Second Grave on the Left

I paused and turned to him. “Okay, this is getting creepy.”

After an apprehensive laugh, he said, “Sorry. I just … You’re growing up so fast.”

“Growing up?” I coughed into my sleeve before continuing. “I’m pretty much grown.”

“Right.” He was still somewhere else. A different time. A different place. After a moment, he refocused and grew serious. “Sweetheart, is there more to your ability than what you’ve told me?”

I’d taken another bite and drew my brows together in question.

“You know, things. Can you … do things?”

Last week, I had the murderous husband of a former client try to kill me. Reyes had saved my life. Again. And he’d done it in his usual manner. He’d appeared out of nowhere and severed the man’s spinal cord with one lighting flash of his sword. Since that very same thing had happened in the past—criminals’ spinal columns being severed with no outside trauma whatsoever, no medical explanation—I feared Dad was beginning to make the connection.

“Things?” I asked, an air of innocence in my voice.

“Well, for example, that man who attacked you last week.”

“Mmm-hmm,” I said, taking another bite.

“Did you … Can you … Are you able—?”

“I didn’t hurt him, Dad,” I said after I swallowed. “I told you, there was another man there. He threw the guy against the cage of the elevator. The impact must have—”

“Right,” he said, shaking his head. “I—I knew that. It’s just, our forensics guy said that was impossible.” He lifted his gaze to mine, his soft brown eyes probing.

I sat my sandwich down. “Dad, you don’t really think I have the capability to hurt someone, do you?”

“You have such a gentle soul,” he said sadly.

Gentle? Did he know me at all?

“I just … I wonder if there’s more to it—”

“I brought dessert.”

We both looked up at my stepmother. She scooted a chair next to Dad and planted her ass in it, carefully placing a white dessert box on the table. I could tell she’d just had her short brown hair styled and her nails done. She smelled like hairspray and nail polish. I often wondered what my dad saw in the woman. He was just as blinded by her too-polished exterior as everyone else. Anyone who knew her—or thought they knew her—called her a saint for taking on a cop husband with two small children. Saint was not the word that came to my mind. I think I gave her the heebie-jeebies. In all fairness, she did the same to me. Her lipstick was always a little too red for her pale skin, her shadow a little too blue. Her aura a little too dark.

My sister, Gemma, followed in her wake, taking the only seat available next to me with an obligatory, albeit strained, smile. Her blond hair was pulled back in a taut wrap, and she wore just enough makeup to look made up yet still professional. She was a shrink, after all.

Our relationship, while never award-winning, had gone nowhere but down since high school. No idea why. She was three years older and had taken every opportunity growing up to remind me of that fact. While Denise was the only mother I had ever known—sadly—Gemma had had three wonderful years with our real mother before she died giving birth to yours truly. I’d often wondered if that was where the strain in our relationship stemmed from. If Gemma subconsciously blamed me for our mother’s death.

But the vacancy had been filled only a year later when my dad married the she-wolf. And Gemma had taken to her instantly. I, on the other hand, had yet to reach that apex of the mother–daughter bond. I preferred my bondage stepmother-free and sprinkled with a little sexy.

Oddly, I was almost glad for the interruption. I wasn’t sure where Dad had been going with his line of questioning—or if even he was sure where he was going with his line of questioning—but there was still so much he didn’t know. And didn’t need to know. And would never know, if I had anything to say about it. My being a grim reaper, for one. Still, he seemed so lost. Almost desperate. You’d think twenty years on the police force would have given him better interrogation skills. He’d been grasping at straws, the see-through twirly kind that kids use at birthday parties.

I finished my sandwich in a flash, excused myself to the annoyance of my dad, then hightailed it home, taking note that Denise did not offer me any of the cheesecake she’d picked up at the bakery down the street. I realized on the long, hazardous, thirty-second trek to my apartment building that Gemma seemed as perplexed by Dad’s behavior as I was. She kept casting curious glances at him from underneath her lashes. Maybe I’d call her later and ask her if she had any idea what was going on. Or maybe I’d have my bikini area waxed by a German female wrestler, which would be more fun than talking to my sister on the phone.

“Well?” Cookie asked as I walked to my apartment, her head poking out her door. How did she always know I was coming? I was pure stealth. Smoke. Nigh invisible. Like a ninja without the head wrap.

“Crap,” I said when I tripped on my own feet and dropped my cell.

“Did you talk to Warren?”

“Sure did.” I grabbed my phone then rummaged through my bag in search of my ever-elusive keys.

“And?”

“And that man is going to need medication.”

She sighed and leaned against her doorjamb. “Poor guy. Did he really threaten that murdered car salesman?”