I shrugged. “I guess that’s one way of looking at it.”
An intrigued smile spread across his face as he studied me, making my nerve endings prickly with suspicion.
“He is so into you,” Elizabeth said.
I ignored her and glanced at my watch. “Gosh, look at the time.” Where the heck was Uncle Bob?
“So the spirits that don’t cross are just hanging out on earth, walking through us without a care in the world?” Garrett asked, not ready to give up his quest.
I sighed. This could go on for days.
“No. They exist in the same time and space but on a different plane. Like a double-exposed picture. I’m just able to be on both planes simultaneously.”
“Then that makes you pretty amazing,” he said, appreciation shimmering in his eyes.
This was too much. I was still prying my jaw off the floor, metaphorically, that he believed anything I said.
“So, how about it? Let’s go get some coffee,” he suggested again.
“But I just explained everything.”
“Sweetheart, I doubt you’ve even scratched the surface.” When I hesitated, he said, “We can go as friends.”
I scowled, just a little, then reminded him, “We’re not friends, remember? You’ve made that painfully clear over the last month. We’re not pals or buds or anything else even remotely resembling friends.”
“Weekend lovers?” he offered.
That was it. I didn’t know what game he was playing—though I was fairly certain it wasn’t Monopoly … or checkers—but I refused to play along. I stood and walked around the desk so I could stand over him. Menacingly. Like Darth Vader, only with better lung capacity. After a meaningful stare-down, I pointed to the exit. “I have work to do.”
He glanced at the door I was pointing at, the one through which I was suggesting he leave. “You have work to do? On that door?” he asked, all teasing and smart-assy.
“What?”
“Are you going to paint it?”
“No.”
“I suggest a deep, rich brown to go with your hair.” He stood, reversing the situation to tower over me. After another stare-down, one with a different meaning entirely, he leaned in and said softly, “Or gold … to go with your eyes.”
“I think I just came,” Elizabeth said.
The other two lawyers, after clearing their throats, had the decency to step out of the room. Elizabeth reluctantly followed them into the reception area, otherwise known as Cookie’s-god-danged-space-and-don’t-you-forget-it.
As Garrett waited for me to agree to have coffee with him, I saw it from the corner of my eye. The blurry Superman thing. It moved so fast that by the time I turned my head, it was gone. It had moved to my other side, brushed my arm, feathered across my mouth, then dived inside me, pooling in my abdomen, oozing warmth throughout my entire body.
My insides quaked, and I threw back my head with a startled gasp. Garrett stepped forward and grabbed hold of my arms to keep me from falling. Only then did I see the bewildered expression on his face. He pulled me closer. Then the feeling left me and Garrett shot backwards, as if a violent force had shoved him.
He stumbled, caught himself, then looked at me. We both stood stunned and wide-eyed. I toppled toward my desk, leaned against it to keep my knees from buckling.
“Was that … one of them?” he asked, absently rubbing his chest where he’d apparently been shoved. He glanced around wildly before placing a disconcerted scowl on me.
“No,” I said, trying to slow my breathing, “that was something very different.”
What, I didn’t know. But I could guess, and I didn’t like the direction my guesses were heading. Could it be the Big Bad? If so, why here? Why now? My life didn’t seem to be in any immediate danger.
Fear was difficult for me to hide. I rarely felt it. But surely Garrett sensed it in me now. The thought of him seeing me afraid grated more than a little.
Then another scenario came to mind. Of all the times I’d seen Bad, he’d never brushed against me. He’d never even touched me, and he certainly hadn’t dived in for a swim in my nether regions. Maybe it wasn’t Bad at all.
I scanned the room, probably looking a little desperate. Was it Reyes? Could it have been him? Could he have been … jealous? Of Swopes? Was he serious?
I rushed to the door and asked everyone, “Did you see anything? Did he come this way?”
Elizabeth, who had been sitting on our sage green reception sofa, jumped up and said, “You lost him? How could you lose him?”
“Not Garrett,” I said, possibly a little too impatiently. “The dark, blurry guy.”
Cookie was slowly beginning to realize we had company. She eased up out of her seat as if a cobra were perched on her desk. “Charley, sweetheart, do we have clients?”
“Oh, yeah. I forgot to mention that. Everyone, this is Cookie. Cookie, we have the three lawyers who left us last night. The ones I told you about. We’re working on their case with Uncle Bob. Okay, now, did anyone see him?”
The lawyers questioned each other with sideways glances and shrugs. I let a hapless sigh slip through my lips and slumped against the doorjamb.
You’d think, me being a grim reaper and all, I’d have connections, ways of obtaining Blurry Guy’s identity. But since the only connection from the other side I’d ever made was that of Bad, aka death incarnate, inquiries proved difficult.