I pondered which case I should put him on. I opted for Reyes because I simply didn’t have any other resources in that area. But Angel wasn’t going to like it.

“How much do you know about Reyes?” I asked, hoping he wouldn’t disappear. Or pull a nine-millimeter and gank me.

He eyed me a moment, shifted uncomfortably, then rested his elbows on his knees and looked off into the distance. Or, well, into a warehouse. After a long while, he said, “Rey’aziel isn’t our case.”

I sucked in a soft breath with the mention of Reyes’s otherworldly name. How did he know it? Better yet, how long had he known it?

“Angel, do you know what Reyes is?”

He shrugged. “I know what he isn’t.” He leveled an intent gaze on me. “He isn’t our case.”

With a sigh, I sat on the pavement, slick or no slick, and leaned against the trash bin beside him. I needed Angel with me on this. I needed his help, his particular talents. After placing a dirty hand on his, I said, “If I don’t find him, he’s going to die.”

A dubious chuckle shook his chest, and in that instant, he seemed so much older than the thirteen years he’d accumulated before he passed. “If only it were that easy.”

“Angel,” I said, my tone admonishing. “You can’t mean that.”

The look he stabbed me with was one of such anger, such incredulity, I fought the urge to lean away from him. “You can’t be serious,” he said as if I’d suddenly lost my marbles. Little did he know, I’d lost my marbles eons ago.

I knew Angel didn’t like the guy, but I had no idea he felt such malevolence toward him.

“Is there a reason you’re sitting in a puddle of oil talking to yourself?”

I looked up to find Garrett Swopes standing over me, a dark-skinned, silvery-eyed skiptracer who knew just enough about me to be dangerous; then I glanced back at Angel. He was gone. Naturally. When the going gets tough, the tough refuse to talk about it and insist on running away to stew in their own crabby insecurities.

I struggled to my feet and realized my jeans would never be the same again. “What are you doing here, Swopes?” I asked, swiping at my ass for the second time that morning.

As skiptracers went, Garrett was one of the best. We’d been fairly decent friends for a while until Uncle Bob, in a moment of weakness brought on by one-too-many brewskis, told him what I did for a living. Not the PI part—Garrett already knew that—but the Charley-sees-dead-people part. After that, our slightly flirtatious relationship took a left turn into hostile territory, as though he were angry that I would try to pull off such a scheme. A month later, Garrett was slowly but surely—and quite reluctantly—beginning to believe in what I could do, having seen the evidence firsthand. Not that I gave a shit if he believed me or not, especially after his behavior over the last month, but Garrett was good at his job. He came in handy from time to time. As for the skeptic in him, he could bite my ass.