No, I’d felt jealousy. This was jealousy from a supernatural being. From Reyes Farrow.
“Yes, you did,” I said, playing it off. “And we aren’t close. We’re colleagues. Kind of. Have you seen my other boot?”
He gestured toward the receiver under his flat screen, where one leather boot sat perilously close to toppling off.
“Oh, thanks. So, are you going over?” I asked him.
He shrugged an indifferent affirmation.
“Thinking about getting dressed anytime soon?”
“Not really.”
“Oh, no, you don’t,” I said, wagging an index finger.
“What?” he asked, all innocence and myrrh. He knew exactly what I was referring to.
“You put on a shirt or you stay home. You’ll give that poor woman a heart attack.” Cookie would have enough to deal with having both Garrett and Reyes in the same room together. If one of them were shirtless… I shuddered to think.
He grinned and went to his closet, looking just as good going as coming.
By the time we got there, the coffee was brewed and Cookie had brought over a basket of muffins. Muffins! She was such a great hostess. I only brought an open pack of gum with pocket lint on it. Both Reyes and I had to navigate around the throngs of departed women. Our actions had to look odd to the two nonsupernatural beings in the room, but they didn’t say anything.
We sat in my living room, Reyes and I on Sophie and Garrett and Cookie on lesser chairs who were apparently unworthy of names. The guilt of my negligence tried to get a foothold. I didn’t let it, assuring it that I’d just been busy. The chairs would get names first chance I got.
Garrett busied himself by taking books and materials out of the backpack he was carrying. From the looks of things, I was about to get some answers. Sweeeeet.
“Do you want to take off your jacket?” I asked him.
“No, I’m good. I just wanted to explain a few things, what’s been happening and what I’ve figured out.”
“Sounds ominous,” I said, settling deeper into the sofa. Reyes threw a possessive arm across the back, almost touching my shoulders.
Cookie noticed, her expression full of longing before she caught herself.
Garrett’s gaze darted toward the movement as well, then back at me. “You have no idea how ominous. But first, you might want to know something about how I got started in the bond enforcement business.”
Not the direction I thought the conversation would take, but okay. “You were in the military.”
He took a stack of notes and sat back. “Right, and that training definitely comes in handy. But you know how I told you my dad was an engineer working in Colombia?”
“Yes,” Cookie said, chiming in. “He was kidnapped and you never heard from him again.”
“Exactly. What I didn’t tell you is why I’m so good at my job. I have a talent for reading people. I see the world through a different lens than most.”
Sounded legit.
“My father was the first person in my family to go to college, to really do something with his life. But his ancestors were a little less academically inclined. Basically, I come from a very long and very well established line of con artists.”
“Con artists,” I said in disbelief. “Like real con artists?”
“Yep. Grifters of every size, shape, and color. And that’s probably why it took me so long to believe in what you could do. In who you are. We don’t harbor an overabundance of trust, especially when we use the same tactics for a con. We know every trick in the book.”
“Wait, for real?” Cookie asked, still trying to wrap her head about it.
I was right there with her. “Like genuine con artists?”
“All the way back to a great-great-grandfather of questionable morals who claimed to be a Romani prince and an enslaved grandmother who used voodoo to raise the dead.”
“Wow,” Cookie said, “that’s so cool.”
“Yeah. My dad put himself through college by setting up cons and selling moonshine. He was a pretty famous moonshiner, actually.”
“My dad’s pretty famous, too.” We all turned to stare at Reyes.
“Wait,” Cookie said, recovering first, “could your grandmother really raise the dead?”
“No, hon. Thus the term con artist.”
“Oh, right. But that does explain why you didn’t believe Charley for so long.”
Garrett continued. “Exactly. Even after I saw cold, hard evidence, it took a bit of convincing.” He raised the notes he had in his hands. “And what if this whole thing, everything that happened when I died, the story, the setup, the trip to hell and back, what if it was all just an elaborate con? Smoke and mirrors to get me to do Lucifer’s bidding? I’m kind of like you, Charles. I can tell when someone is lying, and Lucifer was lying to me about how Reyes is going to destroy the world.”
Finally! Someone with some common sense.
“How do you know?” Cookie asked.
“Because he spent a lot of time, too much time, trying to convince me of that, of how bad Rey’aziel is, of how he is going to kill you, Charles, everyone —” He seemed to fight for the right words. “— everyone… close to me, then destroy the world in a fit of rage.”
“And you think he was lying?” I asked.
“I know he was. He creates a way out of hell, a portal like you named Rey’aziel, then sends him away? Why would Lucifer send the portal, his only way out of hell, to Earth to get you? There has to be a pretty f**king good reason to risk his only way out of that hellhole he lives in. But Junior’s been bad.” He shook his head at Reyes. Reyes ignored him. “And so now, instead of fixing the problem, Roger Ramjet has increased it sevenfold. And Daddy’s thinking, ‘Well, shit.’ ” He glanced at me. “Let’s just say he’s really upset about the whole ‘Reyes was born on Earth to be with you’ thing.”